Sermon 05132012 John 15: 5-17



Sermon 05132012 John 15: 5-17

One of the Buddha's disciples once asked him, “Teacher, what should I say to a friend who is dying?” Buddha replied, “Tell him that wherever he goes, whatever journeys he undertakes, a piece of you will always be traveling with him.”

What do you think? Is that the way to speak to a friend? Is that the sentiment that friends have to one another? Or is friendship more about feelings of personal affection? In our world, the concept of friendship has taken such a beating. It's thrown around carelessly. It's used so ambiguously, that I don't know if a friend is somebody that I'm supposed to go to the movies with, have long deep conversations with, somebody that I sort of know, but that I don't particularly care about.

It may be that Facebook has done more damage to the idea of friendship than anything. When all a friend is, is somebody that you know, that you met once, or your cousin's boyfriend's neighbor that you heard about, the concept starts to become meaningless. And I'm sure there will be many preachers today that will spend their sermons railing against Facebook and things like that, since friendship seems to be such a central concept of the Gospel passage today.

This passage is about halfway through what Bible scholars call the Farewell Discourse of John's Gospel. The Farewell Discourse takes place during the last supper, and it is a huge, three chapter long speech by Jesus that takes bits and pieces of the teachings he's given throughout his ministry and re-applies them to teach about a new subject: his death and resurrection. Jesus knows that this is his last night on earth, he knows the significance of what's about to come next, and he’s trying to help the disciples understand it all, help them figure out how they are supposed to carry on after he’s gone.

About halfway through, he gives them this teaching about the vine. He says that he is the vine, the true vine, and that everybody who dwells in him bears fruit. It’s a simple agricultural metaphor. He describes believers as the offshoots of this vine. And if a plant is going to bear any fruit, it has to stay connected to its source. But, in this metaphor, if Jesus is the vine and we’re the branches, what is the is fruit that we’re supposed to bear? Well, that’s what the rest of the passage is trying to describe.

Starting in verse 12, you can hear a sort of call-and-response dynamic going on: “This is my commandment…” Yes? “That you love one another.” Okay. How are we supposed to do that? “As I have loved you.” Alright. Well what is this love like? “Greater love has no one than this.” Alright, it’s the greatest and strongest love there is. But how do we do it? “That somebody lays down his life for his friends.”

Phew. That’s a big one. Greater love has no one than this, that somebody lays down their life for their friends. That’s a seriously tall order. I’ve had many friends in my day – many acquaintances, many good friends, many very close friends – and there are only a handful that I can imagine laying down my life for. What about you? How many friends do you have that you’re that attached to? Friends so good that you would voluntarily put yourself in the way of harm or death for them?

That’s not what our concept of friendship is, in our world. Maybe it’s the Facebook syndrome. Maybe it’s just that the world has gotten smaller, we know more people, we interact with more people everyday. We communicate more, and we’re polite, so anybody that we see or speak to more than a couple of times, we call friend. We are friend-ly with one another – being friendly, literally acting like a friend, is just a matter of niceties and small talk. Mostly, it’s just not being rude. Is that all a friend is? Somebody that you’re not rude to?

For years I was annoyed and disenfranchised with the whole strain of hymns and other Christian music that describes Jesus as a friend. These songs and things always seemed to play up the friendship of Jesus, a friendship that sounded very much like the friendship I just described. Buddies with Jesus. An acquaintance of Jesus. Hanging around nearby Jesus, just in case you need him, so he can help you out. It’s always felt too simple, too shallow to describe Jesus and his relationship to us.

And yet here we have Jesus himself describing himself as our friend. He says, No longer do I call you servants – this coming from the Son of God and the King of Kings – no longer do I call you servants, but I have called you friends. That seems immensely meaningful. So what does it mean for Jesus to be a friend?

Well, let’s see. Verse 14: You are my friends if you do what I command you. Okay, alright, well, that sounds a lot like being a servant. How is it different? “A servant does not know what his master is doing, but all that I have heard from the Father I made known to you.” So it’s a matter of transparency, of openness and revealing yourself. But notice – the whole obedience thing goes both ways. We are Jesus’s friends if we do what he commands… but in verse 7, he says, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.” Did you notice that? Friendship with Christ means that we follow his commands, but it also means that he responds to ours.

And then there’s that high demand again – to lay down your life. Jesus says that how he shows his love for us, by laying down his life for us, and calls us to be ready to do that same thing. Is that the great test, then? Can you only call yourself a true friend, a friend like Jesus, if you go willingly to death for somebody? That seems awfully specific. We don’t really have cause to do that very often. Maybe it just refers to a commitment, a level of devotion. That’s how dedicated I am to my friend, that I would, if necessary, lay down my life. That seems feasible, at least.

And what about the word that we’re getting “friends” from? The Greek is “philoi”, friends. It’s the plural form of the word “philos”, which can mean friend. In fact, the concept of the “philos”-friend was really common in the ancient world. Aristotle and the other philosphers discussed the “philos”-friend as the basic unit of human relationship. It’s where care and compassion come from. But it can also mean “love”. It’s one of the Greek “love” words. So to describe people as our “philoi”, friends, is really, literally, to describe them as “loved ones”. Loved ones. Luckily, that’s a phrase that we have in our language, and it’s one we’re familiar with. Loved ones are family, usually. Sometimes you have friends and acquaintances, but mostly family – your “loved ones” are the people whom you care about, who care about you. The people who want your well-being, who want what’s best for you. On today, Mother’s Day, we are particularly aware of people who want what’s best for us. That’s what moms are, aren’t they?

The most profound way that Jesus describes this relationship is “abiding”. It’s one of the common buzzwords in John’s Gospel. John says that Jesus abides in God – it’s a major theme for most of the Gospel. Then, in this farewell discourse, Jesus says that we abide in him in exactly the same way that he abides in God. To be a friend of Christ is to dwell within him, and for a part of him to dwell within you. To be a part of Christ just like Christ is part of God. To share the same concerns and needs. To care so deeply about what the other person wants that it becomes your own desire.

This is more than friendship, the way we have always known it. If this is what friendship truly is, then we have been sold a short bill of goods for friendship in our lives. This is not what acquaintances do. It’s not what Facebook friends do. It’s not what polite conversation partners do. This level of care and devotion is what mothers feel for their children. Brothers and sisters. It’s what lifelong friends, bound to each other’s hearts by experience, what they do for each other. This is family.

It’s family. We often say that the church is a family, and this drives that home. It’s caring about your fellow human beings as though they were your flesh and blood. This is the kind of love that Christ calls us to have for one another, This is the fruit that we are to bear if we abide in him.

And here’s the key – it’s not just for us. This is not a love that we pass around within the church community, enjoying it privately and never letting it escape the four walls of church. To be a branch in the vine of Christ is to always be bearing fruit. To always be a brother or a sister. To always treat the children of God, all of them, no matter who, as family.

“These things do I command you: that you love one another.” Amen.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download