Love is Your Birthright
Easter 5C-25
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
“Live every day as if it may be your last, because someday, it will be true.” (The gospel according to Steve Jobs.) In his final moments, Jesus is thinking about the end. Judas has stepped out from the Last Supper to plan his betrayal. “The crucifixion clock is ticking fast and hard, and Jesus knows that his disciples are about to face the greatest devastation of their lives. So, he gets right to the point. No parables, no stories, no pithy sayings. Just one commandment. One simple, straightforward commandment, summarizing Jesus’s deepest desire for his followers: “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” And then, right on the heels of the commandment, a promise. Or maybe an incentive. Or maybe a warning: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Debi Thomas, “If You Love,” Journey with Jesus, 5/12/22)
Loving God and neighbor as yourself is a Christian I.D. badge. Yet, there is widespread disagreement today about who counts as a true Christian. I believe Christian nationalism is clearly an oxymoron. It is not Christian nor is it patriotic. But if you were to ask a Christian nationalist, I’m pretty sure they don’t think that I’m a real Christian—nor anyone who espouses views like mine, or that ordain women and GLBTQIA+ persons; or that prioritize justice, nonviolence, and care for the earth over the afterlife.
Christian churches up and down the street and across the country have created a mess of things by name-calling, exclusion, hubris, inquisitions, heresy hunting, and worse. The first Christian said to be executed by other Christians was Priscillian of Avila in 385 C.E. Priscillian was found guilty of heresy. In the 250 years following this event, theologian Harvey Cox claims, “Christian imperial authorities put twenty-five thousand to death for their lack of creedal correctness.” Yet, “I’m sure those imperial bishops and Christian rulers thought they were doing the loving thing” (Diana Butler Bass, “The Centrality of Love,” Sunday Musings, 5/17/25).
The faith that had been born in persecution became the persecutors. As philosopher Rene Girard pointed out, “Beginning with Constantine, Christianity triumphed at the level of the state and soon began to cloak with its authority persecutions similar to those in which the early Christians were victims.” Once you start attacking your own, dismissing their humanity, it is very easy to attack others you deem less than fully human. (Butler Bass)
“Jesus didn’t say, “love each other and then love everyone else.” No. He insisted that the love the disciples had for each other would witness to a larger love, the same love he proclaimed and modeled in his life and death. Jesus didn’t love only a few. Jesus didn’t die only for the church. For God so loved that world that he gave his beloved Child so that everyone, everyone, everyone might know they are a beloved child of God.
So why are we confused about what love means? What explains the persistent perverse mixture of the gospel with violence? We can point to many places where Christians have made a wrong turn, many stemming from the time after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. There are three dogmas we are all supposed to believe about God: that God is all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), and all-good (omni-benevolent). Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson writes, “These three Omnis have created more atheists than any cluster of ideas in human history, because God can be any two, but not all three.” Could our confusion about what it means to love, and the normalization of religious coercion and violence, arise from our misunderstanding about God’s power? (Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, “I Will Be Who I Will Be –A God of Dynamic Becoming)
There is a difference between saying God is very powerful, and saying God is all powerful. If God is good and all powerful, why is there evil in the world? If God already knows the future, where is the meaning in free will? Ask a bible scholar. Where does it say that in the bible? Ask them, where is the biblical word for all-powerful? It turns out there is not such term or concept in scripture. The bible gives us many synonyms for might and power, but there is no Hebrew for ‘omnipotence.’ This turns out to be a Greek idea; it derives from Plato and Aristotle. For a thousand years, our reading of the bible was filtered through Greek philosophies. We have been reading the bible through Greek and (later) Cartesian metaphysics and Newtonian physics. We have sold our birthright for a bowl of Greek porridge. We are finally free to look at our own scripture without these distorting overlays. One consequence of this is clear. We can no longer be confused about what it means to love God and to love neighbors.
God is not, as Aristotle claimed, the Unmoved Mover. God is the Most Moved Mover. God is that force in the cosmos generating creativity and novelty. God is the source of love that moves us toward greater wellbeing and flourishing. Our universe continuously blossoms into new, more complex interrelationships. “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth…Love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:5-6).
Rather than omnipotence, theologian Thomas Oord has suggested the term “amipotence” to name the infinite power of divine love. ‘Amipotence’ combines two Latin words ami and potens. The first means “love.” The second is the Latin word for power or influence. Amipotence is a verb not a noun. It is an ongoing and endless activity, always different and yet always the same. The heart of amipotence is healing and life-giving, like love itself. God’s power unfolds within relationships. God’s power is persuasive, never coercive. It is ‘In this God, that we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28).
This is a very different picture of God than the one we have been told we are supposed to believe in. It is the God you will encounter in scripture when you read it without the veneer of Greek philosophy or Newtonian physics. It is the God you will find which our ancestors in faith have proclaimed, one who cares, one who relates, one who invites us to make the best decisions and who remains vulnerable to our choices—whether for good or for bad. We do God’s work with our hands—or we don’t. Despite this God comes fresh each moment with the invitation and inspiration to love.
This is the God who dwells, not merely in heaven, but also deep within and through each of us. This is the God who Peter heard in a dream urging him to welcome and include the Gentiles. This is the God to whom the psalmist gave praise today which is proclaimed throughout the universe, beyond the stars; beneath the sea; within each cell; with every breath. This is the God John of Patmos proclaimed is ushering in a new heaven and a new earth. See all things are being made new! “Where charity and love prevail, there God is ever found; brought here together by Christ’s love, by love we thus are bound” (Where Charity and Love Prevail, ELW # 359).
