<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 6pt">What do you look for in a friend? My first real friend was a boy living on my street, Brandon. He was eight. I was seven. We were inseparable – for two summers. We built treehouses (still got the scars to prove it), played whiffleball (he always won), and dreamed of one day exploring Canada together. But then my family moved out to the country, and that was that – never quite the same. </div>
<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 6pt">I made plenty of other friends – at school, in sports, at church. Of course some were deeper than others and some lasted longer than others. As I grew older I learned to hold onto to the ones that lasted and to treasure the memories of those that had faded. True friendship, I discovered is nothing to take for granted. </div>
What do you look for in a friend? My first real friend was a boy living on my street, Brandon. He was eight. I was seven. We were inseparable – for two summers. We built treehouses (still got the scars to prove it), played whiffleball (he always won), and dreamed of one day exploring Canada together. But then my family moved out to the country, and that was that – never quite the same.
I made plenty of other friends – at school, in sports, at church. Of course some were deeper than others and some lasted longer than others. As I grew older I learned to hold onto to the ones that lasted and to treasure the memories of those that had faded. True friendship, I discovered is nothing to take for granted.
What are your experiences of friendship? There is that excitement of a budding new friendship. Where sharing a simple cup of coffee leads to sharing life stories together and you realize that you just might share something much more deeply in common than caffeine.
Then there’s the comfort of old familiar friends. With old friends, there is no need for words. No uncomfortable silences. These are friends who know you and around them you can be yourself. You don’t have to explain. When life happens – good or bad, these are the people you call first. For in these friends you have found a connection, a communion.
However, we also look for friendships in unhealthy ways and for unhealthy reasons. It’s easy to want to fit in, to forget who we are, and who we are called to be. Sometimes we seek friends because we want people to know who we are or we desperately want to be somebody else. We would do just about anything to make that happen. We can measure ourselves by the number of our friends and their popularity. Knowing the right people becomes a tool to gain status, or it’s simply a way to avoid being alone. Loneliness is not solved in numbers. The most profound feeling of loneliness is to be surrounded by people at a party or in a sanctuary only to realize that no one knows or understands you.
Friendship isn’t as easy as it looks.
And it’s easy to take it for granted until we face the fear of losing it. Like moving off to college and wondering if things will ever be the same. What about these lifelong friendships that have been so important, will they be able to bridge distance and time? When the questions become real to us, we understand that friends are a major part of life that not only sustain us but shape us.
Jesus speaks of friendship in our gospel text for today. Jesus’ words here in John fall right in the middle of what scholars call the farewell discourses (four chapters of Jesus imparting life lessons to his disciples). Think of it as Jesus’ last will and testament (I Jesus, being of sound mind and body, leave you the disciples with the following).
It’s a little like the lectures I heard from my parents before going off to college. Mom and dad set some time aside to teach me what I needed to know. To learn how to wash clothes and cook on my own. We opened up a checking account and got my first cell phone to teach me responsibility. There were other conversations around the dinner table reminding me to remember who I was, to be careful, to work hard. But the morning I was to drive to school for orientation and move in it seemed that just when I began to back out of the driveway, the wisdom began again. Don’t forget your registration. Remember to call when you get there. Work hard. For heaven’s sake, be careful. Stalling. But then there were the words, “I love you. We’re proud of you.” They began the real process of letting go and letting me grow up.
Jesus too engages the disciples in a heart to heart. He has been with them for years – as Lord-master, as their rabbi-teacher. He has modeled the life he would have them to live. But it is important for him before he heads to the cross to let the disciples know they are not just servants but they are dear friends.
Now we could say this passage doesn’t offer us much new. Jesus talks about love – easy to understand. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” We’ve heard that before. Love can be so broad and abstract, it’s hard to make sense of Jesus’ command. For God so loved the world – love one another. With God’s universal love, it’s intimidating to know how or where to start.
Jesus gives us a starting point. He first invites us to rest, to abide in his love. Then he calls us to love another by modeling the example of how he loved us - as a friend.
Friendship – love? How can we equate the two? We have heard the hierarchy of the different Greek words for love. Eros – romantic love. Philos- the love between friends, which is good but then there is the big one, agape – the unconditional love of God. But in this gospel, John used the words agape and philos interchangeably. Being friends with Christ is the equivalent of abiding in his love.” Friendship with Christ is no casual relationship.
And how do we become friends with Christ? We keep his commandments. Sharing in the same way of life. Sharing in the mind of Christ. Not out of guilt or duty, but out of joy – out of friendship.
Friendship with Christ leads us to holy friendships in Christ with one another. Most often our tendency is to focus faith vertically, taking care of my relationship with God while we forget or are afraid to extend faith horizontally – to see how faith impacts how we live with one another. In this text, Jesus says plainly, friendship with Christ leads to friendship with one another. And vice versa. The two are inseparable.
Think about when were your deepest spiritual experiences? Maybe it was prayer alone in nature or at home, but I imagine that it is just as likely that your deepest spiritual experiences involved holy friendships. Reading scripture together, sharing your concerns over coffee, praying for one another, singing hymns in this sanctuary – in essence, sharing communion and community together among friends.
Friendship is not only about sharing affirmation but it is about sharing forgiveness and reconciliation. With friendship comes trust, but sometimes that trust is broken. With friendship comes the power to forgive. Have you ever experienced the power of being restored and forgiven by a friend?
Peter did. He had denied Christ three times in his deepest hour of need, and after Jesus’ resurrection, Peter didn’t know quite what to say.
You’ve heard the story in John 21. Jesus asks Peter, Do you love (agape) me? Peter responds, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love (philos) you.” Jesus asks again, “Peter, Do you love (agape) me.” Peter replies, “Yes Lord you know that I love (philos) you.”
Usually, we have viewed this text as poor Peter who even now cannot say he loves Jesus with agape. Finally, the third time Jesus condescends to Peter and asks if he might love him as a friend, “Peter do you love (philos) me.” “Yes Lord,” Peter replies, “you know everything, you know that I love (philos) you.” But maybe this story is one not of Peter’s failure to understand Jesus’ love. Maybe it a story instead of the power of friendship. Of restoration and reinstatement. Peter longs for his friend back. And in the end Jesus grants him that holy friendship again. All is forgiven. [I am indebted to David Wood, pastor of First Baptist Church, Gardiner, Maine, for this insight.]
Jesus makes it clear, we cannot live life on our own. We grow best in community. As the Christian mystic St. John of the Cross said four centuries ago, “God has so ordained things that we grow in faith only through the frail instrumentality of one another.” [Quoted in Marjorie Thompson, Soul Feast, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995, 117.]. We lay down our lives by getting lost in the lives of others. We do not discover ourselves until we lose ourselves by abiding in Christ and abiding in each other. In friendship, we make room for grace.
So maybe friendship gives us a place to start. When love seems either too trite or too broad to understand, we turn practically to our friends. Think about your friends. Do you have friendships now that model holy friendship with Christ? Or how might they look if you did?
One caution. Don’t be overly stingy with friendship. Love isn’t in scarce supply. Instead, love multiplies the more we use it. As we begin to develop a few Christlike friendships, we find ourselves being more willing and able to extend that friendship to others.
What if we were to see friendship as Christ does? What if we were to see friendship as a call to discipleship? What if we were to see that in Christ we are all interconnected, sustaining and shaping one another?
A minister friend was recently sharing with me the success of his church’s soup kitchen, serving hundreds of meals a day to those off the streets of Chicago. “But it lacks something,” he said. “The congregation is volunteering but it seems to be out of obligation or guilt. They are proud of themselves for taking time to help the less fortunate. What if the church embraced Christ’s call to friendship?” he asked. “What if we participated not because we felt we had to but because that’s what friends are for?” Instead of simply shuffling people through the line, there might be a chance to lock eyes, to utter a word of blessing, to pull up a chair and talk after the serving is done.
Wilshire, what would engaging in holy friendship mean for us? There are some of us here now that have experienced the love of God but have never felt the love of community in this place. It would be a wonderful if people could say about Wilshire Baptist Church, “you know, people there are really friends. Of course they have to love each other, they are Christians. But they genuinely care for one another too.” Doesn’t mean we have to all be best buds, but it does mean we are invested in each other lives. We are committed to seeing each other succeed and grow. Even willing to offer each other forgiveness when necessary. That kind of friendship is contagious.
The residents just got back from a trip to Indianapolis this past week. There we spent four days with seventy other Lilly residents from programs all across the country. At first glance, I wondered what my experience here could have in common with a Native American Lutheran pastor from South Dakota or a black female minister in inner-city Brooklyn. Well, it turns out more than I thought. Over the course of the week, we shared stories about our callings, about ministry, about the future of the church. We prayed for another. Soon the mental lines we had constructed to separate us broke down and in their place formed an interconnected web where we couldn’t tell where one life stopped and the other began.
When we arrived at the airport to head home, I was a little disappointed again. The newspaper talked of the rise of hate crimes and divisions over immigration reform. It seemed the world was intent on pulling our web apart. And as our plane took and looked out the window below, I saw people like ants, neighborhoods with row upon row of houses, and cars zipping along on highways speeding in every direction. I wondered how my life was connected to all those below. But then I had to smile to myself, because the higher we flew the more the picture below looked like that the picture in my mind of that interconnected web.
[Rick Lischer employs a similar image in his Open Secrets, New York: Doubleday, 2001, p. 81]
And I thought of our tapestry here at Wilshire. In our tapestry we see the communal life of God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all woven together as one in mutual love. As Christians we believe we too are all woven together in a beautiful tapestry. By sharing in Christ’s love, our friendships are woven into the very life of that Triune God.
In friendship with Christ, we can be confident that there is some design to this mysterious God and to the lives that we live in conjunction with one another.
As friends with Christ, and friends in Christ to one another, we must remember, that as Christians we are never alone. Wilshire, we are a community of faith shaped by the mission of Christ Jesus. That mission is to love one another, and that mission is only possible among friends.
under the chosen Sunday to hear audio of sermon (mp3 format) (beginning March 11, 2007).
(214) 452-3100