Today’s
Gospel is very dear to me; it is the Gospel I chose at my ordination. The verse in which Jesus says, “I no longer
call you slaves . . . I have called you friends” - think about how awesome that
is! The God of the universe, omnipotent,
omniscient, omnipresent, and every other “omni” you can think of, and He calls
us friends. In some ways, it would be
like you and me calling an ant or some tiny creature, friend. We are so different than a tiny creature; to
them we probably seem all powerful (unless it’s a yellow jacket buzzing around
our heads. But, you get the point.) Nevertheless, we share things in common with
a tiny creature: we live, we move, we breathe, we work and go about our
business. Not so much different than
that between God and us.
In that
sameness, God’s love is so abundant He desires for us to experience it; not to
be overwhelmed by it, but to come to know Him – face to face. There are numerous places in Scripture about
friendship and the two which stand out the most is that between Abraham and God
and, from today’s Gospel, Jesus and his disciples.
Abraham, as
you may know is one of my favorite characters in all of Scripture – a simple
man, though very wise and very rich, yet he had an unshakeable faith. It is a faith God recognizes and, more so,
blesses him with. You know the stories: God
asks, Abraham does. But it is the
conversation between the two of them that is remarkable. Before God decides to destroy Sodom and
Gomorrah, He first decides to visit Abraham thinking, “Why should I hide this
thing from my servant Abraham?” It is
the conversation in which Abraham pleads with God, “Will you destroy the city
if there are 50 righteous people, what about 40, what about 30, what about 20?”
all the way down to 10. It’s not the
numbers that are significant, but rather the conversation. That God would stand there face to face with
Abraham and allow a negotiation to take place with a tiny creature is
remarkable. Something to surely reflect
on, for this conversation between God and Abraham was not just for them, but it
is for us as well.
These
stories of friendship repeat in Scripture and in another place one can see the
friendship between Jonathan and King David as something very special. Jonathan pledges his life to David when he
learns that Saul, his father, intends to kill David. Jonathan joins his very soul to David, they
become blood brothers. Each looks out
for the other as looking out for his own life.
Don’t we all need more friends like that? And I hope and pray we all have at least one
or even a few.
Finally,
Jesus himself, God in the flesh, visible to his people, says, “I call you
friends.” It almost brings tears to my
eyes, that Jesus says that to me. I feel
like St. Peter quite often, “Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” And Jesus always replies, “Come follow me.”
We are not
just simply friends with God, but also with each other, for we are friends in
Christ. I leave you with one final quote
from C.S. Lewis, another favorite of mine.
Here he speaks of us as friends: “Is any pleasure on earth as great as a
circle of Christian friends by a good fire?”
I would reply, no there is not any pleasure as great as that, and we
know this because we are here in our circle of fire which we call the
mass. God bless you my friends.
Fr. John
Image comes
from The Return of the King (movie), that of Samwise carrying his friend Frodo
up Mt. Doom because he can no longer make it on his own. It speaks clearly of what friendship is,
carrying one another. It is what God did
for Abraham, what Jonathan did for David, and what Christ did for us all.
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