Friends

John 15:9-17

Sermon by Dan Schrock

May 13, 2012

⁹ As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. ¹⁰If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. ¹²“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵I 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. ¹⁶You 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. ¹⁷I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.š

All of us want friends. The best friend I probably ever had while growing up was a neighbor boy. It was a friendship that lasted about 8 years, and for 3 of those years we spent something like an hour or two together each day. However, that friendship pales in comparison to the friendship between Jenny and me which has gone on now for nearly 30 years. Even if she died tomorrow and I lived for another 30 years—which are both highly debatable propositions—I doubt that in the next 30 years I’d have any friendship that would match the friendship with her.

Thanks to Facebook, many of us have hundreds of friends, sometimes thousands of friends. However, not all friends are the same. The Greek philosopher Aristotle said there are 3 kinds of friends. First, we have friends who are useful to us—they’re useful for business connections or because they help us to get into a particular social group. Second, we have friends who are pleasurable to us—we enjoy being around them and doing things with them. Third, we have close friends whom we value for the sake of friendship itself. This third type of friend, said Aristotle, is the best kind of friend. It doesn’t happen as often as the first two kinds of friendship, but when it does happen, it’s surpassingly sweet.

Aristotle had a towering intellect, but he missed one crucial type of friendship, mostly because he lived at the wrong moment in history. About 350 years after Aristotle died, another man named Jesus of Nazareth came along and made a startling announcement. To the members of his own Christian community, Jesus said: “I do not call you slaves any longer, because the slave 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” (v. 15). The Greek word Jesus uses in this text is doulos, which means “slave,” not “servant,” as most English translations choose to say.

Here Jesus announces to his followers a radical change in status: they’re leaving their status as the slaves of God, and taking on a hugely different status as the friends of God. People in the ancient world commonly thought of themselves as slaves of a particular god. “I’m the slave of the goddess Athena,” someone might say, which meant the person worshipped and owed allegiance to Athena. Added to this was the hard reality that about one-fifth of the people living in the Roman empire were slaves. Imagine you’re a slave in the first century, sitting in church with a bunch of other slaves, and you’re hearing the gospel of John read aloud to you for the first time in your life. You hear Jesus say, “You are no longer my slaves; you are my friends.” Wow! Your social and theological world is just turned topsy-turvy. You now have a very different status in the world. Perhaps for the first time in your life, you hear that you’re somebody important, cherished, valued, prized. That’s sweet!

This friendship between Jesus and his beloved community is different than the friendships Aristotle described. For one thing, Jesus chooses to be friends with us. In most human friendships, the friends more or less find each other through normal everyday interactions. They often fall naturally into friendship. But here Jesus chooses us. He takes the initiative. He makes the move on us. Jesus stretches himself toward us.

A second difference is that this is a friendship which reaches across the borderlands between divinity and humanity. Aristotle knew about human friendships, but not about friendships between the Triune God and us. Here in John 15, Jesus inaugurates something new—a high-speed communication cable between him and us that allows God and us to span the divide and become friends.

A third difference is that this friendship lasts forever. Our human friendships are always temporary, ending when we move away or when we die. But our friendships with Jesus are eternal.

Aristotle said one other thing about friendship that we can learn from. He said that one of the best ways to become morally good is to hang out with people who are already morally good. To become virtuous, spend time with people who already live and breathe the virtues you want for yourself. Become friends with good people, and willy-nilly, you yourself will become good over time.

I think this is why Jesus offers us his friendship—because that’s how he imparts some of his moral goodness to us. Hang out with Jesus long enough, and you’ll start to act like him, sound like him, think like him, be like him. You will become virtuous as he is virtuous. Friendship with Jesus is how this happens—and it’s why his friendship is one of the best gifts we could ever have.

Thomas Aquinas, the great theologian from the thirteenth century, spent a lot of time studying Aristotle and integrating some of Aristotle’s insights into Christian faith. Based partly on what Aristotle said about friendship, and also based on what Jesus says about friendship in John 15, Thomas Aquinas concluded that the goal of the Christian life is to be friends with God. Becoming better friends with God: that’s why we’re here. That’s the point of church. That’s what makes us good. That’s what makes it possible for us to go and bear fruit that lasts.*

Note

*  For the insights on Aristotle and friendship, I’m indebted to David S. Cunningham, “Theological Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide, ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 496-500.