Friendship Sunday 2007
Pentecost 8, Friendship Sunday, P.Berlin 5th Anniv.
John 15:9-15,17
July 22, 2007
“Friendship, Family and Home”
Introduction:* I wonder why it’s such a compliment to tell a woman she looks like a breath of spring, but it’s not a compliment to tell her she looks like the end of hard winter. Isn’t it the same thing? * I wonder why it pleases a woman to say time stands still when I look into your face, but not to say your face would stop a clock. Why? * I wonder why people who punish a child for lying will tell the same child, "Just say I’m not home." * I wonder why, when the preacher says, "In closing..." he doesn’t. * I wonder why a speaker who "needs no introduction" gets one anyway. It seems curious and I wonder.
Many things in this world could cause us to wonder. But one of the most striking things is that God should want to call us His friends, make us part of His family, and provide a place for us to truly call home.
First, there is the wonder of God’s friendship with us. In John 15:14-15 Jesus said: "You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you."
"Friends." That Jesus would call us friends somehow defies imagination. One of the primary reasons this is difficult to imagine is because of what we find written in Romans 5:6-8 "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Because of sin, because of our rebellion against God, because we all have chosen to follow our own ways instead of the ways of God, we are by nature His enemies. As His enemies we deserved nothing but God’s wrath, punishment, and yes, death and hell.
AND YET, Bible’s most potent scripture: John 3:16 gives us this message from God,"For God so… what? What did He do? Yes, He loved the world. That’s you and me! How is this possible? It is possible because of Jesus Christ and His death on the cross. The Cross is the highest symbol of friendship. Jesus told us tells us "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."( John 15: 13)
God’s friendship for us is expressed in the fact that God became man, was born and had a human body, that He needed to love and to be loved, to have friends, the closest of those friends was John the apostle. Jesus friendship towards us was expressed that he willing became one of us as a sin bearer. That sin, our sin, became His very own. For this He suffered the punishment that we deserved. This is something to truly make us wonder.
Another thing to make us wonder is that God not only calls us His friends, He makes us part of His family. Over and over again the Scriptures refer to God as our Father. From Isaiah the prohet we hear these words, “But now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand.” (Isa. 64:8); Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father who art in Heaven; Over and over Jesus tells us about our God and Father, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Mt. 7:11). Finally the Aposltle Paul wrote, “15 For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father." 16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs -- heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Rm. 8:15). As the children of God we can babble and cry out to him as a child…Abba! The Holy Spirit tells us that we are heirs with Jesus Christ through whom we inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.
How is it that we become members of God’s family? The scriptures say, “Gal. 4:4 But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. God adopts us. Adoption, I believe that it is the most splendid way to have a family. Why? Well, it not only entails the choice to have a family as when a husband and wife decide to have a baby, in adoption there is a choice made about whom that child is. There is the plan, there is a search. And finally there is a choice. That choice includes the decision to say, of all the children of the world…I choose you. My parents gave birth to me, and this is wonderful. But my brother and sister, they were adopted. For this reason they can rightly say…my mom, my dad, they choose me. Of all the children of the world they chose me.
Adoption, it is the most wonderful way to have a family. My wife and I know a couple here in Wisconsin that were not able to have any natural children. So they made up a plan. They contacted an agency in India. They made arrangements to adopt a child. They traveled to India. There they chose a child that was unwanted, unwanted because she was a girl. They chose a child that many people might overlook or even reject because she had physical deformities. They chose a child that was not as healthy as the rest and might even suffer life long challenges. This is the child they choose. They picked her up and held her in their arms, they looked into her eyes, oh so beautiful eyes and they whispered in her ear…I choose you. I love you.
God’s love for you is the same. If you feel unwanted, rest assured, God wants you. In spite of your blemishes, your handicaps, the ugliness of your lives, God has picked you out, chosen you and loves you.
He has made us His children as we have heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we have believed in Him. Then Jesus tells calls us to the waters of Baptism. Why? In Baptism God pledges His love and life time commitment to our lives. He makes us His children. He adopts us. For this reason as the adopted children of God we can say, “God chose me, that makes me special.” Will you say that with me.
The genius of God's plan is obvious. If we recognize that we are all members of the same family, if we acknowledge that God desires to hold us together as His family, ideally, we will not fight with each other and hurt each other. Instead we will stand with one another and work together to serve God and bring the message of Jesus Christ to as many people as we can.
The church as the family of God has characteristics similar to earthly families but with infinitely more possibilities for disagreement and dissension. For this reason Paul saw the primary task of the church as one of reconciliation. He wrote, "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us" (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).
If love is at the heart of our relationships, and forgiveness is liberally applied, we will be a family with a unity that holds us together and keeps us together in times of crisis and in times of joyful celebration.
Every family needs a home. There is a poem that goes, “Home is where the heart is, you have often heard it said. Home is where the songbirds sing their sweetest, overhead. Home is like the rainbow’s end that beckons us in the blue. Home is where our brightest dreams take root and all come true. Home - Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ couldn’t wait to click her heals to get back to the other side of the rainbow end and to simply go home. Home - We, as Christians often sing of home, especially our heavenly home, in the last hymn in our hymnal contains these words, “I’m but a stranger here, heaven is my home. Earth is a dessert drear, Heaven is my home. Danger and sorrow stand, Round me on every hand; Heaven is my father-land, Heaven is my home. I may have one foot in heaven, but for now, the rest of me is here on earth.
We all know what home is. We also know what it is not. It is unfortunate that in our world many people live in houses that they cannot call home. The places that we call home cannot always be classified into a residence or a dwelling. I can tell you one thing, the one sure way to tell what is home for each one of us is to be away from it.
As many of you know, and my wife and children are intimately aware, I have spent quite a bit of time away. Let me tell you after being in Thailand, Vietnam and Houston Texas, I know where home is. Home is being with my wife. Home is being with my children. Home is being with you. Home is where I am comfortably loved, a place of rest in a hostile lonely world.
While I was away to Houston this past week for the LCMS Convention a strange thing happened. We worked hard, had long days, and lonely nights. As the days went on and on and on, never seeming to end, the lonely restless longing for home got stronger and stronger. My daughter and I talked almost everyday. Each day she would ask me how much I missed her. At first I said, “On a scale of 1 to 10 I miss you a 6, the next day was a 7 and the following was an 8.” As this restless longing for home got stronger and stronger one evening it stopped. At seminary I had a group of friends. We all went through the crucible of summer Greek together. Over time their families and my families became close friends, we became family. Then we graduated, received our calls into the holy ministry, we went or separate ways. Rarely during the past years have we spoken together, let alone met with each other. During the Convention I met up with several of these friends and we decided to have dinner together. The night came, and twelve of us gathered around one table, we laughed and we cried we shared our stories and we talked about the grace of God that we share in Jesus Christ. In those moments I was home again.
What about you? Have you ever missed home? Have you ever had, or do have right now, a longing to be at peace and be at home? The reason we exist as a church is so that, on this long lonely journey that we go through in this life, we might find a place to call home. It’s not the same as our real home, heaven, but it is home none the less. Here we gather as the family of God, sharing each others burdens and sharing each others joys. Here we gather around a Holy table and share our Lord Jesus Holy Supper. Here we gather strength and courage to go on. Here we remember what Jesus said, “John 14:1 "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. 2 "In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And then He said…"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
It is here in this church, that we share the gift of God’s grace, that He should call us His friends, that He should make us His family, and that God has prepared an eternal home for each one of us. It is here that we know that God has forgiven our sins, chosen us to be His children and given us eternal life. He has given us all of these things because of Jesus, because of His life, because of His death, and because of His resurrection. Friendship, family and home, these are the things that we share. We want to share them with as many people as we can. This is why we have Friendship Sunday Amen!
