Friendship With God?

"Friendship With God?"

John 15:9-17
May 24, 2009

As the Father has loved me, so I have 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 have said these things to you so that my joy
may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. “This is my commandment, that you
love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down
one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed
you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you
ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one
another.

One of the wonders of our current age is the internet, of course, and its ability to
connect and re-connect us. I have been amazed at how useful and powerful the social
networking tools like Facebook and MySpace have been for me, especially when it
comes to reconnecting me to friends I had lost contact with, and had truly wondered
how it was going to be possible to reconnect with them again. And yet, in the last
couple of years, I’ve been able to find them again through Facebook, this social
networking tool in which people set up a profile that is searchable—and search we do,
for our friends, even family members. I have something like 330 “friends”—and the
word “friends” is used loosely here, because they range from those who I am very close
to all the way to those who I barely know. But it’s a useful tool to keep up with people,
friends, acquaintances, even colleagues, in order to see what they are doing and how
they are doing.

But I’m especially thankful for some recent reconnections I’ve made with some of my
closest friends from college, friends I wasn’t sure how in the world I was ever going to
reconnect with again. Of course, we’re not as close as we once were—life has gone
on, but it means something to me to find my friend Jim again, who all throughout college
was a good, supportive friend, a running buddy, a fellow traveler, so to speak, as we
navigated school and romance and an occasional party or two. My friend Tommy is
another person I’ve found again—and Tommy was one of my closest friends, someone
I would have trusted with my life, and someone —well, we were very close at one time,
in college, during those formative years—and when I was debating what to do with my
life, he offered his home in South Florida to me as I was trying to figure out what to do
next. Along with my friend Richard, we all tried to see if we could meet up again this
summer, but it just didn’t work out, though we have promised each other the possibility
of next summer.

What these reconnections with old friends has done for me is remind me that I need to
remember my friends, and to cultivate new ones, especially ones that I are not so
directly connected with my profession as a minister, which is difficult to do, when so
much of your life is caught up in the religious community you serve. My friend Patricia
from Seattle emailed me the other day, wanting me to come to see her and meet her
fiancé, something I have yet to do, though she remains one of my closest friends.
Being a good friend is finding the time, of course, and tending to those deep
connections, even in the midst of the busyness of life, and showing up to meet the most
significant person in one of your best friend’s life. A British publication once offered a
prize for the best definition of a friend. Among the thousands of answers received were
the following: "One who multiplies joys, divides grief, and whose honesty is inviolable."
"One who understands our silence." "A volume of sympathy bound in cloth." "A watch
that beats true for all time and never runs down." The winning definition read: "A friend
is the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out." (Source unknown) My
friends are like this for me, especially the ones who understand my silences, my lack of
communications, which sometimes can be years in length.

And yet, some people have a great knack for making friends wherever they go, and
with whomever they meet. Some people have a tremendous ability to connect, and its
something that comes naturally to them. Jonathan Kramer writes about such person:
Audrey never saw anyone or any living thing as truly separate from herself. She
couldn't stand in a line at a theater for more than five minutes without getting to know
the people both in front and in back of her, and sometimes others along the line as
well, since others so often responded to her friendliness. Her activities were so broad
and varied that her friendships were global, and she could have a telephone call from
any of hundreds of people with whom she kept in touch.   Another of Audrey's great
talents and joys was cooking. One Thanksgiving, she was supervising our family and
friends in an elaborate preparation of the dinner when the phone rang, and Audrey
picked it up. From her side of the conversation, we could tell that whoever it was, was
in a different time zone, had two children, had an Afghan hound that wouldn't stay in
the yard, and was planning a vacation to Naples in May. With the phone cradled
between her shoulder and chin, Audrey continued stirring and tasting and directing all
of us in mime fashion as the conversation went on. Each of us began putting together
hints and guessing who the caller might be -- "It's got to be that woman who had the
Afghan and moved to Cleveland," one of us guessed. "No. It's that Italian family she
met last year. They were going to Naples," another offered. "No, it's just Aunt Doris.
They were thinking about getting a new dog," someone else ventured. An hour later,
when the conversation wound down and ended with Audrey giving her address, we
were all even more puzzled. "So who was it?" we chorused when she hung up, all of us
wondering who'd made the right guess. "Someone we know?" "Oh, that?" Audrey said,
surprised by our question. "Oh, that was just a wrong number." -Jonathan Kramer, Ph.
D. and Diane Dunaway Kramer. Losing the Weight of the World (New York: Berkley
Books, 1997), 248.

I am no Audrey, but I do wish I was like her, and I think people like Audrey model the
way God eventually befriends us, the way God brings us in closer to the heart of God. I
imagine a friendship with God to be something like that—easygoing, open, inquisitive,
honest, even in its beginning stages. The passage we have before us today hints at
that possibility, hints at the transformative nature of friendship and how friendship
between friends can be a model for our relationship with God, for our friendship with
God. Now, having said that, I must admit that it sounds odd, to speak of a friendship
with God, and it’s even odd coming from Christ’s lips, who now says that those earliest
disciples are no longer slaves, or servants, but his friends. In the verses in the earlier
part of chapter 15, Jesus speaks of being the true vine and we, his followers, as being
the fruits—its speaks of being people who bear good fruit, good lives, good love and it
warns against thinking we can be connected to the vine and not produce goodness in
our lives—the branches will be cut off if it bears no fruit, an analogy some of the
farmers in our congregation can probably relate to.

And yet, how does one really become friends with God, or, if you want to personify it a
bit more, how does one becomes friends with Christ? I mean, let’s face it—most of my
friendships are with living, breathing people—people I can touch or hug, or even talk on
the phone with. It’s hard to imagine that kind of friendship with God, even with One that
I feel deeply in my spirit, deeply in my bones, as I experience the Christ in my own life.
And, yet, if we look at the passage in its larger context, we get the sense that Christ
knows that he is asking these disciples to become his friends, despite the fact he will no
longer be with them literally, that they will not be able to touch and hear and journey
with him, as they had the past three years. Jesus says these words knowing that hours
from then he will die, his body will cease to be, at least cease to be in ways that are
familiar to them. Sure, they experience Christ after the resurrection—they can touch
him and feel him—but it’s not quite the same, not really, if we were to be honest—this is
quite unlike any friend these disciples have ever had.   And yet, he now says they are
his friends, right at the moment when their friendship will never be the same again.

Maybe that is why he says this remarkable thing about friendship right before his
death—that he want to convey to them that it is possible to be friends even with those
one cannot touch or feel or see. He says that is possible to be friends with him if we do
as he does, gives as he does, loves as he does—to abide in love is to be a friend of
his, of this Jesus of Nazareth, for eternity, because we do he as he does, we emulate
our friend, this Christ. Aristotle once argued that the best way to acquire a particular
virtue, a characteristic, a good one, is to emulate those who have already embody that
virtue. If we want to be more generous, find a generous friend, and do as she does.   If
you want to be more trusting, find a trusting friend, and do as he does. Our friends
form us, mold us, make us—that is why you can often see the character of a person by
the friends they keep, though, to be honest, that is not always true—you have only to
look at Christ’s friends to know that is not always true—friends do sometimes betray
each other. Still, as a general rule, not only are we known by the company we keep—
we are likely to become the company we keep (Cunningham, Feasting on the Word,
Year B, Vol 2, 500).

Aristotle went to on to describe three different kinds of friendships, the first being the
kind of friends who we deem to be useful to us—you know those kinds of friends:
friends we make through work for business reasons, friends who give us something or
get us something. Now, this truth doesn’t make them bad, or less authentic of a
friendship—it’s just that these kinds of friends help us go forward towards a goal,
whether it be financial or social.   Another kind of friendship is pleasurable—we
cultivate these kinds of friends because we enjoy them—we like being around these
folks, we enjoy playing baseball with them, or being fans of the same team, or simply
having great conversation with them. But for Aristotle, it is the third kind of friendships
that are the best kind, the kind of friendships we seek for the sake of friendship itself—
not friends who are friends because they like the same things we do, or are useful to us
but friends who challenge us, who love us as we are and yet want more for us, friends
who can tell us the truth. And you know what mean: these are the friends who can say
to you that the dress you’re wearing looks awful on you, or that you are, in fact, an
awful golfer, or, in the more difficult moments, a friend that can tell you the truth about
the bad mistake you’re making, and you know, you know for sure that they are still on
your side, wanting the best for you. Most of us only have a few friends that we trust
that much, and that can tell us the truth, the whole truth—I think if we had a whole lot of
friends like that…well, I don’t think we could take that much truth telling. These kinds of
friends, they form us, and sometimes transform us—and they push us and they stay by
our side no matter what, during the good times and the bad—and that loyalty, that
kindness, that honesty, it changes us, hopefully for the good.

Ultimately, those kinds of friends teach us what it means to love another human being,
what it means to be loyal and good to those we love—and they will, in time, teach us
also how to love as God loves. A friendship with God means being open to the ways
that the relationship will change you, the friendship will change you—and if you’ve had
a close friendship, you know that relationships do change, especially over time—you
grow from it, even when it sometimes gets rocky, and you learn a lot yourself, about the
other—and perhaps, if we are paying attention, we also learn something about who
God is. If God is like our good friends, this is a God whom I think most of us would want
to be friends with. As I mentioned earlier, Jesus tells his disciples these truths near the
end of his life, this truth about them being his friends right when he is about to exit the
scene, at least physically. I think the reason why he does that at that moment is
because he wants to show them that it is possible to be friends with someone you
cannot touch or feel or even sense—it is possible to be friends with Christ and with
God, even though we can’t have coffee at McDonalds tomorrow morning with this God.
It is in our human friendships, in Aristotle’s third kind of friendships, that we learn the
things, the traits, the virtues, that God is wanting to teach us in that friendship. And
that is the case with God—to be good friends with God is to be transformed and
challenged in that relationship, just as we are with our good friends.

I often say that we are each other’s teachers—and I say that most often about the
people I struggle with—but in reality it is our friends, our good friends, that teach us the
deepest truths, the deepest things. They show us how to love, which is something that
matters the most to Christ, as you can see from the text: “This is my commandment” he
says to them, “that you love one another as I have loved you.”   Friends show us how to
love and love deeply and love generously—it is our friends who will show us the way
home towards love. A final note: there is an old Jewish story about an ancient sage
who fell asleep for 70 years. Upon awakening and realizing what had happened to him,
he begged God to either send him friends or let him die. Depending on how the teller
wants the story to end, God either lets him die or sends him friends. That is a difficult
one, you know, the choice between the two…we do need the good gift of our friends
because it through them that God shows us how to love, and how to love deeply, and
what a good friend God has always been to us, always. Amen.