On friendship

 6th Sunday of Easter– Eucharist – 5.v.2024

(Acts 10.44-48; 1 John 5.1-6; John 15.9-17)

Some words from today’s Gospel:

“You are my friends.... I do not call you servants any longer, … I have called you friends…”

Forget for a moment the words I’ve missed out – it’s the emphasis on friendship that concerns me here… Here’s a poem by a priest, R S Thomas, who had something of a reputation for grouchiness:

A pen appeared, and god said

"Write what it is to be

Man." And my hand hovered

long over the page

until there, like footprints

of the lost traveller, letters

took shape on the page’s

blankness and I spelled out

the word "lonely" And my hand moved

to erase it, but the voices

of all those waiting at life’s

window cried out loud “It is true.”

This is R.S.Thomas’s poem, “The Word.” Pretty well the antithesis of those words of Jesus I first quoted. Thomas was writing not just as a poet but as a priest who wrestled with the human condition and the barriers we find in communication with God and other people. What he says is what people often want to avoid saying. Where we try to be chirpy and answer the question, “How are you?” with that expected non-threatening response, “Fine,” Thomas instead is embarrassingly honest… “Write what it is to be a man”… “and I spelled out the word ‘lonely.’

I wonder how R S Thomas would fare if he were going through the selection process for ordination today. One of the questions candidates for ordained ministry are asked when they get to the stage of facing a diocesan selection panel concerns how they relate to other people. How are relationships in their family? And what about “friendships”? It’s the interpretation they give to that question which has interested me. Giving their answer, people will say they have anything from two or three close friends to many hundreds. It used to be the Christmas card list that could get out of control. Now people can’t afford the stamps for that, but instead people might reckon up the hundreds or even thousands of “Facebook friends” they have. But do they count? What constitutes a “friend”? Sometimes you might just think, I’ve got the wrong people on this list! When people start a speech off by addressing everyone as “Friends,” you might wonder whether they really have you in mind – and if so, what do they mean by “friend”? It’s a warning to politicians who might well come out the worse for wear if their audience is truly honest, and to clergy who address their entire Parish Magazine readership as “My Dear Friends…” – and then put the same letter before the whole world on the Internet. A businessman once said to me, “I don’t have friends, just acquaintances…” That’s a depressing observation, not least for its honesty. In our churches I hope we can do better, but there is a trap where in seeking to be friends with everyone, you end up being friends with no one in particular. 

Friendships can mark us and form us as the people we are. R S Thomas thought that the human condition was “lonely”, but that’s a heart-breaking observation that perceives what is missing in the lives of people who have come to think that way. We need other people. We need friendships which remain real despite the distance of space and time. We need people who are there for us when we need them – and at the same time need a readiness to be a friend to them through all the life-changes we experience. And we need an openness to celebrate new friendships. It’s something I find really moving when some one says, “May I count you as a friend?” It’s a question that needs to be asked more often…

That’s where our relationships within our churches can be so important. I’m so much moved when I see people who are there for each other – ready to talk, knowing when to be quiet, offering support gently when it’s needed. It’s something I find often at funerals when you see who is there and realise just how much that particular person had meant to so many people; perhaps how much support those present had given, how much the person they are there to mourn had been someone who had brought many different people together. I found that last week in taking the funeral of Angela, “the lady with the dog,” as so many people knew her. Angela had her own particular needs – but also the gift of putting people on the spot. She’d talk to people in the street; sometimes she would knock on their door; some of us she would phone; she’d turn up before opening time at Christmas and Summer Fairs at St. Cuthbert’s - and go home loaded down with tombola prizes. How you responded, I realised, said something about you / about me. She was ready to be your friend – and sometimes friendships can be testing. Are we ready to be friends to others?

Sometimes people say, “Don’t presume upon friendships.” I’ve found myself pondering whether this is a good rule. And this is where we need to get theological. The Book of Common Prayer, in its current edition dating back to 1662, includes the wonderfully-named Prayer of Humble Access for use at Holy Communion: “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O Lord…” it begins. Don’t make presumptions, it seems to say. But then there is a twist in the prayer. What you should not presume is your own state of worthiness: “We do not presume to come to this thy Table,… trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies.” You can presume when it comes to your relationship with God in Christ, for Christ has made us his friends and called us to his table. “I have called you friends.” These are his words in today’s Gospel – his call to us is to sit with him and eat. The modern version of that prayer you’ll find in our “Common Worship” booklets on page 10: “Most merciful Lord, your love compels us to come in.” This version misses out the reference to presumption – and perhaps a problem in modern society is that people presume just too much! – but it gets it right that it’s God who takes the initiative in calling us into fellowship with him. “You are my friends…” says Jesus, and he calls us to be friends to him and to each other.

St Gregory of Nyssa – in the 4th century – wrote:

This is true perfection:

not to avoid a wicked life

because we fear punishment,

like slaves; not to

do good because we

expect repayment, as

if cashing in on the

virtuous life by enforcing

some business deal.

On the contrary,

disregarding all those

good things which we

do hope for and which

God has promised us, we

regard falling from God’s

friendship as the only

thing dreadful, and we

consider becoming

God’s friend the only

thing truly worthwhile.

For Gregory, friendship with God was the one essential. Everything else followed from it. God loves us, and we see it because he doesn’t count the cost when he sends his Son into our world. Here is someone who will go to the Cross for us. But he reminds us: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Love and friendship are there to be given and received freely, without charge. We are called to be friends of God and friends to each other.

But can we do it? Don’t we find ourselves counting the cost? Can I afford to be his or her friend, we might find ourselves asking? That’s when friendship can be seen to cause obligation. It’s to fall into the trap of thinking that if we are to be a particular person’s friend then we have to emulate his lifestyle, reciprocate with presents of similar worth and match the magnificence of their dinner party invitations… The fact is that friendship does need to be worked at, but never so that you lose sight of who you really are, never so that friendship with one person or group causes you to shun another.

“You are my friends if you do what I command you,” says Jesus – “that you love one another.” The new commandment of Jesus is not an order that he lays upon us. 

“You are my friends… love one another…” People with the wrong idea might expect that if God gets mixed up with this world and wants to put things right he would “lay down the law.” But he doesn’t. Christ comes not to lay down the law, but to lay down his life. God takes the initiative of friendship with his people. He loves us, and draws us into his love. He counts us his friends, in a friendship that we can presume upon, in a friendship we are to share with others.