Sermons

Love Does Not Follow the Boundaries We Set

This week, J.D. Vance claimed that Christian love follows a strict order—first family, then neighbor, then community, then country, and only after all that, the world beyond. He calls this ‘ordo amoris’ (The Right Order of Affections) and attributes it to Augustine. But this is not how love works or what Augustine taught.

When I considered attending school and getting a master’s degree in divinity, my father and I had a long conversation about a book called The City of God. In that book, St Augustine talks about wanting to be with God and sit in front of God, look at God, love God, and have God love him back for all eternity. He thought that’s what this enterprise was all about: that he would live a good life, get to go and be with his creator, and that the Creator would just love him and he would love God.

As Augustine got older, he realized that if he were lucky enough to go and be with God and sit and love God and let God love him, he wouldn’t be sitting there alone. There was going to be a community around him, an entire city of people, and more, and as much as he wanted to stare at God and love God, he realized that if he looked to his right or his left, he would see someone else who is also loving God. Augustine realized that he could love them and love even more that love wasn’t finite and that being in the presence of God was not a boundary. It spread out among all worthy people. However, I would add that all people are worthy.

I haven’t read The City of God in at least 25 years, yet I think I remember it correctly. I certainly know that I had a conversation about it with my Dad. So this week, which, to tell the truth, felt like the 270th day of January, I’ve been thinking about my dad. I wonder what my dad would think about the state of the world.

My father spent his entire life caring for people and raising nine kids, all of us wanting to do more to bring more love, light, and God into this world. When all sorts of terrible, unloving things have been happening all around us since January 20th, I’ve been asking myself what all of this means and what is being asked of us.

How do I respond?

How do I keep functioning?

How do I stop myself from over-functioning?

These are all big questions; truthfully, I struggle with them all the time. As people of faith, people who chase the Divine Spark—Episcopalians—we should all also struggle with them.

Mark Clavier would tell us,

“This idea of ordo amortis, this Rightly ordered love, does not mean prioritizing some people over others, as if love were a scarce resource to be budgeted. Augustine tells us that all love must be directed toward God, and in loving God rightly, we learn to love others truly. Christ, in His parable of the Good Samaritan, shows us that our neighbor is not simply the familiar or the close at hand but anyone in need.”

This idea that we should parse out our love for each other in this flipped antibiblical way is not who we are as followers of Jesus or followers of the way. In chapter 3 of Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ family shows up and wants to talk to him. They ask Jesus to come out, and Jesus says…“Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.

” This is what makes following Jesus so tricky because, biologically, we are wired to love our own. To look and see people who do not look like you as your own, to have mercy and to have empathy is what we are called to have and extend it to others. Everyone is Jesus’ family who does the will of God. That will is, and you know this one: it shows up in all major religions,

‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

This is what my dad, Dr. John Morgan, wants the Morgans to reach past just us. Even if you are not a chapter-and-verse kind of person, you know that my family’s interpretation strikes a chord. It calls out the Vice President trying to have us take the easy way out and not do the difficult work God asks of us. It is why, when so many of us are worried about our work and the people we serve, it is not just about us; it is about the state of the world. We are people of the way; we follow so that our selfish desires are muted, and we follow someone who calls us to be merciful, to see each other, and to be of service to each other.

Mark Clavier again,

“ Love does not follow the boundaries we set. It moves outward like ripples in water, breaking through our self-made enclosures. Christianity does not reinforce our natural loyalties—it unsettles them. It tells us to love beyond blood and nation, beyond what is easy or comfortable. Love, then, is not about hierarchy or borders; it is about grace. And grace does not trickle down—it pours out, unmeasured, unbound.”

Let us remember that, and let us act like that together, AMEN!