It’s the day before Jesus dies. No one listening to him knows that, but they might feel it in the air as Jesus sits at dinner and talks and talks, cramming in everything he’s wanted to say to us, everything he needs to teach us.
He talks about loving one another, about God’s current and coming glory, about being here but gone but here, about intimacy with God, about loving Jesus himself by keeping commandments, about vines and abiding in one another…
It’s inspiring and overwhelming and bewildering.
And then Jesus says:
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, but I have called you friends…
Friends.
I suspect that’s not what anyone was expecting to hear from Jesus that night.
They have been close to him – some of them for years. But he’s… the special one. The leader, the rabbi – the one you’ll follow because of the amazing things that happen, the way he makes you feel like the world is changing for the better. He gives the advice, fixes what’s broken, makes the decisions. He is amazing and you love being with him. But he doesn’t feel like your buddy. You’re not equals. Not… friends.
And yet, we are.
We could be.
Jesus is saying to those disciples gathered around a table in Jerusalem, and to you and me all these centuries later, that he wants us to be his friends.
There’s a mutuality in friendship. You can’t just follow a friend, you can’t wait for them to lead, and just react. You plan together, go together. We share responsibility for initiative in a friendship. We each care for and support the other, and let the other care for and support us.
Jesus points that out – friends are not servants, who just do what the master says without knowing why. Friends know what’s on their friend’s mind, and share in the planning of what comes next.
A lot of our relationships these days – relationships that make us laugh, provide advice, affect our opinions, give us that sense of familiarity – are one-way relationships, with people we see through screens (not just since last March) – Instagram celebrities, sportscasters, online fitness instructors, TV stars and news anchors.
Those affiliations often feel a lot like friendships. They can change us for the better – or worse – like friendship, as well as entertain and advise us.
And that’s the kind of relationship it’s probably easy for us to have with Jesus.
But I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about today. I don’t think that’s all he wants from us.
When he tells us he calls us friends, he’s inviting us to a relationship that demands mutuality. Where unconditional love – and expectations, and joy – flows two ways.
A friendship that is like Jesus’ own relationship to God as “Father” – a deep, intimate, sharing of all things, so close that we feel like we are one.
A friendship that demands that instead of drifting away when things go wrong, we invest in the mutual trust of arguing it out, admitting when we are hurt, admitting fault. The mutual trust that means we go through the hard work of the friendship together when things are rough, as well as enjoying the pleasure of each other’s company when it’s easy.
It might be hard for us to imagine Jesus in the kind of deeply mutual relationship we have with our close friends. It’s like how few, if any, of us would feel comfortable asking Anderson Cooper from CNN, or George Takei from Star Trek and Twitter, or Ally Love from Peloton to drive us to the doctor while we’re throwing up, or invite them for dinner when we haven’t cleaned the house in weeks – or expect to be asked to spend all day moving their furniture for pizza and old times sake.
I don’t assume they’ll laugh at my long-winded, not very funny story about the cat. That takes a lot of mutual history, personal investment, and maybe knowing the cat.
Things like that, though, are the outward and visible signs of two-way friendship – of deep mutual trust in one another, long-term investment, and sacrificial love. So Jesus is inviting us to imagine all that - the cold pizza and messy house and boring stories - in our relationship with him, with God.
Because we can’t truly be friends with someone who only takes from us, never gives in return. Or with someone who only gives, and will never receive from us. You’ve felt this if you’ve tried to give presents, or thanks, or invitations to someone who always waves you away or turns you down. Or if you’ve felt the burden of a relationship where someone always demands help, forgiveness, attention, and care and never offers it to you.
True friendship is mutual.
And true friendship is sacrificial.
“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” Jesus tells us.
It must have been unsettling for those who first heard him say this to remember those words the next day, as Jesus hung on the cross. That’s a lot for someone to do for you as a friend, even if it might be okay to see someone die for a cause. It was probably even more unsettling for those first hearers – as for us! – to contemplate that being friends with Jesus might mean being ready to lay down my life for him – as a personal friend, not a concept or ideal.
What those first disciples found – and perhaps you have, too – is that there are a lot of other ways besides crucifixion of laying down one’s life for a friend. For love.
Any time we put aside, or let go of, our ego or self-interest or personal desires in order to be there for someone, to offer them an opportunity, to care for their need, we lay life down.
We’ve all done that – grudgingly, generously, intentionally or accidentally – in this last year of public and personal sacrifices for the health of others.
And perhaps you have dropped everything and driven all day across the country to be present for one special hour in someone’s life.
Maybe you gave up a professional advantage to boost a friend to success.
Maybe you quietly re-arrange your schedule, week by week, to find time to listen to the ordinary details of a friend’s life, and share your own small triumphs and stresses, even when you don’t feel chatty.
Each of those is an act of sacrifice, of laying life down, which may also feel like an act of joy, or may comfort and nourish your own soul. That nourishing joy in giving of ourselves is exactly what Jesus is inviting us to, today.
Jesus is inviting us to befriend and love him, to love God, just as completely, extravagantly, generously, practically, ordinarily, and unconditionally as God loves us.
We may not feel capable of that Christ-like love – I’m not God, after all; my heart is human-sized. But we are capable. That’s what Jesus is telling us when he says “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”
We didn’t start this extravagant love and friendship from our own resources. Jesus chose us – you, me – and equips us for that love. Jesus makes that mutuality with God possible for us since we cannot do it for ourselves.
So that his joy may be in us, and our joy may be complete.
That’s the point of all this mutual love.
So that we – with Jesus – may be complete in joy: filled and fulfilled by giving love – and support and company and laughter and forgiveness and everyday moments – giving friendship, to one who receives it as no one else can. Receives all of us, not just the public and pretty us, in love and friendship that makes laying our lives down a whole-hearted joy.
Jesus is choosing us for friendship with the best friend we can ever have, friendship that completes all the joy of all our other friendships, that transforms everyday life into eternal life.
And even, perhaps, makes make my cat stories funny.
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