The Good Friend - John 10:11ff
Last week I began my sermon by asking how many of you were born of a mother. Turns out most of you, from what I could tell.
So let me ask you today – how many of you have ever had a friend? I suspect it’s the same percentage. Friendship, like motherhood, is an indispensable part of our lives.
I’m thinking of a boyhood friend. We were glued at the hip for 5 years – from mid-school till we graduated High School. We were both in 4H and FFA. We rode dirt bikes, horses, showed steers. We talked ceaselessly about school and girls, our future lives and girls, what we wanted to do when we grew up and girls, that horrid math teacher and girls. It is impossible for me to imagine my early life, without this friend. His existence shaped mine. His tastes influenced mine, his affinities became mine. The person standing before you would have been different, where it not for him.
If you had asked us if we were “best friends” we would have said: “heck no, we’re not girly boys! Best friends are for girls.” But if you had asked us if we were willing to die for the other, we would have said a macho: “in a heart beat.” And we would have mostly meant it. I know for several years we could not have imagined life without the other. A couple of years ago when he lost his teenage daughter – I was in grief for a girl I really never knew – because of the pain that I knew he had to bear the rest of his life.
Two weeks ago we looked at John 10, where Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd. Last week we looked at John 15 and we talked about the Good Branch. Today we look at the text were Jesus gives the definition of a good friend: one who is willing to lay down his life, one who genuinely loves. And in this text Jesus says: I am your friend – not just your master.
When Jesus talked about God, he used simple images. He used ideas, pictures which would have connected with the listeners. God is like a shepherd – guiding, protecting. God is like a farmer – pruning, and nurturing. I am the vine – stay connected through me. And today: God is like a friend. Friends love so much they might have to die for their love.
This third image is “balance-maker.” It helps keep the theological balance, it puts weights on the right side of the scale, so that one doesn’t get carried away by extending thoughts about the Shepherd and the pruning farmer.
Let me explain. A shepherd is a removed figure from the sheep. He guides and protects, but he is in no way like the sheep. If this is the only image of God, you might think of God as a removed man with a tall staff and severe manner. A farmer cuts and kills to encourage growth. Some farmers, particularly the corporate kind, don’t care about nurturing, they only care about the produce. Again Jesus wants us to have a full picture, a complete understanding, of God’s relationship to us. And for us to have this picture we’ve got to have more than just a Shepherd and Farmer – so he adds friend.
A friend is a very different person to the befriended – very different from the shepherd’s relationship to the sheep, than the farmer’s relationship to the branches. And quite different from the master’s relationship to the servant. Jesus introduces the concept by calling himself the vine, but he clinches the image by calling himself a friend.
No one image of God will do. This is why we have the first two commandments! Don’t make an idol. But metaphors, on the other hand, are great. But their like potato chips, you can’t have just one. No one will ever be sufficient when talking about God.
God in Christ is not just your shepherd, your nurturer, your Creator, Protector, advocate and Judge – God is your friend. Not like any other friend, BUT a friend nevertheless. God has your best interest at heart – because he simply loves you.
Jesus was likely drawing on a rich tradition of friendship. He had both the Hebrew tradition – with stories of David and Jonathan, and the Greek culture where Aristotle wrote tomes on the subject. In essence both traditions noted that friends are extraordinary. In every other relationship there is some external obligation. Parents, you can’t run off and leave your kids home alone. Kids, you’ve got to take care of your parents. Employees, you’ve got to be good to your employers. Shepherds have to care for their sheep. The farmer has to care for the vines if he wants some fruit. A true friend is a gift of God and the mutual obligation is internal.
How many times have you ever heard someone look at their calendar and say: “oh, drats, I’ve got to go out with my friends tonight. Ugg.” (Last night I was at a wedding reception and sat by a new aqaintance who was talking about how her boyfriend thought so differently. “you guys just think different” That’s why I just have to have a girls night out.)
The French philosopher, Simone Weil calls friendship supernatural, because it suspends the normal gravity of obligation. With true friends your autonomy is not impinged.
Aristotle devotes two books to friendship, roughly 20 percent of his
Ethics. Aristotle considered friendship necessary for a flourishing life. Happiness requires it and the moral virtue is impossible without it.
Aristotle said: "Friends enhance our ability to think and to act." But, "to think," or "to act," "teleologically.” This is a $10 way of saying act with a purpose, or end in sight. Aristotle believed the only way toward a virtuous life was through cultivated friendships with virtuous people. He might have been influenced by the old Hebrew proverb: as iron sharpens iron…
Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, has written a book entitled “Stumbling on Happiness.” Gilbert says what makes us different than the animals is that we can imagine our future. We are the only animals with a huge frontal lobe where all this future imagining happens. The problem is we aren’t very good at it. We are particularly bad about predicting how we’re going to feel about the future once we get there. For example Gilbert conclusively shows that lottery winners are never as happy as they think they will be when they win.
I heard Gilbert interviewed the other day. There were two poignant points: 1) the surest way to happiness is through altruism – doing good for others and yet people have to be encouraged to do it. It consistently makes people happy, but they have to be convinced by something to do it. (We have a command of Jesus – love one another).
2) others are generally better at telling us what will make us happy than we are. His point was that because we are consistently bad at predicting what will make us happy – we need help from those who have our best interest at heart and who can help us. Because acting on our own impulse we often get it wrong.
Assuming he’s right – gives rise to the need for love and friendship. Look at our text again:
11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.
God in Christ is a friend. He leads us to happiness, by leading us to love. And secondly, he tells us what we need to know.
And he has done this by choosing us. Like a great friendship – we don’t deserve it, but it shapes our existence.
So let me ask you today – how many of you have ever had a friend? I suspect it’s the same percentage. Friendship, like motherhood, is an indispensable part of our lives.
I’m thinking of a boyhood friend. We were glued at the hip for 5 years – from mid-school till we graduated High School. We were both in 4H and FFA. We rode dirt bikes, horses, showed steers. We talked ceaselessly about school and girls, our future lives and girls, what we wanted to do when we grew up and girls, that horrid math teacher and girls. It is impossible for me to imagine my early life, without this friend. His existence shaped mine. His tastes influenced mine, his affinities became mine. The person standing before you would have been different, where it not for him.
If you had asked us if we were “best friends” we would have said: “heck no, we’re not girly boys! Best friends are for girls.” But if you had asked us if we were willing to die for the other, we would have said a macho: “in a heart beat.” And we would have mostly meant it. I know for several years we could not have imagined life without the other. A couple of years ago when he lost his teenage daughter – I was in grief for a girl I really never knew – because of the pain that I knew he had to bear the rest of his life.
Two weeks ago we looked at John 10, where Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd. Last week we looked at John 15 and we talked about the Good Branch. Today we look at the text were Jesus gives the definition of a good friend: one who is willing to lay down his life, one who genuinely loves. And in this text Jesus says: I am your friend – not just your master.
When Jesus talked about God, he used simple images. He used ideas, pictures which would have connected with the listeners. God is like a shepherd – guiding, protecting. God is like a farmer – pruning, and nurturing. I am the vine – stay connected through me. And today: God is like a friend. Friends love so much they might have to die for their love.
This third image is “balance-maker.” It helps keep the theological balance, it puts weights on the right side of the scale, so that one doesn’t get carried away by extending thoughts about the Shepherd and the pruning farmer.
Let me explain. A shepherd is a removed figure from the sheep. He guides and protects, but he is in no way like the sheep. If this is the only image of God, you might think of God as a removed man with a tall staff and severe manner. A farmer cuts and kills to encourage growth. Some farmers, particularly the corporate kind, don’t care about nurturing, they only care about the produce. Again Jesus wants us to have a full picture, a complete understanding, of God’s relationship to us. And for us to have this picture we’ve got to have more than just a Shepherd and Farmer – so he adds friend.
A friend is a very different person to the befriended – very different from the shepherd’s relationship to the sheep, than the farmer’s relationship to the branches. And quite different from the master’s relationship to the servant. Jesus introduces the concept by calling himself the vine, but he clinches the image by calling himself a friend.
No one image of God will do. This is why we have the first two commandments! Don’t make an idol. But metaphors, on the other hand, are great. But their like potato chips, you can’t have just one. No one will ever be sufficient when talking about God.
God in Christ is not just your shepherd, your nurturer, your Creator, Protector, advocate and Judge – God is your friend. Not like any other friend, BUT a friend nevertheless. God has your best interest at heart – because he simply loves you.
Jesus was likely drawing on a rich tradition of friendship. He had both the Hebrew tradition – with stories of David and Jonathan, and the Greek culture where Aristotle wrote tomes on the subject. In essence both traditions noted that friends are extraordinary. In every other relationship there is some external obligation. Parents, you can’t run off and leave your kids home alone. Kids, you’ve got to take care of your parents. Employees, you’ve got to be good to your employers. Shepherds have to care for their sheep. The farmer has to care for the vines if he wants some fruit. A true friend is a gift of God and the mutual obligation is internal.
How many times have you ever heard someone look at their calendar and say: “oh, drats, I’ve got to go out with my friends tonight. Ugg.” (Last night I was at a wedding reception and sat by a new aqaintance who was talking about how her boyfriend thought so differently. “you guys just think different” That’s why I just have to have a girls night out.)
The French philosopher, Simone Weil calls friendship supernatural, because it suspends the normal gravity of obligation. With true friends your autonomy is not impinged.
Aristotle devotes two books to friendship, roughly 20 percent of his
Ethics. Aristotle considered friendship necessary for a flourishing life. Happiness requires it and the moral virtue is impossible without it.
Aristotle said: "Friends enhance our ability to think and to act." But, "to think," or "to act," "teleologically.” This is a $10 way of saying act with a purpose, or end in sight. Aristotle believed the only way toward a virtuous life was through cultivated friendships with virtuous people. He might have been influenced by the old Hebrew proverb: as iron sharpens iron…
Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, has written a book entitled “Stumbling on Happiness.” Gilbert says what makes us different than the animals is that we can imagine our future. We are the only animals with a huge frontal lobe where all this future imagining happens. The problem is we aren’t very good at it. We are particularly bad about predicting how we’re going to feel about the future once we get there. For example Gilbert conclusively shows that lottery winners are never as happy as they think they will be when they win.
I heard Gilbert interviewed the other day. There were two poignant points: 1) the surest way to happiness is through altruism – doing good for others and yet people have to be encouraged to do it. It consistently makes people happy, but they have to be convinced by something to do it. (We have a command of Jesus – love one another).
2) others are generally better at telling us what will make us happy than we are. His point was that because we are consistently bad at predicting what will make us happy – we need help from those who have our best interest at heart and who can help us. Because acting on our own impulse we often get it wrong.
Assuming he’s right – gives rise to the need for love and friendship. Look at our text again:
11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.
God in Christ is a friend. He leads us to happiness, by leading us to love. And secondly, he tells us what we need to know.
And he has done this by choosing us. Like a great friendship – we don’t deserve it, but it shapes our existence.
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