The word enmity means: the state of feeling or being actively opposed or hostile to someone or something. The writer and surgeon Bernie Siegel tells the story of Wild Bill, an inmate of a concentration camp, who after six years of serving the enemy as an interpreter, was still full of energy and physical health and a gentle positive spirit. To the other prisoners, he was a beacon of hope, an agent of reconciliation, one who was constantly urging them to forgive each other and the enemy. This man’s positive spirit was all the more amazing because of the horror which he himself had experienced at the beginning of the war – watching his own family: his wife, his two daughters, his three little boys, shot before his very eyes by Nazi soldiers in Warsaw.  When asked to explain his lack of bitterness, Wild Bill responded, “I had to decide right then whether to let myself hate the soldiers who had done this. It was an easy decision, really. I was a lawyer. In my practice I had seen too often what hate could do to people’s minds and bodies. Hate had just killed the six people who matter most to me in the world. I decided then that I would spend the rest of my life – whether it was a few days or many years – loving every person I came in contact with.”1 Wild Bill refused to sacrifice Love in exchange for enmity.

Enmity was the driving force that led Jesus through betrayal, abandonment, mockery beating, scourging, crowned with thorns, a torture walk and nailed to the cross.  Jesus never knew enmity even after all he suffered we are told ] he spoke these words to all who accused him, tortured him, and abandoned him saying, “Father forgive them they know not what they do.” He sacrificed his life but could not deny himself sacrificing Love. This is why we call the day of Christ’s death good.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that who so ever believes shall have eternal life. John 3:16