Friends

Relationships change. Sometimes they change for the better and sometimes for the worse. Jesus experienced this just as the rest of us do. We're going to look at one of the times when there was one of these changes, a good one. Listen.

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

The eleven are no longer servants of their Master. The relationship has changed. They are now His friends. What does that mean? That's what we're going to look at. We're going to look at Jesus' idea of friendship.

Jesus explains the difference between a servant and a friend. A servant doesn't really know what is going on. He doesn't need to. He just needs to obey whatever his master tells him.  But a friend - well, a friend knows. These men know. And they know because Jesus has told them. He has told them all that He has heard from the Father. He has entrusted that to them. That's why elsewhere He said,

To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables.

They know. And so, there is a certain intimacy between friends. Listen to Proverbs.

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

​A friend loves at all times. 

Friendship is about love, the intimacy of love. The word for 'friend' that John uses here has its roots in the word for love. In fact, in preparing for this sermon I learned that the English word 'friend' has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon word for love. Friendship is about love. It's about intimacy between people. It's about entrusting something of yourself to another person. So, for Jesus, these eleven men were no longer just the hired help, servants. They have become friends with whom He feels a certain intimacy, friends to whom He has entrusted some important things about who He is and what He is about. Jesus loves these men. There is a kind of intimacy between friends that makes them friends. Those eleven men were Jesus' friends.

Now, having said that, I think that you will agree with me when I say that friendship, the kind that I've just described, is pretty rare in our world. People may have lots of acquaintances, people whom they know and with whom they do things, but friendship, intimate friendship, is uncommon. In this, one of my seventh grade teachers proved prophetic. He told my classmates and me that if a person were to have more friends than fingers on one hand he would be extremely lucky. We thought he was nuts, but he wasn't. And lots of people feel that lack. They don't have friends.

Now, all of that leads to this, the point of the sermon. This understanding of friendship lies at the heart of what it means to be the Church. It fits with last week's sermon.

 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

And, as I told you last week, Jesus is talking about our relationships with each other. We are to lay down our lives for each other. That was the point of last week’s sermon. The point this week is that we do that because we are friends.

This notion shows up rather clearly elsewhere. The epistles usually end with something like, 'Greet all the saints', or 'The brothers here greet you'. Listen to how John ends his third letter.

The friends greet you. Greet the friends, each by name.

Being the Church means being friends - not just acquaintances but friends. Remember: the intimacy of love. And that makes so much sense when you look at the big picture.

What's the goal of the Gospel? What is the mission that Jesus has come to accomplish? It's the restoration of all of creation. Jesus came to remove all sin and evil, and to return everything back to the way that it was before Adam's sin, except better. So, one big point of the Gospel is to make us all into friends. Isn't that what Adam and Eve were? Wasn't that the point of God telling us that they were naked? They had no secrets from each other. They were open with each other. There was the intimacy of persons. Jesus has come to get us all back to that point. Jesus came so that we would all be friends, real friends. So, part of what it means to be the Church is that we live as friends. No secrets. Being open with each other. Entrusting ourselves to each other. The intimacy of persons. The intimacy of love. That's the way that it will be in the age to come. 

That explains what we are to be working at now as the Church. We are to be more than acquaintances. We are to work at living as friends. And these friendships that you work at are not limited to this life. They will continue on into eternity and grow. Being the Church means being friends.

However, there are problems. While some of you do have some strong bonds of friendship, as Jesus means that, there are others of you who don't. Why is that? There are different reasons for that. Let me offer one. Walls. Some of us have erected walls, and we hide behind them. We didn't plan on building these walls. It was just how we dealt with our fears. If real friendship is about entrusting important aspects of who you are to others, then walls are the refusal to do that - because you're afraid of what might happen. You might not use the word 'fear'. You might talk about being shy or something like that. But the wall is there. You might be quite the conversationalist, talking about all sorts of things with the people around you. But there is this line. No one crosses that line. That's where the wall is. No one gets inside the wall. This is where I remind you that I get the sermon first. So, I'm not picking on any of you in that description about walls. The person that I've just described is me. And telling you that is my attempt at working at being a friend.

Jesus has come. He has come to rescue us. And that is so much more than making sure we don't end up in hell. He has come to rescue us from things like our walls and the fears that cause us to build those walls. He has come so that we might be restored to what once was: the Garden of Eden where there were no walls only true and deep friendships. So, don't hear what I've been saying as, 'There is this thing that you must do. You must make friends.' That's not what I've been saying at all. Rather, it's, 'Here is something you can do. You can be a friend.' Jesus has come so that you can be freed from your fears and become the kind of person you were intended to be: a friend.

Before I talk about what to do with this, I want to speak about why you should do it. This being a friend needs to become important to you for your own enjoyment of the Gospel. You can be free. You can enjoy real friendships. But this also needs to be important to you because of your love for the other people in this room. You can help them become free enough to enjoy what it means to be a friend and have friends, real friends.

And then, there is the benefit to those outside the Church, all those unbelievers who have none of this and suffer because of that. There is great evangelistic power in this thought. People out in the world may have many acquaintances, but they have pitiful few friends, if any. But here we are, not a religious club, but a group of friends. Some of them will feel the lack. They will hunger for honest friendship. They will see us loving each other as friends, and they will ask how we do that. By our friendships we will show them the power of the Gospel in action. And then, once they ask, we'll tell them about Jesus, the Savior who has rescued us from our friendlessness.

So, what do you do so that you might develop into this friend that Jesus is talking about? And you know the answer. Believe the Gospel. It always comes back to that. So, believe the Gospel when it tells you what the goal is. Jesus has come to free you so that you can enjoy life. One aspect of that is enjoying deep and satisfying friendships with others. That's where you start. Believe the Gospel in your thinking.

Then, you pray. You pray that you would believe the Gospel in your actions. You pray that you might put what you believe in your head into practice in your life. That will, at times, be scary. Pray about the scariness. Pray that the Spirit will help you to do those things that make you feel so very afraid. But don't be hard on yourself. Start with something that is easier, less scary. Start with someone who is an acquaintance, a good acquaintance. Develop that into a friendship, a relationship that is more and more open, more and more honest, a relationship where you are going to do some scary things like bring down a wall. Pray that the Spirit will help you in all of this. And expect that you're going to blow it. There are going to be those times when you are going to retreat behind your wall and clam up. It's going to happen. But learn from that. What made that so scary? Pray for insight and then go back and try again, praying that the Spirit will help you deal with whatever the problem was.

And if you are ready for it, you just might ask someone to pray for you that you would become the friend that Jesus has freed you to become. That just might be a first step in becoming a friend.