John 15:9-17 (Acts 10:44-48)
May
9, 2021
It was the first day of our Group
Processing Class at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education, otherwise
known as PSCE. I had been mentally kicking myself for registering for this
class since walking through the classroom door. I felt tricked, somehow,
although I couldn’t figure out who exactly had tricked me. I had been told by
friends who had taken the course in past semester that it was an important
class. It would serve me well in my ministry. I would gain new insight into
what made people act in the way they did, and even more importantly, I would
gain new insight into what made me act in the way I do.
That last piece of wisdom tied a
nervous knot in the pit of my stomach, but I decided to go through with it
anyway. Then as I was getting ready for my first day, I found that group
process was not just a lecture, take notes, and study for the final kind of
class. No. We would be put into groups. We would have to figure out group
process while we were literally in groups processing. The knot in my stomach
grew exponentially when I heard that information. I realize that it sounds
self-evident that group process would require work in groups, but as the old
joke goes, denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. It was alive and well in me.
So, here we were on the first day of
class. Our professor – an amazing woman who I grew to absolutely adore and
admire – had given us an overview of class expectations, grading, attendance,
etc. We’d received a copy of our syllabus, and now the professor asked for
volunteers to sit in a trial group to give an example of what working in a
group might be like. I did not raise my hand, but plenty of other hands went
up. We moved our chairs into a larger circle around the smaller circle of
volunteers and watched as they tackled a decision-making exercise together.
As I watched these people struggle
to work together, I zeroed in on one person. I’ll call him Bart to protect his
identity. I’ll put it plainly. I thought Bart was an idiot. He quickly became
the clown. He was loud and overbearing, and he talked over everyone else. I
remember that the one thought going through my mind was,
“Please don’t let him be in my
group. Please don’t let him be in my group. Please don’t let him be in my
group.”
Guess what? Our group assignments were
made at the next class. Bart was right there. In my group. My best friend,
Ellen, who you may remember from my installation almost two years ago, was also
in the class but we were not in the same group. She gave me some of her best
and most annoyingly correct advice in that if I felt so much resistance to the
class then, obviously, I needed to be there. I took that as a challenge, so
even with Bart in my group, I decided to stick it out.
That is one decision I have never
regretted. Group process became one of my favorite classes of all the classes I
took in seminary. At the end of the semester, I was asked to be a teaching
assistant to the professor. That meant that I had to take an Advanced Group
class to prepare for it. That meant even more group work, and I loved it! But
what about Bart?
Bart and I became friends. I
wouldn’t say that we became besties but working in that group with him gave me
a chance to see another side of Bart. The process of forming a group forced us
to see beyond our public faces, the personas we showed to the world. Bart and I
became friends and discovering Bart as a friend is one of the many times I’ve
been surprised by God and by the people God puts in my life.
That introductory group process
class forced me to think outside the box when it came to friendship. I learned
to see Bart and the other people in my group outside of the box that I put them
in when we first came together.
I realize that it is probably a
stretch to say that Jesus was telling the disciples to think outside the box
when it comes to friendship. The word “friends” has taken on new meaning since
the advent of social media. On some social media, I am “friends” with people I
have never met. I am “friends” with people I rarely, if ever, see, and have no
real contact with outside of the internet. I’m even friends with folks that I
did not particularly care for when we were in close proximity of one another. I
once read a comment from a fellow preacher that friendship has been cheapened
by social media. I can see how this is true.
And maybe social media has cheapened
the idea of friendship, but despite that, I stay with it because it has also
helped me connect with friends I believe I had lost. And I do think more
outside the box when it comes to friendship. There are people I am friends with
on social media that I wish I’d worked harder at being friends with when we
interacted daily. I wish I had been more willing to really see these people as
my friends once upon a time; to see them as children of God trying to figure
out this life the same as I was. Social media has helped me think outside the
box when it comes to friendship.
As I said earlier, I know it may be
a stretch to say that Jesus was telling his disciples to think differently
about friendship but calling them friends was in fact a sort of status change
for them. They were not just disciples to a teacher or servants to a master,
they were friends. When Jesus called them friends, he was not referring to pals
or buddies or chums. He was referring to them as loved ones. Becoming his
friends meant that they were becoming a part of his family, an integral part of
his life, of him. Being friends with Jesus was more than just a label or
category. It was a relationship in God with God. Friendship meant abiding, remaining
in God as well as with one another. Friendship meant obeying the commands of
the True Friend, the True Vine. And what was the number one commandment that
Jesus gave? To love one another. You are my friends; you abide in me. I abide
in the Father. We all abide together in love. So, love one another as I have
loved you. That is what I command. Love one another as I have loved you. And
what does this love look like? It is a continuation of what we studied last
week. Love is laying down your life for your friends.
This is the love that Jesus embodied
for his friends. Jesus literally laid down his life. He went to the cross and
sacrificed his life for the love of his friends. However, Jesus does not only
lay down his life for the disciples or the people of Galilee or the folks from
his hometown of Nazareth. The cross was and the cross is for the world.
Earlier in this gospel we hear the
words “for God so loved the world that he gave his only son.” It is for the
world that Jesus was willing to die. Jesus not only preached but lived
sacrificial love, and that love was for the world. So, I don’t think I am
overstretching the analogy to say that the entire world consists of Jesus’
friends, or at least all sorts of people that Jesus calls to be his friends.
In our text from Acts, Peter also
gets a new understanding of what it means to be friends. The entirety of
chapter 10 consists of Peter being forced to see through new eyes what it means
to be clean and unclean, pure and impure. It starts with a centurion named
Cornelius and Peter’s vision of a sheet with animals that by the standards of
the Law were considered unclean. Peter wanted to obey the Law, to stick with
what he knew and understood about what was right and what was wrong. But God
insists through his vision that Peter see beyond the box that he previously
dwelled in. This was not merely about clean and unclean food. This was about
people. God called people, all kinds of people. Saul, who persecuted believers,
was called. Cornelius, a Roman Centurion was called. And as we read in our
verses in this chapter, the Holy Spirit descended even upon the Gentiles … our
ancestors. In other words, a whole lot of people were called and answered the
call to abide in God through Christ. A whole lot of different kinds of people
were now friends.
I know that this goes beyond social
media and the shallow kinds of friendships that we experience daily. I know
that befriending the entire world is a daunting task to say the least. But I do
think that these passages remind us of the fact that loving God means loving
God’s people. And Jesus did not suggest this, he commanded it. He commanded us
to love one another, to see the other as a loved one, a member of the family.
In the past when I have preached
about this love, I have said that love is not just about how we feel. It is not
just warm fuzzy. We have to do love. Love is a verb. It is an action. It is
deed. We may not feel love, but we must live love. I still think that is true,
and I still encourage all of us, myself first, to try and do just that: to live
love. But it occurs to me that maybe when Jesus commanded us to love one
another, that maybe he meant we should feel it as well. Maybe we were commanded
to show love, to enact love, and to feel love for one another. By feeling love,
I mean changing our hearts, changing our minds as well as changing what we do.
Maybe the command to love one another is to truly believe that the world is
filled with our friends, our loved ones. How different would the world look
like if we not acted in love, but felt this love, thought this love? What would
the world look like, what would our church look like, what would our community
look like, if we strived to live out the commandment Jesus gave us? If we lived
as though we were all friends? It is a tall order indeed. But Debie Thomas
wrote that Jesus is not just a role model, Jesus is the True Vine. We, the
branches, abide in him. He is the source of our love. He is the source of our
friendship. He is the One from whom all friendship comes, and in whom we abide,
remain, and stay. He laid down his life for his friends, and he did it with a
loving heart. Can we do the same? Can we feel the same?
Let all of God’s children and all of
us friends say, “Alleluia.”
Amen.
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