How many of you, by a show of hands, if I asked you right now could tell me who your worst enemy is? Does a name or a face come to mind? Maybe even an event that changed how you look at that person?
Guess what? I guarantee I can look around this room right now and tell every single one of you who your worst enemy is. Wanna know something trippier? I can also look around this room and tell every single one of you that your worst enemy is here in this room.
We are told that the greatest commandments are love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus tells us that these are the two greatest commandments. Two. Notice that number.
Not saying Jesus wasn’t good at math, but he should have said these are the three greatest commandments. Love God, that’s number one. Love your neighbor as yourself. Look at that command for a minute. Is it a command? Is it just one? Or is it really two?
How can you love your neighbor as yourself if you don’t love yourself? And now a light bulb is going off in a few of your minds. You’re remembering what I said a moment ago. You’re remembering me asking who your worst enemy is. You’re remembering me saying that for each and every one of you I can say without a doubt that each of your worst enemies is sitting right here in this room. Your worst enemy isn’t somebody else who has done something or said something that hurt you. Your worst enemy is yourself.
Nobody who has ever said or done anything to hurt you can be of as much harm to you as you are to yourself. Somebody who calls you a nasty name or spreads horrible things about you only has power if even a tiny portion of you believes it’s true. None of us can ever love our neighbors as much as Jesus does; as much as he truly wishes we could, because none of us loves ourselves as much as Jesus does. Some of us might not even see any value or anything positive in ourselves at all.
We’re starting to talk, this week, as we have arrived at the time of Jesus’ resurrection, about having victory in Christ, and what that victory looks like in different areas in our life. The first type of victory that Jesus’ death and new life gives us is victory over ourselves.
Now, I know that may sound like a strange thing to say, but hear me out. How many of us, when we look in the mirror, really see what God sees? None of us. How many of us, when we look in the mirror, see our hair, our skin, our weight, our clothes? How many of us when asked to look deeper see the things in our hearts God sees? Tougher still.
But how many of us look at our lives and the things we know about ourselves and see all the ways we’ve screwed up, all the ways we haven’t measured up, all the ways we really should be a better person, friend, son, daughter, brother, sister, etc? Take a good look in the mirror. Memorize the face you see, because that face is the face of your own worst enemy. And that relationship, that of the discontent, lack of confidence, and sometimes even outright hatred we have for ourselves, is something Jesus gives us victory over.
It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens after suffering. Easter couldn’t have happened without Good Friday. A lot of us here are probably in our Good Fridays when it comes to our relationship with ourselves. We may feel God has forsaken us in not making us prettier, more successful, better people. We may feel we have failed ourselves or those around us because we aren’t what we or our friends or family think we should be. But the victory we have in Jesus Christ over this tells us it is finished.
Allow me to explain. God didn’t just put you here with the issues you deal with, the struggles you have, the experiences you go through. God put people around you, and consistently brings people into your life who have been through similar experiences, have similar feelings and struggles. You care about those people, and that’s great! You see in them the potential they have. You see the beauty in them, even when they don’t see it in themselves.
We’re put here as the body of Christ, to work together. How many times have each of you here sat with somebody who was going through a difficult time, who couldn’t see the rainbow after the storm? Do you remember the things you told the person? Do you remember the times trying to convince your friend or family member they are beautiful, loved, accepted, and valuable? Can you think of times you haven’t felt that way? Maybe, could it be that even as you were trying to convince your friend or family member of this, you weren’t feeling it was true of you?
This is how the victory begins. I’m reminded of someone who once said that sometimes you have to fake it ’til you make it. I didn’t understand what this meant at first. I didn’t think faking anything could ever be a good thing or bear good results, but it makes sense.
If God brings somebody into your life to love, to help, to point to him, he may not always do that at a time when you feel lovable, helped and pointed to him. In fact, he may well make it a point to bring that somebody into your life when you least feel these things. That can feel pretty unfair. After all, how are you supposed to help somebody through something you haven’t been able to get through yourself? Maybe somebody is struggling with feeling worthless due to losing a job, and you yourself are still jobless. Maybe somebody is struggling with an eating disorder, and you yourself are so uncomfortable with your appearance you don’t see how you’ll be any help.
But what do you do? You may not have it in you; heck, we never fully will, to love the people around you as much as Jesus loves them and you, but you do what you can, right? You love those people God brings into your life with all that’s in you, and the last thing you want is to see them hurting; your children, your friends, your family members. You don’t want them believing the negative things they say about themselves, the feelings of a complete lack of self-worth they may experience at times. So you do what anybody who really cares about somebody else, even in our flawed human way, would do. You try your best to convince them that the negative they see isn’t real. You point out the positives. You show them where they are excelling. You tell them they are loved by God, by you, by many. You try so hard to show them this because, when it comes to them, you believe it. You see the value in them. You see the beauty in them. You’re angry at those who have made this person you care about feel so inferior.
But you still don’t believe it about yourself, so you fake it ’til you make it. You share with person after person about their worth, their beauty, their importance and strength until something starts to dawn on you. You’re saying these things, doing all you can to make people believe these things about themselves, people who feel about themselves so much like you do. People who feel like failures. People who feel like wastes of space. People who can’t let go of the mistakes they’ve made in the past or the hurt they harbor from things done to them. And you believe these things, you really do. About each and every person you talk to. And so it dawns on you, if it’s true about them. If you see it, even if they don’t, and it’s true about them, could it be that these statements about being worth it, being loved, being beautiful in the eyes of God and others are true about you as well?
Victory is here. In a sense, we do have to fake it for a while when we deal with not feeling good about ourselves. We’re our own worst enemies, our own worst critics. We’re harder on and more critical of ourselves than anyone else ever will be, but time and time and time of showing others their worth sinks in. We start to see a mirror image of ourselves in others, not just the similar struggles, but the beauty, the worth, the intelligence.
Christ’s death and new life give us victory over ourselves. When he died on that cross, nailed there with him were all the negative things we could ever say about ourselves, all the negative feelings, all our faults. They were nailed there with him, but guess what? They didn’t come off that cross. When Jesus said it is finished, he put an end to all those things. Those things we feel are true about ourselves that are so negative were finished. We became new creations as he breathed his last.
As we end our time here, before we take communion, you’ll each be given a slip of paper. On it, I want you to write whatever negative things you think and feel about yourselves. Take a few minutes and, when you are ready, step forward and attach the slip to the cross here in front. It will be left here; and over time, you will have to fake it til you make it, but when you do make it — and you will — your resurrection day will be beautiful beyond your wildest imagination.
Your scars will still remain, but you will finally see yourself for who you truly are in Jesus Christ — beloved, beautiful, and worth every last drop of blood he shed for you.
A native of La Crescenta, the Rev. Katharine “Kat” Royal was an alumna of Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy in La Cañada and Azusa Pacific University. A resident of Carrboro, North Carolina, she was pastor of Progressive Christian Alliance from 2011 until her death at age 33 in 2015. This column is published today, Easter Sunday, in her honor.
Scripture to be illustrated
Matthew 22:34-36: When the Pharisees heard how he had bested the Sadducees, they gathered their forces for an assault. One of their religion scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show him up: “Teacher, which command in God’s Law is the most important?”
Matthew 22:37-40: Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.” This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: “Love others as well as you love yourself.” These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.
