In his novel novel, Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis retells an ancient fable. There’s a little scene that shows us something we never seem to repair in our natures. Redival is the second daughter of the king. She was always a bit feather-headed, but she also grew wanton and reckless over time. She was sighted by a palace maid kissing and whispering love talk with a young officer of the guard called Tarin. The servant reported her immediately to the king, who, in rage over his property being violated, immediately ordered the boy suitor neutered.  When the barber had done his surgical trimming, the king sold the eunuch as a slave to a nearby kingdom, thinking that would be the end of it. Of course, it never is, is it? Years later the eunuched Tarin’s father organized unhappy nobles and malcontents in a revolt against the king. One act of violence committed in anger against one man begat a civil war in an entire kingdom.  [Eerdmans, 1956.]

Isn’t this the way of the world?  Violence begets violence, revenge more revenge, retaliation retaliation, ad nauseum, ad infinitum. The whole principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth that we cite as biblical justice was originally meant to limit vengeance, so that violence did not get out of hand. But taking justice into your own hand by chopping off the hand of your enemy for stealing does nothing but hand you a lifetime of animosity and worry.

G. K. Chesterton once said that original sin is the only empirically proven Christian doctrine. Just look at every child born into the world, and before long you see that cute innocent nature turn ugly like the rest of us sinners. Close behind original sin is the principle that violence begets violence. If you hate your enemy, you may be doing what comes naturally, and you may even be justified for doing so, but you only end up caught in a cycle of hatred that will always, always, always end badly for everyone, including you.

We’ve been trying during these last few weeks to figure how to gain and maintain that promised peace that passes understanding, as St. Paul put it. The source is the God who is peace. Our peace with God is made possible by and experienced continually in Christ, the Prince of Peace. We have wrestled with how to forgive those closest to us that have betrayed us in order to be at peace with them and with God and with ourselves. And today we look at how to do the same with those who are farthest from us, our enemies. The peace of God is not a personal privilege of the privately pious. Our peace with God is thrown into doubt every time we are confronted with the choice of whether we will deal with our enemies as righteous warriors or pitiful peacemakers.

I mean the word pitiful in its noblest sense. To have pity is not to look down on someone as we have come to think of it, but rather to look up at what that person might be if it weren’t for the evil that has taken hold in the soul. It is, in other words, to have mercy upon another and to see that, as we say, there but for the grace of God go I. We try to identify with our enemy and imagine what it might be like to live in that person’s skin. Only then do we act.

This is, after all, the kind of pity God has had for you and me in Christ Jesus. God put on the uniform of flesh and felt the injustices and insults of those who make themselves our enemies. And yet Christ refused to be his enemies’ enemy. He set himself against their hate by loving them instead. He practiced what he preached in a way few of us do. In his Sermon on the Mount near the beginning of his ministry in Galilee, Jesus turned the values of the world on their head and showed how our practices can be redemptive instead of retributive. You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.’ Now, we don’t know where it was ever said, you shall hate your enemy; maybe it was one of those pieces of street wisdom that passed for Scripture right alongside God helps those who help themselves. But it does get to our instinct for payback.

When Kim and I argue, my usual unsuccessful way — which, verily, I tried again yesterday, don’t you know?! — is to match her blame for blame, as if I can make her point go away if I can prove she is as bad as I.  That never works, if works means winning somehow. The only thing I win is her deeper unhappiness with me, although yesterday ended well, because she was more generous than I in the end. Now multiply that by the distance of strangers or enemies to us instead of loved ones, and you see where this leads. Think of school bullies or work colleagues. Are you locked in a struggle of estrangement?  The strategy in the Middle East right now — seems Israel and the Palestinians have decided that the only possible way to peace is to kill the enemy until no one is left on the other side or they get too tired of going to funerals. And how will that be a victory? How peace? All you will have is deeper hatred.

Only the gospel of Jesus Christ breaks the cycle of vengeance and violence.  God forgives us first — doesn’t wait for us to ask — and then appeals to us and deals with us only out of love in hopes of winning our hearts and making friends out of enemies.

The final film installment of the trilogy Lord of the Rings is due out in mid-December. Tolkien has given us profound fiction as a way to understand the true gospel. In a recent article, Baylor university professor Ralph Wood, notes that the only line appearing in all three books is: The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many. Bilbo, you may recall, is the one who vouchsafed the evil ring after saving it from the wicked Gollum. Bilbo’s nephew, Frodo, remarks to the wise wizard Gandalf: What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature when he had a chance! Gandalf replies: Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand .Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. Gandalf knows that Gollum deserves death and that he will likely not be cured of his evil before he dies. Yet he says, even the very wise cannot see all ends. And so we must, as Paul later puts it, leave room for the wrath of the God who does see all ends. We must not judge others ourselves.

Bilbo’s pity becomes a counter-culture value that pervades the epic.   When at last the ring is destroyed and the wicked wizard Saruman has been captured, the Hobbits clamor for his execution. Frodo, having learned the power of the pity of Bilbo from Gandalf, offers pardon to Saruman. It is useless to meet revenge with revenge, says Frodo; it will heal nothing. Pity and pardon are not what Saruman wants, though. He knows he is doubly defeated by Frodo, and he becomes angrier. You have grown very much, [Halfling]. You are wise and cruel. You have robbed my revenge of sweetness, and now I must go hence in bitterness, in debt to your mercy. I hate it and you! [“Frodo’s Faith,” in The Christian Century (Sept.6, 2003): 20-23.]

We do not know that our pity will bring about the transformation of our enemies, but we know that it brings about ours and makes possible theirs.  If we do as Jesus says we must, if we make peace with our enemies by loving them, we can know at least that we are children of our heavenly Father. We may not be perfect — which means fully mature or completely true to our nature — but we will be more like our perfect Father.

Orelander Love had never met a Christian — at least not one that he thought really followed Christ — until he met Ms. Jeanette D. Aldred. Ms. Aldred was 88 when they met while Orelander Love was robbing her house. He thought the house was empty, but when he found her in her bed, he panicked and started hitting her over the head. Says he: [She] did what Jesus did under the worst circumstance, under the threat of her life and limb. She said to me, ‘Jesus loves you. I forgive you. God bless you.’ She said these things even as I beat her, kicked, robbed and cursed her. She did not deserve it, but she did as Christ did.

In days following, Mr. Love continued to rob houses, but he was haunted by the words of that woman who forgave him even as he hurt her.  He was finally arrested, and when he was questioned about other burglaries, they mentioned Jeanette Aldred’s name. He began to cry. He confessed to the crime, and wanted more than anything else to speak to her family.  He never was able to see her again personally, but his life has not been the same since. He has been a Christian now for six years. In a letter he wrote after Jeanette’s death at age 95, he said: I do not now care about the years I will spend in prison or the media or the church screaming for vengeance. It was God with the rod that I feared. Ms. Aldred wanted no vengeance She wanted me saved.  Well, I have been saved … I praise God to every inmate who will hear. I thank God for Ms. Aldred. [L. Gregory Jones, “Saint Jeanette,” in The Christian Century (Sept. 20, 2003): 37.]

This is what Paul means by overcoming evil with good. It also helps us understand the peculiar phrase heaping burning coals of fire on their heads. In ancient times homes were heated by a stove that sat with burning coals in the center of the room. (You can see one like it in my office sometime.) If you were poor and without adequate coal for your family, a woman might walk by the windows of her neighbors with a coal bowl balancing on her head. To preserve her dignity, neighbors would pluck a burning coal from their stove and drop it on her head as she passed by. So to heap burning coals of fire on one’s head was kind. But it could also be something that leads to repentance, if it adds heat to the head of our enemy and causes her to think about what she has done by what we have done in response.

The story is told of a Christian rice farmer in the south of China who used a waterwheel driven by a treadmill to irrigate his field during times of drought. On one occasion he found that his neighbor, who had two fields below his own, had breached the retaining wall between their fields and caused the water to drain into his own fields. After the first time, the Christian repaired the breach and tried again. Three times the neighbor robbed water from his Christian neighbor. At last the man consulted friends from his church. They prayed together and agreed that something must be done that would be more than just right. The man took it to heart, and the next day he watered the man’s two fields first and then watered his own. When his neighbor saw what he had done, he was moved by the mercy of the Christian. He began to inquire of the faith of the man who would return good for his evil.

You may never become friends by making peace with your enemies, but you may just become neighbors; and that’s a start. Are you making a start?