Caudillo's Corner  - April 2007

It's about a boy who is about eight years old, and it is told in the first person. For my purposes, I'm going to call the boy Derek (after all, he is the one telling the story!). It is summer time. In fact, it should have been a perfect summer. Derek's dad helped him build a tree house; his sister was away at camp for three weeks; and he was on the best baseball team ever. It should have been perfect - but it wasn't.

Why? Jeremy Ross. Jeremy was a new kid on the street. Jeremy laughed when he struck Derek out in baseball. He had a trampoline party and didn't invite Derek. So Jeremy became an enemy.
Derek thought maybe Dad knew how to get rid of enemies. Wow! Not only did he know, he offered to help! He pulled a really old recipe out of a book in the kitchen. "Enemy Pie! It works every time!".

Enemy Pie works every time!

Dad said the recipe was so secret that he couldn't tell anyone, but he went right to work mixing up one...and when it came out of the oven it smelled good enough to eat! Derek thought it would be disgusting, but Dad was right. How would an enemy ever eat it if it smelled yucky? Then Dad told Derek the tough part: In order for enemy pie to work he had to play with his enemy for an entire day, and he had to be nice to him.

Well, to make a long story short, Derek shared his tree house and Jeremy shared his trampoline, and before they knew it Dad was calling them to come down for supper. While they ate macaroni and cheese, Derek tried dropping hints that maybe they didn't need dessert, but sure enough Dad dished up three generous helpings of enemy pie with ice cream!! Just as Jeremy was bringing a bite of pie to his lips Derek shouted: "Jeremy, don't eat it! I think it's poisonous or something!" He stopped short. Derek saved his life. But Dad was eating away with a big smile on his face. In fact, they all thought it was delicious. Derek concludes: "I don't think I'll ever understand the recipe, but I won't need it, because I just lost my best enemy."

You might not know it but this story is really about Easter...it is about how God made friends of us, his enemies. It wasn't by means of "enemy pie" exactly, but God sent Jesus to make friends with us by tasting death for us. Jesus ate the poisonous pie of death so that we don't have to. Of course that was after "playing nice" with us and we still treated him like the enemy and crucified him on the cross.

The good news is that God's love is stronger than death and anything we can do to Jesus. God's love can transform us from enemies into friends. Jesus said: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." (John 15:13) This is the astonishing, amazing, awesome news of Easter.

Bring a friend to worship on Easter so we can share some "Enemy Pie" together! Halleluia! He is Risen! He is Risen, Indeed!