This morning’s Gospel lesson is taken from Jesus’ farewell speech to his disciples. Like any good leader, he gave his disciples instructions on how to carry on without him.  Jesus’ instructions are relatively short.  They take up only three chapters in John’s Gospel, as opposed to Moses’ parting instructions, which make up the entire book of Deuteronomy.  In fact, Jesus’ farewell message can be summarized in a single sentence from this morning’s reading:  “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

What are Jesus’ commandments?  There is actually only one in John’s Gospel, which Jesus spells out in the chapter just before this one: “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

These words are addressed to us as well as to the disciples. If we want to show our love for Jesus and carry on his work, we need to love one another as Jesus loves us.  It sounds simple, but every one of us knows it is much harder than it sounds.  The way Jesus loves us is so profound that we could contemplate it all our lives and never take it all in.  Jesus showed his love in every aspect of his life and death and resurrection. 

One thing we can say about the way Jesus loves is that it involves action, not just emotion.  I want to point to three different types of action through which Jesus showed his love and then focus on one of them that I believe is a great challenge for us.

One way Jesus actively loved was by speaking the truth.  If we want to love each other the way Jesus loves us, we must also be willing to speak the truth and hear the truth.  The truth can be difficult and painful and it can make us wildly unpopular.  Telling the truth did not always win Jesus friends either. 

A second way in which Jesus acted in love was by forgiving people.  Loving one another requires that we be willing to be the first to forgive—the first to reach out a hand in reconciliation.  This too can be very difficult.  It means we have to let go of our anger, and admit that we are incomplete without the other.

A third way that Jesus acted lovingly—and this is what I want to focus on--was by expending himself in the service of others.  He gave up time and energy, comfort and security, and finally, his very life in loving service to the people around him. 

In this time and place, expending ourselves in service to others may be the hardest aspect of loving the way Jesus loved.  For people living in an authoritarian regime, telling the truth may be the riskiest part of following Jesus, because it could cost them their liberty or their lives.  For people living in mortal conflict, like the Israelis and the Palestinians, forgiveness is the greatest challenge.  But for those of us who live in the richest nation in the world, protected by the first amendment, in relative peace despite 9/11 and its aftermath, the most difficult challenge is risking our comfort and security in the service of others.   

This past week, I attended a clergy conference where we had a chance to hear from our new Bishop-elect, John Chane.  We learned that he was born in D.C. and then grew up in a middle class home in Winchester, Massachusetts.  After a three year tour with a rock band, (yes, our new Bishop is a rock and roll drummer), he became a community organizer in the city of Roxbury.  Seven miles from the suburban neighborhood where he grew up, he encountered the harshest poverty.  There were rats, burned out buildings and children whose bellies were swollen with hunger.  He gave up the comfort and security of his middle class home and lived in relative poverty with his wife and baby in order to serve the people in the most need. 

The Episcopal Church recruited him to become a priest because they were becoming aware of their need to break out of privileged insularity and reach out in loving service to their neighbors.  The Church made a decision to give up a degree of comfort and security in order to love and serve people who had been excluded from the Church. 

Bishop-elect Chane spoke about his years as a community organizer as one of the formative experiences of his ministry.  He offered a quote from former Presiding Bishop John Hines, which has been and continues to be a touchstone for his ministry.  “A bishop’s job is to keep his church family on the firing line of the world’s most desperate needs and to learn to accept the exquisite penalty of such an exposed position.”

The challenge for us, as the church family, is to identify in each generation the world’s most desperate needs and be willing to lay ourselves on that firing line.  When Bishop-elect Chane was a young man, the desperate need was to address poverty and racial injustice.  Since then, the Church has recognized the need to include women, gays and lesbians, disabled people and people from different cultures.  We are still wrestling with all of these issues in the Church.  Our diocese is conducting a series of hearings on racism, the national church has commissioned a new study on the status of women in the church and the Episcopal gay and lesbian group Integrity continues to educate people about sexuality and struggle for full inclusion. 

Loving one another as Jesus loves us means wrestling with how we include or exclude different people in our church family.  But it also means looking at the world around us and opening ourselves to the desperate needs we see there.  It is too easy for the Church to revert to a comfortable, insular security—to direct its gaze inward, instead of outward to the people we are called to love and serve. 

There is a penalty, as John Hines said, for laying ourselves on the line in service to others.  It will cause us pain to let ourselves see the desperate needs in the world around us and we will feel overwhelmed at times.  We may not always agree on what the most desperate need is and we will face criticism, rejection, even hostility.  Serving others involves giving up time, energy, comfort and security, just as Jesus did.  Our own rector is a good example for us.  Father Michael is giving up several weeks of his hard-earned sabbatical to travel to Uganda, to give aid and encouragement to gay clergy and their supporters there.  Michael’s trip is not without risk—homosexuality is considered a crime in Uganda. People like Bishop Christopher, who visited here last year, have been placed under house arrest for supporting gay people. But how can we love one another as Jesus loved us without being willing to serve, even when that means risking our security and safety?