For Christians who long for the gift of love, following a Savior who commanded us to love even our enemies, there's not much good news in the news we're hearing from the world these days. The renewed and escalating violence in the Middle East breaks our hearts. Hostilities continue in Kosovo. Bombings and threats of revenge mark our relationship with Iraq. Violence on our city streets continues as we debate whether the music of rappers such as Eminem serves as a safety valve or as the legitimizing of hatred and bigotry.

We live in a difficult time, a cynical time, a skeptical time, a highly polarized time, and it's hard to keep our bearings, to sort things out. There is among us very little hope that God might, indeed, act in our lives, in our world, so as to enable enemies to embrace, be it in our cities or in the Middle East or in any place where hatred and fear are perceived as defining reality.

One of the things that makes our Bible such a rich and powerful resource for us in our journey of faith is that it's not just a collection of platitudes about love and doing good. It also includes powerful stories of enmity and of estrangement, of what really happens when we humans begin to define one another as different from us, as the enemy, of how we are then prone to act towards one another. It includes stories that we can relate to because they depict things as they are in our world, and also stories that show us the holy bridges which span and re-connect those divides. It's the old, old story. And we can lean on the everlasting arms of the story when we know it, when we believe it, when we trust it.

A poem by David Whyte puts it well:

This is not
the age of information.
This is NOT
the age of information.

Forget the news
and the radio
and the blurred screen.

This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

Let's hear today a good word from the old, old story. Let's remember again. Remember from the book of Genesis, that from the beginning we, God's children, are told the story of Joseph and his brothers. Brothers who become enemies one to another. Brother enemies, enemy brothers who, in the end, find their way back into reconciliation and embrace.

You remember? All of Joseph's older brothers hated him because he was too young to work in the fields with them, was given the cloak of many colors by their father, Jacob, was unfairly privileged in their eyes. They resented their baby brother.

They sold him into slavery in Egypt, but Joseph gained favor in the eyes of Pharaoh and rose to a position of privilege and power. He was a success in spite of his brothers and their hateful deeds. And when famine decimated the Hebrews, the siblings came to Egypt for grain. At first, they did not recognize the one with whom they were dealing as their former brother, Joseph. But he knew them right away. Brother enemies. Enemy brothers. And the question becomes: how will Joseph deal with his brothers, his enemies? Will he exact his due revenge, now that he has the power to do so? Will he humiliate them for what they did to him? Put them in their place? Send them away without food? Have them killed?

This is where the story gets very instructive to us, for everything now hinges on how Joseph chooses to interpret what's going on. Who or what will Joseph define as the enemy-his brothers personally? Or the oppression which drove them to hate one another? The famine which threatens their homeland, but, ironically, is bringing them back together? Human propensity for alienation and estrangement? Will this be for Joseph a matter of family politics or of the wicked getting their due? Are his birth brothers still brothers, having sold him into slavery and given him up for dead, or are they the enemy?

The power of the story for us is that it reminds us to re-examine just how we look at what's going on in our cities and neighborhoods and world. What are the root causes of our fear? Are those we fear and hate our brothers and sisters or are they the enemy? And, if the enemy, how are we to act towards them?

You see, how we interpret and name what's going on has everything to do with how we respond, how we act in the situation, and who we define as enemy-as those beyond the pale, deserving of nothing other than our scorn or even of our violence. For once we define the other as enemy, as the cause of all our problems, or at least the identifiable sign of everything we hate and fear about what's going on in this world, the lives of the enemy become expendable.

What can we learn from Joseph, in Egypt, face-to-face now with his long-estranged brothers? What does he do? Most importantly, Joseph chooses to define his situation from a position of faith. That is, he chooses to see God at work in all that is transpiring and, as a result, he does something completely unexpected. He determines that his enemy is still his brother. He sees those standing before him as those to whom he is still bound in God's encompassing love.

Joseph says to his brothers that what they meant for evil, God meant for good. That it was in fact God who had led him into that place of power in the Egyptian government so that, at this moment of great need among the Hebrews, he would be in a position to offer them the food they desperately need. He embraces them, and they weep, and after that, they all talk together.

So often the Scriptures say little and leave us guessing about how people felt about what was going on. Not here! The tears flow and flow, the emptying tears, the healing tears, tears of remorse and fright and relief and disbelief. Tears which reconnect Joseph to his true identity; tears which reclaim for the Canaanite brothers their humanity, their heart; tears which then can restore the relationship between all the reunited brothers and their father and eventually with their God. And, cleansed by their tears, they can finally talk with one another again.

Was it in seeing God at work in all things that allowed him to become a brother again? Or was it in the act of becoming a brother anew to his own brothers that the hand of God is revealed to Joseph? It's not clear, and it doesn't really matter, for the point is that theological revelation and ethical transformation go hand in hand in God's people. When we see our lives through God's eyes, when our tears mingle with God's tears, when we live in the way God has created us to live, our lives are transformed and miracles happen.

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ teaches us this: that we are to love our enemy; to bless those who curse us; to do to others as we would have them do to us; to forgive that we may be forgiven; to give that it may be given to us.

You see, these are not random acts of kindness, but deliberate, intentional, consistent ways of treating one another-all others, and not just those we like or understand or who speak our same language-as sisters and brothers, as children of God. These teachings of our Savior are the logical consequences of seeing God at work in our lives, of living each moment aware of the generous out-pouring of God's love and mercy, of knowing that God is always about the work of weaving us together in a community of relationship and love.

What might it take for the families of our cities, the families of the nations, and our own families to weep and talk together? In every place of life and death, it is still and always possible for enemies to embrace. God is still working in our time, in villages and schools, in city streets and housing projects, in homes and around tables, desperately yearning for enemies to embrace.

There's another kind of news out there, which we rarely hear, information that is, in fact, bread for our souls. I have time for only one brief example today, but there are many, many similar stories which could be shared. In Northern Ireland, where we often hear only of the violence caused by religious difference, something else is happening. A counterforce of small, ecumenical ministries is reweaving the fabric of life under the radar screen of the "news." A Catholic/Protestant community center is set up on the border between two rival neighborhoods, where people come together to get to know one another, and listen, and weep together. And talk. A ministry to prisoners reconnects those who have been estranged by sectarian violence. Ecumenical prayer groups gather weekly to explore their oneness in Christ, which is deeper than political difference. Protestant and Catholic mothers meet to mourn and then to work together towards peace. Programs through the YMCA bring Catholic and Protestant youth together. Everyone of these ministries serves to break the spiral of violence and revenge. Every new relationship is a bridge of hope in a broken and hurting land. Every attempt is a stubborn refusal to let violence and enmity have the upper hand.

Is this a panacea? No. Are things measurably better in Northern Ireland? Hard to say. But this determined work by Christians to live out loving one's enemy witnesses to hope, to life, and to the possibility of a future brighter than the past. And it creates the social fabric necessary for Peace Accords at the highest levels to have any chance of success.

Dear sisters and brothers, this is our story. We serve a crucified Lord who, while yet on the cross, embraced family, thief, and enemy, drawing them into a new Beloved Community of salvation and hope. We serve a Risen Savior who has triumphed over sin and death in every form. Underneath every label of enemy, of other, of hated, of despised, of not worthy, underneath our brokenness and sin lies the story of the reality of Christ's reconciling love and God's amazing, amazing grace.

Jesus calls his disciples into a different way, that enemies might at last embrace and peace be upon our hearts. AMEN.

NOTE:

David Whyte poem quoted by Lyman Randall in Zion's Herald, Vol. 175, Issue 11, p. 25.

© Patricia E. Farris, 2001.  Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.  All other rights reserved.