Harry Potter, Hot Coals, and Peace With Muslims

A friend of mine is listening to the Harry Potter series on CD. He commented on something he's noticed about Harry - he isn't very forgiving with his enemies. Compare Harry's attitude towards Draco Malfoy to Gandalf's posture towards Gollum.

We started talking about this in reference to the sermon I preached this last Sunday on Romans 12:17-21, "Giving Gifts to Your Enemies." I take it for granted that one of the key signs of the Kingdom of God is love for enemies. This is what Jesus did for us, isn't it? So, this Christmas, let's consider giving gifts not only to those we know and love, but also to our enemies. My text for this sermon was one that tripped me up for a long time. "If your enemy is hungry, give me food to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; and in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." This verse confuses a lot of people. We know that it must have something to do with being kind to our enemies, but the part about the burning coals trips us up. How can heaping burning coals on someone's head ever be even remotely construed as an act of kindness? The typical commentary answer doesn't help too much - they talk about how your act of kindness will produce "burning shame" in your enemy, thus, apparently, bringing him or her around. Maybe ... but shaming someone into contrition hardly seems like an act of love, even when done with grace. I heard another explanation that fits much better and that seems to have the side benefit of connecting the proverb to an actual historical context. In the ancient world, and in many parts of the world today, each family has a fire that they keep burning all day long. At night, the fire is allowed to die down low to hot coals, but they never let it go completely out. With hot coals you can easily reignite your fire in the morning. But if the fire goes out, all that's left is ash, and when the family wakes up in the morning, they'll have to restart their fire before being able to cook or clean or anything. Having no hot coals for your fire is to be in a place of need. So imagine that your enemy, through negligence or circumstance, let's their fire go out. They come to you hungry and thirsty. Not only are you to provide them food and drink, but you give them hot coals to restart their fire (which were carried in a basket or such overhead). So, Paul is saying, we're to bless our enemies at their point of need. In doing so, we'll be demonstrating the Kingdom. This is the heart of Christmas.

Of course this has all kinds of application for our everyday lives. We all have people who frustrate us. And it is these very people that we can bless right at the point of their need - and that need is often connected to that point of frustration. (As an aside, let me mention that one important prior step is to make sure that we're not being an enemy ourselves. In my experience, the people we experience as our "enemies" are often times people to whom we may be acting as an "enemy" ourselves. To practice this is, as Jesus taught, to take the plank out of own eye before trying to help our sister remove her speck of dust.)

There's one another meaningful point of application that I can think of related to this. Many people in America have come to associate "enemy" with Muslims and Islam. You may not know it, but Islamic leaders from all around the world have extended an offer of peace to leaders throughout the Christian world. You can find a copy of their open letter here. It is over 20 pages, with roughly 15 pages of text (the rest being addressees, signatories and notes). They ground their offer of peace in three things: 1) 55% of the world's population is either Muslim or Christian and so the world will know no peace until we can be at peace; 2) their perception in a shared theology of the "unity of God;" 3) the fact that both Christianity and Islam share fundamental convictions in the two greatest commandments: to love God and love neighbor. I was very interested to learn of this letter.

I'm all for peace between Muslims and Christians. I think it would be a great gift to live in peace with our Muslim neighbors. But I disagree somewhat with the reasons why. First, I don't believe that Christians and Muslims share a similar belief in the "unity of God." The Muslim conception of the Unity of God denies the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. There can be no Trinity in the Muslim understanding of God's unity, and so for us, as Christians, to commit to adhering to the Muslim understanding of God's unity is to seriously erode our fundamental understanding of who we know Jesus to be. Second, while I think it is wonderful that both the Bible and Koran teach love for God and love for neighbor, I think this similarity is an inadequate foundation for peace. Here's why: this understanding of peace only works for groups that hold things in common - what about Christians and Hindus, who don't share these same fundamental convictions, should we not be at peace with them? Of course we should! Here's why: because the foundation for peace doesn't come from without but from within.

As Christians, we pursue peace not because we have things in common with other people, but rather we pursue peace because of Jesus. The gospel is its own reason for peace. Peace is part of our gospel story, part of our family history. Jesus was willing to die at the hands of his enemies. Jesus died for those who despised him. Jesus died for the purpose of peace - so that enemies (mainly us and God, but also other enemies) might be reconciled.

So we can live at peace with Muslims, as much as it is possible with us, not so much because we share things in common with them, but because we share Jesus' heart and his way of life. And to do this would be to gift our neighbors with grace at their point of need.