“You Prepare a Table for Me”: Eating Our Way To Our Enemies’ Conversion
seventh in a guest series by Myles Werntz on Psalm 23 and the moral life
Provision of God and the Presence of Enemies
The arc of the moral life takes place in Death’s shadow, with the promise that all that we are is bound for dissolution. But the path through Death, by the grace of the Shepherd-LORD, is one which ends not in despair, though not in complete repair. If we undertake the moral life hoping for success, we do not understand that the path runs through darkness, and that when we are provided for, it is in the presence of enemies.
What does it mean that the goods of the moral life come to us in such contentious circumstances, that the rod and staff appear in the dark, that still waters require keeping wolves at bay or that the feast happens with our enemies present? Can it be that they will not appear unless the darkness calls them forth? This would be to say that the moral life only exists because sin exists, which seems to get things backwards: the goodness that the world is called to does not depend on sin for it to be good. Rather, in a world filled with darkness, wolves, and enemies, the moral life appears with the gifts that it does not as scarce provisions, but as the tools of repair. The children of God will always be given what they need for their goodness to flourish, but that flourishing is not for their own sake: it is that through them, the nations might be blessed.
The moral life is not constructed with this in mind, that our goodness is goodness only to the degree that it heals the world. For there is much darkness which remains the wild tehom, untamed by the light, and the goodness of the moral life is not to be measured by the degree of its capture. This is the folly of much modern ethics, that goodness is meant to be measured by its effectivess, as if the way of virtue was able to measured quarterly. The crucifixion does not seamlessly glide into resurrection, and so, the ineffectiveness of goodness will have its day. But the increase in goodness is not to be measured by whether it keeps the darkness forever at bay: the darkness you will have with you until there is no more night.
The measure of goodness is largely available to us in retrospect: it is that which cannot be measured by data points, but that which is measured by figures, exemplars, and resemblances. Nor is goodness that which can be manufactured: it grows, and like any plant, grows as a matter of precarity. Goodness is not that only flourishes in the good soil is one thing, but one which can gain purchase amidst thorns and in stony ground as well is a goodness worth investing in. Wisdom, as it were, is proved right not by whether it yields 100 times the harvest when it rains hard, but whether it can survive the thorns and drought as well.
But goodness’ survival is something which is only known in the end, for even that which dies on the surface may be alive in the roots, and even that which dies at the roots may be raised up to life again. It is with this reason that the moral life is marked by repentance: we might have eaten as enemies for years, without any sign of life, only to have all of our catalogs of wickedness overturned despite our best intentions.
On Having Enemies
We were once the enemies of the LORD, and now are the sheep. How can this be? And how does this change our vision of our enemies? The Psalm, like the Scriptures, presumes that the having of enemies is a normal affair. But there is a difference between having an enemy and growing one, which is the difference between enemies as an accident and enemies as an intention. The people of God have enemies as a matter of course, for the God of Israel is not Marduk nor Asherah; there are two ways in the world, one of death and one of light. To be the people of God, and to be loved by all the powers of Death , is not a compliment. The enemies which the people have, however, must be only those which are first enemies of God: to be a boor is not being persecuted any more than being nice is being holy.
The kind of enemies which the flock has are not, in other words, the kinds of enemies that it wishes to have or that it intends, but the kind which find the sheep. The sheep are to be known as those who do what they see the Son doing, those led by the Spirit who always attests to the Father and the Son. And in doing this, the sheep make enemies, in no small part by not paying attention to the enemies: the enemies, even in their opposition, are not taken ultimately seriously or given the vigorous opposition they desire. For death cannot kill the sheep.
And if Death cannot kill the sheep, then whatever animosity the enemies bring to the sheep, it is not enough to warn the sheep away. The sheep will be drawn to their enemies, if only because the enemies are, like the sheep, dependent upon the Shepherd-LORD; whatever darkness enfolds them is only visible at all because of the LORD’s light. The enemies of the flock are the chiaroscuro brothers, dark where light should be, and as such, the sheep should have empathy for these wayward powers, these separated brethren. The wars against Canaan begin not as sorties against some exotic others, but as fratricide, fights against the lost children of Cain, beloved and protected by the LORD as they wander.
To cultivate an enemy happens only as we first grow goodness, and find ourselves less and less familiar with the darkness. Enemy-having can never be a matter of intending the destruction of another, for it is in loving one’s enemy that we find the heart of the LORD’s relation to the world, loving that which murdered the Son. And so, too, when the enemy and the sheep are reconciled, it is not on their love of one another that they are reunited: the enemy and the sheep are joined together by their love of the Light, and separated by their opposition to the darkness. What they have in common is not something as fragile as blood, but as strong as the LORD.
On Eating With Our Enemies
If it enmity enters the world through our eating, gorging ourselves on the tree of knowledge, with violence entering the world over whose offering that the LORD would devour first, then it is fitting that the sign of reconciliation is that of a meal. The figure runs all the way down: that meal which we refused to have in the garden is the meal which the LORD himself is, and the meal which we offer to our enemies.
The feast which is offered here, interestingly, is not yet one which is shared with our enemies, but one which we eat in their presence. The LORD cooks a meal of infinite luxury and our enemies have to just watch us eat it: it is the most delicious of images, particularly for a suffering people who have passed through Death’s shadows and lived on grass and water. It is a meal offered not just to nourish, but to make jealous the enemies of the LORD.
For it is jealousy of the meal that opens up the gateway of desire: the flock knows that desire is itself the entrypoint to desiring that which is the LORD. And so, displaying the feast in a way which entices and makes hungry becomes the way not just of enjoying the LORD’s provision, but of witness: we are provided for, and that provision becomes the occasion for the nations seeing that the good which the LORD provides is meant to be theirs as well.