Prayer in a World of Enemies, Part 3: The Conversion of Our Inner Fantasies (Psalm 109 & Revelation 7:9-17)
Prayer in a World of Enemies, Part 3: The Conversion of Our Inner Fantasies
August 3, 2025
Psalm 109 & Revelation 7:9-17
By: Pastor Mike Conner
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Violent political revolutions and rampant human rights abuses plagued the countries of Central America throughout the late 20th century, especially in the decades following the Second World War. Foreign powers like the Untied States and the Soviet Union had much to do with this chaos, as each tried to curb the influence of the other in that region. In many of these countries, left-wing guerilla groups clashed with right-wing military dictatorships that had been installed and supported by US dollars and intelligence. As we might expect, ordinary people without political voice were caught in the middle and bore the brunt of the violence. In the country of El Salvador, these where the campesinos, the rural laborers who worked the plantations of the few rich landowning families who controlled the country.
The Salvadoran government’s death squads had developed methods of terrifying the rural poor, as well as anyone else who criticized the State. One notorious tactic of theirs was capturing people off the streets or from their homes at night. Members of death squads would arrive in dark, unmarked vehicles and whisk away people who would never be heard from again. These victims became known as “the disappeared.” Another method of terror was the wholesale slaughter of poor village communities. The thought here was that the Communists or Socialist revolutionaries could not recruit the rural poor to their cause if these potential sympathizers were not there to begin with .
A man named Oscar Romero was born in El Salvador on August 15, 1917. He became a Catholic priest. As he ascended through the ranks of Church leadership in El Salvador, the violence in his country was becoming impossible to ignore. El Salvador was careening toward full-blown civil war. The institutional Catholic Church was under increasing pressure to decry the use of violence against the rural masses.
Oscar Romero was considered a safe choice for Archbishop of San Salvador when he was appointed to that office in 1977 at the age of 60 years old. Romero was socially and theologically conservative, unwilling to rock the boat by criticizing the government. He preached and taught that the landowners who controlled El Salvador should be more generous with what they had, and that the poor should be more forgiving and hopeful -- but this came without a robust call to transform the social conditions that kept rich and poor locked in their places. He was a bureaucratic leader, adept at administration. He towed the party line. This all changed when the political violence roiling his country touched his heart at last.
Shortly after Romero became Archbishop, one of his dearest friends and colleagues, a priest named Father Rutilio Grande, was assassinated by the Salvadoran government for his public rebukes of state violence and his organizing efforts among rural laborers. Romero was crushed; his eyes were opened; his heart was set on fire with righteous anger and radical love. From that moment on, Romero became a bishop of the people, for the people. He, the most powerful Church leader in his country, became his beloved country’s most outspoken critic.
Romero began traveling around El Salvador to visit rural communities and hear firsthand accounts of their suffering. Each week, he gathered the names of everyone who had been disappeared, tortured, or murdered, and he would speak their names and tell the truth about what had happened over the radio. There was a radio tower installed on the Cathedral in San Salvador where Romero held his weekly mass. Seventy-three percent of the rural population of El Salvador and 47% of the urban population tuned into its broadcasts regularly.
For the majority of Salvadorans, Romero’s speeches and sermons were the main source of news. Romero told the raw, simple truth about those being harmed and those doing the harming. The military government had control of the press and would not report on their own role in the spreading violence. It’s no surprise that the radio tower at the Cathedral was repeatedly bombed. Over and over again, the Romero had it rebuilt.
Romero preached weekly sermons to his congregation and to listeners around El Salvador that reiterated several key ideas: He called those in positions of economic and political power to conversion. He called them to obey God’s higher law of love rather than the State’s orders to terrorize, hoard, and kill. He invited them to become a part of the Body of Christ by repenting of their sins and submitting themselves to the one true God. To the poor masses, Romero affirmed God’s divine solidarity with them through Jesus Christ, and he energized them by calling them to continue in their struggles for justice no matter the cost.
He called on church and country together to address the systemic roots of inequality and abject poverty and to transform society by practicing the values of God’s kingdom. Finally, he drew attention to the martyrs among the people, those who had been, as the Beatitudes say, “hunted down and killed for doing what was right.” He honored them by naming them; he drew strength from the fullness of their witness and their selfless sacrifice.
Oscar Romero did this very poignantly by welcoming coffins bearing the bodies of the dead into worship services at the Cathedral. Very often the congregations would bring coffins containing their loved ones or neighbors into the Sanctuary and place them up front near the platform. Romero would pray, preach, and preside over Communion with the deceased fully in view.
He worked tirelessly with priests, nuns, students, hospital staff, journalists, foreign aid workers, community organizers, and journalists to build coalitions for justice. He made appeals to world leaders, to Pope John Paul II in 1979 and to President Jimmy Carter in 1980, asking them to condemn the violence of the Salvadoran government and US’s participation in it. Both declined.
Romero always refused to travel with a security detail. Wherever he was, he spoke the truth with a Christlike balance of boldness, humility, clarity, and compassion. A poet named Carolyn Forche once described Romero’s eyes as being illuminated as if from within -- a common observation of people enlightened by God’s love (think of Moses’ shining face!). Filled with God’s light, Romero gave hope to a great portion of his country. All he wanted was an end to senseless killing and an end to systemic poverty, the powerful brought down and the lowly lifted up. And for that vision, he, too, gave his life.
On March 24, 1980, Romero ended his full day of ministry by celebrating Mass at a chapel attached to a church-run hospital called Divine Providence. After concluding his sermon, he stepped behind the altar to bless Communion and was struck down by an assassin’s bullet. He died shortly thereafter.
Six days later, 250,000 people gathered at the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador for Romero’s funeral. He had won the hearts of a people. Tragically, his service was interrupted by gunfire and bomb explosions, and in the ensuing chaos another 30 people lost their lives.
Romero couldn’t prevent the Salvadoran Civil War that broke out shortly before his death. From the end of 1979 to 1992, an estimated 75,000 people were killed and 8,000 persons disappeared. But he poured out his life to witness to a better way -- a way marked by sacrificial love, dignifying the poor, remembering the disappeared, repenting from violence and indifference, and forming beloved community. He used his position of privilege to tell and live God’s truth.
Under Pope Francis, Oscar Romero was beatified in 2015 as a martyr and canonized in 2018 as a saint. His feast day is March 24, the day he gave his life for God and for his people. Perhaps no Christian leader in the late 20th century had such a pure and clarifying impact on the worldwide Church as he.
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I have told you Romero’s story because, you and I need some better stories, stories that shape our inner fantasies in a godly direction. Fantasies are the things we idly or actively imagine as we go about our days. In particular, when it comes to living in a world of enemies, we need our fantasies to be touched and transformed by God’s grace.
Psalm 109 is perhaps the Bible’s most explicit fantasy of retribution. The Psalmist asks God to utterly ruin another person’s life:
“Appoint someone evil to oppose my enemy;
…when he is tried, let him be found guilty,
may his prayers condemn him.
May his days be few;
may another take his place of leadership…
May a creditor seize all he has…
May no one extend a kindness to him.”
Yikes. But that’s not all! The Psalmist also asks God to ruin the life of the enemy’s spouse, children -- “may they be wandering beggars,” and to dig up dirt on his father and mother and ruin their legacy.
This is intense, seething stuff. But when the Psalmist expresses why she feels this way, at least I think, ‘Well, okay. I see where you’re coming from.’
“For he never thought of doing a kindness,
but hounded to death the poor, the needy, and the brokenhearted.
He loved to pronounce a curse…
He found no pleasure in blessing.”
This is eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, stuff at its best. ‘God, do to my enemies what they’ve done to me!’ I can certainly think of some contemporary parallels:
It’s cathartic to say all this, to ask for these things, to give expression to the retribution, public humiliation, or outright harm that we sometimes wish upon our enemies. You don’t have to feel ashamed for experiencing those feelings or for having those kinds of thoughts flash through your minds. The Bible certainly gives us space to pray these prayers, to pray against our enemies. They have a place among God’s inspired words.
But we need to ask why a prayer like this is in the Bible and what we might learn from it. It’s not there to feed our ego or inflate our pride or tempt us toward our own violence. We know that Jesus calls us to love our enemies, so Psalm 109 can’t be a place to stay.
But this prayer has a place because it’s honest, and if the scriptures can’t meet us where we are, they can’t help us. The Psalmist is profoundly angry here, just as we sometimes get angry in our own lives. But -- and here’s the crucial thing -- the Psalmist is giving God her anger. This tirade is hurled not at the enemy it so thoroughly condemns, but at God. The Psalmist, wisely, never asks to be personally put in a position to bring judgement upon the enemy. No matter how graphic and volatile this prayer gets, no matter how honest its anger, the Psalmist never asks to do God’s job; the Psalmist ultimately leaves judgment in God’s hands:
“Appoint someone evil to oppose my enemy…
…May this be the Lord’s payment to my accuser.”
The Psalmist has found a way to pray against her enemies while placing the whole fantasy in God’s hands. This creates an opening for God to act -- not necessarily out there upon the enemy as we want, but in here on our heart and mind as we need.
Let me say that again:
When we are honest with God in prayer when it comes to our enemies, it creates an opening for God to act -- not necessarily out there upon the enemy as we want, but in here on our heart and mind as we need.
Enter our passage from the final book of the Bible: Revelation. John was an early Christian martyr exiled to the Roman penal colony on the island of Patmos. There, he received visions from God which he wrote down and sent to young Christian congregations in Asia Minor, encouraging them to remain faithful under persecution.
One day, John was given a vision of the heavenly throne room and the eternal worship happening there. He saw “a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, and people…clothed in white robes” and singing to God and Jesus. John learned that these worshippers were “the ones coming out of the great tribulation.” In other words, they were the martyrs, those who, like Oscar Romero, Father Rutilio Grande, and the legions of disappeared persons, remained faithful to Jesus’ way of love and service no matter the personal cost. Now, eternally in God’s presence,
“The one seated on the throne will shelter them:
They will no longer hunger;
they will no longer thirst.
For the Lamb who is at the center of the throne will shepherd them;
he will guide them to springs of the waters of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
This is a more excellent vision, a better story for us to behold and fix our minds and imaginations upon. Rather than playing the downfall of our enemies on repeat in our mind’s eye, we are called to dwell on this eternal remembering and uplifting of the lowly. By giving our righteous anger over to God, we are able to hear our true call: to serve others, to seek solidarity with the oppressed, to remember and labor on behalf of the “least of these.” Once we pray against our enemies and give that fantasy over to God, our energies are unclogged; anger can be converted into love; we get unstuck; we start actively serving rather than passively fuming.
Sometimes Jesus got angry at the injustices he witnessed. He flipped over the tables in the temple after all. And I’m sure Oscar Romero experienced those flashes of rage in his own spirit -- noticed them, welcomed them, and then surrendered them in a seamless movement of prayer. I know I get angry, too. We are not supposed to pretend like anger isn’t there, to stuff it down and repress it. We’ll spend too much energy trying to look good to others rather than bear good fruit for God. We are not supposed to nurse our anger or cling to it like a coveted possession or make an identity out of it, which are the real spiritual temptations of our age. No, we are called to let it out before God in prayer, and then let God implant in us a vision that builds up rather than tears down, that heals rather than harms, that loves rather than condemns.
Oscar Romero never used his radio messages to pronounce curses on the enemies of his countrymen. Instead, he called everyone to conversion. He told the truth, yes. But he told the truth by filling the airwaves with the names, the stories, the struggles, and the hopes of those who he loved with the love of God, forgave with the forgiveness of God, and sorrowed for with the sorrow of God.
As the scriptures say, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17), and “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds” (Romans 12:2).
On this journey of learning to pray in a world of enemies, we have come close to our own renewal. Having committed ourselves to this work in the first place, and then allowing ourselves to express in prayer the sadness and anger of living among such pain and brokenness, we are not far from the kingdom of God.
May St Oscar Romero of El Salvador and St John of Patmos and others like them form in us a desire for that more excellent way.
And may God make us fit for walking it through the power and presence of his Holy Spirit. Amen.