John 15:9-17 To have a friend is
to be blessed by God. We have
neighbors. We have co-workers. We have people that we are friendly with in
our social circles. But all of these
relationships fall short of having a real friend: someone who we can count on—someone who we
can open our hearts to and have theirs open to us—someone who knows us (and
loves us anyway). To have a friend—a
real friend—is to be blessed by God.
Today in our
Gospel lesson we hear the wonderful Good News that Jesus is our friend and his
friendship is the source of a fruitful Christian life! Jesus says:
As the Father has
loved me, so have I 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
think all of us have probably had friends who weren’t very constant in their
friendship—friends that kind of ran hot and cold in their care and concern for
us. But our friendship with Jesus isn’t
like that because his love for us is grounded in the eternal, unwavering love
that exists between the three persons of the Holy Trinity.
The Father loved
the Son from before the beginning of time and will love him when time is no
more and that same everlasting love is directed towards us.
The constant and
unchanging love that Jesus has for us--the love that is the very foundation of
our friendship with him-- is not just an emotion or an ideal or a concept—but it
took on concrete shape in how Jesus lived his life.
Jesus did what his
Father wanted him to do and spoke the words his Father wanted him to speak--
and he perfectly fulfilled the Father’s mission of love to save us by laying
down his life for us on the cross. That
love, found at the cross, constant and concrete, is the basis for our
friendship with Jesus.
No matter how badly
we fail at times to keep up our end of the friendship, Jesus loves us and we
can be confident that we can come to him again and again and be welcomed as his
dear friend.
But because we can
be confident of forgiveness and welcome does not mean that Jesus wants us to
wander away—or take his friendship lightly.
He wants us to have the fruitful life that comes from being his friend and
so he calls upon us to abide in his love.
And to do that,
our friendship with him takes the same shape as his life in this world—that we
are obedient to his commandments just as he was obedient to his Father’s
commandments.
All of us know
what harsh words and uncaring actions and thoughtlessness can do to our earthly
friendships—how they drive a wedge between us and our friends. So it is in our friendship with Jesus when we
are doing those things that displease him.
It’s not that he stops loving us-- but disobedience
makes a barrier in our own hearts to enjoying our friendship with him. And he does intend that our life with him
would be a joy. Jesus says:
These things I have
spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
Of
all of the misguided, Christ-denying things that are done by Christians, surely
one of the worst is living pinched, narrow, bitter lives and calling it
piety. The true Christian life is to be
marked by a joy even in hard times.
The words of Jesus
were spoken on the night when he was betrayed into death. He was about to be abandoned by those he loved
and counted as friends. He would face
the crown of thorns and the whip and the hammer and the nails and the cross. And yet he was filled with joy.
Why? Because he knew that the salvation of the
world was about to be accomplished so that we could be counted as his friends. That Good News filled him with joy even in
those dark moments of betrayal and suffering and death.
That is the same
joy that he wants us to have: a joy in
our salvation. To be counted among
Jesus’ friends is not some onerous, boring, deadly dull life. To obey his commandments is not a duty that
calls for pinched and sour faces as a sign of our piety—but a joy and a delight
that gives our lives meaning and purpose and depth.
Friendship with
Jesus means to know beyond any shadow of a doubt that in this life and
throughout eternity God is for us-- and that knowledge makes our lives here on
earth a joy indeed!
This is the kind
of life that Jesus gives to his friends and the kind of life that he wants us to
lovingly share with others in an ever-expanding circle of friends. Jesus says:
"This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that
someone lays down his life for his friends.
When
we have a friend who sacrifices for us—who gives their time to help us—who
spends time listening to our troubles—who brings food when we’re sick or takes
the time to send a card—it means the world to us. But how much greater is the love that would
lead a friend to lay down their life for us!
That is what
Christ has done for us. His love for us
led him to lay down his life for us on the cross. The sins that kept us apart from him have
been forgiven and so now we can truly be counted among his friends and share his love with those around us.
Our marriages
become opportunities to serve our spouse and become more patient. Our congregation becomes a place where our own
preferences can be set aside for the good of others and we can grow in
humility. Our friendships are no longer
about what we can get out of another person but what we can give so that we
become more generous.
This kind of
self-giving, cross-shaped love—a love that flows from Jesus and produces the
fruits of faith—is the identifying mark of the Christian community where Christ’s friends know and do his will. Jesus says:
You are my friends if
you do what I command you. No longer do
I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing;
but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have
made known to you.
Generally
speaking, our friends are people like ourselves—people with whom we share a
common set of interests—people who are in much the same place in life as we
are.
But even though
Jesus is our friend, he is not our buddy—he is always our Lord—and he is the
one who sets the terms and boundaries for our friendship with him.
Jesus says that we
are his friends because he has opened his heart to us and made known to us his Father’s
will and purpose.
A servant does not
know his master’s heart—he is simply commanded what to do—and he does it. But our friendship with Jesus is different
than that. He doesn’t demand our blind
obedience as a master to a servant-- but asks us to live in concord with what he
has revealed to be true about God.
Jesus says: “You
are my friends if you do what I command you.” Now maybe we say to ourselves, “That sure
sounds like master/servant language!”
But it’s the farthest thing from it because our obedience flows—not from
some oppressive demand that is placed upon us—but from knowing his heart.
Let me put it this
way: suppose you had a friend who told
that she loved cheesecake and hated peanut brittle and then her birthday came
around. What are you going to make? Cheesecake of course! What kind of person would we be, if we knew
the heartfelt preferences of our friend, but acted against them?
Jesus has made us
his friends and we show ourselves to be his friends by adopting his values as
our own. Our obedience flows from a
sincere desire to please our friend who invites us to open our heart to him in prayer.
Jesus says:
You did not choose
me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and
that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my
name, he may give it to you. These
things I command you, so that you will love one another.
All of us know how
difficult it is to talk honestly with our friends when there is some kind of
animosity or hurt feelings standing in the way.
So it is with opening our hearts to God in prayer.
Now it’s not as if
God won’t hear or answer our prayers until we do this or that good work or
until our lives reach a certain level of fruitfulness.
But what Jesus is
teaching us here is that our prayer life is much more productive and honest
when we are: living in friendship with
Jesus-- and abiding in his love with others—when we really have adopted his
values and purposes as our own.
When we go to our Father
in prayer in the context of that kind of relationship with God and one another we
can be confident that God will help us to live a fruitful Christian life.
What I want you to
remember today is this: Jesus is your
friend. His love for you does not change. To be his friend is to live a life of
joy. His heart is open to you and he
invites you to open your heart to him.
In this way you will see for yourself that a life of God is filled with
the fruits of faith. Amen.
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