Have you ever had a relationship with someone
that changed in the course of your knowing each other? A time when the defined pattern of how you
interacted with that person turned into something very different, in a way you
might not have expected?
It’s not uncommon. For me, I can recall several
bosses who were first mentors, then colleagues, and eventually became friends. There
was a shift in the relationship. Sometimes it was context: I was promoted to
the same level as that boss, and it was natural that things changed. Sometimes
it was a moment of being in the trenches together, struggling through a
difficult problem, appreciating each other’s gifts. I can also recall
professors from seminary with whom my relationship changed once I graduated.
The artifice of teacher and student was no longer necessary. We could
appreciate each other in new ways, because the context in which we related to
one another had changed. We were no
longer professor and student. We were simply friends. I had no doubt that these
professors were still much more knowledgeable than I was, but the pivot point
of the relationship was no longer my studying with them. They now were my
friends. The context of our relationship changed, and so the relationship
itself changed.
Think, for a minute of Matthew Crawley, the middle-class
cousin of the aristocratic Crawleys of Downton Abbey. When we first meet him,
he is a working attorney, tending to his own needs. When it becomes apparent
that there will be no male heir to inherit Downton Abbey, Matthew is told that
he must come and be the one who manages to keep the estate in the family. He
has to adjust to life as an aristocrat, with servants assisting him in dressing
and such, a life he finds ridiculous. But he gets used to it, and when he goes
off to war, William, one of the servants on the estate who has enlisted, is
detailed to serve as his valet. The pre-Downton Abbey Matthew would have found
it absurd, but he falls into this odd relationship of lord and servant in
uniform rather quickly. Context matters. He has grown used to seeing William as
his servant, but the relationship shifts once again in the midst of the
fighting…earldoms mean little in foxholes, it seems. When Matthew and William
are trapped in a firefight, they struggle as equals once again. And when
William is mortally wounded attempting to save Matthew in the battle, it is
clear that Matthew does not see him as an expendable servant, but he grieves
him as an equal comrade-in-arms. The shifting context affects the shift in
their relationship.
Now think of Jesus in today’s gospel. What has
the context of his relationship the disciples been over the three years of his
active ministry? Very simple: he is the Lord, they are the disciples, also
named as servants. In fact, if you look at the Greek text of this passage,
Jesus refers to them not as servants, but as doulos …. slaves. That’s a pretty radical difference in status, isn’t
it? But no sooner does he describe them
as slaves, he says that something has changed. They are no longer slaves to
him. They are philos…friends. Talk
about a promotion!
The disciples probably wondered what was going
on here. This was before Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion and death. What he said to
them sounds to us like a sort of last will and testament, final instructions
before he leaves them. But all they knew in that moment was that there was a
shift in their relationship. They were no longer subordinates. They were on an
equal footing with Jesus, as his friends. His words about dying for each other
had little meaning beyond an expression of love, since they didn’t know that shortly
Jesus would do exactly that. The full revealing of the context was yet to come.
But love and friendship are things they
cherished, and they are things that we cherish, too. Those people who are
enduring friends in our lives are our anchors and our sails. Our lives become
entwined with theirs and we are changed by their presence.
So, too, Jesus’s presence in the disciples’
lives and in ours. We know a bit more about the whole story than the disciples
did in today’s Gospel. We know that Jesus did lay down his life for us, being
willing to be a slave to suffering and death so that we might live. And we also
know that his very presence among us was yet another kind of gift of love and
friendship, a divine gift of divine love and holy friendship.
His
presence among us is in fact the proof of divine love. We human beings have
made it apparent that we cannot understand who our creator is, so Jesus comes
to earth to make it easier for us to understand the Creator's boundless love.
Jesus comes to earth so that our relationship with our God is strengthened.
That's
what St Augustine was talking about when, almost two millenia ago, he wrote
these words: "Deus est qui Deum dat." God gives us many gifts, but God
is He who gives God[1].
Sounds a bit strange, that phrase, until you think of it as Jesus does in the
gospel: God has given us Jesus, a human as well as divine, so that we can be in
relationship - in love - in friendship with God. We cannot love God without the
gift of Jesus to help us understand God, and what relationship with God means.
Friendship seems a word both too small and too large to contain such a loving
relationship.
What
the disciples did not completely understand when Jesus said “I call you my
friends” was how radical that shift in context and relationship was. We only begin to understand it. This man
among us, teaching us, weeping with us, laughing and eating with us, dying for
us, is God. God shaped in a way that we can understand, to be sure, but fully
and magnificently God. It is perfectly reasonable that we should be his
servants. He is God and we are not. But Jesus says, “Of course I am God. But
that doesn’t mean that we cannot love each other with the same intimacy, the
same tenderness, the same joy as friends. And, oh, by the way, love each other
the same way that you and I love each other.”
Even
as he is laying out his end-of-life instructions to the disciples, he is
continuing to be their friend by modeling what filial love is. This Holy One is
the God who has given us himself in human form so that we might better relate
to Him. That makes the guidance to love each other as he loves them even more striking…we
are to love each other as God loves us. Impossible? Perhaps, but we are asked
to try our best to do that.
Friends
come in surprising ways, in unorthodox places. They may come to us in an Abbey
or in a foxhole or on the train or in the hospital. They may even – Don’t be
shocked – come to us in church. Can we welcome our friends as Jesus did, loving
no matter what? Can we share the gift of that love with those sometimes
unlikely friends, in sometimes difficult circumstances?
How
can we not?
Amen.
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