THE VALUE OF FRIENDSHIP

EASTER SUNDAY

 

Scripture:      John 15:12-17

                    Mark 16:1-8

 

The inspiration for this Easter sermon was a phone call we received from one of our oldest friends.  Barbara called to say that their youngest daughter, Adrianna, was coming to Las Vegas for a wedding this weekend and thought it might be nice if she and her boyfriend could come to Easter services at our church (in fact, she’s setting right over there with our family –this’ll probably embarrass her, but she’ll get over it).  I had roomed with John during my intern year in seminary (1962-63), was Best Man at John and Barbara’s wedding in June of 1963, and they were planning to be at our wedding in September of that year until a New York City teacher’s strike (they were both teachers in that system) foiled those plans.  So, as you can see, this is a relationship of some 45 years endurance, and, obviously, we are still very much in touch with each other.  Ann was even present for Adrianna’s birth.

          That call got me to thinking about other long-term friendship relationships in our lives and the value of them.  Tom and Brenda visited us here last September.  They are both retired UCC clergy, and Tom was on his way to take on (what he says will be his last) interim pastorate at The Riverside Church in New York City.  I first met Brenda and Tom when we were all freshmen together at DePauw University and part of the Methodist Student Movement in the spring of 1957 – so, here we’re talking about a 50-year relationship during which we’ve stayed connected.  My best friend, Bill, I’ve known since 1968; we’ve weathered a lot together, but today are as strongly connected as ever.  One of the most marvelous things about that relationship is that his oldest son and my oldest son became best friends at age three and continue to be that for each other today, even though one lives in Colorado and one in New York.  Another very good friend, Roy, I first met in 1973, and in the past few weeks we’ve been able to comfort one another from a distance following a stroke suffered by a mutual friend.  Ann’s best friend is someone she met in nursing school in the early 1960’s, and even though Lynne has spent most of her adult life living in Europe, when they are able to get together it’s as if very little time has passed.  Each of our children have friendships that date back to high school and whose ties are still strong today as they move into their 30’s and 40’s.

          About now I can sense some sidelong glances and shifting uneasiness as the thought comes, “what does all this personal history have to do with the resurrection and the Easter alleluias?”  Well, I hope to make that clear in a moment.  But first I’d like each of you to think about those long-term friendships in your lives.  Remember, I’m talking here about friendships – not those who are related to us by blood ties or marriage and who we are therefore expected to relate to by virtue of those ties of kinship.  Friendships are consciously chosen and need to be worked at to be sustained.  Oh, sure, some of our truly close friends may be relatives – a brother or sister or cousin with whom we’ve developed a special bond – and many of us consider our spouse or significant other to be a best friend.  But for now concentrate on one or more friends who are not so related and whom you’ve known for 30 or 40 or maybe even 50 years and whose friendship has been sustained for all of that time as one of the joys of your life.  (I know that there are those of you young enough for whom that’s not possible, but think about good friends of long-standing of whatever number of years.)

          Do you have someone in mind?  If so, can you sense the good feelings of comfort and pleasure and well-being that come with thinking about that person?  That’s what happened to me when that call from Barbara sent my mind along this track.  There is something incredibly valuable and life-affirming about a relationship that has been freely chosen and that lasts for such an extended period of time.  And today one of the true values of e-mail – despite all the spam that we have to put up with – is how much easier it is to keep in touch and thus to be able to sustain those long-term relationships.

          OK, now here’s the tie-in.  Among all the other things that the resurrection is about – and it is, indeed, about a great many things that we could talk about this morning – it cements the long-term friendship that Jesus has with each one of us.  In anticipation of his crucifixion and resurrection Jesus could say in that tenderest of verses, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  As a result of the resurrection John could have Jesus say to each one of us:  “You are my friends…..” 

          I know, I know, this can all too easily get sugary and sentimentalized, as our evangelical colleagues sometimes tend to do when they speak of Jesus as their closest friend, as though he is right there in the room with them.  The danger here is to make Jesus into a cuddly teddy bear instead of the awesome savior looking down upon us from his cross.  I thought long and hard before finally deciding to have us sing the oh-so-familiar “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”, because it, too, smacks of this sentimentality, but I finally decided to do so because it includes the line “Precious savior, still our refuge” – which is the crux of what the resurrection means – as well as the rhetorical question “Can we find a friend so faithful?”

          For that’s the essence of the friendship that Jesus has for us:  its faithfulness.  Because Jesus has been faithful for us, we are invited to be faithful to him.  Think back on those long-term friendships I asked you about a few moments ago; isn’t the essence of them the reality of that person’s faithfulness toward you – that you can count on them to be there for you – that even in the troubling times there is a basic level of trust that will always pull the relationship through?

          Trust, as we know, works both ways.  In that verse from John 15 (following “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”) that begins “You are my friends…” it goes on to say, “…if you do what I command you.”  “Command” here does not mean just to slavishly obey a set of rules like the Ten Commandments.  In this context it is almost a synonym for “trust”.  Jesus is saying, in effect:  “I have been a friend of yours unto death; now you can return that friendship by trusting all that I have promised you.  But even more importantly:  trust in me and in my Parent-God who loved me enough to take me beyond death.  That is how much I have loved you.”

          And in so doing Jesus moves his relationship with us to a whole new level:  “I do not call you servants any longer…but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”  On Maundy Thursday night we said that Jesus had made himself into a servant through the act of washing the disciples’ feet, and by this symbolism we, too, are called to be servants in the service of Christ in the world.  But here we are told that we are no longer servants.  In this verse “servant” is used in the sense of “slave” – we are no longer enslaved by our fears or anxieties or need to practice petty one-up-man-ship.  We are, in that most marvelous of paradoxes, freed to be servants – free to be the kind of servants Christ calls us to be.  This is what being called “friend” now means.  This is the value of friendship for us.  It is not a sentimentalized warm fuzzy relationship with a mythic, smiling, comfortable Jesus.  Instead, to be called “friend” gives us our marching orders.  We have been chosen, Jesus tells us:  “…I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last….. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”  C.S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves defines friends as those who stand “side by side absorbed in some common interest”.  Jesus is here in this passage in John inviting us to stand side by side with him in his mission to bring God’s love to all the world.

          At other places the Bible uses the idea of friendship to mark a special relationship with God.  In Exodus when Moses is leading the people out of the wilderness and God is about to renew the covenant between God and God’s people, the author writes, “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” (33:11)  The short book of James in the New Testament in speaking about the importance of Abraham says, “Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’ and he was called the friend of God.” (2:23)  And that wonderfully epigrammatic book of Proverbs puts it most succinctly:  “A friend loves at all times,” adding (so we know the importance of both friends and family) “and kinsfolk are born to share adversity.” (17:17)

          It’s instructive that the earliest gospel writer, Mark, ends his account of the resurrection with a sense of amazement and fear – somehow this event was too awesome, and so the women and later the disciples were awe-struck.  It almost seems as though John was written to counteract that fear.  Jesus and the gospel writers knew that what had happened burst all the boundaries – all the boxes that human thinking would put around our experience of death could no longer hold.  So, in order to take the fear away while still leaving the awe John puts what has happened in the context of friendship – the same kind of friendship that God had had for Moses and for Abraham.

          This is the attitude that we need to bring before the empty tomb on this Easter morning.  If we were the ones who were there, rather than Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome, we, too, might well be amazed at the sight of a young man in a white robe instead of the corpse we were expecting to find.  And our 21st century reactions would range from shock to incredulity – from the need for scientific explanations to the impulse just to throw ourselves in prostrate worship before this seemingly divine figure.  And fear would most likely form a part of our response.  But what the gospel of John is inviting us to experience is more than fear.  Yes, be awe-struck – but be awe-struck not by the fact that a corpse is no longer in the place where you would expect to find it but rather by the kind of friendship that Jesus, who is now the Christ, is offering you by this act.  Be awe-struck by what God has done here for you and for me, by what dramatist P.W. Turner calls “God’s act in the hideous situation” at the end of his play Christ in the Concrete City:

          For it happens not as the plausible end

          Of a religious story,

                              But as God’s act

          In the hideous situation.

          For the Word, which is Christ.

          Was made flesh,

                              And died,

          And Christ is risen indeed, and goes before you into Galilee.

 

          Your Galilee,

          The Galilee of the modern industrial city

          Of the neon lights and the multiplex.

          Where you jostle Christ on the pavement

          Among the plate-glass windows.

 

Galilee Street,

          The street on which you live,

          And where he waits to move in,

          Fulfilling his promise to be with us.

          Always.

          Even to the end of the world

 

          Arise, rejoice!

          Thy light is come!

          And the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee!

 

 

          Amen

 

 

 

                                        Dave Pomeroy

                                        First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ

                                        Las Vegas, NV

                                        Easter Sunday

                                        April 8, 2007