A friend of God

 

Sunday 9^th May – Easter 6

Acts 10: 44-48. The very start of the Christian story charts the fact that Jews and gentiles were entirely equal in the new church, that God showed no partiality. This must have been so attractive for the “God-fearers”, gentiles who were attracted to Judaism but were hitherto always on the outside looking in. The building blocks of the new community of equals were being put in place.

1 John 5: 1-6. Whoever is born of God “conquers the world” in this passage. What does this mean? To me this means that the world, and everything in it is intimately connected to God, is not our enemy and we can commune with God through the stuff of ordinary life. “Water and the blood” are indicative of the baptism and crucifixion of Jesus, incorporation and identification with humanity followed by his sacrifice on behalf of humanity, mirrored in the church’s rites of Baptism and Eucharist.

John 15: 9-17. Friendship was given much greater importance in the ancient world that it seems to receives today. Being a friend of Jesus is a radical thing because friendship is based on having an equal relationship – not as a master and slave or teacher and pupil. Friends have no secrets from each other and shares everything he has with his friends even his privileged access to God.

 

Saying you are a friend of God or a friend of Jesus is a truly radical thing because as Jesus himself explains to his disciples, friendship is a relationship of equals. Not like a master and slave – that isn’t a relationship of equals – but friendship is a special thing that was previously bestowed on few people in the Bible. One of the most notable was of course Abraham.

I have been lucky enough to visit the tomb of Abraham in Hebron in the Holy Land and over it the building is both a mosque and a synagogue. The mosque is named after Abraham and is called the Haram El-Khalil – the mosque of the friend of God.

Think about the qualities of true friendship. A relationship of equals, not based on any notion of gain or exploitation. You enjoy their company just for who they actually are, not for what you can get from them. You don’t have to hide any secrets from them. They don’t mind sharing things with you. They want the very best for you and are not in competition so that they rejoice and celebrate with you when you do well and love greatly.

With that picture of true friendship, now read verses 13 to 15 again and imagine Jesus is saying them to you directly because Christianity really starts to transform a person when it becomes personal.

¹³ No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ I do not call you servants^[a] any longer, because the servant^[b] does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

What do we have to do to be recognised as a friend of God? Jesus makes that plain.

“Love one another as I have loved you”

Now as Nat King Cole once beautifully sung – “Love is a many splendored thing” it has so many facets and is rich and multi-layered.

Think of the lovely hymn to love Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians 13 and we need to look no further than John’s gospel itself to have it made plain that in plain terms – God is Love.

And yes, love can be expressed carnally as well as the Song of Songs makes clear but can’t be reduced to being just that.

Love is also service and self-sacrifice – not particularly sexy at all but absolutely necessary and meets us at the point of need.

Love is profligate, audacious, forgiving and gives us a status in God’s universe as a child of God.

And who doesn’t love their children? Happy is any parent whose children grow up to also become their friends.

This is the privileged position that anyone holds who tries to love as God loves us all.

Becoming a friend of God through his Son Jesus Christ we enter a divine dance with our creator. Keep close to God as we have heard in our gospel reading last week about the vine and the branches. Commune with God often, talk to each other often in private and corporate prayer so you keep that relationship open, and fruitful.

What you gain is a new kind of security, not based on what other people may think about you, but what the king of kings thinks about you.

You are loved, go and love likewise.