In the Gospel of John, God’s love is a clear thread running through it
– and the gospel only has words to show us this. Jesus uses an awful lot of
words with his disciples to show them who he is and what kind of relationship
he wants to have with them. In John’s gospel we have the “I am” passages, where
Jesus uses words to show his disciples who he is for them. And in recent weeks
we have dwelled on some of these. Such as I
am the good shepherd, and I am the
true vine.
Not to say that he is, literally, a shepherd – or a grapevine.
When all you have are words, you try to use those words to spark
imaginations. Words become images which can become truths that live inside of
the listener. Sometimes it doesn’t work out well. You may remember the
Pharisee, Nicodemus, who couldn’t quite grasp the images Jesus tried to convey
to him about being born of the Spirit. But others who heard Jesus were better
at catching the meaning – such as the Samaritan woman at the well, who easily
flowed right along with Jesus when he said to her, I give you living water. She said, I’ll take it.
In the words we hear today from Chapter 15, the image is one that you
might understand quite well: friends. We have friends. We know what they are. But
I must confess that it doesn’t seem simple to me.
When I hear Jesus call me his friend, I am bowled over…staggered. This
seems like a remarkable thing. In some ways it seems like too little – remember
that guy, or girl, who said to you, “I just
want to be your friend.” Yet, in other ways, it seems like too much, an
impossibly intimate thing to have with the Son of God.
One year some college students I worked with created a sermon about
friendship, and they managed to articulate seven distinct levels of
friendship. They drew a diagram that
looked like a bullseye target. It was
the seven circles of friendship, kind of like Dante’s nine circles of hell –
only different. The weakest levels of friendship were on the outer rings and
the deeper levels were nearer the center.
It was surprisingly detailed – something, I think, only young people
could create. Friendship is to young
adults like snow is to the Inuit people: something so central to their
existence they are acutely aware of all the nuances.
But even if you don’t have such a fine and variegated understanding of
friendship, you probably would agree that there are a few different degrees, or
kinds, of friendship.
Whatever Jesus means when he uses this word, it is clear that it’s not
a word I can toss off casually or that I can afford to misunderstand. He tells
me I am his friend, that he has chosen me for friendship. And I have to
struggle with understanding just what that means.
What does it mean to call someone “friend?”
As I pondered the question this week, I realized I couldn’t do it on
my own. I would have to turn to an authoritative source, and so I did. Facebook,
that strange realm that invented a whole new meaning for the word “friend.” I
asked my Facebook community what makes someone a good friend.
I got answers from a dozen people and found some consensus about what
we value in a friend. We are looking for someone who is trustworthy, someone
with whom we feel comfortable enough to be ourselves, someone who listens to
us. We don’t want to be judged by our friends, but we do want them to be honest
with us. Maybe. We want them to care for us, to want the best for us. We want
them to love us, unconditionally.
One person said something that I found particularly helpful. That her
friends tell her they love her, even when they know she is wrong. But they also
tell her that she was in the wrong.
As I thought about it a little more, it occurred to me that good
friends can make us better people, because when we are committed to a good
friendship, we are practicing some of the things that make us more loving, more
generous, more joyful people.
In this series on resurrection stories, we have been spending some
time thinking about what it means to have a relationship with a resurrected
Savior, and what it means for us to be resurrected people. We began with a few
of the stories in the gospels about that very first day when Jesus rose from
the grave. The ways he showed up for his first disciples share some common
ground with the ways we might see him show up in our lives.
The message, essentially, is that we can enjoy the presence of Jesus
with us just as the first disciples did because it is the role of the church to
let Jesus live in us and through us. And we are most clearly able to see the
resurrected Jesus when we are letting his light shine through us for the
benefit of one another. The resurrected life of Jesus is most vivid when it is
being shined outwardly, for the benefit of the world.
To be a resurrected people is to be a friend to the people God has
placed in our lives.
I have used a lot of words over these past several weeks in my efforts
to convey the ideas of resurrection life. But words are not enough and never
will be enough. Eventually, all the words must point to something beyond themselves.
As Eliza said, Show me! And the
message of all the gospels is that Jesus did, indeed, show us. He said,
No one has greater love than
this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. And then he showed us.
He also said,
This is my commandment, that
you love one another as I have loved you. Now it’s on us to show him.
This is what Jesus is waiting to see, whether we will love one another
as he loves us.
You may still be on the fence about whether you are
prepared to lay down your life for a friend, even for a friend in the innermost
circle of friendship. No one mentioned that particular quality in response to
my Facebook query.
It’s okay, I think we all understand the ambivalence
one might feel about laying down your life for anyone. But perhaps we can begin
with a few small steps; with a willingness to lay down our agendas…to lay down
our prejudices…to lay down our infernal busyness for a friend in need. We might
be better friends if we could lay down these things. And with more people
practicing real, authentic, and meaningful friendship, the world would be a
better place.
Brothers and sisters, we are living in a
post-resurrection world. Because Jesus lived, died, and rose from the dead, the
world is a different place than what it was before. You and I know this. But
someone outside the church, someone new to the church might say, “Show me!”
And that is a fair request to make. It will be up to
us to show them, with the evidence of our lives.
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