“Friends of Jesus”

John 15:9-17

May 21, 2006

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

I heard about the moving truck that was parked out in front of a southern California home. A husband and his wife were sweeping out the opened garage when a woman from a house across the street approached them. In one of her hands was a hot apple pie. She said, “Welcome to the neighborhood! I baked this myself and I want you to have it.” The husband and wife just looked at each other. They weren’t sure what to do. After a minute the man said to the pie bearing neighbor, “Thanks, but we cannot accept it.” The woman assured him, “Sure you can! When I moved into this neighborhood two years ago, no one welcomed me. It really hurt my feelings. I don’t want that to happen to anyone. I want you to feel at home.” The man stumbled, “Really, we can’t. You see we’ve lived in this house for four years and today we are moving out.” The woman stared at him. Obviously she was embarrassed as they were. Her jaw probably hit the ground. She regained her composure and said, “Well, enjoy it anyway!”

I guess such a thing could happen in a lot of neighborhoods. When Susie and I moved into the first house that was not a parsonage (you come to expect a greeting when you are the parsonage family) we met one of our next door neighbors. She was working in the flower bed in her front yard. She looked up at us and said, “I work a lot. My dad mows my yard for me. I’m hardly ever out here in this flower bed. You probably won’t see much of me.” Okay. I got the message. She wasn’t too interested in being our neighbor. Our houses just happened to be next to one another.

I guess that the same kind of thing can be said of our friendships these days. There are a lot of reasons for that, I guess. We are busy running from here to there, doing this and that; there’s hardly time for anything other than the things that we are already doing. Rare are childhood friends who have been with us a lifetime. Even the friendships we forged in college are fleeting.

So I perked up a bit when I read the gospel lesson for this morning taken from the middle section of John’s fifteenth chapter. You will remember that Jesus is saying last and lasting words to the disciples. His words come in the midst of what we’ve come to call the farewell discourse of Jesus. Jesus says to them, “...I have called you friends.” My heart jumped when I read that. I was thinking that perhaps Jesus was going to give us a lesson on how to be a good friend and how important friendships are. To be honest, it’s a lesson I could use. I’m not always a good friend.

That’s not what Jesus is up to here; let’s dig a little deeper to see what he is up to. Now I’ll have to admit that this passage seems a little strange to me. If Jesus had said this kind of thing way back in the first or second or third chapter of John’s gospel, it would make a little more sense. But this is the farewell discourse, for crying out loud. Fifteen chapters may not seem like a lot when you’re reading a novel, but in a gospel, it’s a lifetime. In this case it is three years.

For three years, for three whole years Jesus and the disciples have been walking up and down the streets of Jericho and Judea and Jerusalem. For three whole years the thirteen have been together. They’ve eaten meals together. They’ve had night time conversations together.

They’ve talked about trivial things and very important things. For three whole years they have been together. They know each other. By the fifteenth chapter, you would have to assume that the thirteen know a lot about each other. The disciples must know what it means when there is a certain look in Jesus’ eye. They must know what it means when he frowns a certain way. So it seems a little strange to me to hear Jesus saying, near the end of the gospel and his life for him to say, “Now I call you my friends.”

What is it that they were before? Evidently they were servants. That is what Jesus says. These are his words, “I do not call you servants any longer....but I have called you friends.” You could say that the casual would look at Jesus and the twelve that he is always with and say something like, “Well, there’s Jesus and that group of friends that he is always with.” But apparently in Jesus’ way of thinking, there was more to being his friend than simply being around him and knowing things about him. He puts it this way, “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” The servant does not know what the master is doing or why he is doing it. But friends? Friends know and understand one another. I hope that you understand this, one of the ways that Jesus defines friendship with these twelve is that they are in the know.

I have a minister friend of mine who pastors a church near Fort Smith. He and I have been friends since our seminary days. He rarely (did you hear me say rarely?) lets me get away with anything. I have the same affect on him. Even though we do not live in the same town, he holds me accountable. If I call him and tell him that things are fine when they are not, he has a way of calling me on it. He can hear my voice and tell. So he will ask, “What is going on? What is really going on?” Maybe you have a friend like that. Friends seem to know what we are talking about when it comes to life and our attitudes, and our goals and our values and our dreams and our fears and our struggles.

And in our lesson for this morning, it seems that Jesus and the twelve were beginning to understand each other. Finally the disciples were getting it. They were catching on. No longer were they the ones who were doing the toting and the fetching and the heavy lifting. No longer were they saying something like, “Yes sir. Yes Jesus.” Now they had an inkling as to the why and the hows and the so whats. I guess that you could say that it is something like a promotion from obedience to understanding; from roles to relationships, from servants to friends.

Going from feeling superficial to significant, I think, is what Jesus has in mind here. And now let me warn you. It’s a little easy for us to walk a little taller, to get a little more confidence, and say to the world, “I’m a friend of Jesus, you know!” We all are, aren’t we? We get it, don’t we? We are in the know, right? We know all about Jesus. We know why he came. We know what he is all about. I don’t mean to, but sometimes I think I’m special because I am in the know.

Then there is something that brings me down to size and I realize I really don’t know all that much. A preacher friend of mine came across a poll that tried to identify the most spiritual people in the United States. Who do you think would make the list? Billy Graham? Robert Schuller? Charles Stanley? Max Lucado? A monk or two? A missionary perhaps? A United Methodist preacher? You know, us and our kind.

None of them. None of us. I am not sure what the criteria was, but apparently the pollsters decided that the most spiritual people in our country were poor and un-educated women who live on the border between Alabama and Georgia. Women who are raising their grandchildren and in some cases their great grandchildren, whose live and lifestyle demonstrates Jesus’ vision, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Or in their case, family.

Now it seems to me that when Jesus stopped calling the disciples servants, he was not elevating them to a life free of toting and fetching and lifting. They will still do that. Listen to his words again, “You are my friends if you do what I command you to do.” And what is it, Jesus, that you command us to do?

Well according to the lesson it is to love. In last week’s sermon I pointed out that the word abide was used eight times in eight verses. Today the word love in one shape or form is used nine times in nine verses. Jesus is trying to tell us something. Friendship with Jesus, you see, is conditional. We must love as he loved. Friends of Jesus understand that there is something much bigger going on in Christ than it’s just me and Jesus, buddies, pals, friends. Friends of Jesus don’t just get it; they also do it. They love. “Love one another as I have loved you.” It always comes down to that, doesn’t it?

In my ministry, I have had the chance to go to a few conferences where Tony Compollo has been one of the speakers. Listening to Tony will wear you completely out. His energy is high and his challenge is always demanding. Tony teaches sociology at a college in Philadelphia and in his spare time serves as the Associate Pastor at an inner city church.

At one conference Tony said, “You ask the poor what they need and they will say, ‘Help us find jobs.’ So the church will set up a Bible study for them. So the poor will say again, ‘We need jobs. Help us find jobs.’ And the church will say, ‘Here’s a warm meal and some clothes.’ And the poor will say, ‘We really need jobs.’” The poor come to the conclusion, says Tony Compollo, that the church isn’t really interested in what they need.

Are we listening. Helping the poor and finding jobs may not be what we are supposed to be about. But we are supposed to be about something. Rare is the day that someone doesn’t call us asking for help with their utility bills. Rare is the day that all of us come across someone who really needs something from us that we are very capable of giving.

One of the most important questions of our time is this one. What are we doing for others? Friends of Jesus can answer that. Friends of Jesus know that the answer has everything to do with loving as Jesus loved. Following Jesus is a personal relationship of love and loyalty to the one who loved us more than we can even begin to imagine. The test of that love and loyalty remains the simple, the profound, the danger and the difficult command, love one another. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to Rev. Jeanie Burton for an idea or two in this sermon. Thanks to the nameless one who I mentioned early in the sermon, my friend who holds me accountable and who loves me no matter what. Thanks also to the ministry of Tony Compolo).