The One Where Jesus Calls Us Friends

Common English Bible Chapter 15

9 “As the Father loved me, I too have loved you. Remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy will be in you and your joy will be complete. 12 This is my commandment: love each other just as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than to give up one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I don’t call you servants any longer, because servants don’t know what their master is doing. Instead, I call you friends, because everything I heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You didn’t choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you could go and produce fruit and so that your fruit could last. As a result, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. 17 I give you these commandments so that you can love each other.

Intro: Incomplete

Given the title of this sermon, you should probably expect me to start this sermon with a video clip from everyone’s favorite sitcom.

But…I’m going to start somewhere else today...

Play video: Sheldon and Amy Closure.

This is silly, but you know what, I know a lot of Christians who live this kind of existence.

We’ve come to know Jesus.

We’ve been coming to Jesus all our lives.

We have been in on the Christian thing.

And yet…it feels like our joy is only partially fulfilled sometimes, doesn’t it?

We might have fleeting moments of joy, little slivers in the course of our regular days where we can come across joy.

But kind of like Sheldon, we never seem to get to that full, complete, closure of joy where all is made right with the world.

What gives?

I wonder what it looks like to finish, to have a completed joy.

Bible Breakdown

Group One: The Disciples at the Table

How could we possibly feel joy at a time like this?

The disciples have to know that something dark is brewing.

Jesus has spent all week in Jerusalem ticking off the religious leaders of their day.

There have been rumors circling that the political authorities are getting a little peeved at Jesus at this point too.

And Jesus, just a few minutes ago in this meal, told them all that one of them would betray him and that he was going to die.

If they didn’t already know it, surely they could sense that something was coming down the pike that wasn’t really great.

And yet Jesus is inviting them in to…joy?

Chara

What so many people confuse are joy and happiness.

Happiness is conditional. Joy doesn’t care.

Happiness can be given or taken away. Joy is eternal.

Happiness is surface level. Joy plumbs the depths of our hearts and souls.

So of course Jesus is not inviting them into happiness.

Knowing that the cross is coming, how could he?

Jesus is instead inviting them in to joy.

Jesus is able to do this because he’s seeing what’s a few layers deep in the story.

All the disciples see are the surface level factors of the menacing religious leaders, murderous political players, and Jesus cryptic warnings.

Jesus is looking past those surface level realities to the kingdom truth hidden right behind it all.

Jesus knows that yes it’s his death, but it’s also new life.

Jesus knows that yes it’s the end of their movement as they know it, but it’s just the beginning of a much bigger movement.

Jesus knows that it might just be the end of happiness, these disciples may not know happiness as you and I do ever again after this night. But he also knows that this is the birth of joy.

And not only is Jesus inviting them to joy, but he’s inviting them into a new kind of relationship with him.

We Get to be Friends?

I had a professor in seminary who was known for being a little bit intimidating.

Also he was Scottish, so it was even more intimidating sounding when he spoke to you!

But I loved his approach to theology and the way he understood the world, so I took a few classes from him.

One class was the very last he ever taught at the seminary, and you could kind of tell he was getting a little bit punchy.

So instead of a written final, he wanted to try something else.

Our final exam would be in person, one on one, in the professor’s office.

He could ask us anything he wanted to about the class, and we had to be able to respond to him in the moment, without notes or research or anything like that.

He told us that we were allowed to bring a friend or a bottle of Scotch, whatever we thought would be more helpful.

I brought both.

When my friend and I got to his office, we were stunned to see that instead of his usual very nicely put together suit, complete with bow tie, Dr. Purves was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of jeans.

He invited us in, poured each of us a Scotch, and asked us just one lay-up question about the class.

After that, he started to ask us about what we were planning on doing after graduation, the kinds of ministry we were most interested in, and how our families were doing.

It was clear in that moment that we were no longer teacher and students.

We were friends.

The disciples had been Jesus’ students the whole way through their journey together.

The disciple and rabbi relationship is extremely strict.

In fact the Greek that Jesus is using here in this passage does not really say “servants.” It calls these disciples “slaves.”

And yet, Jesus is in this moment at the very end, inviting them in to a new relationship together.

We are friends.

Imagine the love that these disciples must have felt toward and from Jesus in this moment.

To be friends with their rabbi.

And not just their rabbi, but with someone they were pretty well convinced was the messiah (even if they didn’t know what that meant yet).

We aren’t servants any more...

Though surely friends serve each other from time to time.

We’re friends.

What an incredible out pouring of love, and a remarkable gift Jesus gave to these simple fishermen at the end.

And yet, Jesus makes sure these disciples know that there is some work to come with this new station in life.

How do we love when we’re scared?

Clearly this teaching has left an impression on John.

If you’ve been hanging out with us in church for the last few weeks, you know that something like what follows has been in John’s writings four times in a row now:

This is my commandment: love each other just as I have loved you.

These disciples, now freshly presented with Jesus’ love and friendship, know what it means to have him love them.

They know all about the agape love of God, seeking the needs of the other above the self.

And now Jesus says if you want to really understand this love, if you want your joy to be complete, you need to go out and love others the same exact way.

One problem in all of that:

This is a group of disciples in hiding!

They are aware that the religious leaders of their day want to see Jesus killed, and they have to know that they are next on the less-than-proverbial chopping block.

This is a situation where to step outside at all is to be under constant threat.

And Jesus is calling us to…love in this season?

Jesus is calling us to love the very people who might want to kill us?

Jesus is calling us to love each other, even though we’re pretty sure one of the guys sitting here is a traitor?

Jesus is calling us to love just as he has loved?

How on earth are we ever going to do that…?

Group Two: Christians Today

I think in a lot of ways, we are much like the disciples sitting around that table.

We could ask the exact same questions that they might have been asking.

We might just get very different responses...

How could we possibly feel joy at a time like this?

There has been no official research that I have seen in any of this, but I’m thinking that as a percentage, Americans are loosing our sense of optimism, and hope, and even joy these days, aren’t we?

We’d rather fight about our political differences than gather around what unites us.

We’d rather cancel pieces of our culture than talk about who our culture can be hurting, and how we might include them.

We seem to live with a perpetual sense of fear hanging over just about everything we do.

And oh by the way, we’re still in the middle of a global pandemic (go get your shot).

Our joy, to put it mildly, is anything but complete.

One (of many) big reasons for this I think is that we have completely traded in joy and settled for happiness.

Money, it turns out, can buy happiness.

My happiness is more important than your happiness, so I don’t much mind who I bulldoze to make sure I get what I want.

Winning an argument brings a fair amount of happiness, so we aren’t even really interested in changing minds, we just want to feel right.

Happiness is a horse that won’t take us where we need to go.

The minute anything negative comes around, happiness fails us.

The minute the picture we’ve painted of the world around us turns out to be wrong, happiness runs away.

The minute we walk through the difficult paths of loosing a loved one, or hearing a difficult diagnosis, or we are out of work, happiness can’t carry our burdens, can it?

Church, we’re asking the wrong question as a culture.

It’s not how can we feel joy at a time like this.

The question is how can we live at a time like this without joy?

How do we complete this joy that Jesus has started in us, so that no matter what happens in our lives we can lean on the Joy of Christ in our midst?

We lean in to being friends.

We get to be friends?

You have probably heard me speak in sermons about my friend Ed.

Ed and I met when we were in high school.

We went to the same youth group, and it was pretty clear that we would be fast friends.

After I graduated and went to college, I started helping at my old youth group, so I was an intern and Ed was a student leader.

Then I got my first job in youth ministry, and Ed was looking for an internship.

Then Ed moved over to Westminster, and I followed behind shortly there after.

We spent 13 years together in ministry, and he is without question one of my best friends.

I think one of the markers of a really good best friend is just how much I want to be like Ed.

I am a total pansy when it comes to any kind of conflict, but Ed could start a fight in an empty room if he was fighting for justice and righteousness. I wish I was more like Ed.

I can take an entire lifetime to make a decision sometimes, Ed goes with his gut and tends to be right 90% of the time. I wish I was more like Ed.

I eat so much fast food and potato chips that the surgeon general has considered putting a warning label on me, but Ed is one of the most physically fit people I know. I wish I was more like Ed.

I’ve been told, though sometimes I have a hard time believing it, that this is a two way street. There are pieces of my personality and skill set that Ed wishes he lived more in to.

That’s what makes good friends great, the ability to sharpen each other bit by bit, until we grow in to the people that we want to be.

So, in a way that might be a little bit of a different slant than the disciples, what does it mean for us that Jesus calls us friends?

It means that we don’t see Jesus as just some great moral teacher that we can ignore or not at our discretion, but rather the example and the model we want to be more like.

It means that Jesus is not just some far off idea, but someone who genuinely enjoys being a presence in our lives, so long as we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

It means that we can and should desire every day to be more like Jesus. More like Jesus. More like Jesus.

A good friend

Loves us even when we are far from having our best day.

Carries the load for us when we are unable to carry it ourselves.

Inspires us, challenges us, and equips us to be the best versions of ourselves.

Goes ahead of us when we are afraid, and shows us that everything is going to work out ok.

Jesus, as it turns out, is a very good friend.

How do we love when we’re scared?

We saw last week that fear is in fact the opposite of love.

There’s a lot to be frightened of in our world today, isn’t there?

But I believe that Jesus Christ goes out ahead of us, to be our guide and to be our shield.

This is not a guide and a shield for us to live a comfortable lifestyle, or to get our way all the time, or to make sure we never have to change anything ever.

Jesus is the guide and shield for us to love our neighbors well.

Jesus is the guide and shield to love everyone, including and especially those that disagree with us.

Jesus is the guide and shield to love everyone, including and especially those who look, or act, or think differently than we do.

Jesus is the guide and the shield to love everyone, regardless of what sins they’ve committed or whether or not we agree with the choices they’ve made in life.

Jesus is the guide and the shield to love everyone, and this might be the hardest, regardless of whether they are at all interested in loving us back.

Jesus goes ahead of us to deal with our fears, so that all we’re left with is love.

Because truthfully, the only way to complete joy, as paradoxical as this might sound, is to give it away to everyone.

Wrap Up

So how do we find our way to complete joy?

We choose, right now and forever, to never trade in joy for happiness.

It’s a lot cheaper and easier to get to, but it will never take us where we want to go.

We accept, fully and in our hearts, that Jesus Christ reaches out to call us friends.

We use that friendship to do everything we can to become more and more and more like Jesus each day.

We love others the way that Jesus loved us, so that we can be more and more like him.

And we leave our fears behind, so that we live with joy in these complicated and difficult days.