Easter 6 B

On the Sixth Sunday of Easter in 2015 I was providing supply at a church that had scheduled for that Sunday to have an informal children’s sermon followed by a sermon for the adults. Here is how I spoke about friendship and love to both the children and the adults. 

Easter 6 B

May 10, 2015

The Rev. Valerie Hart

Children's sermon 

Any of you have a best friend? Raise your hands.

Tell me, what makes a good friend?

See how they respond. Bring up

Fun

Trust

Honesty

They are there no matter what

Someone we can tell our secrets to

Won't judge us

Jesus tells us that we are his friends. Jesus is like that. He will care about us no matter what. We can trust him. We can tell him our secrets. We can even have fun with him. He says that he wants us to have the joy that he has and for our joy to be complete. 

Say a prayer telling Jesus we want to be his friend. 

Adult sermon

During the children's sermon we talked about what a friend is like. (Refer back to some of the things the children said.) 

I'd like you to bring to mind one of your really good friends, either current or in the past. Think about what made that relationship so special?

Really good friends are always there for you, no matter what. If at three o'clock in the morning you are stalled by the side of a lonely highway you can call them on the phone and they'll get up out of bed and come to get you. They may be cussing you out the whole way there, but they will pick you up. 

A good friend is one that you can ask them if a pair of pants make you look fat, and they'll tell you the truth. 

Such friendships are built over time. They usually have to do with going through stuff together. It might be a coworker or someone you volunteer with or a neighbor, but a good friendship is built on being tested together. Soldiers who have been on the battlefield say that the one thing they remember positively about that time was the friendships that they developed. Successful soldiers in battle form a cohesive whole where each of them is willing to sacrifice themselves for the others. The same is true of firefighters. They are people who are willing to risk and even lose their lives to save one another. 

Given that it is Mother's Day I have to include that mothers are like that too. They are willing to do whatever it takes to keep their children safe and healthy. 

In the Gospel today, Jesus says, "I have called you friends." What we have been talking about is the type of friendship that that Christ offers us. We are offered a deep and abiding friendship with God. 

There is a tradition in the Hebrew Scriptures of friendship with God. Abraham is the best known friend of God. In fact, that is the term that is most often used to describe him. He was a friend of God because he totally trusted God. He trusted enough to leave his homeland and wander without knowing where he was going, trusting God’s promise of a home. Now if you read Genesis you will see that Abraham was not always courageous, that he sometimes did not live up to what we might have expected of a hero of the Bible, but he was always God’s friend. He was willing to argue with God and to sometimes doubt God, but he was always God's friend. 

Jesus says that we are his friends and abide in his love if we do what he commands. 

And what does Jesus command? That we love one another as he has loved us.

We are to love. 

Now in Greek there are several words that all get translated into English as love. The Greeks had a more nuanced understand of the concept of love than we do. 

The first is Eros. It has to do with emotion. It is the romantic, sexual kind of love. It is about feeling good. 

The second word is Philio. This has to do with affection and positive regard, as in a friendship. We find the word Philio in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Philio is that brotherly love. 

And then there is agape. Agape love is not about emotions. It is not about feeling warm and fuzzy inside. Agape love is not about how one feels, but what one does. It is about action not about warm feelings. 

It is a love that is unconditional 

It is a love that is sacrificial

It is a love that sees beyond the surface of things. 

In agape love there is no self benefit. It is not concerned with what is in it for me

Agape love is offered whether it is returned or not

C.S. Lewis describes agape love as "gift love."

It is not a feeling - it is a choice. It is a choice to care. A choice to give. 

Thomas Aquinas describes agape love as "to will the good of another." 

And it is the Greek word Agape that is used each of the many times love is used in these passages. 

When Christ says that we are to love one another as he loves us it is this is the kind of love he is talking about. It is a universal, unconditional, sacrificial love that he is talking about. 

Christ wants us to obey his command to love, not out of fear, not out of concern for punishment, but out of friendship and love. 

It is like how hard we worked to obey a teacher that we really respected; that we knew had our best interest at heart. Not out of fear of punishment but out of a desire to do what he or she wanted us to do. 

Christ invites us to be his friends, not his servants. He wants us to obey not out of fear, but out of friendship. 

He wants us to love one another in the sacrificial way that he loves us. He wants us to choose to love. He wants us to choose to will good for another. 

He wants us to do this not for his sake, but for our sake. He wants us to do this so that his joy may be in us and that our joy and be complete. 

There is no greater joy than this, to abide in his love - to be Gods friend. 

Amen

6 Easter Sermon

Jesus calls his disciples friends. What does it mean to be a friend? To be a friend of Christ?

6 Easter B

Transcribed from a sermon given

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Arroyo Grande

On May 13, 1012

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

John 15:9-17

What is a friend? Jesus says to his disciples, I do not call you servants any longer… but I have called you friends.” What does it mean to be a friend? Think about someone who is a really good friend of yours. Someone whom if someone asked, you would say best describes friendship. What is that friend like? What is the nature of that friendship?

Now friendship often comes from associations. Our friends may be people we went to school with, or we’ve worked with, or we have been part of a project with. Perhaps your friends are ones who share a hobby that you enjoy or are part of a club that you go to. Perhaps we share going to this church, or working in the thrift shop. Perhaps it is someone that you go and stand beside a stream and you throw a hook in hoping to catch a fish. It is somebody you share with.

Now there are different kinds of love, and erotic love, the kind of love that leads to a long term commitment, tends to be shown by looking at each other. You are focused on each other. And then there is the kind of love that is affectionate. Where one person is taking care of the other, like parental love. And that tends to be focused on one person caring for the other. But friendship is different.

In friendship the eyes of both are looking forward together. They are not looking at each other but at whatever it is that they are engaged in. Whatever it is that brings them together, whether it be a shared passion, interest or a job to be done. And friendships often grow gradually. They start out as an acquaintenship but you discover that you share a lot in common and as time goes by and the friendship grows deeper. You get to know one another better even though the conversation is not focused on your home lives. You get to see how that person reacts in different situations and in a really good and deep friendship you know one another. You know each other’s strengths and you now each other’s weaknesses. You see them for who they are. The wonderful thing about a really good friendship is you can just be yourself in that relationship. You don’t have to pretend to be anything else because if you did your friend would look at you and say “come on, get real.”

Friendships like that are really important. They are not necessary to live, they are not necessary for survival, but they enrich our lives so greatly. With a friend you can get in an argument and you know you can work it out. A friend is a kind of person that when you ask, “Do these pants make my hips look big?” will tell you the truth. A friend is someone who will complement you when you are doing well and will critique you when you are not. A friend is someone who celebrates with you when things are going well, grieves with you when things are tough and is always there. A friend is the sort of person who you haven’t talked to for six months but when your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere at 2:00 in the morning you can call them on the phone and they’ll come and get you. They may be cussing you out the whole way there, but they’ll still pick you up. That is what a friend is. A friend is a really honest relationship.

Today is mother’s day. For e one of the greatest gifts of being a mother is watching the process in which my children move toward becoming my friends. It is really delightful. Somewhat like the process in which Jesus talks about the disciples who have been his servants becoming his friends. You see I will always be my children’s mother, that doesn’t end, but the relationship changes. When they are real little and they are babies you are busy feeding them, and changing them, and taking care of them, and making sure that they are warm enough, and rocking them to sleep. All focused on their care. And then at some point as they get a little older it starts being focused on setting boundaries, on discipline. It is about helping these wonderful creatures turn into somewhat civilized beings. And then there is always a time when there is tension. Because they have to get separate from mom. And you go through that. You don’t stop loving them no matter what, but you are sensitive to the changes. But a delightful thing can start to happen in adulthood. Where they start becoming friends. They stop seeing you either as the idealized mother when they were little or the pathetic mother when they are teenagers. And they begin seeing you as a human being, with strengths and weaknesses; with gifts and times you don’t always act perfectly. They begin to share in a different way. And you share with them in a different way as they become your friends.

And so it is with Christ. The relationship with Christ changes over time. The relationship with God changes over time. Jesus describes God as the Father. The perfect parent and in that sense we are totally dependent upon God - God is there to nurture us and care for us and be there for us as the perfect parent. But in this Gospel passage Jesus invites the disciples to a different aspect of the relationship. Not one of duty and dependence as a servant, but as a friend. As a friend who is not there primarily for what they can get, but is in the relationship because the relationship in itself is of value. It becomes a relationship in which the focus is on doing what needs to be done.

Christ invites us into a friendship that is focused on loving one another. A friendship in which our relationship with him is focused around doing the work that he began - of teaching the world about God’s love. It is about being God’s love and compassion in the world. It doesn’t mean that God ever stops being our parent. It doesn’t mean that Christ ever stops being our savior. But the friendship adds another dimension to that relationship.

And why? Why would we want this friendship? Jesus tells us very simply. He says, “so that your joy may be complete.” That the completion of our joy in Christ is when we find ourselves companions with Christ, working to bring about the kingdom of God.