SUNDAY SERMON
ARE WE FRIENDS OF JESUS?
Easter 6, Year B
May 25, 2003
Epistle: 1
John 4:7-21
Gospel: John
15:9-17
You are my friends. These are among the last words Jesus says the night before his death. He is in an upstairs room in Jerusalem. At a dinner party. It's a special dinner party; a holy meal on a holy night. It is called Pasch-Passover. You are my friends.
Jesus looks around the table at the twelve. They have been with him night and day, week in and week out, for three years. He can read their hearts. He's seen their jealousies, their bickering, their mood-swings. You are my friends.
He doesn't call them "my servants" or "my followers" or even "my disciples." He says "my friends." Jesus takes a common, familiar word, friend, and baptizes it with meaning, bringing it into the church and our life together right down to this moment.
What Jesus said to them, he says to us. The Son of God looks out at any group of his followers, anywhere in the world, looks out at you this morning and says: you are my friends.
Most of you have heard the hymn, "What a friend we have in Jesus." And that's true. But if you think about today's gospel, the question is reversed: What kind of friends does Jesus have in us? You are my friends. Well, are we? Am I a friend of Jesus? Are you? And what difference does it make in my other friendships?
At first glance it may look like Jesus is talking about friendship with conditions. After all the full sentence reads, You are my friends if you do what I command you. Are there strings attached? We have all known people who offer us friendship with strings attached-contribute to their projects, share their political or religious opinions or bless their chosen lifestyle and behavior. So it is perfectly natural to hear Jesus' words in this light. "You are my friends if you do what I command," sounds like strings are attached. It sounds like in order to win friendship with Jesus we have to commit to a book of rules (the Ten Commandments?) and worry if we will score high enough to pass the final exam.
I think this is one reason why many people in our culture hesitate to commit their lives to following this Master. They see Jesus as taskmaster much more than as friend. "If you do what I command" sounds intimidating-until we get to know the Jesus who commands us. Throughout these chapters in John's gospel known as the farewell chapters, Jesus keeps repeating this "command": love one another. So in the same breath Jesus calls us his friends and tells us to love one another.
Being a friend of Jesus and loving one another are connected; no, they are inseparable. Loving one another is not easy…I hope you are prepared to agree. It's true whether we focus on family or friends or this larger bunch you find you've landed with at CHC. (It takes no effort at all to come up with one person who is a challenge to love…I can think of several, can't you?) Some days it is just plain hard work to love one another. It is so much easier to see her selfishness or his stubbornness, and discuss it! Any yet loving each other is exactly what Jesus commands us to do.
The secret to loving one another is found in the other reading from St. John: I Jn. 4.19. We love because he first loved us. This is the gospel-in-a-nutshell. God makes the first move. God loved us first-before we'd shown any interest in God, any inclination to love. God loves us because God is love. Listen to Eugene Peterson's translation of this part of 1 John [The Message]:
God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home…in us, so that we're free of worry…First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
This secret is absolutely essential to living the Christian life; absolutely essential to loving one another; absolutely essential to friendship with Jesus and with each other. We love because God loved us first.
The church is one place where we can learn about God loving us first. The church is where we are introduced to the One [Jesus] who offers us friendship with God. Two events this week reminded me of this holy friendship.
First, I had the delightful assignment from Katie Brownyard to meet with seven of the young people who will be confirmed next week by our Bishop-not to quiz them on what they'd learned-but to say something personal to them one on one. What I hope I conveyed to each of them is that the church, at its best, is a solid part of their lives; that it's a place where we all continue to grow together as friends of Jesus and as people who really, truly love each other; that's it's a place they can always come home to and feel welcoming arms catching them.
Second, like you, I received the news of Jim and Doree Brinson's new opportunity which will take them far away from us, geographically. It is bittersweet to leave a community which you love and which loves you deeply, as I know only too well from personal experience. But Jim and Doree take with them an overflowing cup of holy friendship with God and with us because of what they have known and practiced of Jesus' command: love one another.
Let me come back now to some final thoughts about what friendship with Jesus looks like. A friend, a real friend, is one who understands us in our depths. This includes all our emotions and all our failures. A friend is one who knows the worst about you and doesn't desert you but hangs in with you. And yet sometimes we fail at being friends.
Jesus knows that like his first friends, we may fall asleep or run away. We fail him. He knows we come up short at being a true friend-to him and to each other. Still he calls us friends. In the most amazing use of the word "friend" in the whole Bible, Jesus says to Judas after he has betrayed him with a kiss: Friend, why are you here? [Mt.26.50] And I imagine Jesus looking at Judas with love and compassion and forgiveness.
A true friend is one who freely opens her heart to you, trusting you with her secrets, trusting that you will not betray or reject her. This is what Jesus says to us: the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father. Jesus wants to let you in on his family secrets, the very life he shares with his Father.
Jesus has called us his friends. It is an awesome calling. How do we live up to it and how do we live into it? By loving one another…and what do we do when the going gets rough-because frankly if you knew me better and I knew you better, we'd agree: you are not all that loveable all the time. And here's the real shocker: neither am I!
What we do to keep loving each other is return again and again to this bedrock of the gospel message:
We love because God first loved us.
We return again and again to the words of Jesus:
You are my friends. Love one another.