May 19, 2006
Friends
Easter 6B Jn 15.9-17
“What a friend we have in Jesus.”
I never did like either that hymn or the one about sunbeams. Let alone the hokey tune, the friendly lyric itself sounded like that if Jesus was looking for a friend in me, he had gone wanting. Later on, as maturity began to creep up on my blind side, I didn’t like the way it challenged me to get serious about what it means to be a friend. It’s like Jesus has never stopped challenging me. Maybe that’s what it means to be a friend. Somebody who never stops caring, like Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven.
Did the disciples, do we, truly realize what Jesus offers when he offers his friendship — “(All) that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you,” he told them (Jn 15.15b). The very intimacy he had with God, his Father, he was passing down? And then there’s Moses. It says over in Exodus that “The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (33.11). And God says the same thing about Abraham, “Abraham, my friend” (Is 41.8). It is a staggering thought to be included in such company. But that is where we are if we are even halfway faithful to the apostles’ fellowship and teaching as we claim in the Baptismal Covenant of a Sunday morning.
The love of God. The mercy of God. The judgment of God. You take your shoes off when you think about that. But the friendship of God? (cf Frederick Buechner)
Nobody can be a friend alone, apparently not even God. Further, friendship is something far more about what we are than what we do. I can love you. I can even make you my beloved, but I do that altogether on my own, single-hearted. If my love is not returned, I’m in for some big withdrawal pain, a lousy hangover, and a longing for thou, for “I-Thou” as old Martin Buber might put it. But on the other hand, I suspect it’s not possible to befriend someone, and do it all alone and stand there slack-jawed, wondering at the incompletion of it, the where-did-it-all-go of it. I wonder if friendship is not the original tango two-step?
George Fox, the founder of the 17th century so-called Quaker Movement, actually preferred the thought of his followers as friends of Jesus. They called themselves The Religious Society of Friends and took their name from this same story in John’s Sunday’s gospel. The Quaker name came from Fox’s constant stirring up the status quo and frequently ending up in court. He told a judge once that he ought to be trembling before the Lord. The judge was not impressed, but just called Fox a quaker, instead. But “Friends” is the name that stuck.
I suppose one does not “earn” friendship or be “worthy” of it any more than one earns love. There are certain things in life that one wills, one chooses if possible to be, that nothing of any consequence can stem. At least two of these are to be loving and to be a friend, both sort of a part with each. Both imply profound risk. Jesus knew that, just as he knew from his wilderness testing by Satan that he had been born to risk. Not to put down carpentering, but to be more than a carpenter. Life is not an exact science.
We churchers are, I believe, to be about friendship, about friendship like that with Jesus and his friends. I have friends. They have me. I’ve had many friends over the years, some, with only that pale, at best cool translucency, others of impenetrable substance. Friends, the way Jesus used it, is not an “instead” word, some casual synonym for servants. Friends is an inclusive word. Servants maybe cannot be friends, but friends for sure must be servants.
What is there about “be” that makes love and friend change their meaning? Beloved, befriend. One of my colleagues signs off his email with “Be blessed.” It is a gentle command, an attention-getter, a question — it says to me, “Why don’t you allow yourself to be blessed?” For Jesus to call us friends is a blessing in itself. The old hymn “What a friend we have in Jesus” doesn’t sound even half so bad now as it once did.
If there’s nothing much else here, I’ll leave you with a tired old story.
Sister Mary Ecumenica’s assignment in her Order was to stay in touch with the “Others.” It came upon her in the keeping of this work to visit a Quaker Meeting. She arrived at the appointed hour, took her seat, and waited. Silence. Later, more silence. Later still, more silence.
Finally, thinking she’d made some indiscreet mistake, Sister asked discretely the person sitting next to her, “When does the service begin?” Only to hear the even more discrete answer, “As soon as the Meeting is over.”
And if that doesn’t charm you, don’t forget Cole Porter, who said these words that may have helped out old George Fox when he got too friendly with Jesus: “If you’re ever in a jam, here I am / If you ever need a pal, I’m your gal / If you ever feel so happy you land in jail; I’m your bail / It’s friendship, friendship / Just a perfect blendship / When other friendships have been forgot / Ours will still be hot.”