John 14: 15-21 All Hat and No Cattle - Pastor Paul Larsen - April 27, 2008

Jared Allen. Jared Allen. Jared Allen. If you live in Minnesota and you haven’t heard that name you must have been incommunicado this past week. His name has been a headline on radio, TV and the newspaper! The Minnesota Vikings and their fans have gone ga-ga over this guy. The Vikings traded a first round draft pick and two third round, draft picks to get Mr. Allen from the Kansas City Chiefs. They also gave him a six year contract worth more than $73 million dollars. Lots of fans are reacting as if Allen is going to lead the team to the Super Bowl. I hope he does. It would be great fun. But hasn’t there has been an overabundance of hype about him?

There is no question about his abilities as a football player. He led the league in sacks last year. He had more quarterback sacks than the top three Viking combined! The question is about his off-the-field behavior. He has been arrested for drunk driving three times, twice in a period of five months in 2006. He ended up serving a two game suspension for the last two arrests. If he were to be arrested again he would serve a much longer suspension. But Jared says he is done with drinking. He says he has learned his lesson.

He tells the story of what happened following his last arrest. His paternal grandfather, Ray Allen, a member of the Marines for a quarter-century and a guy referred to as Scarface and Master Blaster got after him. Ray learned about his grandson’s troubles from watching ESPN. Ray called Jared up and said, “You’re screwing up the family’s name. Now what are you going to do about it?” Jared says he has not had a drink since that conversation. He said, “After the last DUI, I had to take a long look in the mirror. I realized I was throwing away everything I love and for what?”

At the press conference when he was introduced as the newest Viking, Allen told the media: The important thing for me to express to the Vikings was these changes were not made just so I would look good in the eyes of the NFL. These changes were made for me as a man and to be a better man for my family, to represent the name on the back of my jersey. Like I told coach, now that I am part of Viking family I will do everything to represent that family as if I am representing my personal family.”

It sounds like he has things figured out. It sounds like he has turned his life around out of love for his family and his love for football.

In our Gospel text Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Make sure you don’t get that turned around. Jesus did not say, “If you keep my commandments, then I will love you.” Jesus has already shown us the depth of his love for us by going to the cross. He loved us enough to die for us. Now, he is asking us to show our love for him by living according to his commandments. What were his commandments? He commands us to love!

Jesus said, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

For a society that talks incessantly about love, do we really have a clue what love is? A song written by Joni Mitchell entitled, Both Sides Now, says,  

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all

I wonder sometimes whether any of us really know love at all.  Yet "love" is a hot topic.  Love is something to discuss, something to philosophize about. Love gets a lot of attention. It fills the television, movie screens, books, magazines. I find myself preaching a lot about love. There are courses on love. For awhile there was a professor from California who taught a sellout course on love. He was referred to as Doctor Love. And yet Ashley Montagu, a highly respected anthropologist and social philosopher, once remarked,

 "Love is the answer to the problems of being human, however today in our superabundance of love-talk, there is a super-absence of love action."

That's it! Isn't it?  Love is not just something we talk about in an abstract way.  It is something we do. If I do not act in love it remains unknown. As the song says "I really don't know love at all"

I am told that in Texas they have a saying about “Cowboy wanna-be’s.”  They say they are “All hat and no cattle.” 

Does that symbolize my faith? 

Does it symbolize yours?

Are we obedient Christians or are we all hat and no cattle? 

You have to put Christ’s commands to work in your life to experience his fullness.  To Christ, obedient faith is love enacted. We each need to ask ourselves, “Do I have obedient faith?” Am I loving others the way Christ commanded me to?

Our Gospel text is telling us that there is a connection between the Christian’s relationship to Christ and Christian behavior. Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my commandments.”

Max DePree, a business consultant and author, wrote, "We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are." Hear that again, “We can not become what we need to be by remaining what we are.” That seems rather obvious, but in practice it is very hard. There is a more colloquial way of saying the same thing. “If we don't change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.”

Are you headed in the wrong direction?

Is there something in your life that you are doing that you know is not what God wants you to do, yet you keep doing it?

Is there something you know you should be doing, but you are not doing it?

Is there something about you that would cause people to describe you as, “All hat and no cattle?”

If you think you can answer “No” to all of those questions then you are either deluded or you have been in a coma.

We don’t always do everything God wants us to do.

We often fail to do the things we know we should do.

There have been times when every one of us was “All hat and no cattle.”

But God loves us anyway. God forgives us for our failures and our phoniness. And God even gives us “Another Advocate,” the Holy Spirit, to help us and inspire us and empower us to obey Christ’s command to love one another even as he has loved us.

Way too often we think we can, or we have to, make it on our own. The truth is: we can’t and we don’t have to. The Holy Spirit offers us all the help we need, if we will only accept it.

Some of you are old enough to remember Richard Daly who was mayor of Chicago for 21 years. Mayor Daly was known as a rather forbidding guy to work for. One day one of Mayor Daly’s speech writers came in and demanded a raise. Daly responded, “I’m not going to give you a raise. You are getting paid more than enough already. It should be enough for you that you are working for a great American hero like myself.” And that was the end of it...or so the mayor thought.

Two weeks later Mayor Daly was to give a nationally broadcast speech to a convention of veterans. Daly almost never read his speeches until he got up to deliver them. So there he stood before a vast throng of veterans and the national press. He began to describe the plight of the veterans saying, “I’m concerned for you. I have a heart for you. I am deeply convinced that this country needs to take care of its veterans. So, today I am proposing a seventeen point plan that includes the city, state and federal governments, to care for the veterans of this country.” Now by this time, everyone was on the edge of their seat to hear what the proposal was. He turned the page and saw only these words: “You’re on your own now, you great American hero.”

I don't know if Daly learned anything at that moment. With his great ego perhaps he did not. But he should have learned that all of us need help. No matter how great we think we are, need help. We need advocates who help to make us who we are.

In this text Jesus promises us an advocate, the Holy Spirit, who can help us to change our lives and turn them around. It is the Holy Spirit who empowers us to repent and to live in a new way. The Spirit enables us to stop doing those things that are wrong and start doing the right things. The Spirit gives us the ability to follow Christ’s command to love.

Some of you may remember the 1989-90 college basketball season where one of the top teams in the country was Michigan. Early in the season Michigan was playing Wisconsin. Michigan was favored to win by a large margin but found themselves in a very close game. Near the end of the game Michigan's guard Rumeal Robinson was fouled with his team behind by one point. Robinson stepped to the free-throw line, shooting two shots and missed them both. Wisconsin upset Michigan that day. Robinson felt horrible. He felt so sorry. He felt as if he had let down his family, his teammates, his coaches, and his school. You know, for a lot of people that is the extent of their repentance when something goes wrong. They feel badly about it, but Robinson resolved to do something about it.

For the rest of the season, at the end of practice, when everyone else was done and had hit the showers, Robinson shot an extra one hundred free throws. Every day he shot free throws. You may recall that in the National Championship Game that next spring, in overtime, Rumeal Robinson was fouled with three seconds left on the clock and his team was behind by one point. He made both free throws and Michigan won the National Championship! Robinson knew what repentance is. Repentance is not feeling badly because we have done something wrong; repentance is doing something about it. Repentance is making a conscious change in our life because we know “We can not become what we need to be by remaining what we are.”

Is Christ is tugging at your heart urging you to make some changes?

What does God want you to stop doing?

What is the Spirit urging you to do that you are not now doing?

How can you better follow Christ’s commandment to love?

Jesus doesn’t want you to turn your life around out of fear of punishment.

He doesn’t want you to do it in an attempt to earn his love – He already loves you unconditionally.

He doesn’t want you to do what you know should be done out of guilt.

He wants you to do it as a response to the boundless love he gives you.

I hope and pray that Jared Allen has turned his life around. Not just so the Vikings can win more football games, but because he wants to live in a way that reflects his love for his family and for all that is important to him.

Even more, I hope that each of us can daily seek to turn our lives around.

To turn away from those things we shouldn’t do;

to actually do those things we know we should do;

and to live in accordance to Christ’s commandments as a way of showing our love for Jesus. Amen.

GUIDED BY THE GOSPEL: GATHERING • GROWING • GIVING