"Friends and Lovers"

Tomorrow is a very powerful day for many people, a day that means much more than just a day off work or a three day weekend. We celebrate Memorial Day tomorrow, and for those of you who have lost friends and lovers, it's often a day of deep emotion, a day for recalling fond memories and once again bidding farewell. It's a powerful day.

This morning's passage from the Gospel of John is part of what's called "The Farewell Discourse" of Jesus. He has gathered in the Upper Room with a small group of his closest friends, and he's declaring his love for them. "I call you my friends," he says. "I have shared my love with you, and when I'm gone, I want you to love each other in the same way." That intimate group of friends was the first Christian church, and the words Jesus spoke to them echo down through the centuries to us, to every Christian and every Christian church that has followed. "You are my friends. Love one another, even as I have loved you."

Friendship is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't come easily for a lot of people. A recent study of the life cycles of American men showed that friendship was largely noticeable by its absence! Another study states that it is very difficult for a man and a woman to develop a close friendship without struggling with the romantic images projected upon them by society. It's especially difficult for a man and a woman to be friends when they're both married or living in a committed relationship with someone else. Women tend to do better when it comes to friendship. Many women have said that the love they share with their best friends is nearly as important to them as the love they feel for their spouse! (1)

Friendship is incredibly important. It comforts, nurtures and heals. Friendship can even save your life, and that's where the church comes in. Jesus called his disciples friends and commanded them to love one another. Isn't that interesting? Of everything Jesus ever taught, this is his one and only commandment - to love God and to love one another. It's not a suggestion and it's not an option, it's a commandment, and it's the defining characteristic of what it means to be a church! "By this the world will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another." The church is where we're supposed to be friends and lovers . . . and it works! Survey after survey has indicated that people are drawn to church because it's a place where love and friendship are offered. Studies show that friendship counts more as a reason for joining than worship, music, activities or preaching. I believe it's true in our own church. Whenever we have an Inquirer's Class or a new members reception it's the same. People say they started out church shopping and never got beyond their first visit here. They say it's the warmth and the friendliness of the church that draws them back.

But, friendship is not enough. It has to be friendship with a difference. To paraphrase the words Jesus once spoke about peace: "Friendship I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. My friendship I give to you!" In other words, it's friendship with a spiritual dimension, based on the love and friendship of Jesus Christ.

Think of the qualities you associate with human friendship and then apply them to the way you think about your relationship with God. That's the advice of Francois Fenelon, who advises us to

Tell [God] all that is in your heart, as one unloads one's heart to a dear friend. People who have no secrets from each other never lack for subjects of conversation; they do not weigh their words, because there is nothing to be kept back. Neither do they seek for something to say; they talk out of the abundance of their heart - without consideration, just what they think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God. (2)

There's a Greek word for this kind of intimate spiritual friendship when it occurs in a human context - it's koinonia, and it's a word that has special meaning for Anni and me, because that was the name of a coffee house in downtown Portland where Anni was going to college back in the sixties. My memories of Koinonia House, which are obviously colored by the company I was keeping, are that it was a very romantic kind of place. There were great singers and musicians at Koinonia House, and a lot of very interesting and diverse coffee house types used to hang out there, with the added dimension that many of them were Christians. That's the way it was supposed to be, because the word koinonia means fellowship, communion or sharing, and the spiritual dimension of koinonia is the fellowship or communion you share with Christ and other Christians through the Holy Spirit. You could sit there with lovers and friends, listening to some guitar player singing Suzanne from the stage and overhear snatches of philosophical conversations coming from adjoining tables that could easily drift from Nietzsche and Kafka to Jesus Christ.

Sounds almost like a Methodist coffee hour in Ashland, doesn't it? There are similarities. The folks we find ourselves sitting next to and talking with in church are a pretty diverse crowd, and they're often people we'd never be friends with in any other context. Sometimes we find ourselves working together on committees, striving for the same goals, even though we have very little in common outside the church. It's the koinonia of the Holy Spirit that makes us brothers and sisters, friends and lovers, and it happens through our fellowship and spiritual communion with Jesus Christ.

The world offers us so many attractive and appealing images of what it means to be friends and lovers but, lest we forget, after the commandment to love one another even as he has loved us, Christ adds one more sentence, in order to make the profound implications of koinonia perfectly clear: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." What does that mean? Obviously, we hear it as an allusion to the sacrificial love of Christ when he died on a cross, but there are other examples of how you and I lay down our lives for the ones we love. I'll close with this account written by a man who made a visit to one of his closest friends in the hospital. It's an experience many of you have had, a story some of you could have written.

When Frank pushed himself into an upright position in the hospital bed, the heart monitor's cursive line disintegrated into an erratic scribble. His wife, Mary, returned to the room and drew a chair to his bedside. "I'm thirsty," Frank said. Mary lifted the straw to his lips as he pulled the oxygen mask aside. The medicine was making him sick. She fetched the basin, wrapped a firm arm around his spasm-wracked shoulders and mopped the sweat from his forehead.

So in the end love comes down to this, I thought: not some Clark Gable appraisal of Vivien Leigh or some sex symbol's seductive pose, but "Help me sit up." In the end love is not a smoldering glance across the dance floor, the clink of crystal, a leisurely picnic spread upon summer's clover. It's the squeeze of a hand. I'm here. I'll be here no matter how long the struggle. I'm in it for the duration. Water? You need water? Here. Drink. Let me straighten your pillow." (3)

"This is my commandment, that you love one another even as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God - for friends and lovers. Amen.

(1) Cited by Patricia E. de Jong, First Congregational Church of Berkeley, "What A Friend," May 4, '97
(2) Francois Fenelon, "On Prayer and Meditation," quoted in The Interpreter's Bible, vol. 8, p. 725
(3) Mike Harden, Columbus Dispatch, quoted by Don Shelby, 1st UMC, Santa Monica, Ca.