Jesus’s command to love one another invites us into unexpected friendships, including the friendship between God and creation.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Sixth Sunday of Easter, year B
Texts: Acts 10:44-48, John 15:9-17

Dear friends, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus does something pretty unexpected in the gospel reading today. 

Here in his last hours with his followers, he says to them: “I do not call you servants any longer…but I have called you friends.”  Something has shifted in their relationship, and Jesus names it. “We care about each other. We’re close. I’ve trusted you with everything. We are friends.” 

But, it seems like an odd kind of friendship.  Not only because we know that these “friends” won’t really act like friends in the chapters to come, but also because of the way Jesus describes friendship: “you are my friends if you do what I command you” – which doesn’t sound like friendship.  Following commands, that sounds like what servants do! So which is it – friends or servants? Both? Somewhere in between? What’s going on?

I often feel, when I’m studying or preaching from the gospel of John, that you really need a PhD in Greek and in ancient philosophy to understand what the heck is going on.  In this case, it’s really important to understand what friendship meant to Jesus. And, I don’t have a PhD, but from what I understand, the simple version is this: people in the ancient world took friendship very seriously.  

Friendships came with serious expectations. 

It was sometimes even ritualized with a ceremony involving solemn vows and an exchange of symbolic gifts – basically a wedding, but to celebrate a friendship. Because, just like marriage, friendship meant a serious commitment: to help and give and speak and act in each other’s best interest for the rest of their lives. 

And what’s more, friends were expected to be patient and kind. They did not envy or boast. You see where I’m going with this? They weren’t arrogant or rude or irritable or resentful. Friendship bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things and never ended. 

Friendship was love.

Literally the Greek word for friendship is “philia,” which just means love.

I imagine that the people of the ancient world would be mystified at our modern dilution of the idea of friendship. You can become “friends” on Facebook by clicking a button? That’s it?  What do you mean you’re “just friends?”  What is “just” about committing yourself so deeply to one another, that you would even die for each other?

Because that’s how Jesus describes it: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Jesus isn’t so much imparting new spiritual wisdom here as much as he is quoting the common wisdom of his day. Aristotle wrote something very similar – almost word for word- about laying down one’s life for one’s friends almost three hundred years earlier.  For centuries, ancient philosophers had described the ideal, the truest friendship as love, self-sacrificial to the very point of death.

And that’s exactly what Jesus is preparing his friends for. He is about to lay down his life for them. For love. For friendship.

And he wants them to love in the same way. That’s the really unexpected part. 

Because, you know, the interesting thing about the word for “friend” in Greek is that it has both an active and a passive meaning. A friend is simultaneously the one who loves and the one who is loved, the lover and the beloved. There is an equality and a mutuality built into the very word. 

That’s what Jesus means when he says “I do not call you servants any longer.” Jesus is showing how friendship, how love, breaks down hierarchy. It started two chapters earlier when Jesus washed their feet, flipping the expected hierarchy of master and servant. And here, he destroys it completely. No servants. No masters.  Just friends. 

And not only in this inner circle, but on a cosmic scale as well. 

No longer is it going to be God up here and creation down here, with God the subject doing the loving and creation the object being loved. The truth revealed in Jesus, God-with-us, is that it’s both God and creation, both loving and being loved, both subjects and objects of the passion and pleasure and pain of love. Jesus reveals God’s desire for mutual love – deep and abiding and unexpected friendship.

And this unexpected friendship between God and creation keeps creating more unexpected friendships, keeps sowing love in places where love seemed impossible. 

We see it in Acts, with Peter and Cornelius. 

Friendship between them should have been impossible – a wealthy Roman military leader and a poor Jewish fisherman. Come on. How could they love each other?  How could they be vulnerable enough to allow themselves to be loved?  But the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them all. The love of God was bigger than every hierarchy and cultural barrier that separated them. Cornelius invited Peter. And Peter stayed with Cornelius and welcomed him, the very first Gentile to be baptized. They loved each other. And became friends.  An unexpected friendship that changed the course of Peter’s life. And changed the course of the church. 

And that’s exactly what Jesus wanted for Peter, when he called him his friend. And wants for all of us. 

He wants our joy to be complete – the joy of unexpected friendship.

I hope you have experienced this joy already. I hope you’ve had a  friendship that seemed to come out of nowhere–that overcame the barriers of our world that seeks to sort and divide. A friend who, as another ancient philosopher put it, doubled your joy and divided your grief.  

We believe that God’s friendship with creation, God’s love poured out for us and our love poured out in return, can create friendships – true friendships which otherwise would seem not just unexpected but impossible. Between those on opposite ends of the hierarchy. On opposite sides of borders. On opposite sides of front lines. 

And in our world, we are desperate for more unexpected friendships.

We need unexpected friendship – we need the mutual love of the Holy Spirit to break down the hierarchies that surround us – that never seem to change and keep us part.  To break down every way that we let gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, ability, religion, and politics keep us from loving each other. 

We need unexpected friendship – we need the love of God who became vulnerable, who invites us into mutual vulnerability. The love that risks being known and being hurt, that trust others with what is most tender in ourselves.  

We need unexpected friendship – we need the love of Jesus–who laid down his life.  The love that teaches us to lay down our own wants and desires and comforts out of care for each other. That trades happiness for joy.

That’s why Jesus commands us to love one another.

Not because we are servants to be commanded. After all, if friendship has broken down hierarchy, then commands aren’t really commands, are they?  And in case, love can’t be commanded. Love must be given freely or it isn’t love. 

Rather it is the will of God, the hope God has for humanity, that we love one another. And it becomes a self-fulfilling statement. When Jesus says, “You are my friends if you do what I command,” what he is saying is this: “If do what I’ve said, if you love one another, then you will be loved and loving – active and passive – beloved lovers – in a word, friends.”

Unexpected friends, let us love one another.   And our joy will be complete. 

In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.