Friends
“…I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends….”
John 15:15
I suppose I have all kinds of friends–new friends, longtime friends, close friends and acquaintances who are also friends. I have a few friends from my college or graduate school years whom I have not seen in years, but when chance or providence puts us together, we seem to be able to pick up where we left off decades ago. I am blessed, as are many of you, that my wife is my best friend, but there is one Friend like no other.
In 1855, Dubliner Joseph Scriven, wrote a hymn many of us know by heart.
“What a Friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry,
Everything to God in prayer!”
As close as some of my friends are, none of them can bear by sins and my griefs. And to none do I carry my prayers.
As the shadow of the Cross loomed over our Lord, He made a startling statement, “I have called you friends…” Search through history, study your textbooks, read other Holy Writs, and you will not find deities reaching to their worshippers as a friend. Ancient Jews in Jesus’ day would have known the words of Proverbs 18:24, “…there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother…,” but most of them would have never thought of Yahweh as that kind of friend.
Yet, Jesus changed all of that. God zipped Himself into a suit of flesh to live among us because He wanted more than a relationship at a distance; He wanted something closer than anyone could have ever imagined.
I do not know about you, but I need that kind of friend because many of my friends cannot be the kind of Friend Jesus is. For above all, Jesus is trustworthy with all that we carry to Him. In other words, this “Friend,” Who is also our “God,” already knows everything there is to know about us. He is the one incomparable “Other” whom we can trust with our darkest thoughts. Why is that important?
Brennan Manning (d. 2013) was a Franciscan priest, author and speaker. In an amazingly frank and honest assessment of how important it is to come to terms with the one in the mirror in the shadow of the grace and mercy of Jesus, he wrote:
“Is there anyone I can level with? Anyone I date tell that I am benevolent and malevolent, chaste and randy, compassionate and vindictive, selfless and selfish, that beneath my brave words lives a frightened child…that I have blackened a friend’s character, betrayed a trust, violated a confidence, that I am tolerant and thoughtful, a bigot and a blowhard, that I hate hard rock?”[1]
He goes on to warn of the danger of self-loathing that can arise from not coming clean with Jesus.
“Sensing that if I bare my soul, I will be abandoned by my friends and ridiculed by my enemies, I remain in hiding, borrowing from the cosmetic kit to put on my pretty face. I veil my unstated distrust behind a cheerful countenance, mask my fears behind sanguine pretense, and present a false self that is mostly admirable, mildly prepossessing, and superficially happy. Later I hate myself for my flagrant dishonesty.
“Who can I turn to? In what may be the most stunning sentence in the entire Bible, Jesus says, ‘I call you my friend,’
“… Is this not the dream that we all share? Someday, somewhere, I am going to meet that person who really understands me – understands the words I speak and even the words I leave unspoken. The Gospel proclaims that Jesus of Nazareth is the fulfillment of that dream.”[2]
St. Augustine once wrote, “A friend is someone who knows everything about you and totally accepts you as you are.”
What the Gospel and what the Friend Jesus offers us is an acceptance and a love that knows no boundary line. As long as we are willing to lower the drawbridges of our lives and really let the King of Kings and Lord of Lords enter the palaces of our hearts, we will find what the offer of His friendship actually means–and what it can actually do. When we say “yes” to Jesus’ friendship, by laying ourselves bare before Him, we open the door for a transformation and healing of all our spiritually dark and diseased places.
To quote Manning once more:
“Raw honesty with Jesus about our doubts and anxieties, our lust and laziness, our shabby prayer life and stale religiosity, our mixed motives and divided hearts is the risk we take in the certainty of being acceptable and accepted. It is the full and mature expression of invincible trust. Jesus is the friend who will never fail, the faithful one who will never be lacking in fidelity, even when people are unfaithful to him, the stranger to self-hatred who estranges us from self-hatred.”[3]
In other words, if we can learn to trust Jesus fully with all that we are, we will come to experience not just His acceptance of us, but His love of us; and in doing so, we begin to accept and love ourselves, and slowly but surely be transformed into the disciples Jesus calls us to be.
Having a friend in Jesus brings peace and wholeness, shalom.
Think of a world of friends who accepted and loved one another without reserve. I very much suspect that is what God’s Kingdom looks like. It begins by opening your heart to Jesus’ Friendship. Have you done that? Have you done that? (That was not a rhetorical question.) If so, thanks be to God. If not, why wait? Why wait one minute?
A Prayer
Dear Lord Jesus, the truest of all friends,
You called your disciples friends.
Give me both the courage and humility to accept Your friendship.
Courage to unveil my true self to You;
humility to receive Your grace and mercy.
Redeem my past, by the power of Your most perfect love;
made known in Your death on the Cross.
For as You taught us, ‘greater love, hath no one, than to lay down one’s life for a friend,” (John 15:13).
So enable me, Lord Jesus, to receive that love – the greatest of all loves,
that in doing so, I may know the peace and joy
of your everlasting friendship.
Amen.[4]
[1] Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child (Colorado Springs, CO, 1994), p. 163-164
[2] Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust (New York: HarperOne, 2000), p. 102.
[3] Ibid., p. 103.
[4] Written by Russ Levenson, Jr., c. 2021.
