The Enemy is Us
a Palm Sunday Illustrated Devotional
It feels like in my spiritual journey thus far, grace often comes with the church calendar. Whatever you are needing at a certain time, there is something in that season for you. I believe that this is due in part to the wisdom of the ages, but also the Holy Spirit moving as the seasons of the earth move (which Spirit also moves them as well). And as it happened, grace arrived just when I needed it this Palm Sunday. I have felt really distressed recently. Like my barking dog, who is as I write warning of an outside threat of a bunny, I have felt this need to alert those in my circles to the obvious breaches of moral conduct that I have seen from the policies of this current administration in order to protect their souls. Whether it is cutting off foreign aid that countries depend upon and that saves lives, or threatening to roll back refugee statuses for millions of our neighbors, or deportation of hard working people from our country, there are so many moral foibles it has been hard to keep up. And even more distressing I find is when people I love and respect, who follow Jesus, either don’t seem as concerned, or in fact support these immoral policies. It has kept me feeling on high alert, stressed out, and at times, burnt out. But as I was listening to Richard Rohr’s podcast, “Everything Belongs”1, something healed inside me.
I felt somehow that my stress was evidence of my moral purity, my distress and outrage badges of my righteousness. I was more Jesus’s than those who claimed Jesus but support so many of the things Jesus would be against by supporting Trump. And by keeping pure maybe I could snatch others out of the fires of Trumpism. But this left me feeling lonely, and left my nervous system in a dis-regulated bundle, and like a “winner” amongst “losers”. This is where the Podcast came along in a moment of Palm Sunday grace. There was a pattern Rohr mentioned in the prophets: anger that was then followed by sadness and grief. Anger, because an injustice had occurred. And this is where I have been sitting. However, he said if we stay here this will only make us feel superior, and further and form in us an “us and them” mentality.
How is this any different from the fundamentalism I have left behind? Certainly we must be angry at injustice. Jesus was, so were the prophets. But it ended in grief because we are all equally guilty. If we invest in the stock market, or have a 401K, we most likely are buying into weapons manufactures that benefit off of war. War is what keeps us living the comfortable life we do in America. As much as we want to detest the system and fight against it, it is the system that has brought us here. A necessary response to that is to grieve.
The finger stops being pointed only at a symptom like Trumpism, and more so at the disease— exploitative greed and selfishness being normative.
There is a Walt Kelly comic called “Pogo”. One frame famously has said “we have seen the enemy, and he is us”. This what I discovered. It shouldn’t stop our advocacy. It shouldn’t stop us pointing fingers at wrongdoing, and being deeply angry in it. In fact, the church needs to grow in this. But if this is already something you do well, it may be good to hear it doesn’t have to stop there. A grief is also necessary. Trump was popularly elected. He is not the problem, he is the symptom. The problem doesn’t just exist in America, but around the world. The problem is sin: in all people, in all places, in all time. In Lent, and in this last week of Holy Week, we both celebrate that Jesus died to liberate the world from this deeply entrenched evil, but we also mourn that Jesus had to die to begin with due to the evil and sin of our world. We must mourn that we have contributed to it, and not ONLY in a way in which would make us individually responsible, but in the sense of communal guilt. Original Sin, as Rohr put, is a great means of solidarity and humility. Though we are Originally Good, we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s Glory.
In the story we celebrate on Palm Sunday, the Triumphal Entry, we see a group of people celebrating the King. In our liturgy we sing their song every Sunday: “Blessed is He who Comes in the Name of the Lord, Hosanna in the Highest”. We are those people every Sunday, and yet these same people killed him a few days after this. We cannot point fingers at them as “examples of human fickleness”, but we must see this Palm Sunday they are us. We are the enemy. Not only do we hail Jesus as king this week, we also crucify him.
And verse 41 Jesus wept over the city, as was shown in my artwork for this sermon. When Jesus wept, he wept for us. We have not accepted him, accepted his way of non-violent enemy love, and we have not loved him, and yet, he died still. We were his enemies, and still are. We are both sinners and saints, bruised and healed. And it is still true this Palm Sunday. Yet he calls us his beloved. He calls us his own.
Whether you’re conservative or liberal, fundamentalist or open minded, however you classify yourself or wherever you are coming from, remember mercy. Mercy should not ever replace justice, but it does triumph over judgment. And if it did not, none of us could take another breath. For me with my frustration and confusion with my conservative family and friends, this helps me to realize I am one with them, and we are all intertwined. Even if I feel I am on the right side of this, I am surely on the wrong side of many other things, and have contributed much to the very things I am against. In my anger, I must also grieve, for anger is a common home and companion for grief.
As we work for justice let us not forget this. Let the spirit that animates our justice work not be a forceful, violent in spirit, self-righteous spirit, but a clear articulation of kingdom values, and a valuing of the deep and ever expansive mercy of the King. Let us be tirelessly working for the poor and disadvantaged, while also realizing all human beings are complex and messy. Let us work for justice, but also love mercy, for all people. And when we do firmly confront others for the sake of justice like Jesus with the Pharisees, let’s not aim down or across, but up. And always recognize that we are all the same. And in your working for justice, heed the words of Saint Paul , “be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger”2
The Hymn, “Ah Holy Jesus”, Johann Heerman, verse two to close:
Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee!
‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee;
I crucified thee.
Season 4 Episode 2
Eph 4:26