Easter V, Sunday 18th May, by Fr Gary Eaborn

Earlier in the year there was a flutter of excitement in the theological world as a debate about Christian teaching on love trended on Twitter. And whilst many Twitter interactions can properly be described as unedifying, this one turned out to be edifying, at least because it exposed some of the complexity around the simple proposition that we should love one another.

The somewhat unpromising starting point was something the Vice-President of the United States, J. D. Vance, had said in an interview. He said:

“There’s this old-school [concept] — and I think a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world,”

And the political commentator, Rory Stewart responded on Twitter criticising Vance’s comments as a bizarre take on Jesus’s commandment that we love one another and Rory went on to say that Vance’s take was “less Christian and more pagan tribal.” 

To which Vance responded: “Just google ‘ordo amoris,’”

And what the many people who did google ‘ordo amoris’ found is that there is indeed a Christian teaching, going back at least to the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas, that there is an “order of love” where God is to be loved first and foremost, followed by oneself, then others, and among other people, there are, as Aquinas put it, “those who should be loved with a more intense affection”

This hierarchy, this “order of love”, acknowledges that certain relationships, practically speaking, carry more immediate obligations. But what we see from today’s readings is that the command that we love one another, however it is ordered, takes place within an abundant divine economy of love. We do not love those who are near at the expense of those who are far away. We do not love within an economy of lack in which our love for those nearest to us will be exhausted, and which will prevent us from loving those who are far away. Whilst the way in which we love those who are near and those who are far will differ according to the circumstances, it is never exclusionary,  it is all a participation in a divine love beyond our human limitations. 

And the clue to this is found in today’s Gospel reading. Here Jesus says that he is giving a “new” commandment to his disciples. But this commandment is not entirely new as love for others is already part of Old Testament law. As far back as the nineteenth chapter of the book of Leviticus, the Israelites are commanded to “love your neighbour as yourself”. 

What is new here is found in the words “just as I have loved you” which sets a whole new standard for our love for one another. The standard of our love for one another becomes that of Jesus’s love, which is the embodiment of God’s love. If we want to know the answer to the question of how we should love, if we wish to explore the complexity around the simple proposition that we love one another, then these few words “as I have loved you” bring us a wealth of further inspiration. They invite us to reflect on the whole of Jesus’s life, and to ask: “How is Jesus loving here?” and to ask “How does this inspire our loving now?” And this provides us with a wealth of examples of how Jesus’s love expands beyond any constraints we might seek to place on it. These words “as I have loved you” open up the horizon of our loving to the whole world. As we are told in John 3.16: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” 

And so, we see already in this Gospel reading, the way in which in the abundant divine economy of love, love spills over, love becomes a blessing to the whole world. Because it is through this love for one another that “everyone will know that you are my disciples”.

And the nature of this overflowing divine economy of love is also found in our other readings. The account in Genesis 22 of God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, can be read in many ways. It confounds any attempt to understand it in the context of a universal ethical framework. God has prohibited human sacrifice, God has promised Abraham that he will become the father of nations through Sarah’s Son Isaac. So, the command to sacrifice Isaac is incomprehensible. It demands that the one to whom Abraham owes the most immediate and practical duties and obligations of love, his own Son, should be sacrificed. There can be no more extreme example of an abrogation of the duties of love of those nearest to us as it might be understood in any rational framework. And yet Abraham’s love for God, found here in his faithful obedience, becomes a blessing to himself and to Isaac and to the whole world. Abraham places his trust in God’s love in a way that can’t be rationalised. And, as we just heard, “by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice”. 

And just as Abraham’s faithfulness becomes a blessing to all nations, we see in the reading from Acts how this plays out in the early church. Peter explains “step by step” to those closest to him: the circumcised Christians in Jerusalem, how God’s love extends to the uncircumcised Gentile Christians. How God’s purposes must not be hindered, how the Gentiles have been called to repentance that leads to life. And so, the love of the Christian community in Jerusalem spills over. 

If we return, then, to the “ordo amoris”, we can say that this should not be understood in the terms of a world which speaks of lack before it speaks of abundance. It is not to be understood in terms of a political culture which only sees a world of limited resources confronted by uncontrolled human consumption. It is not to be understood in terms of love as a scarce resource to be meted out. Instead, we should understand that all our relationships take place within a divine economy where our love for those closest to us leads to an increase not a decrease in our capacity to love others, whether they are family or neighbours or community members or people in this country or in distant lands.

So, as we share communion together, in remembrance of Christ’s sacrificial love for us, and in contemplation of his example, let us love as he has loved us by listening to a neighbour, by serving a stranger or by advocating for those far away and, so in acts of love small and large  let us become a blessing to the world.