This might be one of my most difficult posts, because it has to do with the experience of life in the rawest. It has to do with friendship and with enmity, and with whether or not there can ever be any other type of relationship between persons.
Jesus says near the end of John's gospel, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (15:13, KJV). One does not want to quibble, but in the general flow of Jesus' teachings, it would seem that a still greater love would be to lay down one's life for one's enemies. Surely the emphasis here must be on what Jesus considers to be true friendship--total and lasting and unstinting commitment.
This commitment to friendship must be seen in distinction from "friendliness," which is why it should not seem so strange to hear Jesus say in another context, "Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes; and salute no man by the way" (Luke 10:4).
But why does Jesus so emphasize friendship, when it would seem that a person's relationship to God would be what matters? The answer would seem to lie in just what would make a person a friend to another, and an enemy to yet another. The answer would be righteousness, especially as righteousness would be expressed in prophetic example or in martyrdom.
Consider Abel as a prophet, as Jesus would have us do (Luke 11:51). Abel was surely a righteous man, but what exactly was so prophet-like about Abel getting sneakily clobbered by his brother? Why does Abel, having done no more than his duty to God and then bleeding into the ground, rate mention in the same breath with "Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple"? We are not told that Cain threatened Abel with death for offering his sacrifice, and that Abel, "Zacharias-like," persisted nonetheless. Abel simply blundered into his own demise.
Yet we must remember that Jesus says that merely doing the right things will lead to incurring the world's deadly enmity--even when such enmity is muted or hidden, and even when the world thinks that it is not at all inclined to such sentiments. This sets up what is--unsurprisingly--one of the least-emphasized episodes in the Gospels:
"Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill me? The people answered and said, Thou hast a devil: who goeth about to kill thee? Jesus answered and said unto them, I have done one work, and ye all marvel. . . .are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day? Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. Then said some of them of Jerusalem, Is not this he, whom they seek to kill?" (John 7:19-25).
In the space of seconds, we go from "who goeth about to kill thee?" to "Is not this he, whom they seek to kill?" The implication is clear, and has been borne out countless times in history: to practice righteousness is to dare the world's deadly hatred.
This cruel dichotomy--lifelong friendship versus deadly enmity--goes all the way back to Genesis. Cain asks God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and we imagine we are to respond with a resounding "Yes!", but that is to miss the point. Cain is not Abel's keeper; Cain IS Abel. As much as Adam and Eve are "bone of bone and flesh of flesh," so are Cain and Abel and all of us.
And when we forget that we are "bone of bone and flesh of flesh," then we humans in our selves and in our groups are as alien to each other as Noah was to the animals, when God said "the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth" (9:2).
We ARE each other, or we are each other's prey. We are lifelong friends or we are deadly enemies.
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