6 Easter b May 10, 2015
Acts Ps. 33:1-8,18-22
1 John 4:7-21 John 15:9-17
Lectionary Link What is the official name of the Quakers? The Religious Society of Friends. And certainly such a designation would find some basis in the Gospel of John.
We have read the words of Jesus to his disciples: "I have called you friends." This comes immediately after the discourse on the Vine and the branches and the injunction to "abide" in Christ.
I think one of the ways that we can understand this Gospel lesson today is something like a "graduation" ceremony. What happens when one gets a diploma? One receives certification from a governing body. The diploma gives a person the permission and privilege to begin to practice a career or a profession. Why does one receive a diploma? One has followed the rules and the requirements for the particular degree. One learns the rules and the requirements of a profession so that one can teach others to do the same and so that one can model the rules and requirements by the practice of one's life.
Jesus said to his disciples, "I no longer call you servants or students subject to teaching conditions of rules and regulations. Your status has changed, you have graduated and now I call you friends, fellow teachers of our program to promote a loving friendship with God and a loving friendship with each other.
The early Jesus Movement was all about friendship and befriending. One can understand the Gospel of John as a discipleship manual within the Jesus Movement. The goal of Christian spirituality was to come to know Christ as one's friend.
The friendship experience with Christ represented a break through event in discipleship, in mystical training. At first one can seem like a servant in the process of discipleship. Training oneself to learn new behaviors can seem at times to be very difficult. It is like discipline in any path of excellence. Like learning to play the piano. One practices and practices and struggles with endless scales and it can seem boringly repetitive but suddenly there is a break through; it's as though the piano chooses you and all of the rules of practice become automatic and suddenly one is possessed with lyricism and the piano seems to say, "you are my friend."
In the mystical practice of the early Christians, the members were attracted by a spiritual path of realizing a special friendship with Christ. There was the camaraderie with fellow devotees on the spiritual path. There were teachers who encouraged disciples and students to keep on the path.
Becoming a friend of Christ is to arrive at lyrical spiritual experience. You are my friends if you do what I command you. How can love and commandment be mentioned together? St. Paul wrote that to love is to fulfill the commandments of the law. Love is lyrical living and it is when following the commandments have become so internalized that they have become the habit of one's life.
One could say that they main reason that the Gospel of John was written was so that people could come to know a friendship experience with Christ. In friendship there is a permissive freedom that does not happen when one is not a friend. In friendship there is such a mutual regard without divisive rigid egos. It is not difficult to lay down one's life for one's friends. The life referred to here is the "pseuche" life/soul life, or the particular ego state in how one's emotions, mind and will are constituted. With one's friends one does not worry about hurt feelings, or having different opinions of the mind or freedom of choice. In friendship love, there is mutual regard of being in the peak state of relationship.
Jesus spoke about an intimate friendship. John's Gospel presents a dynamic Trinitarian friendship. Friendship begins within God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The image of divine friendship spills into the created order. Jesus told his non-mystical literal disciples, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father. The Father and I are one." Jesus had arrived at a place of never seeing himself as being apart from the Plenitude of God. He was always, already one with God." And this is the kind of friendship energy and relationship which he offered to his disciple students. This befriending tradition is what built the early church.
The Gospel of John is a mystical manual for us today. We are offered the experience of being a friend of Christ. We are invited to let God's Holy Spirit energize the Christ nature within us so that we too can know ourselves as being one with God the Father. How so? Because we are learning to live our lives as never being seen as living in separation from All that Is.
Even though John's Gospel does not include an explicit reference to the Trinity, it is a teaching about the holy friendship within God that becomes known and shared with us.
You and I are to come to know this dynamic friendship with Christ as the foundation of our personal esteem. If we know this holy friendship with Christ, we cease to be people who seek constant affirmation and adoration from others. As we come to a friendship experience with Christ, we can be those who model friendship as the way life should be lived. We arrive at allowing the nature of Christ to be known through us with the behaviors of friendship love.
Today, you and I are invited to friendship with Christ because he said that the dynamic friendship that is found within God, is also shared with us. Everything that we do in the church and in our liturgy is to support the quest to know this friendship with Christ. Amen.
Acts Ps. 33:1-8,18-22
1 John 4:7-21 John 15:9-17
Lectionary Link What is the official name of the Quakers? The Religious Society of Friends. And certainly such a designation would find some basis in the Gospel of John.
We have read the words of Jesus to his disciples: "I have called you friends." This comes immediately after the discourse on the Vine and the branches and the injunction to "abide" in Christ.
I think one of the ways that we can understand this Gospel lesson today is something like a "graduation" ceremony. What happens when one gets a diploma? One receives certification from a governing body. The diploma gives a person the permission and privilege to begin to practice a career or a profession. Why does one receive a diploma? One has followed the rules and the requirements for the particular degree. One learns the rules and the requirements of a profession so that one can teach others to do the same and so that one can model the rules and requirements by the practice of one's life.
Jesus said to his disciples, "I no longer call you servants or students subject to teaching conditions of rules and regulations. Your status has changed, you have graduated and now I call you friends, fellow teachers of our program to promote a loving friendship with God and a loving friendship with each other.
The early Jesus Movement was all about friendship and befriending. One can understand the Gospel of John as a discipleship manual within the Jesus Movement. The goal of Christian spirituality was to come to know Christ as one's friend.
The friendship experience with Christ represented a break through event in discipleship, in mystical training. At first one can seem like a servant in the process of discipleship. Training oneself to learn new behaviors can seem at times to be very difficult. It is like discipline in any path of excellence. Like learning to play the piano. One practices and practices and struggles with endless scales and it can seem boringly repetitive but suddenly there is a break through; it's as though the piano chooses you and all of the rules of practice become automatic and suddenly one is possessed with lyricism and the piano seems to say, "you are my friend."
In the mystical practice of the early Christians, the members were attracted by a spiritual path of realizing a special friendship with Christ. There was the camaraderie with fellow devotees on the spiritual path. There were teachers who encouraged disciples and students to keep on the path.
Becoming a friend of Christ is to arrive at lyrical spiritual experience. You are my friends if you do what I command you. How can love and commandment be mentioned together? St. Paul wrote that to love is to fulfill the commandments of the law. Love is lyrical living and it is when following the commandments have become so internalized that they have become the habit of one's life.
One could say that they main reason that the Gospel of John was written was so that people could come to know a friendship experience with Christ. In friendship there is a permissive freedom that does not happen when one is not a friend. In friendship there is such a mutual regard without divisive rigid egos. It is not difficult to lay down one's life for one's friends. The life referred to here is the "pseuche" life/soul life, or the particular ego state in how one's emotions, mind and will are constituted. With one's friends one does not worry about hurt feelings, or having different opinions of the mind or freedom of choice. In friendship love, there is mutual regard of being in the peak state of relationship.
Jesus spoke about an intimate friendship. John's Gospel presents a dynamic Trinitarian friendship. Friendship begins within God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The image of divine friendship spills into the created order. Jesus told his non-mystical literal disciples, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father. The Father and I are one." Jesus had arrived at a place of never seeing himself as being apart from the Plenitude of God. He was always, already one with God." And this is the kind of friendship energy and relationship which he offered to his disciple students. This befriending tradition is what built the early church.
The Gospel of John is a mystical manual for us today. We are offered the experience of being a friend of Christ. We are invited to let God's Holy Spirit energize the Christ nature within us so that we too can know ourselves as being one with God the Father. How so? Because we are learning to live our lives as never being seen as living in separation from All that Is.
Even though John's Gospel does not include an explicit reference to the Trinity, it is a teaching about the holy friendship within God that becomes known and shared with us.
You and I are to come to know this dynamic friendship with Christ as the foundation of our personal esteem. If we know this holy friendship with Christ, we cease to be people who seek constant affirmation and adoration from others. As we come to a friendship experience with Christ, we can be those who model friendship as the way life should be lived. We arrive at allowing the nature of Christ to be known through us with the behaviors of friendship love.
Today, you and I are invited to friendship with Christ because he said that the dynamic friendship that is found within God, is also shared with us. Everything that we do in the church and in our liturgy is to support the quest to know this friendship with Christ. Amen.
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