I have made it pretty clear that John is not my favorite gospel. I like stories and John prefers words. In place of a birth narrative, John gives us this: “In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. . . .”

Not a gripping narrative.

It goes on like that and when I read it I often think such a gospel could only have been written long after Mary had died. I am a mother, and I am very enamored of all my beautiful, brilliant daughters  . . .  and I brag as much (if not more) than any mom. But can you imagine a mother listening to those words used to describe her first-born?? Not even the most child-focused parent would speak of their kid in such a way.

I find no hint of humanity in John’s soaring prose.

Which is why, I think, I am struck by the words John has Jesus speaking in today’s gospel reading. In particular, these words: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant 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/Mother. You did not choose me but I chose you.”

This doesn’t show up in any of the other gospels.

In Luke, Jesus speaks of his friends, and addresses his disciples as friends. But this specific thing about being Jesus’ friends is present only in John.

We know that at the time that this gospel was written, the followers of the Way were being persecuted. So we aren’t surprised to find in the midst of such persecution to find that John’s Jesus reminds his followers to love one another, and encourage them by saying, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

This is important stuff when persecutors are banging on the door demanding names of one’s friends at the threat of one’s own life. I have read about things like that happening at other times in history, but I have never lived through such a period, and can only imagine what strength it took to protect others at great personal price.

The kind of friendship that John is writing about is far more than  someone with which to watch a movie, go fishing or shopping.

This kind of friendship entails deep intimacy. 

Sadly, in our day and time the term “friend” is often reduced to acquaintance, and in our cavalier and quick definition of friend, we lose those very things which make for the kind of deep friendship of which I speak: empathy, support, and mutual struggle.

I find it interesting that so many Christians think the heart of our faith is the nuclear family, and how willing they are to be less than charitable to others in their defense of that particular idolatry. When it is not family – but true friendship that is at the heart of the Christian faith.

How radical is this kind of friendship! When Jesus names the disciples his friends he changes the shape of things: the church is not to be a pyramid, but a circle.

The notion of friendship implies freedom. Not to mention delight in one another’s presence: that love which is “joy complete.”

Jurgen Moltman is one who has captured the essence of the kind of friendship I think Jesus is talking about. Hear his words:

“When, in the field of human relationships, the parent-child relation comes to an end, when the master-servant connection is abolished, and when the privileges based on sexual position are removed, then what is truly human emerges and remains; and that is friendship. The new human being, the true human being, the free human being is the friend. Existence for others within the regulation and functioning of the social order is necessary. But it is only legitimated as long as the necessity continues to exist. On the other hand existence with others, in unexacting friendliness, is free from necessity and compulsion.  It preserves freedom because it unites receptivity with permanence. Friendship is the reasonable passion for truly human fellowship; it is a mutual affection cemented by loyalty. The more people begin to live with one another as friends, the more privileges and claims to domination become superfluous. The more people trust one another the less they need to control one another. The positive meaning of a classless society free of domination, without repression and without privileges, lies in friendship. Without the power of friendship and without the goal of a friendly world there is no human hope for the class struggles and struggles for dominance.”  Jurgen Moltman, The Church in the Power of the Spirit (London: SCM Press, 1977), p. 116.

            Do you hear how very radical these words of Jesus are? Friendship is our way beyond patriarchy and the domination system.

            Now I want to say something that may upset you. And if not you, it is sure to upset some others. When people talk about gay marriage destroying heterosexual marriage as we have always known it, I finally must admit that they have the causes wrong, but they are right about one thing: heterosexual marriage as it has always been is going away. Because heterosexual marriage is based in the patriarchal domination system. It is based on an archaic view of one of the parties being the property of the other. Of course, heterosexual marriage has undergone change; sometimes gradual, and sometimes sudden. And the heterosexual marriages that make it these days don’t make it with one partner dominating the other. But it is still a struggle to put new wine in old wineskins. It is hard to rethink marriage when there is so much residual baggage yet to be unpacked.  And when there are few models to help us in this journey.

Gay and lesbian relationships, however, are not based in the patriarchy. They are based in friendship. Which is why open-minded heterosexuals have much to learn about this more equalitarian way of relating from our GLBT friends.

What that means is that marriage as we once knew it is threatened. Not because of GLBT people, but because Jesus himself began turning the tables, and the world upside down. Everything is being made new, including the way even heterosexual couples relate to one another.  Moltman refers to a friendship that takes Paul’s words seriously. “In Christ there is no east or west, no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free.” None of those things matter when we are truly friends with one another. All prior distinctions disappear. Only our humanity matters.

            That, too, is biblical. I want to hear someone tell me how anyone can support a ‘defense of marriage’ law between one man and one woman if we take scripture seriously when it says, ‘in Christ there is no male or female.’ It only makes sense to me that if we take that seriously; marriage can only be between two PEOPLE. 

Two friends.

That is the radical faith to which we have been called. The new creation which Jesus ushers in.

            What can it mean to be a friend of Jesus? We turn to John’s words to guide us.

First, it means that we are both loved, and chosen. It was a common thing in Jesus’ day for one who wanted to learn Torah to choose a teacher or rabbi to follow; someone they wanted to emulate.  In our text, we are told, “ You did not choose me but I chose you.”  By calling his followers, Jesus begins the process of turning things upside down. To be chosen and loved means that we are not allowed our usual attitude of the well-trained consumer. We are not in a position to decide when and where we will act like friends. We are not in a position to demand this or that benefit from Jesus to satisfy our own needs. It is not, in other words, about us.

            This does not, however, mean that we are entitled to a sense of elitism on our part. We have not been chosen for privilege, but for bearing lasting fruit, for abiding productivity in the kin-dom of God. It is knowing that we are loved and chosen, we can also trust that God is going to sustain in the work to which God has called us. Even when we are discouraged, and even overwhelmed; when we are confused, or fearful, or awash in failure . . . we can trust that God is still at work. Our shortcomings do not shake the electing hand that sustains us in our works.

            To be a friend of Jesus means to know what is going on. “I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father Mother.” (Vs. 15)

            We let our friends in our plans, our dreams, and our lives. Jesus told the disciples about the coming crisis and Jesus’ impending departure. They were not kept in the dark about what was happening and what was going to happen. No secrets, in other words. John’s gospel is a gospel of revelation, if it is anything. It is the story of light coming into darkness . . . the hope that a people living in a dark time needed to hear.  It holds in it the promise of the coming of the Spirit of truth, of understanding.

            What makes people friends of Jesus is being captured by this story, and following the plot which sometimes comforts, sometimes disturbs, and leads through the cross to the empty tomb . . . finding in this story some light to guide their way in a world that is at once both beautiful and bewildering.

            And, of course, to be a friend of Jesus means to keep his commandments and to love as he has loved. John has a habit of speaking of love as a commandment . . . and that may cause us some discomfort. How on earth can we be commanded to love? What kind of love is that?

            Isn’t genuine love something that is spontaneous and that comes from within rather than being conjured up as a duty?

            But John doesn’t use the word “commandment” to refer to the laws and ordinances of the Hebrew Scriptures. He is not concerned about the law being a burdensome load from which Jesus brings freedom. Instead, for John, “commandments” refers to the teachings, the directives Jesus gives to the disciples, or to the directives Jesus receives from God, by which all his actions are guided.

            In other words, this is not a list of shoulds, of shalls and shall nots, but Jesus’ commandments is the script by which he lives. His value system. His marching orders. In the metaphor of a stage production, he hands over to us, the stand-ins, his script.

            Here is the flow: “As the Mother Father has loved me, so I have loved you, abide in my love.”

            We fit into the flow of love, receiving and basking in it, as well as passing it on . . . 

            Once, there was a gentleman who visited a church in which I was preaching. He told me after the service that he visited lots of churches. He was looking for one in which he could be comfortable. “I won’t be coming back here,” he told me, “and I’ll tell you why. I am tired of all this mushy maudlin stuff about love. I’m disgusted with Christian churches that keep focusing on that ‘love your neighbor stuff.’ I am looking for a church that will talk honestly about how hard life is and how following rules is the only way to maintain.”

            He was looking, I think, for less good news.

            But he did have a point about one thing. This message of love and friendship with Jesus could easily degenerate into maudlin sentimentality, if we didn’t also note what comes next in John’s gospel. In that section we are warned that the world will not be happy about the disciples’ friendship with Jesus. All this talk about love gives way to talk about hate.

            My Greek professor, Charlie Cousar, used to remind us of the Greek proverb, “The one who has no enemies has no friends.”

            Again, Jesus was honest with his disciples about what they were getting in to. What it would cost.

            I am reminding you that entering into this cycle of love is not easy. It is nothing about which to be flippant. It is not a Sunday only kind of thing, not a hobby, or a pastime. It is a way of life. It is THE way to life.

            We have new friends, new members, who are joining us today. They have been chosen by God, and led here, to join us in this joyful work of love.

            We talk about being a Presbyterian church, a church that is reformed and always reforming. And we practice that today, as we welcome them into our midst, we are ‘reforming’ – our circle widens, their lives fit into our life together, and we are changed. We have new friends to get to know, new strengths on which to build, new passions to consider.

            We thank God for the gift they are to us, and we pray to God that we can be the kind of place where their faith is strengthened, the kind of place where we all abide in love, empowered to go out and share that love with the world in a way that bears fruit.

            Welcome, friends. Welcome home.