Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
In a clever and poignant skit that aired on the Daily Show recently, the actors staged Facebook as an actual space—a local bar, to be exact. As the skit opens, a woman sitting at the bar announces that she has procrastinated long enough in the place and says it’s time to leave and get some work done. The owner/bartender does not want her to leave because he’d really like to sell her more drinks. He sees an “I’M FOR HER” button on her backpack and makes a crucial intervention. As she is packing up her backpack, he points out that a guy at the bar thinks Bernie would have won the election had he been the party nominee. Incensed, the woman returns to the bar, starts arguing with the Bernie supporter, and orders another drink. Immediately appreciating the brilliance of his intervention, the bartender encourages other patrons to get into arguments with each other. In short order, the bar is full of people arguing with each other, insulting each other, even breaking beer bottles on one another’s heads . . . and buying more drinks. The cash is rolling in. Oh, and now and again, someone shares a photo of their kid with another patron.
To clarify the meaning of the skit, the host of the Daily Show points out that Facebook made $40 billion in advertising last year. Encouraging tribalism and stoking our anger with others, it turns out, is very good for business and very bad for us.
Jesus could not be more right: we have heard it said that we should love our neighbor and hate our enemies. If anything, we are hearing that dictum with increasing frequency today. Even more, and with the help of both social and traditional media, the category of “our neighbor” seems ever shrinking, while the category of enemy just seems to be expanding.
What can we, as followers of Jesus, do about that?
One good suggestion, brought to the fore in the Daily Show skit, is to think critically about how much time we “spend in the bar” that is social and traditional media. If these business entities are buttressing their bottom line by stoking our anger at and fear of others, then maybe we need to think about how much eyeball time we give them or where we look when we’re there. Can we look at the pictures of our friends’ children and resist the temptation to get invested or involved in tribalism and vitriol?
Another suggestion could be to think about how we might disrupt the ease with which we are identified as “the enemy.” A few years ago, when I was promoted to full professor at UD (which was a great honor for me), I celebrated by purchasing a University of Dayton vanity plate that says “PRFSSR.” Back then, that just seemed celebratory and fun. Today, it feels like an unintended announcement that I am the enemy. That’s because, for a lot of people, professors are elitist know-it-alls who think they are better than everyone else. I’ve thought a lot about that and, recently, have developed a practice of waving and smiling at people—people who are complete strangers—when I’m driving my car. I know it’s something of an odd thing, and probably a lot of the people I wave to just think I’m nuts. But I do it, and I’m going to keep doing it. I’m also working to develop a discipline of polite or even hospitable driving. As someone who learned to drive in Chicago, this is a significant change. Rather than strategize to get where I’m going as quickly as possible (which does not breed friendly driving habits), I now invite people to get in front of me or go first or even hang out for miles in the right lane on I-75 behind a truck. These are very small things that I am doing, of course. Still, I hope that maybe, just maybe, some of the people I wave at or some of the people I am nice to on the road might give a second thought to the idea that I am their enemy. Are there ways you might do that?
But all of this is minor compared to the suggestion (it’s really a command) that Jesus makes. Love your enemy. Pray for those who persecute you.
This word from Jesus could not be more relevant today. If we really have figured out who our enemies and persecutors are—and that is a big assumption—how is it to our credit to love only those who love us? We are, after all, followers of Jesus, the one who asked for forgiveness for those who put him on the cross. Loving well those who love us is certainly our charge. But so is loving our enemies. And that too must be our sacramental discipline.
Amen.
- Sue Trollinger