Enemies and Friends

Pride, Prejudice and Powerlessness

 My wonderful Monday evening small group is in our sixteenth year of meeting together. This past Monday, we talked about the tiny book of Obadiah, the shortest book in the Old Testament.  We watched the Bible Project video on the book, and we grappled with the book’s indictment.  In the long simmering feud between Israel and Edom (the descendants of twin brothers Jacob and Esau), Edom had capitalized on Israel’s misfortune.  When Israel was attacked, Edom refused to care for Israelite refugees, but had instead used the situation to their own advantage: they killed Israelites, and stole their land and property.  At the root of this, of course, was pride: Edom understood themselves as superior, and so could not see Israel as their brother, but only as an obstacle to be conquered.

We know what it’s like to be kicked when we are down.  We know what it is like to desperately wish that others would see us as a brother, only to be voted off the island.  We remember those times, feeling disoriented and alone.  Maybe you feel it right now.

It’s harder to know when we are doing that to other people—and yet, of course, we do.  When we are stressed, it is easy to feel like we are under attack, like everything is a war that we have to win no matter the cost. We push away people who are trying to help, we quickly divide the world into enemies and friends; we fight or flee. 

Jesus shows us a different way; he knows prostitutes, tax collectors, sinners.  He takes genuine interest in people who aren’t like Him, casts them as the heroes of stories, says that they can see truths that religious leaders can’t see.  He eats with them at the table, in their own homes and in public.

Many, many Christians are quick to remind you that he doesn’t eat with them because he approves of them, but because he wants to invite them to change. Yes, of course; that’s the most obvious thing about Jesus.  He wants everyone to change.

But that’s not the point of the story.  The point is that the Pharisees have lost something precious when they’ve treated the sinners as enemies instead of human beings.  They feel alone and embattled because they are so sure that they are the only people in the world who are right, and they cannot see the partners and friends they could have.  They feel angry and bitter because others won’t become like them, but they cannot see how their self-righteousness has warped them into a bitter shell that talks about God but knows nothing of His healing power. 

They have been pursuing their understanding of God with such intensity that they have forgotten who God really is; they have been trying to follow God so rigorously that they have forgotten how much God loves each of us.  They have been trying to follow God but have become horribly disfigured; their sense of right and wrong is so inverted that God Himself is walking in their midst and all they can see is a troublemaker.  All the world is divided into enemies and friends, and friends seems to be an ever-shrinking category, so small in fact that the dearest Friend can only be perceived as an enemy.

This is no way to live.  And the question we need to sit with now is why so often people who follow Jesus live this way.