“Who Needs Friends?”

John 15:9-17

May 25, 2003

St. Paul, Little Rock

Rev. John Fleming

I do not always watch the television show, Saturday Night Live. You probably have watched that show a time or two. When I was eight or nine years old, I was not allowed to watch it. But now that I am much older than that, sometimes on Saturday nights if I am not too busy pacing or worrying or putting the finishing touches on Sunday’s sermon, I will watch the show. Now you can watch the show just about any time of the day on the comedy channel, channel 45. Parents, you might want to remember that!

I remember a segment that I watched on Saturday night about three years ago. I was flipping through the channels when I came to it. If you have ever watched Saturday night live, then you know that in the middle of the program, there is a news segment that usually makes fun of things happening in the news. Three years ago, the news anchor was Colin Quinn. Three years ago, on this particular show, Colin reported that the actors and actresses on the situation comedy, Friends, had just been awarded new contracts. The new deal would give each of them forty million dollars over a two year period. If you are calculating that, it is $750,000 an episode. Wow! I still remember the words that Colin said that night. His words somehow found a place in my mind. Listen to his words, “With money like that, who needs friends?” I think that we all need friends. Don’t you?

Suzie Humphreys was a radio personality in Dallas when I lived there. She also was an inspirational speaker who spoke at a conference that I went to. I liked her so much that I bought one of her tapes. You will love the title of her tape, “Life Is What Happens To You While You Are Making Other Plans”. That is also a great sermon title. On that tape, she tells that she loves a ritual that she and her ten year old son, Josh, do every afternoon. Because she works mostly in the morning, Suzie picks up her son at his school. Suzie tells that most days, Josh runs from the front of his school to her car. Usually he is so excited about his day and so excited to see his mother that he sprints to the car. Suzie tells that on this particular day, Josh was not running. He was dragging his back pack behind him and she thinks that he nearly tripped on his bottom lip as he made his way towards her. Finally he opened the car door, fell into their car, and let out one of the deepest sighs that Suzie had ever heard. She looked over at her son and asked, “Josh, what’s wrong?” He was just beginning to cry when she asked him that question. His lip had just begun to quiver. By the time the question was asked, he was crying so hard that he was having a hard time catching his breath. In between breaths, Suzie heard her son say, “Mom, I have no friends!” Suzie admitted that she could have been a little more motherly when she asked, “None?” Josh said, “None, I have no friends.” Suzie said “That must feel pretty bad, Josh, you not having any friends and all.” Josh said, “Mom, how would you know? You have friends all over the place.

Wherever you go, people want your autograph and want to talk with you. You have a ton of friends.” Suzie tells that she did a dangerous thing. She was driving on Central Expressway in Dallas and she pulled her car over on the side of the road. If you have been on that interstate, then you know why it was so dangerous. Cars were whizzing by them at record speeds when she pulled the car over and put it into park. She turned to Josh and asked him if he had any paper in his backpack. When he said that he did, she told him to get out a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle of it. Then she gave him these instructions, “On the left side of that line, I want you to write down the names of people who like you even a little bit. Josh started to cry again. He said, “I can’t think of anyone.” Suzie asked, “What about Cory?” Josh said, “Cory? Mom, are you talking about the Cory from our neighborhood? I play with him three or four afternoons a week. She asked, “Is he one of your friends? Josh said, “Sure, he’s one of my best friends. His mom said, “Well, then write his name down.” Josh did that. Then Suzie asked, “Can you think of anyone else? Josh said, “No.” So she asked, “What about John?” Josh answered, “Mom, are you talking about the John on my baseball team? We warm up together before every game. Suzie asked, “Is he a friend, Josh?” Her son answered, “Sure.” “Write his name down.” “What about Hunter?” “Hunter? Mom, surely you’re kidding about Hunter being one of my friends. Hunter is probably my best friend in the whole world. Hunter would do anything for me.” Suzie said, “Write his name down.” Suzie tells that in matter of a few minutes, the two of them had comprised a list of ten of Josh’s best friends. Then she turned a corner. She said, “Now, Josh, on the other side of the paper, I want you to write down the names of people who don’t like you at all.” Listen to what Josh said, “Mom, why would I want to do that? I have ten people over here who like me a lot. Why would I care about all the other people?” Who needs friends? Ten year old little boys? Yes, but more than ten year old boys. I think that we all need friends.

I ran across a troubling statistic while I was working on our sermon. The statistic simply says that sixty percent of men over the age of 30, of which I qualify, cannot name a single person that they consider a close friend. Sixty percent! And of the forty percent of those who could, they named someone that they have been friends with since elementary school. The statistics for women are a little better. Women are a little better at friend making than us men are. But still, who needs friends? I think that we all need friends.

In our gospel lesson for today, we read of another person who needed friends. These are among Jesus’ final words to his disciples, in what I called last week, the farewell discourse, that starts in the thirteenth chapter and goes through the seventeenth one. Jesus is preparing the disciples for his leaving. He tells them what they must do once he is gone. He reminds them that they need to stay connected to God. I hope that you remember last week’s sermon. There, Jesus tells his disciples to stay connected to the vine and to abide in his love. If you will go home this afternoon and read this fifteenth chapter, you will see that the word “abide” appears ten or eleven times in twenty-seven verses. The word abide, it seems to me, is an old fashioned one that means to live in, to dwell in, to inhabit. It means to soak up the love of God. And Jesus says that if you will do this you will have joy and your joy will be complete.

That is the first half of the lesson; there are two parts to it. In the second part, it is Jesus who turns the corner and says this to his disciples, “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 the Father.” They are no longer slaves or servants who simply follow the commands of Jesus blindly. Do you see this? Jesus defines friendship as being in the know. But there is a condition to his friendship. Jesus says, “You are my friends if you do what I command you....that you love one another as I have loved you.

Do me a favor. For just a minute, think about your friendships. Think about those people that you consider dear and treasured. It is possible that the person that you are sitting next to is that treasured friend. Or, it could be that the one who crosses your mind is the one that you went to school with and the one who now lives in another town. But still, they are your friends. Maybe those friendships were born out of your own families. Your brother married and now your sister-in-law is one of your best friends. Or maybe it began when you said, “What, you too? I thought that I was the only one!” Friendships are sometimes born out of being in the same place, and in the same situation at the same time. Think about the rules of your friendships. These rules are not written down anywhere, but you know that there are certain rules or expectations that accompany our friendships. Maybe one of the rules is that you will trust each other. In friendships, you have to be able to share your deepest and darkest secrets. Conversations that begin, “Don’t tell anyone that I told you this, but....” must never be shared. You have to have trust to be friends. You have to have mutual affection, too. You need to know that your friends will be there for you when you need them the most. I have thought about this. My number one rule for friendship is this one: “What is important to me, if you are my friend, must also be important to you.” That is a good rule for friendships.

Let us go down a different path now. Now I want you to think about your friendship with Jesus. I think that the same expectation applies for our friendship with Jesus. Whatever is important to Jesus, if we are his friends, must become important to us. What does the scripture tell us? The word from John’s gospel this morning is that the most important thing to Jesus is that we love one another as he has loved us and as God has loved Him. Love one another. These words have been repeated so many times in nineteen hundred years. They have become worse than a cliché. The Beatles sang “All You Need is Love” The Judds sang that love will build a bridge, and love conquering all has been said from a myriad of preachers in pulpits and song writers in studios. I personally wish that Jesus had asked for something a little easier than loving other people. Loving others, it is simple and hard all at the same time. I believe that I just heard someone think out loud, “Preacher, you don’t know who I have to love!” You are right about that, but the people that I have to love are the same kind of people who have done the same kinds of things to me. Loving other people, it’s as simple as it can be and as hard as it can be all at the same time. Jesus also says, “No one has greater love than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Now I know that Jesus, in his mind, is looking at the cross. The shadow of it is in front of him. He knows that he will soon be on it. I know that these words of Jesus are about the cross. Soon, he himself, will lay down his life for his friends. But what about us? Is Jesus asking us to do the very same thing? Can we lay down our lives for our friends? Well, maybe we could, but the chances are that we won’t have to. But maybe there are some things that we could lay down for our friends. Maybe we could lay down our calendars for friends. Maybe we could lay down our pride for our friends. Maybe we could lay down other obligations and other commitments to be with our friends. Perhaps this is a way of looking at this passage these days!

And just in case you think that you come to this friendship with Jesus haphazardly or by chance, let me remind you of another line in our morning’s lesson: “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Maybe you have seen the episode of the Wonder Years that I like. One of the main characters is Kevin. In this particular episode, the setting is a gym class. Everyday the coach chooses two captains and those two choose everyone else for daily basketball games. Kevin is fed up with the process. He is tired of waiting to be chosen. Somehow he finds the courage to talk to the coach about his choosing of the captains. He says to him, “Why do you always choose the two best players to be the captains? They pick all the best players. Why can’t anyone be a captain?” Do you know what the coach did. He turned to Kevin and said, “Okay, today you’re a captain.” Kevin has the chance to choose. Will he pick the best players, or will he pick his friends? Kevin has the first choice. He looks at his best friend. His friend is perhaps the worst basketball player ever to play the game. Kevin picks him. He chooses him. When it is Kevin’s turn to choose again, because he felt so great about his first choice, he chooses another who is usually picked last. He chose him because he was his friend. Kevin kept doing the same thing every time that it was his turn to choose. He picked all of the boys who were always the last chosen. Some of his friends said, “Kevin, pick someone good. We want to win this game!” But Kevin kept choosing those who were always chosen last. You see, Kevin wasn’t interested in winning the game. I would like to tell you that the game was like David slaying Goliath. It wasn’t that way. I would like to tell you that they won the game. They didn’t. To be honest with you, I don’t think that they even made a single basket or scored one point. But they had fun. Now, I am not comparing you to those players. I am not about to tell you that you are awful, because you are not. If Jesus wanted to win the religious game, he could have chosen the scribes and the Pharisees. He could have picked the best. But instead he picked tax collectors and sinners. He chose fishermen. He choosing was not about winning the game. His choosing was about complete joy. Jesus said, “...so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete...”

I would not be a good pastor today if I did not tell you that once you are chosen, you have a job to do. When we are chosen, we are always chosen for something. Jesus says that he appointed us to bear fruit, fruit that will last. Would you like to see a bumper crop? Then this afternoon and from now on, try planting a seed of hope in someone’s life. Do you want enough fruit to give your friends and neighbors produce for years? Then try planting a seed of confidence and love and a blessing in someone’s life. Who needs friends? I need friends. You need friends. But most importantly, I think that Jesus needs for us to be friends with the friendless. Let us pray.