Anybody recognize these lyrics?

 

When you're down and troubled and you need some loving care
And nothing, nothing is going right
Close your eyes and think of me and soon I will be there
To brighten up even your darkest night

You just call out my name and you know wherever I am
I'll come running to see you again
Winter, spring, summer or fall; all you have to do is call
And I'll be there
You've got a friend.[1]

 

I’d like you to take just a moment and think about a person in your life whom you consider to be a friend – and I mean a true friend, not just an acquaintance or a co-worker.

 

And consider – what is it about this person that makes him or her your friend?  What qualities does that person have?  What are the special elements of your relationship?

 

A Middle School English teacher asked her class to write imaginative definitions of a friend.  One student said, “A friend is a pair of open arms in a society of armless people.”  Another wrote.  “A friend is a mug of hot coffee on a damp, cloudy day.”  Yet another said, “A friend is a hot bath after you have walked 20 miles on a dusty road.”

 

How would you define friendship?  How might you put into words the essence of your relationship with your friend?

 

Mark Twain once wrote, “The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime – if not asked to lend money!”

 

Friendship.  It is a wonderful thing.  It must surely be one of God’s greatest gifts to us.  And yet, true friendships are not easy to develop.  A couple of years ago, a clergy journal shared some interesting information about making friends: 60% of men over age 30 cannot identify a single person they would call a close friend.  Of the 40% who do list friends, most were made during childhood or school years.

 

Most women can identify five or six people whom they call close friends, and yet a closer look shows that the basis of a lot of these relationships is functional; the relationship fulfills some sort of practical purpose.

 

Friendship – authentic friendship – can be very elusive for many of us.  Which makes Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel lesson even more poignant and meaningful.  He says to his disciples, “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, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”

 

Jesus calls his disciples friends.  In fact in the bible, the people who followed Jesus are called “friends” before they are ever called “Christians.” 

 

What are the qualities of a good friendship?  As you were thinking of your special friend a few minutes ago, did you come up with any distinctive characteristics of your relationship?  Here are some ideas.

 

For a start, friends care about each other’s welfare.  If you are my friend, I want the best for you; I want people to think well of you, and I want no harm to come to you.

 

Friends share experiences.  C. S. Lewis, the noted scholar and Christian writer, said that “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What!  You, too?  I thought I was the only one!’”

 

Deep friendships are often forged in the midst of common suffering.  Soldiers returning from battle often speak warmly of the friendships they made in the midst of the ugliness of war.

 

In addition to sharing experiences, friends also share what is inside.  Friends speak their minds to each other openly, fully, and without fear or embarrassment.  I know that I can share with my best friend my wildest dreams and my greatest hopes, my deepest sorrows and my darkest secrets – and he (yes, my best friend is my husband, Peter) – and he will not think I’m crazy or strange but will love me anyway, just as I am, warts and all.

 

To be friends at the deepest level requires that there be a certain level of mutuality, of sameness and kinship of spirit.  To quote C. S. Lewis again, “Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; friends are side by side, absorbed in some common interest.”

 

Friends hold each other accountable.  We expect our friends to be faithful to the friendship, and to keep their promises.  Have you ever been let down by a friend?  I know I have; it happens all the time in friendships.  And our disappointment at being let down by a friend, or another person’s disappointment at being let down by us – often strains or can even break the relationship.  Friendships can be sustained only when both friends keep up their ends of the bargain.

 

And friendship often requires sacrifice of some sort; in some rare cases, even the supreme sacrifice.  In our passage this morning, Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

 

During the Viet Nam War, a rural village had been bombarded with mortar shells, and some shells landed on an orphanage run by missionaries.  The missionaries and a few children were killed outright.  Several other children were wounded, including an 8-year-old girl who had multiple injuries and was bleeding profusely.

 

In response to a runner sent to a nearby town, a Navy doctor and nurse came to the village and determined that the young girl was in critical need of an immediate blood transfusion.  While neither American had the right blood type, several of the uninjured children did.  The American doctor and nurse, struggling to overcome the language barrier, explained to the frightened children that the girl would die without some blood; would any of them be willing to donate their blood to help?

 

Wide-eyed silence met their request; and then a little hand went slowly up in the air.  A young boy named Heng lay down on a pallet and allowed the nurse to insert a needle into his vein.  He then shuddered and started to sob uncontrollably.  Something seemed terribly wrong.  Just then a Vietnamese nurse arrived to help, and seeing Heng’s distress, she spoke to him in his native language, soothing and reassuring him.  Heng stopped crying, and a look of relief spread over his face.  The Vietnam nurse explained to the Americans, “Heng thought he was dying.  He thought you asked him to give all his blood to save the little girl.”  The Navy nurse asked, “But why would he be willing to do that?”  The Vietnamese nurse repeated the question to Heng, who answered simply, “Because she is my friend.”  What a friend little Heng was to his classmate!

 

Do you have a friend like that?  You do, you know.  His name is Jesus, and he was willing to give up his life for his friends – and for us.  And he showed all the qualities necessary for true friendship.

 

Friendships are sustained when we can trust our friends completely, and we can be sure that Jesus will never let us down.  God in Jesus cares deeply about our welfare and wants the best for us.

 

And we can tell our friend Jesus anything.  We need not worry about the suitability or eloquence or subject of our prayers.  We can tell Jesus what is deep within our hearts – our fears, our anger, our doubts – and he will love us anyway, warts and all.

 

In Jesus, God came to live with us as one of us, in order to share our experiences.  Jesus lived a life in which his friendships mattered, and just as he shared a vision of the Kingdom of God with his disciples, he wants to share that kinship of spirit with us, too.

 

Jesus knew how to be a friend, and he trusted his friends.  He tolerated his friends’ weaknesses and upheld their strengths, and he chose to give up himself for his friends.

 

Just as friends need each other, Jesus needed his disciples to carry on his work.  And he needs us today to be his hands and feet and body as his church, carrying on his message and doing his work in the world.

 

Jesus makes only one condition of his friendship.  He says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”  Jesus simply, without options, commands us to love one another.  If we are to be his followers, loving one another is not optional.  He says, if you want to be my friend, then be a friend to my other friends.

 

The friendship that Jesus offered his followers, and the church in turn offers to everyone, is extraordinarily inclusive.  He looked at all of humanity – even those rejected by society, those on the margins of life – and said, “You, all of you, are my friends.  I give you to one another.  Now go, and be friends with each other in my name.”

 

And that is how it happens in Christ’s church.  We are called to make friends with people who we would not otherwise meet.  We are called to make friends with people we might not otherwise choose to associate with, or with people we might not even particularly like.  But we are called into a relationship of friendship with them nonetheless – relationship based on trust, and loyalty, and love.  This is the part of the unique nature of the church as a kinship of people who are called together, in friendship, by the grace of God and the love of Christ.

 

Today, we have welcomed 9 new people into our church family.  Before God and this congregation, these 9 new members have made vows – just as the 161 members of this congregation have before them – to participate in the life and mission of this family of God.  And we as a congregation have, in turn, promised our friendship and prayers to them.

 

And so to our newest members, it is my prayer that you will find faithful friends within this worshiping community; friends who will share in your laughter and your joy as well as your times of pain and sorrow.  And it is my prayer that you will be friends in return.

 

One last story.  During the Holocaust, a teenager from Poland named Vladislav was recruited by the Germans to supervise 30 Jewish women who were put to work as laborers at the concentration camp where they had been imprisoned.  Vladislav not only felt responsible for the women, but he grew close to them and smuggled milk, bread, and vegetables into them to keep up their strength.  One day, one of his workers, Deborah, contracted a mysterious infection.  Vladislav was beside himself.  He knew if the Germans discovered the open lesions on her arms, they would kill her; but he was prohibited from calling a doctor to help her.  He had to cure her on his own – but how?  His solution was to put himself at risk.  He infected himself with her blood, and when the lesions appeared, he went to a doctor in town.  The doctor prescribed medication, which Vladislav then shared with Deborah.  Both were cured and both survived the war.  What a friend Vladislav was to Deborah!

 

What a friend Jesus is to us!  And what a friend he calls us to be to one another!

 

Amen.