Loving the Person Next to You Part 6 ~ Loving Our Friends as We Love Ourselves John 15:9-17 Rev. Jeff Chapman ~ March 27,, 2011 ~ Faith Presbyterian Church of Sacramento As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one s life for one s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. (John 15:9-17, NRSV) Few things in life are more valuable to us than friendship. It was Aristotle who once said, Without friendships no one would choose to live, even if they had all other good things in life. 1 Emily Dickenson once wrote, My friends are my estate. And it was that great philosopher Winnie the Pooh who perhaps said it best when he told his friend Piglet, If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus one day, so I never have to live without you. Even as children we know the importance of friendship. When my kids get their class list at the beginning of another school year, the very first thing they want to know is whether or not any of their friends are on the list. When you were a kid yourself and went into the school lunchroom, or out to the playground, what was the very first thing you looked for? Your friends. We learn early on that friendships are one of the most valuable things in the world. Just try and imagine a life with no friends. Sadly, some people can. Some of the most bitter tears ever shed have been shed by people who feel that in this life they have not a single friend. We all want friends. We all work hard to make friends. We all wonder how we can become a person who has great friends. 1 C.S. Lewis put it this way, Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that gives value to survival.
When I was growing up, I remember that my parents would always tell me, Jeff, if you want to have a good friend, you ve got to be a good friend. I m sure I ve repeated that mantra to my own children a time or two. It s not bad advice. So how does one be a good friend? Well, I want to suggest to you today that the best way for us to learn how to love others as friends is to look at how Jesus loves us as friends. You see, in his time here on earth friendships were very important to Jesus. 2 Read through the Gospels and you will see this evidenced time and time again. Regularly, for instance, Jesus called his disciples his friends. 3 Jesus even called Judas his friend, right up to the very moment he was about to betray him. 4 At one point Jesus wept at the tomb of his dead friend Lazarus. 5 Time after time we read about Jesus attending parties for no apparent reason other than to enjoy the company of his friends. Jesus fondness for friendship was so great that it even earned him one of his most famous nicknames. Mocking him for the way he was so liberal with friendship, the religious leaders of his day called him a friend of sinners. 6 They did not mean it as a compliment. I think he took it as one anyway. Certainly the most vivid picture of how much Jesus valued friendship is found in the passage from John 15 which we just read, a passage that is set in the context of Jesus teaching on the vine and the branches. In the first part of the chapter, Jesus uses this horticultural metaphor to help us recognize our deep need to be intimately connected to God. Specifically, Jesus says that just as a branch cannot live or produce fruit apart from a vine, so we also cannot live or produce anything of value unless our lives are connected to God. In other words, to live apart from Christ is to live like a branch broken off from a vine. Now, if I go outside right now and break a branch off a tree, it will remain green for a time. But eventually, it will wither and die. Certainly, it will never produce leaves or fruit again. In the same way, a person living apart from Christ may, for a time, put on the illusion that all is well. But the deadness caused by his or her disconnectedness from the one source of all life and grace will eventually show its true colors. Apart from Christ, that person will ultimately wither and die. Remain in me, Jesus urges us, so that you can live and bear much fruit. In verse 9 Jesus gives us the reason why we should remain in him. In one of the most amazing statements in all of scripture, Jesus tells us, As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. Stop for a moment, would you, and consider what it is that Jesus is saying here to us. 2 2 In fact, in the Gospels you get the sense at times that Jesus valued friendship even more than he valued family. Often when Jesus speaks about family in relation to the Christian life, he speaks about it as an impediment. His call to discipleship, for instance, often involved a call to leave one s family. For examples see Luke 9:57-62, Mark 3:31-35, Mark 1:14-20. But it was never a call to leave one s friends. David J. Wood was very helpful at this point and others. In portions of this message I have relied heavily on two lectures he gave at the 2007 Princeton Seminary Forum for Youth Ministry entitled, The Recovery and the Promise of Friendship and The Promise of Friendship and the Practice of Ministry. It would be worth reading both lectures at: - http://www3.ptsem.edu/offices/coned/iym/lectures/2007/2007_wood_rec.pdf - http://www3.ptsem.edu/offices/coned/iym/lectures/2007/2007_wood_prom.pdf 3 See, for instance, Luke 12:4. 4 Matthew 26:50. 5 John 11:36. 6 Matthew 11:19. See how the religious leaders hated Jesus tendency to make friends with everybody in Matthew 9:9-13.
3 There is no greater force or power in the universe than the love that exists between the three persons of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It was out of this divine love, in fact, that all of creation sprung to life. And Christ is telling us here that he loves us with the same love that the Father has for him. That is simply inconceivable. You and I will never, ever be able to comprehend the depth of God s love for us. If we keep God s commands, Jesus says, we can abide in that very love. We can rest in that love. We can make ourselves at home in that love. This does not mean let s make this clear that Jesus will only love us if we keep God s commands. Many other places in scripture make clear that God loves us even when we do not keep God s commands. Romans 5:8 says it most clearly. There Paul writes, God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God, then, doesn t love us if we keep his commands. Rather, what Jesus is saying here is that when we keep God s commandments, then we will experience God s best for us in life, which comes out of God s love for us. Think about it this way. How does God show his love for us? By looking out for us. But trying to guide us, and set boundaries for us, and lead us. Which means that when I follow Jesus teachings, when I, for instance, refuse to hoard wealth, take a day of Sabbath rest each week, save the gift of sex for marriage, honor my parents, choose not to envy what others possess, show compassion to the poor, when I follow these and other teachings of Christ then I put myself in a place where I can experience God s loving care for me. Then, as Jesus puts it, my joy in this life is made complete. Jesus doesn t love us if we follow his teachings. Rather, we experience Jesus love for us when we follow him and, in doing so, realize that he is always, always looking out for our best in life. Now, as stunning as it is to hear Jesus speak of how much God loves us, Jesus doesn t stop there. Amazingly, he takes it a step further. Not only do I love you with the love of my Father, Jesus says, but if you follow me you are my friends. No longer do I call you servants, because the servant does not know what the master is doing. I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father. Do you understand what Jesus is telling us here? Not only does he love us beyond comprehension, but if we follow him he goes a step further and counts us as his friends. Not servants. Not children. But friends! Be careful not to swallow this stunning truth without thinking much of it, as if it s a given, as if we could just say, Of course Jesus is our friend. What else would he be? Do you think the President of the United States wants to be your friend? Do you think even somebody like Mother Teresa, were she alive today, would want to be your friend? Honestly, we can barely conceive of these sorts of people wanting to just hang out with us and completely share their lives with us. And as elite and important as they may be, they are still just people, sinful and broken people just like us! The President of the United States does not want to be my friends. But here Jesus is telling us that the holy and sovereign Creator of the universe does desire friendship with us. Not only worship. Not only love. Not just respect. Not just obedience. Not just adoration. But friendship!
I don t know about you, but when I hear that God our Father loves us, I can almost accept it. After all, while we are grateful for the love of parents, most of us have come to take such love for granted. The love a parent has for a child is natural, almost expected. 7 But friendship is different. For when a person who is otherwise not naturally connected to you (as a father would be to a son or daughter) decides to choose you as a friend, even chooses to love you as a friend, well, that is not something to be taken for granted. Most everybody has family; not everybody has friends. Jesus says here, You did not choose me but I chose you. In other words, I don t have to be in this relationship. I choose to be in this relationship. Not only do I love you and want the best for you, I enjoy you. I enjoy your companionship. I take pleasure in your company. I died, in fact, so that we could be together! What a staggering thing it is to consider that it is our Creator who says these things to us. And by the way, this desire on Jesus part to share friendship with us is nothing new. For we see this desire in God all the way back through time. In the Old Testament, for instance, God at one point calls Abraham his friend. 8 Later, in Exodus 33:11, we read the same thing about Moses. The text says, The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. What this shows us is that God s desire for friendship is not corrected in Jesus, it is simply revealed in Jesus. In other words, God has always desired friendship with his people. What Jesus shows us here is that friendship with God is not just a privilege for the heroes of the faith, but an invitation to all who would have faith. God just doesn t want to be friends with Moses and Abraham; God also wants to be friends with you and with me. Is this not why Jesus came? God spoke face to face with Moses, as a man speaks with his friend. When Jesus took on flesh and came as one of us, he came to speak to all the world face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. It makes me wonder if one of the most important things we learn from Jesus about friendship is that friendship is best when it s incarnational. Friendship is best when it s face to face. This is a reminder I believe our culture desperately needs to hear. For we live today in what somebody has described as the discarnate life. 9 We have access to such sophisticated means of communication, and yet we still live at a time when social isolation is experiencing a dramatic upswing, a time when face to face connections are becoming increasingly infrequent. At last count this week, I have 467 friends on Facebook, many of whom I barely know and may never again sit and talk with face to face. There are people out there who have literally thousands of friends in cyberspace and yet do not have one, single true friend in life. How utterly tragic is that? Now believe me, I m not one of those curmudgeons who thinks we should do away with all technology. Technology is not the enemy. But let s be clear, neither is it a friend. And the evidence is undeniable - the internet, and cell phones, and texting, and e-mail are not bringing us closer together. That s why I think that the incarnation of Christ, the insistence of God to connect with us as friends face to face, in the flesh, teaches us something extraordinarily vital about the nature of friendship. It s a lesson which is, I think, as applicable in our digital age as it has ever been. Each of us would do well to ask ourselves how we have let technology stand in the way of us, or our kids, connecting with one another face to face. 7 Which is, by the way, what makes it so utterly devastating when a parent does not love his or her child. 8 II Chronicles 20:7, Isaiah 41:8. 9 Marshall McLuhan, as quoted by David J. Wood in The Recovery and the Promise of Friendship. 4
5 This desire of God for face to face friendship with us does not mean that Jesus just wants to be our buddy. There was a popular t-shirt a few years back that had a picture of Jesus and said, underneath, Jesus Is My Homeboy. Let s be clear something, Jesus is not our homeboy. His friendship is not casual. Jesus is not our pal, our equal, our peer, a little friend who rides shotgun with us through life. Jesus is our friend, but he is also our Lord. And friendship with Jesus is costly, very costly. In fact, friendship with Jesus will cost us everything. It will cost us everything exactly like it cost him everything. Jesus tells us here, in fact, that there is no greater love that a person can have for a friend than to lay down one s life for that friend. Which is, of course, the extent Jesus went to for us. It is also, understand, the extent Jesus asks us to go to for him. Remember his words to us from Luke 9, If anyone would come after me [if anybody would be my friend] that person must deny himself and take up his or her cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me, [as my friend], will save it. 10 Friendship with Jesus is an indescribable gift. It is also costly. And it should never be taken lightly. Nearly 400 years before the time of Christ, the Greek philosopher Aristotle also understood that friendship was not only indispensible for life but that friendship, at least the deepest sort of friendship, was always costly. You see, as he understood it, there were at least three different kinds of friendship. First, there are friendships of use, people we count as friends because they are helpful to us in some way. You re friends with the kid in high school who has a car because he can take you where you want to go on the weekends. That s a friendship of use. Second, there are friendships of pleasure, people we enjoy as friends because they make us feel good. We ve all been friends with somebody because they are fun, because they make us laugh, because they make us feel good about ourselves. Nothing wrong with friendships of use or pleasure. In reality, these are the most common types of friendships, and they serve great purpose in our lives. There is, however, a third type of friendship which is not only more rare than the first two, but also much more valuable. Every once in a while, Aristotle said, we come across friendships of character. Unlike in other sorts of friendships, when I love you with a friendship of character I don t love you because of what I can get from you, or because of how you make me feel, but I love you simply because of who you are, in and of yourself. Specifically, the essential marks of a friendship of character are the following. It s voluntary; friends like this freely choose one another. It s mutual; it goes both ways. It s full of goodwill. It involves transparency; friends of character share their inner selves with one another in ways which are vulnerable and risky. Friendships of character are committed and enduring, not subject to the passage of time or other changes. They are also full of affection, and equality, and virtue. 11 10 Luke 9:23-24 (NIV). 11 These characteristics were spelled out by David J. Woods in The Promise of Friendship and the Practice of Ministry.
6 Now, as I describe this sort of friendship to you, don t you find yourself asking, Do I have any friendships like this? Do I have a friend who has chosen me as his friend, a friend who completely shares herself with me? Do I have a friend committed to me no matter what, one who is willing to make great sacrifices for me? I think most of us would agree that it would be a great blessing to have even one friend of character like this in our lives. Understand something. We do. At least, we can. This is the sort of friendship each of us is offered by Christ. Though he is our Lord, Christ is also a friend, a friend who chooses us and, if we would choose him in faith, will share himself with us, sacrifice for us, and remain forever committed to us. As we ll sing together in a few minutes, what a friend we have of can have in Jesus! Here s the thing, though. This sort of friendship of character we receive from Jesus is exactly the sort of friendship Jesus wants other people to receive from us. Said another way, in exactly the way Jesus is a friend to us, we are to be a friend to others. That means that instead of asking ourselves if we have any friends like this, maybe Jesus wants us to ask instead whether or not we are ourselves friends like this. In verse 12 of our passage today Jesus says something we are used to hearing Jesus say. This is my commandment, he says, that you love one another as I have loved you. For emphasis, he says exactly the same thing in verse 17, I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. Friendship with Jesus, I hope you see by now, is a treasure and a gift. I hope you are also beginning to see that one of the main requirements for friendship with Christ is friendship with others. As we ve been talking about for weeks now, the second command is just like, and intimately related to, the first. First, love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. But in the same breath, also love your neighbors as you love yourself. Have you ever had somebody who wanted to be your friend but was not all that thrilled about accepting the friends you already had? Imagine I said to you one day, Listen, I really like hanging out with you but I m really not really interested in hanging out with your other friends. So, how about you and me just go over here and hang out together, just the two of us, away from the rest of those people you usually hang out with? How does that sound? I suspect that wouldn t sound too good to you. Friendship with a person like that never really works because your friends are a part of who you are. Which means that they can t be easily separated from you. And so friendship with you is going to carry with it, at least to some extent, friendship with those who are already your friends. This is why some people in his day could never be friends with Jesus. They just didn t like his friends. He was, remember, a friend to sinners. We must not make the same mistake. Our Lord says to us, I desire friendship with you. I am extending to you enduring, sacrificial, transparent friendship. But my friendship with you requires friendship with those who are already my friends. Friendship with me means friendship with them. In some ways, isn t that what the church is? Are we not essentially a gathering of people who all share in common one mutual friend? And through that mutually shared friendship with Christ, have we not also become committed to one another as well, as friends? Every single one of us.
Amen. 7 The Next Step A resource for Life Groups and/or personal application ~ Read John 15:9-17 again. (You might read John 15:1-8 as well to set the context.) What is the most striking thing that Jesus says here? ~ What does it mean to you to abide or remain in Jesus love? (Verse 9) ~ What does Jesus mean when we says that he no longer calls his disciples servants but, instead, calls them friends? And why does he say that we are only his friends if we keep his commands? (Verses 14-15) ~ Do you think of God as a friend? Do you think of Jesus as a friend? (If you answered those two questions differently, why?) ~ What do we learn from Jesus model of friendship towards us that we can apply towards our friendship towards others? ~ Jeff talked about the three types of friendship: accidental friendships (people with whom we share experiences army buddy, classmate); timely friendships (people we are friends with for a certain season of life once we move away, for instance, the friendship ends); and enduring friendships (these cut across time and reach to the depths of who we are). Describe an enduring friendship you have had in life. ~ Augustine once wrote, Though they cling to each other, no friends are true friends unless you, my God, bind them fast to one another through that love which is sown in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. Do you agree with him that friendships are never as deep as when they are shared in Christ? Why or why not? ~ How do you think God wants to use friendships in the church to shape us and form us? ~ What is one thing you could change about yourself to become more like the sort of friend Jesus is? Further Scripture Readings for the Week: Monday: Proverbs 17:9, 17:17, 18:24, 27:6 Wisdom on friendship Tuesday: Matthew 9:9-13 Friend of sinners Wednesday: John 11:1-44 Jesus weeps for a friend Thursday: II Samuel 1:17-27 Picture of friendship Friday: Isaiah 41:1-10 Friendship of God Saturday : In preparation for tomorrow, you can read Luke 10:25-37.