“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.”
Call me kitsch, simple minded or fanciful; I was for many years a follower of the cult television shows Friends. The series began in 1992 and ran until to September 2004, and is an American comedy revolving around a group of friends in Manhattan. I understand the series is being rerun on free to air television. The series revolves around friends in conversation, beginning in a coffee shop and then moving the conversation into their shared apartment or we may say flat.
The friends care for one another, they are a diverse group, and the centre of their conversations is always about relationships, loyalty, aspirations and disappointments. Another way of speaking about the show is to describe it as ‘the lives, loves and laughs of six young friends, living in Manhattan, on their journey through life”.
While talking about friendships, have you noticed in Midsomer Murders, and Agatha Christie, the interconnectedness of the village people in those shows? All the villagers seem to be friends yet the numbers of murders each episode seems a great contradiction.
Friends and friendships are important. Apart from the “Society of Friends” of the Quakers – who have made it an emblem and a practice – friendship is less honoured in the church than it should be. Yes we all, or most of us have a variety of friends and friendships, other than our soul mates or partners or spouses. Some friends come and go, while others even if we only see them once a year remain strong and vibrant and we pick up conversations as though we were speaking the day before.
When Jesus, in today’s Gospel, names discipleship as a reflection of God’s love, to be shared with others, he is not talking about some wishy washy sentimental love, but a love which is to be at the core and centre of our relationship to God and to one another. He then goes on to link love with friendship – and changes the shape of things – he is bringing them in to the circle, the intimate circle, encompassing and surrounding all who follow in his foot steps and wish to be disciples with the everlasting generosity and hospitality of God. He is expanding the idea of friendship to embrace mutuality and equality. Here friendship embraces freedom and delight in our relationships with others. Just as Jesus in last weeks Gospel as the true vine calls us to remain with him, today’s Gospel spells out in more details what this means.
The fourth Gospel of John arose after the most shocking and disorienting event for Israel for over 600 years – the destruction of the temple – the house of Yahweh, by the Romans in 70CE. Following this event, and without the presence of the Temple, Judaism saw a revitalized commitment to the Torah, for the law and the religious establishment was the other place where God might be found. The Johannine community found itself in terrible tension with this new Jewish establishment. The issue was not so much with the ‘man or woman in the street’, as we say, but with the political, economic and religious leaders. The more the new converts proclaimed Jesus, the more they were vilified as heretics and traitors.
It is in this context that John speaks to a variety of different, emerging Christian communities. In a community like John’s, under persecution and challenge of one variety or another, who to trust, who to be friends with and the meaning of friendship, is significant. There is a contract or covenant implied in being a friend of Jesus’. To ‘abide’ in Jesus, to ‘remain’ with him, meant a durable friendship – a friendship not devoid of risk and a willingness to sacrifice for others – to lay down one’s life for others – “to bear the heat” as we say.
We are still in the Easter season, where we affirm and believe that Jesus has risen from the grave – the gift of true and enduring friendship.
Rohan Williams speak of this love, of this commitment to friendship with God, in these words:
The resurrection is in part about the sheer toughness and persistence of God’s love. When we have done our worst, God remains God – and remains committed to being our God. God was God even while God in human flesh was dying in anguish on the cross; God is God now in the new life of Jesus raised from death. But what is interesting about the stories of the resurrection as we read them in the Bible is that they are not a series of general statements as to how the love of God is more powerful than evil or sin. They say that just as people met God’s absolute love in the face and presence, the physical presence, of Jesus of Nazareth, so they still do.”
Friendship in today’s Gospel is no ordinary friendship; it goes beyond the Friends of the television series. It is a friendship Jesus himself has initiated. It should not be assumed that friendship with Jesus signifies some privilege, or a privileged club membership, for it is a call to service and to faithfulness to God’s dream for all of creation. The quality of our relationships is not to be defined by the values of the postmodern world, or secular humanism, but by Jesus himself – ‘that you love one another as I have loved you’. This is not a love chained or shackled to the law or one that seeks revenge, but rather embraces the infinity of God’s love – unlimited grace and hospitality. Sadly this is not a message easily to be found even within our own Anglican communion.
Today’s Gospel calls us to build friendships with one another, to express love to one another, to be intimate and caring – to be as passionate about Jesus as we are to our partner and children.
Today’s Gospel calls us to be resurrection people. Resurrection begins in abandonment, persecution and a humiliating death of a young man. Here all our brokenness is laid bare. The stone is rolled away – the tomb is empty – and the grace of God flows to us to enrich and restore our friendships and all our relationships.
Friendship rejects gossip. Friendship sees the good in another. Friendship embraces the generosity of God. Friendship avoids judgement. Friendship embraces the different. Friendship endures in the face of failure and sin. Friendship seeks restoration. Friendship forgives Friendship is the love of God freely given.
Amen