6th Sunday of Easter (Year
B) – Sunday, May 13, 2012
Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church,
Lancaster, PA
Texts: Psalm 98, Acts 10:44-48, 1 John
5:1-6, John 15:9-17
As of
8:44 pm last night, I had 806 friends on facebook. That sounds kind
of ridiculous to say. I have 806 friends. Hopefully that number
hasn't gone down since then! Obviously, I'm not really a friend to
all 806 of my facebook friends. People from high school, college,
from probably 5 or 6 different places I no longer work are all on
there and of course I'm not going to “unfriend” them! Like any
piece of technology, facebook can be a tool to help me connect with
people I'm actually friends with in real life, or it can be a wall to
hide behind. It can serve as a costume to present myself to someone
in a carefully managed and scripted way. By what I post, what I say,
what pictures I put up, I can control exactly how I want to present
myself, and to whom. Facebook is both something that connects us,
but also something that maintains a distance between us...a
comfortable, safe distance from each other.
But
we'd be kidding ourselves if we think facebook is the only place this
happens. Most of our relationships in life are scripted, because we
relate to most people according to a set of unspoken, but agreed-upon
rules. There's a certain distance between us and most people we
know. We say only certain things to certain people. We work very
hard to create tailored images of ourselves. We just don't want most
people to know a whole lot about who we really are. We all have
dirty laundry, and we don't air it out in front of people from work,
people we don't know very well, who we don't trust, and we don't
share it with people who we think might judge us. We might not admit
it to ourselves, but deep down we perceive that other people are
competitors, competitors for success or power, for esteem (in teenage
terms, for “coolness”), and even for love. It's a symptom of our
fallen humanity, this distance between us. We're threatened by each
other. We're afraid of each other. We judge each other, and we
relentlessly judge ourselves based on what others might think of us.
And so...we keep our distance. We trap ourselves behind a wall,
unable to share who we really are.
But
there are some people in our lives with whom we can cross that
distance. There are some people who we've come to know so well that
we don't have to vacuum before they come over. We call them friends.
And with friends, we can keep it real, as some folks say. When
we're with that person, we tell it like it is. You can lean over to
your friend and say, “is she really wearing that?” You tell him
or her what you really think. The wall comes down. The filter is
turned off. You can expose just how petty you really are. You can
laugh yourselves silly about the dumb things you do. You can be
honest about your fears. You can be honest about each other, you can
challenge each other, because that challenge doesn't come with
judgment. You can speak the truth to each other, knowing that the
one speaking to you is just as flawed as you.
If you
were one of the disciples, listening to Jesus as we hear in this
morning's reading, the distance between you and others was set in
stone by the social rules of the Greeks and Romans. Those rules set
up a rigid hierarchy. Every single person was somewhere in the
pecking order, and unless you were the emperor, who was at the very
top, or the lowest of the low, at the very bottom, you had people
above you and people below you. What you said and who you were to
those above and below you was entirely scripted. To be called a
“friend” was something very special, because “friends” were
almost the only people in your life who were social equals. It meant
that you would do anything for that person without keeping a tally of
who owes whom. Friendship meant mutual devotion and a willingness to
be there for the friend no matter the personal cost. When Jesus
says, “no one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life
for one's friends,” he is in agreement with the wider society.
Most
of the time we wonder where we stand with each other. We wonder what
the people in our lives think of us, and that uncertainty, that
wonder can eat into us. Is this person really my friend? Does she
really care about me? Does he really accept me as the messed-up
person I am? And so it's a wonderful thing to hear that person's
acceptance of you and commitment to you as a friend expressed in
words. Has a friend ever introduced you to someone else and said,
“this is my friend, _____?” It matters when we are named and
claimed as someone's friend. When you hear those words and you know
that person means it, everything changes. You know that person has
got your back. You know that with that friend, you can be who you
are. You know your friend will be there for you anywhere, anytime,
no questions asked.
This
is the power of Jesus' words to his disciples, when he explains that
he has been and will continue to call them not servants, but his
friends. This is a teacher with his disciples, a lord with his
servants – clearly an unequal relationship normally, but Jesus cuts
through all that. He rejects the whole pecking order and calls them
friends, equals, beloved ones, for whom he was quite willing to lay
down his life. And when he did lay down his life on the cross, Jesus
laid it down not only for them but also for each one of you, and in
doing so he declares you his friends as well. We didn't earn his
friendship. No, Jesus tell us, “you did not choose me but I chose
you.” Jesus doesn't seem to be very picky in choosing his friends,
does he??
By
calling us friends, Jesus is telling us who we are. We can be honest
with Jesus. We can be ourselves around our friend. But he gives us
even more clues to our identity in these few verses, which continue
what we heard last week when Jesus said that he is the vine, and we
are his branches. Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so I
have loved you.” What the Father is to Jesus, Jesus is to us. As
Jesus abides, or dwells, in the love of the Father, so Jesus calls us
to abide, to live within, his love. What's happening is that Jesus
is drawing us into the relationship that he as the Son, through the
Spirit, has with the Father. It isn't just that Jesus forgives us,
it isn't just that he loves us, but that his love draws us into his
being in a very real way. When he claims us in baptism, when he
gives himself to us in his holy supper, Jesus makes us into something
new, just like when someone claims you as a friend. Everything
changes. We become something new, that is, his branches, his
friends, his Body in the world. The Body of Christ is in us, and we
are each a part of it.
And
what's more is that we are not the only ones he's made a part of
himself. Jesus laid down his life for all humanity, for all his
friends in the world. And so, what if we could see next to each and
every person we meet, Jesus standing there saying, “this is my
friend, and I'd like you to meet her or him.” How might Jesus be
calling us to become a community of holy friendship in him – all of
us needing one another, dependent upon each other, realizing that not
one of us comes close to deserving this gospel friendship? It starts
with just hearing the good news that Jesus Christ loves you as his
friend, and so you can love yourself, and then you can love others
for who they are, knowing that Christ already does. The Holy Spirit
is moving in us, tearing down the walls between us, enabling us to be
honest with each other, and to challenge each other as friends
instead of competitors.
In
this holy friendship, Jesus is in charge of the guest list, and it's
getting pretty long. We are the friends of the crucified and risen
one, Jesus Christ. This house is the place where the friends of
Jesus hang out to be with him in worship, to learn about him, to eat
and sing and play and serve his friends in need. If anything is true
about this community of friends or the place that they meet, it is,
that all are welcome. And so, as we're about to sing, “let us
build a house where all are named, their songs and visions heard and
loved and treasured, as words within the Word. Built of tears and
cries and laughter, prayers of faith and songs of grace, let this
house proclaim from floor to rafter: all are welcome, all are
welcome, all are welcome in this place.” In the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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