Indeed, for each and every one of us, Covid has only intensified the loneliness that pervades our world. One psychotherapist describes it in stark terms: “We are living in a new Dark Age, in which the world is enduring a loss of love, a loss of tenderness . . . The yearning to love and to be loved is stifled and replaced by a constant watchfulness and defensiveness. Lonely people, belonging nowhere and to nobody, cope as best they can. The search for intimacy has never been so desperate.”[1] It sounds to me as if we at St. Ambrose have something to offer to a lonely world. Some might argue that church should be about God, not friendship. “If we simply need friends,” they might ask, “then why bother coming to church? You can make friends at school or in your neighborhood.” Well, let’s see what Jesus has to say about that.
As Jesus bids farewell to his disciples at the Last Supper, he gives them their instructions on how to live together in community. “Remain on in my love… [Jesus tells his friends.] I have said this to you that my joy may be yours and your joy may be fulfilled…. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” For the author of John’s Gospel, this “divine love” that Jesus has been talking about over the past few weeks in our lectionary is friendship! Yes! In Jesus, God comes to us as Friend.
In Greek, there are many words that we translate into English as “love.” You may remember some of them from C.S. Lewis’ book, The Four Loves. There’s eros, or sexual, romantic love. There’s storge, or affection, like I feel for my sweet baby granddaughter. There’s agape or self-giving love—charity—love for the sake of the other. And then there’s philia, or friendship-love. Our world tends to give a lot of air time to the excitement of eros and to the cuddly comfort of affection. Our theology, on the other hand, tends to be all about agape, calling us to imitate the self-giving love of God. Friendship, however, is often dismissed. “Who has time to spend on friendship?” we shrug, as we rush around in our busy lives. “That’s just for children’s playdates and teenage cliques.”
That’s not true for St. John the Evangelist, though. John uses both agape and philia interchangeably in his Gospel. When we read “beloved” in English, the Greek word is philos, “friend.” God’s beloved is “God’s friend.” The beloved disciple is “Jesus’ friend.” The relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is holy friendship. And in today’s Gospel, Jesus bestows that friendship with God upon us, and then commands us to bestow it upon one another. It is in friendship that God’s joy and our joy are fulfilled.
Now, before we get too carried away, let’s look more carefully at what this philia-love really is. Think for a minute of your best friends. What drew you together? What do you share? When you are away from your friend, what do you miss? What keeps your friendship going? When I think of my friends, I think first of sharing my true self with them: I know that with my friends I can be myself, in all of my weirdness, and that will be enough—they will love me for who I am. When I used to ask the teens in my youth group what was special about Sunday School or church camp, they always told me that they could be themselves with their church friends. They didn’t have to pretend. They could laugh and be silly without fearing ridicule. And that this is what kept them going through the tough times at school. I pray that as St. Ambrose friends, we can offer one another this same kind of relief, that we can provide a safe place for all, without pretense or fear of ridicule.
One definition of friendship is that it is about “risky caring and respectful give and take.”[2] Friends are willing to sacrifice something that one wants in order to make the other happy, and vice versa. There is a voluntariness and reciprocity to friendship. Here at St. Ambrose, we give up our precious time to help a friend in need. We compromise on music choices and service times to bring joy to our friends. Jesus says in our Gospel that there is no greater friendship than to lay down one’s life for one’s friend. And then he allows himself to be led away to be crucified. The goal is not the sacrificial suffering itself, however. Jesus’ goal was the healing of his community. When we make sacrifices for the sake of others, we do it not to suffer or to submit resentfully. Here at St. Ambrose, for example, we sit outside in the cold and in the heat for worship not because we have to, but in order to keep the vulnerable safe. We do it for the sake of our friends.
When I think about my friends, it’s clear that friendship grows out of a shared interest, out of a common bond of some kind: Young mothers in a children’s playgroup; men who play golf or watch football together; children with the same teachers and classroom experiences; teens who share the same interest in music. If we lose our common bond, the friendship weakens and bears no fruit. As C.S. Lewis writes, “Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers.”[3] It makes me wonder: What is our shared interest, our common bond, here at St. Ambrose? Is it maintaining our buildings or getting our personal needs met? Is it a shared vision of the past? I hope not. I pray that our common bond is friendship with Jesus: learning more about him, following his Way, worshiping God in his Name, serving as his hands and feet in the world, and expanding the circle of his friendship to the lost and lonely.
The best definition of friendship, I think, comes from the movie Shall We Dance. Susan Sarandon says, “We all need a witness to our lives.”[4] Friends are our witnesses: they know us for who we are, they love us through the everyday ups and downs. When I was a rather lonely child, I used to imagine that my deceased grandparents were watching me live my life. In my imagination, they would just watch and notice; they would keep me company from afar. We all need a loving witness. Jesus promises us in the Book of Acts, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” Jesus, too, needs our witness to his life. A circle of true friendship is never closed. It only improves with the addition of new friends. Otherwise, it becomes merely a clique. I pray that our circle of friends will grow as we continue to form ourselves as a community of true witnesses to the life of our Friend Jesus: in Boulder, in Colorado and in the west, and even to the remotest part of the earth. Amen.
[1] Brian Thorne, quoted in Margaret Coles, “Why Julian of Norwich is a Mystic for Troubled Times,” The Times, May 8, 2021.
[2] Dorothy Bass and Don C. Richter, Way to Live Leader’s Guide (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2002), 82.
[3] C. S. Lewis, found at https://www.cslewis.com/four-types-of-love.
[4] Quoted in David J. Wood, “The Promise of Friendship and the Practice of Ministry.” In The 2007 Princeton Lectures on Youth, Church, and Culture, 5.
