What I did for love moved me far beyond my home in Galilee. I was an itinerant, journeying from one village to the next with my mission to love. So many people touched my life as I touched theirs. Some were hateful, lethally so. But they could not kill my milder Spirit. They could not stop my loving mission. Love continues to live and grow, for still there are people willing to “Feed my lambs,” “Tend my sheep.”
What we do for love is to give the whole of ourselves. We sometimes have it presented to us that such giving is fulfilled, ultimately, in romantic love. Romantic love is sometimes confused with feelings of infatuation, meaning “fatuous” or “foolish.” We are foolish in infatuation because we do not give the whole of ourselves. We do not give our reason. This is the premise of the book, Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. It is authored by Alain de Botton, a member of The School of Life Community. He asserts we are wise to give our reason to another for then we will not be tempted to find our ideal of perfection in another. For we ourselves are not their ideal of perfection. We are, all of us, in being human, imperfect. Imperfect means we are not yet complete, not finished, and who of us would want to be complete, finished. We are yet learning, still growing. When hateful theology though, for example atonement, gets hold of imperfection, it links it with sin, unworthiness. It goes a more hideous step farther and mistakenly links imperfection with the lie that all humanity’s sin killed Jesus. Atonement claims we are all unworthy as compared to the worthy Jesus whom we are to worship. Today’s reading from Book of Revelation, makes this claim, “Jesus… freed us from our sins by his blood.” “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain… and (they) fell down and worshiped.” The theology coerces us to worship an ideal of perfection or worthiness in another – a vengeful, blood seeking deity, who murders his own son and keeps us in a tribal cult that manipulates worthiness. Atonement’s worthiness is not satisfied by growing love that nurtures us, only by glorifying bloody worship that depletes us. We are coerced into foolish vertical worship of a man who asks us for reasonable horizontal love, ‘Can you feed my lambs? Can you tend my sheep?’ We can. We most often do so in the love of family that usually begins with marriage’s romantic love, a sweet and beautiful feeling, a commitment. Once felt it is enduring. Even should it be lost, in whatever the manner, we return to the feeling through our memories and we feel both its exhilaration and comfort again. Even as such love remains, we learn of a communion of love calling us yet beyond, for us to give the whole of ourselves in a deeper love, Agape. Agape love is the love of all as friend. It is to love someone for whom we do not have romantic feelings, someone from whom we may receive little or no feeling of exhilaration nor comfort. We can go so far as to love someone who treats us as an enemy. It is difficult to love someone who treats us their enemy. It was difficult for Jesus and early persecuted followers, but they witnessed such love. Many in the U.S. are being treated as enemies by self-titled Christians who will not love those they judge unworthy. Perhaps the unworthy is Black or Muslim or immigrant or gay or someone who simply disagrees with them. Those judged unworthy are targeted with what is most un-Christ-like, not love but hate, not a milder spirit but a vengeful determination. Self titled Christians demonstrate an infatuation with a vengeful, blood seeking deity whom they believe is perfect and chooses them as perfect too. Self-titled Christians have brought superficial infatuation to their relationship with God, Jesus, and the rest of us. They have not brought their reason. Reason can enlighten the haters about love’s practicalities. We are called to stand among faux Christians and ‘Feed these lambs,’ ‘Tend these sheep.’
“How, then, was it possible for the Gospel doctrine of peace, which does not permit men to take vengeance even upon enemies, to prevail throughout the world, unless at the advent of Jesus a milder spirit had been everywhere introduced into the conduct of things?” (Contra Celsus – Origen)
Prayer: Spirit, show me what to do for love.
Question: With whom am I called to learn and grow in love?
May 1, 2022 Gospel John 21:1-19 Third Sunday of Easter