Sunday 5 May 2024 - What a friend we have in Jesus

Many of you will have hit our gospel passage recently as part of our Lent Studies. You should have a copy of the text in front of you. Here we have Jesus sharing his last great teaching with his disciples. They’re words that are so familiar for those of us who have been around the Bible or Church for a long time, especially verses 12 and 13: love one another as I have loved you. There is no greater love than laying down one’s life for one’s friends. I don’t know that many of us, even people who don’t have faith in Jesus, would have much to argue about with that second statement.

But to be honest this section of scripture is one I’ve always struggled with and it took me right to the last minute to wrestle with it in order to come up with something to share this morning. I wonder if there’s anything in it that you wrestled with too, and whether that’s the same as me?

Did any questions, problems, ‘shockers or blockers’ emerge for you?

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What I’m going to do today is actually just share my wrestle with this passage, what I found when I dug into it. It might not be the best sermon I’ve ever done, but I hope that that wrestling has some resonance for you.

My struggle with this passage are not with those beautiful verses in 12 and 13, but actually what comes before and after: in v 11 “if you keep my commands, you will remain in my love,” and later “you are my friends if you do what I command”. Can you see what might be problematic?

I think the reason I find these statements hard has to do with two things in my background:

i) When I was small and at school (and tbh a lot older), I found it extremely hard to make friends. I had several changes of school and every time we moved there were several months of the sheer dread of break and lunchtimes spent pretending that I didn’t mind that I was on my own.

ii) I was always the smart one. To be found not to be was deeply humiliating. I was reflecting with Diana the other day about the time how I did French lessons outside of school, and how one day I saw the notes of our reliever teacher. Our usual teacher had written descriptions of each of the students in the class to help the reliever work out who we were. I was described as the ‘older one’, and another student was the ‘smart one’. The emotion I felt in this was not outrage, but actually shame. Part of my identity has always been bound up with ‘getting it right’ and being the best.

So when I read in this passage of a God who says that he is our friend, but it reads as if there are conditions of command and performance related to it, I’m straight back into the small child inside me who longs to have friends, and wants to be seen to be the best. I end up mired in shame and fear – that Jesus cannot be my friend, because I have not achieved what he commanded.

But these feelings are not of God. We know that God’s perfect love casts out fear. No one is alone or outside the love of God. So when you something from scripture leaps out at you as really hard; when it brings up emotions or something that you don’t actually believe to be true to the nature of God, then it’s worth digging into it; because the enemy wants us to let the lies of who God is creep in and take over until there’s no room for the truth.

So here’s what I found when I dug in hard to the text, and I’m glad that I did:

· Translation is important. At the beginning of this passage we hear“. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.” Jesus as the two-way mirror showing us how much God loves us.” But then he goes onto say “remain in my love” – which has the potential to sound like a threat? But what about a different translation? But how do you feel instead about other completely legitimate translations of ‘abide’ in my love. Or put another way ‘rest in my love’? Different translations help you find the nuance of the passage.

· Remember who Jesus is talking to: Jesus is talking to his disciples. Yes the truths are universal but let’s think of the context too. He’s talking to people he has done a close journey of friendship with; who have left everything to learn from Jesus and be in relationship with him. It’s almost like he’s saying, “I can see that you are my friends, when you try your hardest to do what I ask of you.”

· What were those disciples like? Were the disciples squeaky clean? In no way! Does that mean they exist outside of the love of God? No! Even when they, and we, fail to live up to our side of friendship, God reaches out to us. God reaching out to humanity, again and again, is the story of scripture. Including in our passage from Acts today as the reach of God extends again.

We also see this reaching out in one of my favourite post-resurrection stories, as Jesus reaches out to Peter on the beach. This is Peter who at Jesus’ arrest three times said “I do not know this man”, and who Jesus three times asks “Simon Peter, do you love me?” – and gives him the re-invitation to ‘follow me’.

· Let’s look at what we know are told of the commands of God. The commands (entolē) of God are actually good. The longest psalm is a psalm in praise of how good the laws, the commands of God are. What God asks of us is actually meant for our flourishing and freedom. When we think of “commandment” or command today we think perhaps of authority which asks us to obey without discussion. But in Biblical usage commands are associated with a divine ordinance. If God is good, if God’s commands are designed for our flourishing, why wouldn’t we try our hardest to obey them? And the command Jesus gives us here is so good: love one another.

· Finally, let’s look at who Jesus is. Jesus is no ordinary friend. He’s not a kid in the playground who says you’ll be his friend but only if you give him your strawberry yoghurt. Jesus, Son of God, is not just our friend, he is our king, our Lord. Jesus offers the best of what friendship can offer – deep authentic vulnerability and love which is sacrificial and costly. Imagine – if Jesus tells us we are his friends, then we have the heart of God opened up to us. With that deep a friendship, naturally comes great responsibility to reciprocate that friendship with care. In v. 16 we see that Jesus is not even actually asking us to be friends with him here, although he has already called us his friends. He’s actually asking us to love each other in the way that he has loved us. It’s almost like Jesus saying to us in v. 16 that friendship is offered, whether you like it or not, in the death I will die for you. It’s already done: you didn’t choose me – I chose you. You didn’t ask me to die for you – I did it anyway.

From that, it is a logical follow through that the kind of love that Jesus shows us is, as the hymn puts it, is love “so amazing, so divine, commands my soul, my life, my all”. Or, to paraphrase the immortal words of Spiderman’s uncle “With great love comes great responsibility”.

But ultimately, going back to that small child who struggled to make friends and who sought to be the best. In light of this passage, I’ve realized again this week that ongoing journey that I, and all of us, need to make towards understanding that we are never going to live up to the commandments of God. We just can’t. That’s why our friend and King Jesus chose to lay down his life for us (greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friends v.13). It is grace. In my reaction to this text, I had forgotten grace.

Ultimately, in the arc of scripture, and in the arc of our experience now, we know that people are more loyal to God than God is loyal to humanity. What a thought. It’s not that Jesus asks us for our loyalty, or obeying of his commands, in order to gain his friendship. It’s that Jesus was, and is, always will be loyal to us, and his friendship is offered to us anyway.

What a friend we have in Jesus.