This week’s gospel picks up where we left Jesus and the disciples last week near the beginning of his Farewell Discourse.
Dr. Mary Shore, the dean at our ELCA seminary in Columbia, compares what Jesus is doing here with conversations her father had in the last days before he died. He would share memories and stories with her mother and then he’d give her instructions about how to take care of some detail – what to do before she started the furnace when the cold weather came, or where to find an important document. And then he’d return to reminiscing.
Jesus is saying, “Listen, it’s important that you know these things before I leave you.”
And he says,
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. (John 15:14-15)
The command Jesus is referring to is the one he repeats in verse 12: to love one another as he has loved you.
Reading his words today, we hear that “if” in verse 14 as a conditional phrase. We flip his words and add an unspoken “then” to them: “If you are obedient, “then” you are my friends.” We turn it into a test that’s about what we do, and that’s not a test we can pass, let alone ace, because in our human condition, we are sinners, we fall short and the relationship falls apart.
But that’s not what Jesus says.
Our obedience is not a test; our obedience flows from being loved by God.[i]
Because we are loved by God,
because Jesus chooses us and calls us friends,
therefore we love others the way God loves us.
Because/therefore. God always acts first.
Jesus calls the disciples friends without them doing anything to earn that friendship.[ii] They’ve questioned him and shown a lack of understanding and, within hours of this conversation, they will desert him. And yet, Jesus calls them friends. So this friendship must be grounded and rooted in something other than their efforts and achievements.
Jesus also tells the disciples that this relationship is different from others they have. Even though they call him Rabbi, this relationship is not merely one between a teacher and student. Even though they call him Lord, theirs is not the relationship of a master and servant.
This friendship has its foundation in the love of God. And that makes it radically different, from the beginning.
The late author of the The Ragamuffin Gospel Brendan Manning said,
If John were to be asked, ‘What is your primary identity in life?’ he would not reply, ‘I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,’ but rather, ‘I am the one Jesus loves.’
Being “one whom Jesus loves” means each one of us is a beautiful child of God, loved and forgiven, with mercies that are new every morning.
What would it mean if each of us could see ourselves, first and foremost, as “one whom Jesus loves”?
This weekend the Sierra-Pacific Synod had its virtual synod assembly, which included a bishop’s election. By Friday afternoon, the ballot was narrowed to seven candidates and each of them was given five minutes to address the assembly, and I’m enough of a church geek that I watched some of their statements. In his address, the now Bishop-elect Reverend Dr. Megan Rohrer who serves in San Francisco as a pastor and a police department chaplain enthusiastically described his love for the Gospel because he knows that the Good News saved his life when he was a child witnessing what he described as “a rough and tumbly divorce” between his parents. Knowing God was with him in that time of his life made all the difference. He knew he was “one whom Jesus loves.” [iii]
God’s friendship is not the way of relationship or friendship we learn in the world. As children, friendships change as rapidly as the direction of the wind. And even as adults, friendships remain fragile. We are human and fallible, and relationships are hard. It doesn’t help that “friend” is used so broadly today that its meaning is lost. Online, you can have hundreds if not thousands of “friends”, but that one category includes people you have known since childhood, right alongside acquaintances and even those whom you’ve never met. Regardless of where the relationship began, when a disagreement, misunderstanding or judgment becomes a wedge, or a confidence is betrayed, pride or ego get in the way of reconciliation and the relationship is broken and ends. But divine friendship is different.
Over and against whatever expectations or experiences we have from our human relationships, Jesus calls us friends and asks us to see each other the way God sees us and love each other the way God loves us.
Our actions toward others aren’t grounded in our human understanding of relationship, but in what God has already done for us. And it makes all the difference. It means that the place I begin is love, not judgment. The place I begin is love, not aggravation. The place I begin is love, not envy. The place I begin is love, not resentment.
This way of love is the way of Jesus.
Let us pray.
Gracious and loving God,
Thank you for sending your Son Jesus that we would know what love is.
Forgive us when we fail to love, as we are already loved by you.
Teach us to love with kindness, patience, compassion and mercy.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
[i] Raymond E. Brown. The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI. 682.
[ii] “6th Sunday of Easter.” Pulpit Fiction. (podcast)
[iii] The Reverend Dr. Megan Rohrer, Sierra Pacific Synod assembly, May 7, 2021.
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