Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them.  Take our minds and think with them.  Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus says to his followers both those in his own day and, like you and me, those who follow him today, “Those who love me will keep my word.”  Now, I do love Jesus.  I love him more than words can describe.  Jesus is my friend, my constant companion, my guide along the path of life, my Savior from sin and the grave, my first priority—even before fiancé, friends, and family.  My identity as a priest forever connects me to Jesus in the most public of ways.  The very core of the profession I’ve chosen for my life is tell every person I meet about the immeasurable love that God has given to this world through Jesus.  I have loved Jesus my whole life.  In fact, I can’t ever remember not loving him. 

Often in my private conversations with Jesus, I am brought to tears, I openly weep, when I think of the forgiveness, grace, and love that God pours into my heart through Jesus.  I have often said in sermons that Jesus is with us at all time and in all places—even here—even now.  Do you sense him?  Do you?  Do you feel his presence?  I really do.  I see him in you as his love flows from you to me.  I feel him in me—physically—I really feel Jesus in me as an overwhelming sensation of love.  I do love Jesus.  I love him more than words can describe.

Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word.”  Now I was once told that the commandments in the Old Testament number 618 including the 10 biggies we all know as the Ten Commandments.  Moreover, there are many other commandments or teachings about how we are to live in relation to God and one another in the New Testament.  Perhaps the number of commandments we are to obey in the whole of God’s word, Old and New Testaments, comes to a thousand or more.  Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word.”  However, the idea of obeying a thousand or so commandments in scripture is simply overwhelming, and, personally, I have never been very good at following rules in the first place. 

However, before we choose to ignore Jesus’ teaching and the divine commandments in the word of God because they are simply too overwhelming to keep, Jesus gives us some help to simplify things.  He gives us a new teaching what he calls a new commandment.  In last Sunday’s gospel lesson, also from John, Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”  This new commandment sums up all the others in the entirety of scripture.  Love one another as I have loved you.  Now, I can sink my teeth into that teaching.  So if I love Jesus, and I do as I pointed out, I will love other people just as Jesus loves me.           

Now, here’s my real struggle with today’s Gospel lesson.  As I have said, I do love Jesus, but I don’t obey (at least much of the time) his commandment to love.  I am going to be honest with you and hope you will be honest with yourselves as well.  I judge people before I really know them.  I pass people in need everyday and do nothing to help.  I buy things I don’t really need because I think it will make me feel better all along knowing that there are 1.2 billion people in our world who live on less than one dollar a day.  I talk bad about people.  I spend way too much money on fancy meals when I know good and well that 60,000 people will die today because of lack of food and basic medical attention in our world—60,000 human beings—today.  I have, in the past, been a part of organizations that intentionally exclude people because of the color of their skin or the size of their pocketbook.  These are the confessions of a priest, and the list could go on but I am beginning to really feel bad about myself, and I don’t want to give you guys the wrong impression about me.  The truth is I don’t do most of these things most of the time.  My point is I am not always a great lover.  And if you are all willing to be really honest with yourselves, I think you would have to agree that many of the flaws I have listed you share.  I do love Jesus, but, too often, I don’t love his people as I should.   

In the day’s leading up to the war in Iraq, I was at a dinner table with friends and we were discussing the impending death and destruction that would certainly come with the beginning of military action, regardless of whether or not it was the right decision.  I noticed one of my friends become upset and leave the table.  I followed him into the parking lot of the place where we were eating and found him standing alone, crying.  As I walked up next to him and silently put my arm around him, he was muttering over and over, “There is no love left in the world…There is no love left in the world.”  Now I’m naturally an optimist.  Nonetheless part of me had to agree with my friend.  When I look at the evil wrought in the larger world and look inside at the reality of my own brokenness, I have to agree that the world and my own life often seem sadly loveless.  And, at times, I feel powerless over the evil and hate that seem pervasive in our world and over my own selfishness that loves me more than others.  So where does that leave us?

This past week I received the most recent issue of the UT Alumni magazine.  In this issue is an article they call the “Ultimate Longhorn Reading List”.  For the article, they polled UT’s academy of distinguished teachers and asked them to list the top five books they feel everyone should read before they die.  Surprisingly to me the book or books that showed up on the most lists were JRR Tolkein’s trilogy the Lord of the Rings.  In connection to today’s gospel lesson, I was reminded of a scene in the Two Towers, the second book of the trilogy, when the good guys are in serious trouble.  They are under the brutal onslaught of the evil orc army. 

Our heroes are all but defeated.  They have retreated into their last stronghold and that too will fall momentarily.  Once it does, the orcs will kill everyone who stands for love and for life including all the women and children.  The King of Rohan who is leading the army fighting against the evil orcs has given up hope.  For him there is no love left in the world.  There is nothing left that can stand against the evil and hate that he’s facing.  Just then at the very moment he is ready to give up and accept death, one the other hero’s, Aragorn, looks him in the eye and says, “Ride out with me…Ride out with me.”  So as the first light of a new day is dawning in the east, they ride out together on their war horses into the heart of the evil army in a bold self-sacrificial effort to triumph over the forces of evil and hate.  If they are going to go down, they are going to go down fighting.  And guess what, that fearless and, perhaps even, foolhardy move begins to turn the tide of the battle…a battle in which love and light are the ultimate victors.

Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word.”  And then he goes on to promise us that he will not leave us to try and become great lovers on our own.  He promises that God will give us an Advocate who is the Holy Spirit.  He says, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things, and will remind you of everything I have said to you….[so] do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” 

You see despite our failure, at times, to be a good lover—despite the reality of evil in our larger world, we are called out into the darkness to be light.  We are called to love boldly even when it costs us something.  As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, we are to live “dangerously unselfish lives.”  We are called to keep on loving no matter what. 

And the good news in today’s Gospel lesson is that we don’t do so alone, we have an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who says to us, in every moment, particularly our most desperate, “Ride out with me.”  The Holy Spirit is saying to you, “Ride out with me, you are not alone.  If you will only step out of your place of hopelessness you will find that there are others who are ready to love with you—to join you in the battle against hate.”  Jesus’ Spirit is saying, “Ride out with me, you are not alone.  Your love, however imperfect, can make a positive difference in the lives of those who cross your path.”  The Spirit of Truth is saying to you, “Ride out with me, you are not alone.  Love boldly and together we will accomplish more good in this world than you could ever hope or imagine.”  Amen.    

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