I’d like to share three short illustrations of friendship, for our reflection.
I will begin by reciting a poem from the nineteen-eighties. It is actually a verse of lyrics from a song. If you recognize this song, well, that might say something about your age, but please know that I am also old enough to be deeply familiar with this shard of folk wisdom. Here’s the poem:
Thank you for being a friend,
traveled down a road and back again.
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidante.
And if you threw a party,
and invited everyone you knew,
you would see the biggest gift would be from me,
and the card attached would say,
“Thank you for being a friend.”
What does this say about friendship? What does it tell us that a friend is? A friend—
Travels the roads of life with you, roads both high and low, roads both easy and difficult
A friend has a true heart
A friend is a pal, someone to whom you can tell important things
A friend throws parties with gifts
A friend brings big gifts to parties, with meaningful cards attached
It’s not such a bad definition, actually. All of these things are good things. I have friends like this. I strive to be a friend like this. Even the line about parties: I like parties! I miss them. I am not going to tell you that the theme song of “The Golden Girls” is a bad song. No way. I’m not that guy.
Here’s a second poem that might open up the idea of friendship a bit more. It’s another bit of free verse that stresses the central importance of friendship in our common life. Maybe you know this song, too:
So no one told you life was gonna be this way
Your job's a joke, you're broke
Your love life's DOA
It's like you're always stuck in second gear
When it hasn't been your day, your week, your month
Or even your year, but
I'll be there for you
(When the rain starts to pour)
I'll be there for you
(Like I've been there before)
I'll be there for you
('Cause you're there for me too)
Friendship in this song accepts the “Golden Girls” formula, but it doubles down on the idea that friendship is about being there when life is especially hard. That rings true. The six Generation-X “Friends” who made this song famous were always great cheerleaders for one another, especially when their (kind of adorable) 20-something problems stressed them out the most. They weren’t bad friends. And I love these Friends. Especially Monica. And Phoebe.
But I want to go deeper.
And so we come to my third example of friendship, before I turn to Jesus himself. Andrew and I recently watched a Stephen King thriller, the TV series, “Mr. Mercedes.” One of my favorite scenes happens at an Irish pub, where Bill and Ida, old neighbors and old friends, go to soothe their sorrows after Ida suffers a painful loss. Bill is played by actor Brendan Gleeson. At one point Bill gets up and sings an old song for Ida, filling the pub with the blend of wry humor and reliable melancholy that is one of the great gifts of the Irish to the whole world. Bill is, for Ida, a friend who truly understands her, and he typically demonstrates that understanding by revealing easily to her his own frailty, his own ready tendency to mess up for no good reason, his real and relatable sadness and regret. If Bill is your friend, then you have a friend who knows your own ridiculous, even maddening flaws, because he obviously has a set of his own. He sees the real you, and he accepts and even sings sad songs to the real you.
Bill and Ida speak the truth to one another. They both get it. Often enough they quarrel. They can acknowledge their own absurdities. They are friends, and their friendship goes far deeper than gifts and greeting cards, or even just being around when times are tough. They come fairly close to defining and living friendship the way Jesus does.
A true friend, Jesus in John teaches us, is bold. And she is bold in two ways: a true friend is “bold in both speech and action.”* Theologian and biblical scholar Gail O’Day articulates this for us in her study of friendship in the Gospel according to John. O’Day helps us go deeper in our understanding of Christian friendship, which we can sometimes avoid or ignore when an easier connection, like two people just being there for each other, is already a powerful relationship. Now, sitcom friends are good friends! But Jesus goes deeper still. It’s important for us to understand that when Jesus calls us friends, he is not just teaching us to support and encourage each other, and he’s not just assuring us that he will be there for us when times are tough. (Though he will, to be sure.) Life in Christ, life in Christian community, Easter life: this life both demands and blesses us with ultimate friendship.
Gail O’Day tells us that in the Greek and Roman cultures of the first century, friendship (in Greek, philoi) was distinguished from mere flattery (in Greek, kolax). At its best, ultimate friendship is philoi: it includes courageous honesty: you can tell a true friend what they need to hear, and if you are a true friend, you also can hear what you need to hear.
So yes, when Jesus says he will lay down his life for his friends, we can be sure that he will do exactly that, on the cross, rising up from death to life in an act of immense, ultimate friendship. And yes, when he says that there is no greater love than this, he means that we too should lay down our lives for our friends. For the first Christians, this was literal: they were martyrs, witnesses to the faith who went all the way. Even in our own time we see this happen, if less often. We pray for essential workers: can we see and truly appreciate, as we pray for them, the immensity of their love? We pray for social-justice advocates, and strive to be advocates ourselves. Can we see and truly appreciate the immensity of love that this faithful work asks of us?
But there’s more! There’s more meaning to be explored in this ultimate understanding of friendship, this elevation of friendship above all other relationships of love, including romantic and family love.
Jesus first gives his new commandment, that we love one another—that we practice philoi—between two terrible betrayals: Judas had just gone out into the night, and Peter was about to deny Jesus three times. We are meant to see that the command of ultimate friendship is given in the immediate context of awful violation of that same friendship. We are not just to be the kind of friends who bring great gifts to parties, or buy a beer for our buddy Ross when Rachel breaks up with him. We are to be friends who confront the worst things we do to each other, and strive to make a strong repair. We are to be friends who challenge each other, with honesty and authenticity.
And this is a form of laying down one’s life, too. If I am the kind of friend who will tell you what you need to hear, and hear what I need to hear, that is a kind of sacrifice. It is a willingness to lay down and be vulnerable to you. It is a crucible of intimacy that takes me out of an easy place of safety. It is the painful but resurrecting power of friendship in and with Jesus himself.
Jesus is intense. He is loving and comforting too: again I will say, I love my friends, sometimes with simplicity and even silliness, and I won’t trash-talk sweet sitcoms. But the work we do here in Christian community: our engagement in Sacred Ground, our pursuit of climate justice, our extended hands to neighbors in need, our willingness to be honest and brave with one another, our faithful self-confrontation and confession—all of this deepens our ultimate friendship with God, and one another, and the living world around us. Sometimes it is quite hard. But Jesus tells us why he forms us in this way, and it is truly Good News:
“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
Building friendships like these takes us into deeper joy. The hard work, the courage, the challenge of this bracing intimacy: it can be rough, but we are building strong bonds of fellowship, held together in God’s firm embrace. Life rises up gloriously when we respond to God’s invitation into ultimate friendship.
This is the deep and nourishing gladness we celebrate in this glorious garden, filled with Resurrection light. This is why we sing, with such palpable relief, our Easter song, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
***
* Gail R. O’Day, “Jesus as Friend in the Gospel of John,” https://www.richardmburgess.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/jn_15_ODay_-_Jesus_as_friend_in_the_gospel_of_John.124193245.pdf.
“The Golden Girls” lyrics by Andrew M. Gold.
“Friends” lyrics by Michael Jay Skloff, David L. Crane, Marta Fran Kauffman, Allee Willis, Philip Ronald Solem, Danny C. Wilde.
Photo: Bill and Ida, “Mr. Mercedes.” (2017.) Marty Bowen, David E. Kelley, et al., executive producers. Audience Network.
Preached on the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year B), May 9, 2021, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17