In the portion of John's Gospel from the departure of Judas on his mission to betray Jesus -- the middle of chapter 13-- to Jesus' conversation with the Father-- chapter 17-- Jesus gives His parting teachings to His disciples. In those teachings Jesus returns again and again to the idea of love, love between Jesus and the Father, the love Jesus has for His disciples, and the love the disciples should have for one another. Today's reading (Jn 15: 12-17) is part of that conversation about love. Obviously reflecting on what He is about to do, Jesus says: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." So that's the gold standard, the aspirational goal-- to be the one who jumps on the hand grenade to save the platoon, or the one who is executed in place of another (see, eg, A Tale of Two Cities), or the one who accepts another's punishment in a concentration camp. But for most of us those sorts of extraordinary heroics aren't in the cards. We aren't presented with such situations, right? I've never been around a live hand grenade, or had the opportunity to switch positions with someone to be executed, or in a concentration camp-- thank God! And yet-- and yet-- maybe we're giving ourselves too much of a pass when we say we don't have a chance to demonstrate the kind of great love Jesus is talking about today. Monday evening I was up at Stillwater Prison doing a communion service, which included preaching a homily on last Sunday's Gospel. That Gospel, you may recall, was also from this section of John's Gospel where Jesus was instructing on love, and included the command that we "love one another." So I suggested a few examples of how folks at Stillwater might love one another, at some personal cost. One I mentioned, which seemed to get some traction from the group, was the idea of befriending someone in the prison who had no other friends, who seemed a little weird, who was all alone. That would be hard, I suggested, because people would look at you funny if you decided to be a buddy of such a person. You'd lose some "street cred." Folks might not respect you as much is you hung around with someone who was a loser. You'd be giving up something of yourself if you did that, but that's what Jesus asks of us. I could see the heads nodding as I said that. Think about it. We all have ways that we could give something of ourselves in love for another-- some time, some money, some status, some energy. The love to which Jesus calls us isn't intended to be easy-- anyone can do that. Jesus asks for more, for everything, really. He asks us to give up our lives for our friends. Can we do that?