True Spiritual Friendship

 

I was sitting, waiting for an appointment, and there was a very attractive book with a shiny cover that immediately got my attention.  It was entitled: How do Dinosaurs Play with Their Friends?  I couldn’t help but think of all of you for some reason!  Now I am in trouble, aren’t I?  How do dinosaurs play with their friends?  Realizing this was an opportunity I don’t normally get to read a book like that, I immersed myself in all twenty pages of it.  It was spellbinding!  I tried to figure out the underlying philosophy; what was the pedagogy at work in the preparation of this book, was there anything philosophically that I might be able to derive benefit from in this twenty-page book with illustrations?  I came to the conclusion that there was one underlying message, and it was simply this:  Play nice!  Wow, this has universal and, I think, geopolitical application in our day and age, and affects the way we should look at the notion of how we play with our friends.  Play nice!   A simple message, but much deeper and more profound than we realize, and particularly so, because the word “friendship” has taken on some very different and unusual meanings. 

 

I am not sure we know what real friends are anymore.  By that, I mean perhaps the virtual world, and social media, has meant that we define friends differently.  I have people on social media who have invited me to be their friends, but in some cases haven’t ever met.  I know people who have friends and celebrate the friendship that they have had in a virtual sense for five years, but never met physically in those five years.  Our notion of friendship crosses borders and continents, even languages and ethnicity, like never before, and the notion of what constitutes a friend is changing.  That is why Jan Yager wrote a much more serious book some years ago called, Friendshifts.  It is about what is happening to friendship.  She says when we use the word “friendship” there are certain things that we need to understand about it.   Friends, for example, constitute one or two people who are connected other than through blood, other than through family ties.  In other words, you know the old saying:  “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.”  

 

Friends are people you choose to have a relationship with.  Friends are people who are not necessarily connected legally.  In other words, you are not in a friendship relationship with someone.  You do it quite innocently, and you do it without having to be forced into it.  It is not manipulative.  Often, friendships are formed around relationships, and those relationships are formalized through work, or institutions, or mutual benefit.  But true friendship is borne without that legal component to it.  Friendship, Yager suggests, is reciprocal.  In other words, there is a give and take.  It is not just one person who is in a friendship.  Friendship requires reciprocity, a back and forth and mutuality, and it is one that ultimately is uplifting and beneficial for everyone.

 

So, having defined friendship in such a way, Yager suggests that maybe what is needed more than a definition of friendship is what qualities make a friendship.  That is why in today’s passage from the Gospel of John, I am struck by how many times Jesus uses the word “friendship” in conversation with his disciples. Here is the essence of Jesus’ teachings about friendship and why it is an important component in our daily life and our walk with God. But we need to put it in context.  In the passage from John, Jesus is talking to his disciples in what is known as the high priestly prayer.  It is a moment really when Jesus has an intimate conversation with his disciples knowing that he is going to die.  It is a rather sad moment, touched with pathos.  Nevertheless, he draws them in intimately, and he makes a distinction that you and I would probably miss, but in the time of Jesus was a very powerful one.  He says to the disciples, “I am not calling you slaves; I am calling you friends.”

 

Now, the word for slaves in Greek is doulos, and means either a slave or a servant.  We think of a slave in the pejorative sense, as how it has evolved as a form of subservience over the years.  But in biblical times the notion of a slave had some credentials to it.  There was a sense of belonging.  That is why in The Old Testament, for example, Moses is referred to as a “slave of God”.  Joshua refers to himself as a “slave of God”.  David refers to himself as “a slave of God.”  In The New Testament, the Apostle Paul says “I am a slave for Christ.”  James says, “I am a slave of God.”  It is not as if “slave” is pejorative; it is just different.  A slave, for example, does not have intimate conversations with their master.  A slave does not give advice to the master.  A slave does not necessarily receive affection.  It is based more on service, on serving.  Jesus says, “I am not calling you a slave; I am calling you friends.  And a friend lays down his life for you, and I have called you friends that you might learn from what the Father has taught me.  I am teaching you, as friends, in order that you may love one another as I have loved you.”  

 

The language he is using they understood. Often the word philos, was used to describe friendship by the Roman Emperor and his intimate guides, friends, intercessors.  For example, a Roman Emperor would have advisers and generals and senators and other leaders that he would get advice from, but he would call on his friends first, before he turned to anyone else.  He drew the friends into a close relationship, they were his advisers.  Even today, in law, as many of you know, we have the notion of the amicus curiae, who is invited by the Court, as a friend of the Court, to give an opinion or advice.  In our tradition, the amicus curiae give a brief, and that brief is submitted before the Court in an appellant court, but also can be in a criminal or civil case.  It is an important contribution.  Well, that is the language that Jesus is using to describe the disciples.  They are people who give advice.  They are people who are in an intimate relationship.  But more than that, they are the ones that Jesus trusts and those in who he places his own love.  That is why he says to them, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.  Abide in my love.”  That is friendship as far as Jesus is concerned.  It goes even deeper, because it shows that friendship in the matter not only of nearness, but of commitment. 

 

We have just celebrated Remembrance Day, and even this morning I got up early to watch the Armistice ceremonies from London.  You realize the level of commitment that people made, and perhaps the sense of sorrow that is often there when we remember them, as we did last Sunday.  There was in World War I an area in the battlefield known as “No Man’s Land” – you have probably all heard of it.  It is that area that needs to be won between the opposing forces in their own trenches.  It is a place where often people are killed – they are overland, not in the trenches.  There is a wonderful story, and I am sure it has been repeated, of one particular infantry man who lost one of his friends who was shot in No Man’s Land.  He managed to make it back to the trench, but he had to leave his friend out there in No Man’s Land, and he said to his commanding officer, I would like to go out and get that man when the gunfire ceases.

 

The Captain said, “You can’t do that.  I would lose you as well as him.”

 

The infantry man was insistent, and he said, “I made a promise to him.  We made covenant to one another that I would be there for him and he would be there for me.  I have to keep my promise to my friend.”  So he went out into No Man’s Land and found his friend, picks his friend up and is shot in the leg as he is doing this.  He manages to make it back to the trench with his friend, only to find that he is dead.  

 

The Commanding Officer said, “I told you he was dead, and you now have got shot in the leg and are no use to me.  Why didn’t you listen to me?”

 

The infantryman said, “Actually, when I found him, he was still alive, and his words to me were ‘Jim, you told me you would come and get me’ and then he died.”  He continued to say to the Commanding Officer, “That is precisely what friendship is about.”  

 

That is what Jesus is saying to his disciples:  “Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friend.”  Jesus’ ministry was one that took friendship to a whole other level.  It took him to give his own life for his friends.  There was closeness in that moment, and only later in their lives would they realize the power of the meaning.  

 

There is also the sense of a circle of friendship.  In an ancient text, written in the second century, there is what is known as The Shepherd of Hermas, which has in it what they call, The Similitudes.  It is kind of a weird, mystical book that hasn’t always been accepted as authoritative, but there is within this a sign of how the early Christians worshipped.  In The Similitudes there is this thing called “The Circle of Friendship” or “The Prayer of Friendship” and it is like a concentric circle.  It starts with Christ in the centre, then it moves to the angels, then to the Apostles, the disciples, and finally to all the Church and its believers.  It reaches out beyond itself.  It starts with Christ, but it doesn’t end with Christ.  It begins with him, but moves out into the world.  It is a prayer circle of love and of commitment.  It is a very powerful image.  I think when Jesus gathered the disciples into the very inner circle at the beginning, he expected it to be a concentric one.  He didn’t want an intimate relationship with his disciples as if they were buddies and have it stop there, he wanted it to expand.  I think there is a profound lesson in that for the way we understand friendship and the Church.  

 

There is at the moment a trend, and you may have heard this and read about it in the papers. It is about churches, for example, wanting to close down their buildings and simply have what they call “virtual worship”.  In other words, Lori, Jean and I, and the choir, we’d all be here, but nobody else would. We would put on a show, it would be televised, and you would watch it wherever you are, joining in virtually, and that is the nature of the church; as long as we are here doing our thing, everything is fine.  There is only one problem with this:  it isn’t church, and it certainly isn’t what Christ had in mind!  I’ll tell you why.  It is fine for you who are listening on the radio today, and there are thousands of you, I know, to be wherever you are listening to this service and deriving benefit from it – we hope! –that is what I want.  There are also those who go online and derive benefit from the service online and feel connected with us, when you can’t come to church.  But, in and of itself, that cannot constitute what I call friendship.  Why?  How do we have Stephen Ministry, visiting people in their homes and in their time of need if we do not connect with people physically?  How do we embrace people with a hug when they have lost someone they loved or are in need of comfort?  You can have all the flashy emojis that you want, but it certainly does not replace the physical touch of a brother and sister in Christ who loves and cares for you.  You can have all kinds of beautiful photos of babies online and say, “Isn’t this baby cute?” and lots of smiley emojis, and “Wow!  That’s the best baby I have ever seen!” but when you hold that baby in your arms and bless him or her, then you are connecting!  It is a whole other world.  When you take the Refugee Committee that does an immense amount of work, sure it can go online and say, “Oh, look, you can have Crowdfunding and support our refugee program.”  You can even bring refugees from overseas if you’ve got enough money to be able to do it and a few signatures to sponsor it.  But when they want to go to the dentist, when they need clothing, when the children need advice and education, is it there for them?  You cannot replicate human community and nearness and the expanding circle of love by electronic means.  You cannot do it!  

 

This is why the gathered community and why church and places of worship are important, and not just Christian places of worship, other places of worship are important, because they connect people.  Jesus was saying, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you” and his was a love that gave of itself. That is what happens when you have community.  It is also the case that you have a sanitized friendship when you have an electronic or virtual one, because you don’t have to associate with people you don’t want as your friends.  When you are in the muddled community of a group of people, no matter how loyal and committed to Christ they may be, there are going to be differences of opinion.  It seems to me that if we want to be like the dinosaurs and learn how to play nice, sometimes playing nice means people being with you that you might not always think are particularly nice.  That is the nature of community. That is the nature of life!

 

Finally, there is something about this word of Jesus that is so beautiful, because Jesus is encouraging them; he is not beating them up.  Jesus is saying, “I don’t want to treat you as slaves, I want you to be my friends, and the reason that I want you to be my friends is I want you to take the love that the Father has for me out into the world.  I want you to spread this love.”  It is a word of encouragement to them.  It is a word of comfort when they are down and depressed, because they were down and depressed.  It is a word of hope, a word of inspiration, and it is why it is one of the most beautiful passages in the whole world:  “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.  Abide in my love.  This is why I call you friends.”  It is a word of encouragement. 

 

If I started out with a children’s book about dinosaurs and friendship, I have to end, do I not, with a children’s book. This one is even more powerful, has even greater punch, and may be quite fitting in the light of the time of the year, and that is Winnie The Pooh:

 

One day, Pooh Bear is about to go for a walk in the Hundred Acre Wood. It is about eleven-thirty in the morning.  It is a fine time to go calling, just before lunch.  So, Pooh sets out across the street, stepping on the stones and when he gets right in the middle of the street, he sits down on a warm stone and thinks about where would be the best place for him to make his calls.  He says to himself, “I think I will go to see Tigger.”  No, dismisses that.  Then he says “Owl?”, and then “No, Owl uses big and hard to understand words.”  At last he brightens up, “I know.  I think I will go see Rabbit.  I like Rabbit!  Rabbit uses encouraging words:  ‘How’s about lunch?’ and ‘Help yourself, Pooh.’  Yes, I think I will go and see Rabbit.”