Brief synopsis of the readings: Again in Acts we pick up shortly after last week’s reading. Paul and Barnabas are again on the move and began to appoint elders to lead the newly found churches. They eventually returned to Antioch and told the community how God “had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.” John’s Gospel describes a scene from the Last Supper, after Judas left. Jesus told his disciples that he would not be with them much longer and commanded them to love one another “as I have loved you.” Finally, “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
If I took a poll among all of you and asked whether or not you agreed with certain teachings of Jesus I imagine almost everyone will agree with Jesus. And this commandment, to love one another, will certainly gain unanimous support. After all, who can disagree with this?
Problem is, we’ve disagreed from our first days on what this means. On January 6, 2021 a group of people unhappy with the results of the 2020 Presidential election stormed the Capitol and attempted to overthrow the government. Yet our President called it a “day of love.” In the Middle Ages Pope Urban II proclaimed that if we loved God we would march to the Middle East and take back Jerusalem by force, marking the start of the Crusades. Over the next 200 years about 1.7 million people died in this failed attempt. Is this what anyone calls love?
But Jesus does give us some help: “As I have loved you, so you should also love one another.” So how does Jesus love us and who does Jesus love? Our first reading shows Paul and Barnabas going back to Antioch and telling the others how God has opened the door to the Gentiles. They had gone off with the intent of showing the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah but came back having greatly expanded those who should hear the message. But in January US Vice President (and Catholic convert) JD Vance argued that we are called to love our family first, then our neighbor, and then our community, and only then the rest of the world. In other words our love has a hierarchy. Fortunately Cardinal Robert Prevost (currently Pope Leo XIV) said this in response: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
This belies a false belief that Jesus’ love for us is finite and must be parsed out conservatively. We need to love our family first because if we love everyone we might “run out of love” and leave our family hanging. Simply put, we don’t love someone better by denying love to another. We don’t love our family by claiming that refugees are on their own or deserve what they get. Granted, resources are finite and we can’t solve world hunger overnight. But at some point we need to acknowledge how much money we spend on exercise equipment that tracks how many calories we burn while others are starving for those same calories. Love doesn’t demand that we solve everything overnight, but if we don’t love everyone we won’t even try.
On March 18, 1958 the Trappist monk Thomas Merton found himself at the corner of 4th and Walnut in Louisville, Kentucky when he suddenly experienced a revelation (that he described in his book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander) that he loved all the people he could see. He explained that “they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.” This was not the result of an attempt on Merton’s part but a divine inspiration from God. Of everything I’ve read this is the closest experience I’ve ever heard of God’s love for us. This changed Merton’s writing as he became much more aware of the need to speak of inclusiveness and compassion.
To me this speaks of an outward facing love where the recipient of our love is not directed toward ideals or vague ideas of each other. Jesus calls us to love personally, individually and passionately. It’s a love that does not allow for hierarchy or exception. It also does not allow us to use or manipulate others. From time to time in my work I met well meaning people who demanded that a dying loved one “accept Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior.” Laudable as this may have been they would browbeat, lie and beg their loved one. I called it the “Noah’s Ark” model: Do whatever you need to do to convince your loved one because once it starts raining it’s too late. When they see the floods they will thank you.
I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind. Last week I spoke about how Paul’s outreach to the Gentiles did not exclude the Jews but included everyone. Jesus’ love for us has never included haranguing or threatening. Paul and Barnabas never sounded like they were trying to sell an inferior used car using emotional blackmail.
Make no mistake: this is not an easy ask. The beauty of the Noah’s Ark model is that it’s easy and often effective but it’s not loving. It says more about our need to be right or secure, as if we know we’re on the right track if we convince others that they are on the right track.
And finally love is not transactional and does not keep count. Love calls us, as it did Thomas Merton, to recognize that our love for each other is eternal and limitless. That love allows us to see each other not as measurable numbers but part of the same people of God. It recognizes not only that God loves us but also everyone around us in a community that binds us in ways that make all other distinctions irrelevant.
By the way there is a plaque on the corner of 4th and Walnut in Louisville to commemorate the place of Merton’s revelation. It’s worth a visit.