Enemy Pie!

Homily, Enemy Pie!
Fifth Sunday of Easter, 2025
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
Plant City, FL

The Rev. Derek M Larson, TSSF

Today’s Lectionary Readings:

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Enemy Pie! It’s one of my favorite children’s books. It’s about a little boy who has an enemy down the street named Jeremy Ross. Jeremy had laughed at him on the baseball field and so the little boy made him his enemy. The boy’s dad completely understood what it was to have enemies and had the perfect remedy. Enemy Pie. He said that he would bake some enemy pie to give to Jeremy Ross that would solve his enemy problem for good. All his boy had to do was spend one day with Jeremy Ross to get him over to their kitchen. And so the plan was set in motion. 

By the end of the day, however, the boy had had so much fun playing with Jeremy Ross, he was no longer sure about serving him Enemy Pie. But it was too late, they were in too deep now. His dad had baked an enticing pie for Jeremy Ross and set it on the table. But when Jeremy Ross ate it, he said it was delicious and nothing bad happened to him. The boy looked, and his own dad was eating the pie too! And so he took a bite, and sure enough it was scrumptious. The boy wondered why the plan had not gone accordingly, but then he thought about it and decided it must because Jeremy Ross wasn’t his enemy. Lovely story!

In our reading from Acts today, it appears that Peter and Cornelius have been served up some Enemy Pie by the Holy Spirit. 

It’s not that they were enemies, exactly, no more than the little boy and Jeremy Ross were really enemies, but that it was important for them to keep up some “healthy” boundaries between one another. Peter took his faith and his beliefs seriously, and he didn’t want them watered down by someone who believed differently. His faith community—a Jewish Christian community—was strong. It was made up of the apostles. The very ones who walked with and knew Jesus personally. He couldn’t be sitting at the table with a common gentile who didn’t even follow Moses’ law, much less Jesus’ teaching. It was important for him to stay in upright company. He had heard rumors that Cornelius was probably a good guy. But it didn’t change the fact that Gentiles were lawless. Gentiles were unholy. Gentiles were profane. 

But then the Holy Spirit comes along and gives a vision and says to him, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” And the Spirit led him to the home of Cornelius, a Gentile, and to share not only his words with him, but to a share a table. To stay with him. To get to know him and his family. To find common ground. The Spirit led Peter into a situation that was completely against all his beliefs. To the table of someone completely unlike him. I wonder what they shared at that table. I know there must have been some Enemy Pie. 

And afterwards Peter knew what his community would think about all this. He knew what the other apostles would say if they found out he was spending time at the table of Cornelius. And sure enough when they found out, they let Peter have it, “Why did you go to eat with uncircumcised men?” Don’t you know what they are like? Don’t you know they don’t follow the Scriptures? Don’t you know they are unclean? Are you losing your faith? But Peter had learned his lesson from the Enemy Pie. “God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean” he says in chapter 10:28.

It sounds like a pretty basic lesson, doesn’t it? Like the one our parents taught us when we were young, “Play nice and don’t call people names.” But it’s a lesson we haven’t fully gotten into our heads either. There is quite a bit of name calling around us, isn’t there? You turn on the news, you listen to the radio, you read the paper, there is a lot of name calling. And too often we get riled up into it. I know I have. But in this Scripture God is showing us that we should not call anyone profane or unclean. Or stupid. Or evil. Or an idiot. Or pathetic. Or whatever insult or slur we might use. We may disagree with other people on a deep level, but every human being is a child of God, and God has asked us to call no one—no one— profane. 

And that’s because every human being is holy. Jeremy Ross and every human being. Not by their own deeds—God knows that. But by virtue of the Incarnation, in which God, in Christ, became human making all humanity sacred. Every person you meet shares their human nature with Christ, and thus shares with Christ his holiness. You cannot meet a person that God does not love and share God’s nature with. Every human being is holy. 

To call someone profane, then, is to deny the presence of God in their life. Too call someone profane is to hinder God, as Peter says. To call someone profane is an act of selective atheism which declares God doesn’t exist in them. But however much we disagree with someone, however sinful they may be, God does exist in them. Which is exactly why Jesus in Luke 6 tells his disciples to love their enemies. To do good to them. To pray for them. For God is working within them, even when we don’t see it. Even when they don’t see it. Even when no one sees it. God exists, working in them. And we need to pray that the Spirit’s work in them is fruitful—that it grows and blossoms, just as we should pray for ourselves. To love our enemies is to place ourselves squarely on the team of God, who loves all humanity. “What God is making holy, we should not call profane.”

That is hard. That is counter cultural. Very few people around us are living that out. But that is what God is calling us to do. To break down the walls of division, and to share a table with our enemies. Not because we like them, but because we love them. 

And we don’t always have to compromise our values or ideals or our beliefs to love them. Sometimes we do. Sometimes if our values are at odds with the love of God, than we need some new values. But not always. And we don’t always have to stay quiet about politics and avoid the hard conversations. Sometimes we do. But sometimes having the hard conversations is exactly what God is calling us to do. But not always. Loving others is not about compromising or staying quiet. Loving others is about respecting their human dignity and being willing to share a table with them.

I wonder who the Holy Spirit is calling us to share some Enemy Pie with. It may be someone you know. It may be someone you know of. It may be someone you can share a literal a table with. It may be someone you’ll never meet but you can soften your heart towards. 

The mission of the Church is reconciliation. The mission of St. Peter’s is welcoming Christian community. The mission of God is to break down the barriers we have built up between us. And to do that we must never call others profane, but instead foster within us the ability to see the sanctity of every human being and the Spirit of God that loves them and is working in them. If we do that the world will know we are Christians by our love. Amen. 

Questions for Personal Reflection

  1. In what ways have I called others “profane”?
  2. What are some specific practices I can adopt to help me recognize the presence of God living in those I don’t like?
  3. When have I been called “profane” by others and what effect did it have on me?
  4. When have I called myself “profane”, denying the Holy Spirit’s presence within me?
  5. What prayer is rising up in my heart from this homily on loving enemy and pursuing reconciliation?