Sermon for Easter VI Year B 2012 You Are My Friends What do you think of this statement by C.S. Lewis? Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... it has no survival value; rather [friendship] is one of the things that give value to survival. I am tempted to disagree with him and yet... If we place his statement beside today s gospel Certainly the friendship of the disciples did not help Jesus survive (they betrayed, deserted and denied him after all) yet it is the friendship of Jesus that not only gives great value to our survival it is our survival. Thousands of years ago, long before C.S. Lewis, the philosopher Aristotle described three kinds of friendship: Some people are our friends because this is useful to us; they allow us to make business connections or get into a particular social group. Other friendships are pleasurable; we cultivate these because we enjoy them. But the third kind of friendship the best kind is for the sake of friendship itself. Good friends are truly one of life's greatest treasures. To have a friend is to have someone to turn to, no matter what, someone to confide in, someone to trust and rely on. Real friends are self-giving and not concerned with what they will get in return. They are not manipulative or two-faced. They are not judgmental or conditional. Real friends are indeed a treasure. John's gospel is full of Jesus' assurances of his love for his disciples and his command for his followers to love others, but only in this week's gospel does Jesus complicate matters by calling the disciples friends. I say "complicate" because even though we recognize friendship as something quite special, 1
at the same time we tend to think of friendship as somehow being "less" than love less intense, less invested And yet, friendship makes a different sort of demand on us. While love seems to be or not be, friendship implies more choice. We love our children, our siblings, our parents just because we are in relationship with them. We speak of falling in love with our spouse or partner as something that seems somehow out of our control. But friendship is different. It is rarely as instinctive as a parent's love for a child, nor is it as involuntary as falling in love can be. Real friendship, mature friendship isn't automatic; it's intentional, it takes work, and requires commitment even to be friends with those whom we love. Jesus calls his disciples friends, and in doing so, he upsets the usual teacher-pupil relationship, he breaks boundaries, and he brings a new dimension to the bond he has with his disciples. No longer are they master and servant. Rather they are "friends," with all that entails. Friendship in the first-century Mediterranean world was a serious matter. To be considered a friend was to be in a position of honor. Being a friend meant being treated as kin with the attendant obligations. To be a friend meant to look out for the welfare of the other, to put the other's needs on an equal footing with one's own. Friendship implied reciprocity as well to consider someone a friend meant counting on that person to return that level of concern and care. When Jesus calls the disciples "friends, he gave everything to them his knowledge of God and his own life. He has shared with them what the Father has revealed to him, and he has given them the task of going out and sharing this revelation with the world. 2
Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus enacts friendship but when Jesus says No one has greater love than this, To lay down one s life for one s friends You are my friends... These verses provide the words to describe and name who and what Jesus is as friend. Jesus is both the model and the source of friendship. As the model of friendship, he calls the disciples to love as he has loved. As the source of friendship, he makes possible their own friendship through what he has given them. Jesus words here invite us to reexamine the sometimes casual way we refer to Jesus as our friend. The mark of friendship with Jesus is not what Jesus does for us listen to our sorrows, walk beside us, hear our prayers but what we do in response to what Jesus has done for us. Jesus has been the ultimate friend he gave his life in love for us. Now it is our turn to be Jesus friend, which means that we love one another as he has loved us. Not many of us will find ourselves in a situation where we are asked to lay down our lives as an expression of friendship and an act of love. But that does not mean that we are therefore exempt from Jesus commandment to love as he loved. What might the church look like as a community of friends? As I said, not many of us will find ourselves in a situation where we are asked to lay down our lives And yet as a community of friends born anew in baptism and nourished at the Lord s Supper are we not also called to die to old patterns of existence and rise with Christ to new life? As a community of friends, are we not to organize our very lives around the forgiveness of sins? 3
To remain in Christ s self-giving love for his friends is to be called to join with those who suffer, those who are broken, those who are in pain. J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, understands the connection between friendship and love, the mystery at the heart of the gospel. She makes the statement through a fanciful ceiling in the home of Xenophilus Lovegood (by the way the name is important as all the names are) When Harry visits the Lovegood home in the final book The Deathly Hallows, he is captivated by the scene at the head of the stairs. Climbing the stairs, he examines the painting on the ceiling and sees his own portrait in it his and Ron s and Hermione s and Neville s. In its beauty and grandeur, it is like a ceiling by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. What appeared to be golden chains, writes Rowling, wove around the pictures, linking them together, but after examining them for a minute or so, Harry realized that the chains were actually one word, repeated a thousand times in golden ink: friends... friends... friends It is clear now, after thousands of pages of story and explication in the seventh and final novel of the series that this has been Rowling s theme from the beginning: love, friendship, sacrifice, and eventually life. For it is life that springs out of Harry s gift of himself: the life of self-sacrifice, the life that defeats death, the life of ongoing friendship and relationship. No one has greater love than this, Jesus said, than to lay down one s life for one s friends. I have called you friends... This is the heart of the Christian faith and the secret of life itself. This is the truth that shines like a precious gem at the center of humanity s long struggle for meaning and justification. Genuine caring and involvement in the lives of others love, friendship is the key to our very existence. 4
According to Aristotle, one of the best ways to acquire a virtue is to emulate those who already embody it. This is most likely to be successful when we have become friends with those whose lives we seek to imitate. For says Aristotle a friend is another self. Friends form each other in the moral life, taking on each other s characteristics both good and bad. We are known by the company we keep; in fact, we are very likely to become the company we keep. Therefore a true friend who loves as God loves will, in time, teach us how to love as God loves. Thus, when Jesus says You are my friends if you do what I command you He is not simply offering a useful or pleasurable friendship to those who have done his bidding. He is describing the kind of deep friendship that Aristotle called the best kind of friendship. We are called into this kind of friendship with God through Jesus. Jesus gave everything to his friends his knowledge of God and his own life. Jesus is our model for friendship because he loved without limits and he makes it possible for us to live a life of friendship because we have been transformed by everything he shared with us. Through friendship we come to know God and through friendship we enact the love of God. We can risk being friends because Jesus has been a friend to us. In the book Truth and Beauty: A Friendship Ann Patchett wrote of her twenty-year friendship with the late Lucy Grealy whom she met in college. Lucy lost part of her jaw to childhood cancer and their friendship spanned through years of chemotherapy, radiation and numerous reconstructive surgeries. Ann s book is not about either Lucy s life or Ann s life; it tells the story the truth and the beauty of the parts of their lives they shared. It is a portrait of unwavering commitment over 20 years. 5
Through love, fame, drugs, and despair We see what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined. To be sure Lucy and Ann s friendship, though deep and profound, was far from perfect and humanly flawed, but I have never forgotten a quote from a poem Lucy wrote about their friendship near the beginning of the book, When I dream of fire You re still the one I d save. Now that s a friend! I could imagine Jesus saying something like that So, C.S. Lewis, I think you are wrong friendship at least friendship with Jesus is more than necessary for survival It s salvation for us and for all the world! 6