No Greater Love

Propers: The Sixth Sunday of Easter, A.D. 2018 B

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

We live in an age of cheap friendship and cheap love.

I don’t mean to pick on social media, but it does offer us our clearest illustrations. Our user accounts often have hundreds, even thousands of “friends,” most of whom we wouldn’t know from Adam. They aren’t friends in any real sense. They aren’t even acquaintances.

Social media gives us innumerable opportunities to “love” things that we don’t really love: causes to affirm, accomplishments to acknowledge. But it doesn’t cost us anything. We share a ribbon, change a profile pic, and suddenly think ourselves activists. Virtue signaling, they call it, or better yet, hashtag activism. But can it be virtue if achieved only virtually? There’s no sacrifice, no real world result. And so it is not love, because we give nothing of ourselves. We just look trendy.

And because of this context, so very far removed from the world of our ancestors, today’s Gospel loses its teeth. Jesus says, “You are my friends.” Jesus says, “Go and love.” And we’re like, yeah, sure, whatever. Isn’t that the default? I’m friends with everybody. I love everything—except what I don’t love, that’s hate speech.

But the world of Jesus’ day, indeed the world of our grandparents’ day, had a very different understanding of friend. Romans didn’t have many friends. They had patrons and clients. They had allies and rivals. They had neighbors and fellow workers. But a friend was something rare. Something cherished.

The love of a good friend was considered greater than the love between husband and wife, between parent and child. A friend was someone closer to you than a brother. And that kind of love cost you, hurt you, because it made you vulnerable in a way that you weren’t toward anyone else. In those days, marriage was a hierarchy. Family was a hierarchy. All of life was made up of hierarchies. But not friendship. Friendship was closer than blood. Friendship was that rarest of things—the free and loving lifelong bond between equals.

It’s no great exaggeration to say that the life of a friend was often dearer to you than your own. And so, yes, friendships were rare. But they were of inestimable value. One true friend is worth ten thousand half-hearted loves.

When Jesus says to His disciples, “I do not call you servants any longer; you are My friends,” a gasp goes throughout the room. A shock. How can this Man say such things? They have seen Him calm the storm and walk on waves. They have seen Him throttle demons and raise the dead. Truly they have seen in Him the face of God on earth. They follow Him, yes, love Him, yes, even come to worship Him. But to be called His friends? Friends of the Messiah? Friends of God?

It is no less intimate than a marriage. It is as though the two now become one.

You know, this talk of Commandments—of obligations, of onerous demands laid out by Jesus in this farewell discourse—seems a heavy weight. To love one another, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends, would appear an impossible burden. It’s hard to imagine living in this way, forever pouring out oneself for one’s neighbor. Unless, of course, you’re in love. When you’re in love, that pain becomes joy.

Love is a sacrifice, after all, the willing choice to place another’s good before your own. But when you’re in love, that very pain is the fondest desire of your heart. It’s what you want to do, what you need to do. You give and give and give from the sheer joy of pouring yourself into your beloved, and your beloved pouring herself out into you. That’s why our word passion means at once both love and pain.

And so it is that Christ’s call for us to love one another, to lay down our lives for our friends, is not some sentiment, some saccharine, anodyne fluff designed to float us meaninglessly through a soft and spongy life. No! It is the call to high adventure! To go out and live bravely, to explore, to risk, to fight the good fight, forever finding the face of God hidden in our neighbor, forever pushing forward the frontier of the City and Kingdom of Christ.

We are called to a life of risk and pain, sacrifice and joy, bold new discoveries and ancient bedrock truths. And forever is our Lord’s command to “Go!” coupled inextricably with His promise that He is with us, in and around and above us, sending us out to the ends of the earth, gathering us in to the heart of the world. For we are His friends! And He lays down His life for us, every day. He pours His life into us, every day. He comes to us in Word and in water, in Spirit and in truth, in Body and in Blood, forever forgiving the darkness of sin, forever raising us up and out from the dead.

Why do we come to Church? Why believe in Christ? Because He is our friend. Every day He raises us to new life in Him. Every Sunday He meets us, here at this Altar, to lay down His life for our own. Every time we gather at this Font we are reborn. Every time we eat from this Table we are immortal. Rejoice, dear Christians, for you are the friends of God! He lays down His life for His friends. And in this infinite liberation, we are now freed in turn to lay down our lives for our friends.

Because what would life even be, if we had no friends for whom we would lay down our lives out of love?

Go and live as those who know that God is with us, and so no power on earth can hold us back, and no grave can hold us down.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.