Friendship

Nehemiah 6: 1-16,  John 15: 12-end

‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’

What is friendship? Those of us lucky enough to have friends, some of them of very long-standing when you get to my age, might give you a variety of answers. For me, these are the characteristics which I would suggest mark out my true friendships.

Friends are with us through thick and thin, people with whom we can laugh and cry and not be embarrassed; friends love us unconditionally, putting up with our foibles and eccentricities with grace and understanding; friends are not our family, but those with whom we choose to hang out ; friends will never try to make us feel small, or stupid, but accept us just as we are; close friends are those with whom we can share our inmost thoughts, reciprocally, and know they will always be held in confidence;   friends will love us to the end, and beyond.

Our Gospel tonight has a lot to say about friendship. As the Last Supper concludes, and with the Crucifixion not far off,  Jesus addresses his closest of friends, those disciples who have been with him since the beginning of his ministry,  essentially trying to prepare them for his coming death.

In what is generally referred to as the Farewell Discourses,  Chapters 14 – 17 of John’s Gospel contain  some of his most profound teachings, summarising for his friends all the things he has tried to communicate to them during his time with them not only in words but in action, framed by John at the beginning of  Chapter 13 with the words: ‘Now before the festival of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.’

And as Jesus contemplates what he is to face, he gives his disciples two precious and enduring gifts, the first of which is that  he no longer will call them servants, but friends. That slight distance between teacher and taught is closed as he subtly shifts their relationship to one of close friendship ‘because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father.’  And that sharing extends to us. Come to my table, says God, and as friends will shall sit together and in fellowship.

And the most important of  all these ‘ everythings’  is the commandment that the disciples are to love one another, even as Jesus has loved them. This is his so-called New Commandment. It is by following this commandment that his disciples through the ages will be recognised as Christians: we must love one another as Christ loves us.

If Moses through the Ten Commandments called his people to show by how they lived their lives what their God was like,  so Jesus builds on that code of behaviour to emphasise that love which underpins all his teachings, and which beats at the heart of the universe: God’s love for us, our love for God, and how we put that love into action in how we live our lives.

And in one of his most moving examples of the closeness of that love for his friends is the suggestion that ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’. True, but hardly a comfort to them as they contemplate what confronts them down the road in Jerusalem. It will only be later that the disciples will fully understand that Jesus’ sacrificial death is not just for them, but for the whole world.

As autumn begins to consolidate its grip we begin to move into a time of Remembrance. Every year in the chill of a November autumn day we remember all those who have been killed in conflict, with ceremonies at the Cenotaph and in most villages and towns up and down the country. For a few minutes in our hectic lives the country falls silent as we remember all those who have laid down their lives for their friends, and indeed their country. They all showed the greater love.

And as we contemplate the horror of the attack on the synagogue in Manchester last week, we are reminded again of the great heroism shown by those who tried so desperately to prevent the terrorist from entering the building, and who paid with their lives. They did indeed lay down their lives not just for their friends, but also for their community.

Sadly persecution of one religious group by another is always with us. Jesus warned his disciples of what they were to face in terms of persecution, and indeed 2000 years later Christians are still being persecuted in countries as disparate as North Korea, Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Nigeria, and the DCR, formerly the  Congo, where in the Northern province of Kivu at least 70 Christians were murdered in a church earlier this year. Persecution of Christians is widely under reported, to the shame of our media. Why? I leave you to come up with your own answers.

In our reading Jesus promises, as I said earlier, a second gift to the disciples, the stupendous gift of the Holy Spirit, promised at some point in the future. The word he uses here is  parakletos, the Greek word for Comforter, but in our translation an Advocate, someone who stands besides us. In the context of this passage I think Comforter is perhaps more appropriate.

And not just Comforter or Advocate I would suggest, but a bringer of hope and indeed certainty. After Pentecost those frightened disciples hiding in fear ‘because of the Jews’ were empowered to go out into the world to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. It was as if an injection of hope and certainty had been infused into their very beings as their confidence returned and a small church began to form in Jerusalem with Peter at its head.

Jesus knows how hard it will be for his disciples to face his death. And any of us who have prepared someone to face death knows how hard that can be. There is the uncertainty of when the death will occur – this week, this month, next year? Our lives are put on hold and we feel as if we are standing on shifting sands. We even fantasise that perhaps there has been some mistake and there will be a reprieve, whatever that means. Courage in spades is required to see it out to the end.

Of course we know that the disciples, when push came to shove, deserted Jesus in his hour of need. Even Peter, who at least followed Jesus throughout his ordeal, denied that he had ever known him. At that point they scored pretty much nul points in the friendship league. But as they were to prove in their subsequent lives,  true friendship never dies. That deep connection, forged during Jesus’ brief time with them  on earth, would eventually lead to many of them being martyred for their belief in him. Their ultimate sacrifices were the seeds for the growth of the Church.

What is friendship? That was the question I posed at the beginning of this sermon. Are we reliable friends?  How far would we go to prove our friendship, to our earthly friends and to the eternal God who forever extends his hand in friendship?

Perhaps these are questions we should be asking ourselves  as we enter the period of Remembrance.