There are a lot of things that I like and respect about the youth and
young adults of this congregation – their desire to know God,
their curiosity and sense of fun, their extraordinary willingness to
serve this church. Anyone who came to thanksgiving last night
got
to see them in action. But one of the things that I like most about
them is how they treat each other. They come from all over
the
world, from dramatically different backgrounds, experiences, points of
view. And yet they become friends.
I’ve seen young adults offer space in their tiny apartments to
friends who don’t have a place to stay. They comfort each
other in times of sadness and disappointment, pray for each other, help
each other with moving, language problems, employment. They
have
taught me a lot about what it means to be a friend.
The youth have taught me a lot as well. They listen so well
to
each other and are always ready with a word of encouragement.
They are so open to each other’s ideas, so willing to learn from
one another.
It is a great blessing for our congregation to be able to suggest to a
newcomer that they attend a youth or young adult activity and to know
that we don’t have to worry - that if they attend, they
will be welcomed, they will be treated as a friend.
And we really need friends. Many of us who are living far
from
home can testify to this. But I’d imagine that even those
who are fully at home in Paris know that we live in a world that can
feel cruel and dangerous. And life can be very lonely –
even for those of us who enjoy being alone.
As human beings, we love to pretend that we are independent, that we
don’t need anyone. But being in a new and foreign place
often teaches us that we are absolutely dependent on
friendship.
In fact, we are created by God with a need for other people.
We
need kindness and conversation and laughter in the same way that we
need food and water. We can experience such joy and comfort from just a
friendly word, an invitation to a meal, a walk to the metro stop.
The Bible testifies powerfully to our need for friendship. In
the
book of Genesis, God looked at Adam wandering around Eden and said, it
is not good for him to be alone – and he created a companion for
Adam, a friend. The Old Testament tells the story of the
friendship of David and Jonathan, which endured even in the face of war
and betrayal. There is the unusual friendship between Ruth
and
Naomi, between a woman and her mother in law, which gives us one of the
most beautiful and powerful expressions of friendship in
literature: “Wherever you go, I will go. Where you
stay, I will stay; your people shall be my people and your God will be
my God.” As we just heard Destiny/Sasha read; the book of
Proverbs speaks of a friend as one who loves at all times, who sticks
closer than a family member, one who sharpens our faith, our minds, our
discernment, as iron sharpens iron.
We need friends. Now this is not the same as needing to be
popular or cool or even well-liked. And thank God for
that.
I try to remind the youth that the kingdom of heaven is full of people
who had to sit alone in the cafeteria when they were 13. But
we
do need friendship.
And it is that deep need, I think, that makes today’s Gospel
passage so extraordinary. Jesus says, “I do not call you
servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master
is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to
you everything that I have heard from my father.” I do not
call you servants any longer…but I have called you
friends.
At the beginning of time, the Bible tells us, the earth was formless
and void and darkness covered the face of the deep. And then
the
Spirit of God swept over the waters and created all that
exists.
We are called friend by that Spirit of God. Holy Scripture
ends
with the image of the Almighty God sitting on the throne of the
universe, shining so brightly that there is no longer need for the sun
or the moon. We are called friend by that Almighty
God. We
are buddies with the Alpha and the Omega, the Lord, the Giver of
Life. Jesus calls us Friend. That is extraordinary.
If you think about it, an all-powerful God could chose any way at all
to communicate with humanity – bolts of lightning, voices from
heaven, mysterious oracles, dreams. And God has tried nearly
everything to get our attention. But again and again,
Scripture
tells us, God meets us as a friend. Enoch walked with
God.
The book of Exodus says that Moses met and talked to God face to face
like one would talk to a friend. The books of Chronicles and
James refer to Abraham as a friend of God. The writers of the
Psalms speak to God with an intimacy, a freedom, that characterizes
only the closest human friendships. In every interaction, God
could have come to humanity in a show of power that would have us on
our knees, shaking in terror. But instead, God spoke to us
face
to face as he would a friend. And in Jesus, God has come to
us,
to be with us, to be our friend.
And what does that really mean, to be the Friend of God? What
does it mean to sing “what a friend we have in Jesus” or
even to say that we have a relationship with God.? Sometimes it can
roll of my tongue so easily. But when I really think about
it,
I’m not as sure what it means. Being friends with God
– does it mean that God and I go out for coffee? That we
like the same books? Does it mean that God likes
me? And
doesn’t a friendship suggest equality, a kind of even
footing? Surely I don’t have that with God…What does
it mean that Jesus calls us his friends?
First, to say that Jesus is my friend is to say that my relationship
with Jesus is the most important and most intimate relationship in my
life. In our culture today we tend to think that friendship
is a
kind of paler version of real love, meaning romantic love.
However, if you look at the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, if
you look at the Old and New Testaments, for that matter, there is
surprisingly little emphasis on romantic love. After all, in
the
Roman world and in Jewish culture at the time of Jesus, most people
were married off at a young age to someone that they didn’t know
well. Certainly they believed in fidelity and love within
marriage. But it seems that they expected that the people
they
were closest to, the most important people in their lives, the center
of their emotional worlds, would be their friends. Jesus’
contemporaries thought that their greatest relational challenges and
best opportunity for moral growth would be in the context of
friendship. After all, someone else decided whom
you
married. Someone else decided what you did for a
living.
But you chose your friends. They were the most important
people
in your life.
And so, when Jesus calls us friend, what does he mean? He is
saying that our relationship with him must be the most important
relationship in our life. He is saying that everything that
matters most in life is going to take place in the context of our
relationship with Jesus. Jesus is where all our needs are
met,
where we find our greatest joy, where we are challenged most, where we
grow and where we go for comfort. When Jesus offers us
friendship, he is not offering to stand out the sidelines of our
lives. He is staking his claim at the center, saying that he
desires a kind of closeness to us and intimacy that we won’t
experience in any other relationship.
When we say that we are friends with Jesus, we are also saying that we
are dependent on him for our very survival. These days we
tend to
consider friendship important; we might even say that it’s an
essential part of our emotional and spiritual health. But in
the
ancient world, friendship was necessary for physical
survival.
There were no corner stores, no easy communication, not even a
standardized currency. If you needed something, you had to
find a
friend or a friend of a friend who would give or sell it to
you.
In order to stay alive, you needed a complex network of relationships
with friends and family. Goods were exchanged within these
networks, services were provided, and human life was made
possible. People were absolutely dependent on their
friends. And when Jesus calls us friends, he means to say
that we
are just as dependent on him.
I do not call you servants any longer…but I have called you
friends. That is amazing. It is
wonderful. But
it’s also scary. Something that I realize in being with the
youth and young adults – and mainly in seeing my own failures in
friendship – is that friendships can be really difficult.
Friends can hurt us. And we can hurt them, intentionally and
unintentionally. There is nothing quite like the pain that
comes
from a broken friendship.
I think that friendships here at the American church, in this
international and intercultural context, can be especially
difficult. Our ideas of how friendship works, of what we can
expect from one another, can be very different depending on where we
are from. A lot of hurt and misunderstanding can result, even
within the church. And then there are just the normal, day to
day
hurts and little disagreements that are part of even the healthiest
friendships.
God who reigns in splendor on the throne in heaven is all powerful and
seemingly invulnerable. But a friend, a friend is vulnerable
– a friend can be misunderstood, can be hurt, can be
rejected. And let’s face it, our track record as human
beings is not good. The Old Testament is a witness to our
repeated rejection of God’s love. After this rejection, God
surely could have decided get our attention. He could have
shown
us every bit of his divine power. He could have so
overpowered us
that we would obey in terror for the rest of our lives. He
could
have forced us to acknowledge that we were tiny insects that he could
crush with a footstep, he could have made us realize that we were his
servants and nothing more.
But instead, God in his fullness – God in all his power and
glory, came to us as Jesus, as a human being. And he came not
only to a few great heroes of the faith, not only to a group of
disciples. He came to all of us. God who created
heaven and
earth, standing before us, face to face, saying that if we chose, we
can be called friend. What does it mean that Jesus calls us
friends? It means that God’s love for us is so great
that He is willing to put up with the most painful
experiences
possible in order to be with us.
Finally, being friends with Jesus means that we are called to respond
to the love, care and concern that God offers to
us. In
today’s Gospel text, Jesus says this: This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
He
goes on to say, you are my friends if you do what I command
you.
Now I don’t think that Jesus is saying that we have to follow him
perfectly or there is no possibility of relationship. The
whole
point of grace is that we get to be in relationship with God because
God loves us, not because we earn it.
Rather, I think that Jesus is saying that we grow in friendship with
him by imitating him. In other words, we are called to be a
friend to others in the same way that Jesus has become a friend to
us. It’s as if we have entered into a web of relationships
with Jesus at the center. Our friendship with God brings us
into
relationship with one another. We become friends not because
we
all like each other, but rather because we are all connected to
Christ. We are bound together by our common friendship with
God.
We are called to reach out to one another in friendship in the same way
that Jesus has reached out to us. We are called to love one
another as He loved us. This means that just as our
friendship
with Jesus is a relationship in which we grow spiritually, emotionally,
and physically, we are called into relationships with one another that
promote the same kind of growth. We are called not to
comfortable
relationships but to relationships in which we challenge each other to
be more faithful to God, more able to serve one another.
We are absolutely dependent on our relationship with Jesus to meet our
every need. As we imitate Jesus, we are called to attend to
the
needs of our friends. Now we all know that this isn’t a
simple thing. We are not God. Our friends have
needs that
we cannot meet. And sometimes it is hard to tell the
difference
between what someone needs and what someone wants. But just
as
Jesus is concerned with our whole selves, our whole lives – we
are to be concerned with the all the needs and concerns of others.
Finally, and this one I admit is especially hard for me – if we
are to love others as God has loved us, we are called to be the kind of
friends who risk being hurt. We are called to chose the
dangers
of intimacy, of being close to one another over the safety of shutting
ourselves off. We are called to the dangerous practice of
friendship, of being vulnerable, of truly loving.
I do not call you servants any longer…but I have called you
friends. What does that mean, to be called the friend of
Jesus,
the friend of the Holy God? I’m not sure that I
know.
But I do know that when the creator of heaven and earth, the Almighty
God, offers to call you friend, the only thing you can say is
yes. Yes. And my prayer for all of us is that we
might
continue saying yes with our words and with our actions, until we meet
God face to face, and greet him as a friend.
