Being Friends with Jesus

**This post is from a sermon I preached at my home parish--All Saints, Norton, VA--on Sunday, May 10, 2015 (Sixth Sunday of Easter)**

All Saints Episcopal Church, Norton, VA (where I was baptized, confirmed, and ordained a deacon)

"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."

--John 15: 15

 

 

For the first 12 or so years of my life I had a best friend named Broderick, who was my dog.  Some of you may even remember Broderick; in fact, he sometimes would come to church with us, go to the nursing home service in Wise and offer pastoral care, and Dad even had him included in the media guide for the basketball team at UVA-Wise.  He was my Ole Buddy--that was what I called him--and we were inseparable.  Broderick followed me everywhere, as though Mom and Dad had given him orders to make sure I was ok.  He was literally my older brother.  And the day he died in 1995 is still vivid in my mind; his funeral--held in our front yard at Flat Gap--was the first Episcopal burial I attended.  I have never had a friend quite like him, and even now at 31 there are days when I miss him.

 

With my sister Ashley and best friend/older brother Broderick sometime in 1984 or 1985.  

 

 

 

So I wonder:  who was your childhood best friend?  Or who is your best friend now?  What are the qualities that define that relationship?  Honesty?  Support?  The ability to just be yourselves when you're around each other?

 

 

In our gospel today Jesus, continuing his Farewell Discourse to the 12 apostles, says something that he does not say in any of the synoptic gospels--only here in the Fourth.  After washing their feet and sharing a meal, with them gathered around him expecting him to open up the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven, he calls them his friends.  His friends!  These men who have been following him for the better part of three years, who have called him 'rabbi', 'master', and 'Lord' he calls friends.  The Greek word used here is filos and also translates to 'dear ones' or 'beloved.'  So these ordinary, flawed, broken human beings are the beloved ones of the Son of God.  Matthew:  tax collector and despised one, a friend of Jesus.  Thomas:  the denier, a friend of Jesus.  Nathaniel:  who made fun of Jesus' hometown, a friend of Jesus.  Simon Peter:  the Rock, who stumbles and falls and disappoints his teacher so many times, a friend of Jesus.  And Judas:  the betrayer, a friend of Jesus.  And would dare say that this passage is for us today, as well.  We, flawed and broken individuals, are friends of Jesus.

 

 

This may seem a bit presumptuous on our part, to dare think of ourselves as friends with God.  But there is precedence for this in Holy Scripture.  Isaiah 41: 8 refers to Abraham as God's friend, and in Wisdom 7: 27 Solomon says that wisdom herself makes people the friends of God.  But doesn't this claim still seem a bit bold on our part?

 

 

Well, that's what makes Jesus so radical, and it's why we need him.  For too long in human history deities had always been far, far removed from humanity.  Think of the gods and goddesses of Greek and Roman mythology.  They sat atop their thrones on Mt. Olympus and only interacted with humanity when it suited their whims.  We were little more than tools or puppets to them.  The God that Jesus called Father, the God of Abraham, was different from these deities.  This God showed genuine compassion, promising a nation to Abraham and Sarah and later rescuing that nation from bondage.  This God seemed to actually care about humanity.  However, even this God was far away for Jesus' contemporaries, dwelling in the Holy of Holies, the innermost section of the temple in Jerusalem, where no one, save the high priest, could enter--and even then only once a year. 

 

 

But Jesus comes along and changes the narrative.  In Jesus, the living embodiment of God, we have an image of God.  In Jesus God has a face, and it smiles.  God has a mouth and taste buds, and they partake in meals.  God has hands, and they do work and pull up those who are beaten down.  God has emotions, and they run the gamete from anger to sadness and everywhere in-between.  In Jesus, God is just like us.  Suddenly, now, in Jesus, God is not so far away.  God has deemed not to be separated from humanity, and no longer need we gaze longingly to a God so far removed from us.  Jesus dwells in our presence, which makes us worthy to dwell in the presence of God.  He himself is not a distant stranger but a friend, a friend with whom we can be honest, a friend in whom we can find support, and a friend who loves us just the way we are and who invites us to just be ourselves with him.  And those of us who have been washed by the baptismal waters and have met Jesus in the sacred meal of bread and wine know these sacraments to be the marks of such friendship. 

 

So what does it mean to be friends with Jesus?  It means to abide in joy, love, and relationship, three things that we were made for.  To be a friend of Jesus is to abide in joy, in good news.  It is something to celebrate.  Sadly, we often hear Jesus' own friends twist this and make friendship with Jesus into a burden to mourn, rather than a joy to celebrate, as though we were still servants.  To be a friend of Jesus is to abide in love, the kind he showed.  Love one another as I have loved you.  This is not the kind of love that the world knows, which is a reciprocal love that often asks something in return.  But Jesus shows us how to love unconditionally, to love those who doubt us, those that make fun of us, those that disappoint us, and even those that betray us.  To be a friend of Jesus is to abide in relationship.  We are in relationship with Jesus simply by being in relationship with each other, for we are the body of Christ.  If you look into the face of the one sitting next to you, you will see the very face of Jesus.  So we need not wonder what the Kingdom of God will look like, we have the capacity, through our love for one another and for Jesus, to bring about the Kingdom here and now.  We are not observers, but participants, beloved partners with Jesus in this redemptive work.  That's what it means to be friends with Jesus. 

 

So it really isn't such a bold claim, is it?  God's love for you made manifest in Jesus is greater than any of you can imagine, greater than friendship you have had or ever will have.  It's greater even than the love I had for Broderick or he for me.  It is an everlasting love that we cannot earn and cannot lose.  That is the power of the grace of God and the power of the friendship into which Jesus is calling you and me.  So, brothers and sisters, go into this week knowing that you are friends with Jesus, and that he calls you into lives of joy, love, and relationship with him and with one another.  And lest us join with our friend, our teacher, and our Lord, to see his face in all we meet and put our love for him into action out in the world, so that we may partner with him to bring about the Kingdom here and now.