In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Jesus said to his disciples, . . . . ‘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, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends . . . .’”
It’s hard to overstate how much Jesus’s words stand at odds with the prevailing mood in our culture when it comes to love. For decades now, we might as well have read collectively from a different gospel. And in that newfound gospel, what we hear usually goes something like this: “Greater love hath no one than this, that one find the right romantic partner and settle down and get married and live happily ever after.” Or else it goes something like this: “Greater love hath no one than this, that one become a parent to children.”
I suspect that for most of us, thinking about the word “love” probably conjures up something similar. The romanticized love of two partners for one another. The idealized love of a parent for a child. But it’s especially noticeable when it comes to romantic relationships. We talk about finding love, falling in love, falling out of love, and other gerundial phrases ending in love. We listen to love songs, we write love letters, we call people lovebirds. Love is in the air as flowers blossom, and the Lion King has cuddly teenage lions feeling the love tonight. Free love, marital love, all this love talk—all referring to the same conceptual cloud, the same group of things, in whatever combination we happen to find them.
It’s no surprise that it stings so much, then, when those are absent. Stores and commercials place so much on emphasis on Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day. And none of them are walks in the park when it turns out that these things that we hold up to be the be-all, end-all of human connection are actually deficient in our own lives. That’s not to say we shouldn’t celebrate them if we find them helpful or beneficial. But it is to say that if we don’t find them so useful, it may be reassuring to realize that we’re not alone. As a friend of mine once said about his own life one time in a sermon, the psalmist’s words—“Though my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will sustain me”[i]—take on a different meaning when your father and mother have, in fact, forsaken you.
It’s important to realize that this is the lens that we bring, so many of us at least, to our gospel reading today. It’s in the air we breathe and in the water we drink. And that’s what should make it so surprising when Jesus says what he says today. Even Scripture talks elsewhere about Christ as the spouse of the Church and about God as Father and mother. But when Jesus talks about the depths of God’s love, he doesn’t compare it to marriage or to parenthood. He compares it to friendship: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” And what’s more: “I do not call you servants any longer . . . but I have called you friends.”
Think for a moment about how extraordinary that is. The God of the Universe, the Lord of heaven and earth, wills to be our friend. If that sounds a bit too pedestrian or limited for our tastes, that may testify to our own pedestrian and limited understanding of what true friendship entails.
To that point, it might help to think about what a good friendship usually involves. In one of my first classes in law school, my professor was a former politician, and he often joked about the way politicians talk about one another: “‘Well, Governor so-and-so and Senator so-and-so are good friends of mine.’ But that’s ridiculous!” he’d say. “They’re not your friends. They’re your acquaintances. Your friends are the people you go get drinks with or talk about your life problems to.” And there’s something to that: friends as companions, people with whom we break bread and so forth.
From Aristotle to Aquinas, the classical tradition has often identified five hallmarks of friendship.[ii] First, “every friend wishes one’s friend to be and to live.” As Josef Pieper put it, “It is good that you exist.” Second, a friend “desires good things for one’s friend.” In other words, we wish them well on top of being glad they’re alive. Third, a friend “does good things to one’s friends.” Not just wishing them well, but actually doing good by them. Fourth, a friend “takes pleasure in another friend’s company.” We’re glad they exist, they’re alive, and that they’re nearby. There’s pleasure in abiding together. And fifth, a friend “is of one mind with another friend, rejoicing and sorrowing in almost the same things.” They go through the ups and downs of life together. Or as Saint Paul puts it, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”[iii]
And note, these marks of friendship aren’t limited to the people we go out to dinner with or the ones we talk to on the phone necessarily. They include our so-called friends, but also our roommates or dormmates, or coworkers or colleagues. They include our mothers, our fathers, our other parents and grandparents, our partners and spouses. As long as we do all these things and others do in kind, and to the extent they actually happen, there’s more than the weak links that tie cubicle mates to each other. There’s more than the emotionally intense bonds that tie lovers to one another. There’s more, even, than the strongest bonds of affection that bind many mothers to their children and vice-versa. There is something in these friendships quite close to the divine. There is something exceptionally near to God.
And when we apply these things to God, there’s nothing buddy-buddy about that. For us, it means looking at God and say, “it is good that you exist.” It means desiring good things for God, namely that God be praised and glorified, and more than just desiring that God be praised and glorified, actually praising and glorifying God. Or as Jesus says, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” Why? Because when a friend tells us something is hurtful to them and we ignore them, that hardly shows our love for them; but when a friend tells us they love something and we do it, that shows our devotion to them. And this friendship means taking pleasure in God’s company—to delight both in prayer and in God’s works. It means being of the same mind with God, to rejoice when God rejoices in goodness and mercy and loving-kindness, and to sorrow when God sorrows in sin and despair and death.
And note that the same thing is true for God. And what an incredible blessing this is. It means that God also looks at us and says, “it is good that you exist.” It means that God also desires good things for us, namely that we might have life and have it abundantly, and more than just desiring it, that God actually blesses us richly even as we face trials and tribulations. It means that God also takes pleasure in our company—imagine that!—that God is pleased when we draw near to the throne of grace with boldness, when we approach God in prayer, when we delight in God’s work in and around us. And above all, it means that God also wishes to be of the same mind as us—that God truly rejoices when we rejoice and weeps whenever we weep.
That is true friendship. That is true love. And that is the love that Jesus talks about having for each of us and wanting to have for each of us. We witness that love throughout our earthly pilgrimage in the bonds that we share one for another. On this Mother’s Day, we’re reminded of that in our secular calendar. We experience it day to day in the affection we have for those near and dear to us, whatever familial or social connections we share or don’t. But it’s important to remember that this love—the love of God toward us in Jesus Christ, the friendship of God—is one that encompasses, and embraces, and surpasses all these other bonds that we have, the bonds that link us by blood, by race, by nationality, by language, by political affiliation, by sports, by employers, by whatever the relevant group may be. That love unites us and makes us of one mind and one heart in Christ Jesus, the one “who fills all in all.”[iv] In that friendship, as Saint Paul reminds us, “[t]here is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”[v]
Jesus said to his disciples, just as Jesus says to us now, “I do not call you servants any longer . . . but I have called you friends.”
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[i] Ps. 27:14 (BCP).
[ii] See generally Thomas Aquinas, S. Th. II-II, q. 25, a. 7.
[iii] Rom. 12:15.
[iv] Eph. 1:23.
[v] Gal. 3:28.