7/11/21 “The Scared Act of Friendship” by Nancy E. Petty

Sirach 6:14-17, John 15:12-15

                For him who sees no wood for trees

                And yet is busie as the bees

                From him that’s settled on his lees (at ease or not disturbed)

                And speaketh not without his fees

                Libera (li bear a) nos. (free us)

If you have ever said of someone, “they can see the forest for the trees” you are quoting a proverb first documented by John Heywood in 1546. This proverb has survived in its shorter form for over 475 years. Other ways of expressing this idiom have sprung up over the years. Expressions like: he’s in the weeds; she’s lost perspective; they can’t see the big picture; or as the younger generation might express it: Don’t sweat the small stuff. Or, that’s a first world problem.

Sometimes it seems to me that religion, and specifically the church, often can’t see the forest for the trees. Religion, Christian theology, the institutional church seem to prefer to focus on the trees and staying stuck in the weeds rather than seeing with the forest, the big picture, of what Jesus was all about. These trees/weeds have names: “sin,” “atonement,” “repentance,” “born again,” “bodily resurrection,” “salvation,” just to point out a few. It is among these trees that religion and the church wander about, almost aimlessly. Contrary to the Christian theology and church teachings these are not the things Jesus focused on. They are not the forest—the big picture.

What is the big picture of our faith from Jesus’ perspective? Is it possible that it is found in this one teaching of his in the 15th chapter of John? Is it possible that it is this teaching that opens up our view to the forest? Could the sacred act of friendship be the lens through which we see the kingdom of God? Listen again to the teaching.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from God.

Gail O’Day, Professor of Preaching and New Testament at Candler School of Theology, writes: “Friendship does not figure prominently in [the] theological world, since friendship is normally relegated to the secular realm, as exemplified by the prominence of friends as the pivot of plots in television shows and movies. Yet as the quote from the Gospel of John shows, nothing could be farther from the truth. For Jesus, friendship is the ultimate relationship with God and one another.”

As I reflected on these words, in my mind’s eye, I scanned Jesus’ life and the stories that stand out the most in his ministry. I wanted to see if I could see the big picture of his life. Here’s what I saw. I saw him in a sacred act of friendship washing the disciples’ feet. I saw the sacred act of friendship as he spoke frankly and compassionately to a woman whom the religious leaders were ready to stone to death while at the same time trying to trap him. In an act of friendship, he risked his own life to free her. I saw him extending the sacred act of friendship as he accompanied his grieving friends on the Emmaus road. I saw Jesus sitting at the table with Levi, the despised tax collector, eating a meal in a sacred act of friendship.

Why do I call these events sacred acts of friendship? As O’Day explains, “according to Hellenistic philosophers, to be someone’s friend was to speak frankly and honestly to them and to hold nothing back.” She goes on to say, “The New Testament writings were not created in a social vacuum. These two dimensions of friendship in the ancient world – the gift of one’s life for one’s friends and the use of frank and open speech – informed the way that the Gospel of John and its readers understood language about friendship.”

Sometimes I wonder if we have opted for Hallmark’s definition of friendship rather than Jesus’. Loving one another through the sacred act of friendship is more than saying “Friends are the sprinkles on the cupcake of life” as one Hallmark card suggested. Jesus’ model of friendship is about as Gail O’Day puts it: “loving freely and generously without counting the cost and without wondering and worrying about who is on the receiving end of our limitless love…As a teaching, John 15 affirmed a common cultural ideal – to look to the interests of the other for the sake of the common good. What distinguishes Jesus’ words from this ideal was not their content, but the fact that Jesus did not merely talk about laying down his life for his friends. Jesus enacted the ancient ideal of friendship – he lay down his life for his friends. Jesus’ whole life is an incarnation of the ideal of friendship.”

Few, if any of us, will be asked to “lay down our life” for a friend as Jesus did. And yet, laying down our lives for our friends is not just about physically dying for them. There are many ways that one can lay down life for another. All of us are being called upon daily to “love freely and generously without counting the cost and without wondering and worrying about who is on the receiving end of our limitless love.”

Pictures speak when our words fall short. That image on the front of your worship guide of Mary Magdalene washing Jesus’ feet and wiping them dry with her hair is one of the most profound images in all of scripture of the sacred act of friendship. It speaks for itself.

Another picture of the sacred act of friendship is the presence of Rabbi Lucy Dinner here, leading worship with me. The very fact that she is here when she had other commitments this day is a sacred act of friendship, much less that she agreed to do a teaching. You see, these past few weeks have been scary and difficult. Karla’s heart attack along with a family member struggling with serious depression reminded me, not so gently, that there are limits to what I can shoulder emotionally and physically and spiritually all at once. In that moment of knowing that I could no longer go at it all alone, I knew that if I could only muster the courage to pick up the phone and call my rabbi friend she would be there for me. And she was and she is as she has been so many other times. Just like so many of you who, through the sacred act of friendship, have cared for Karla and me and my family these past weeks and years.

The gift of these last three scary and difficult weeks has been seeing the forest again. To have affirmed once more that while the trees serve a purpose, they are not focus. They are not the big picture of religion nor are they what the church is to be about. Loving one another, and, in the New Testament understanding of friendship – the gift of one’s life for one’s friends and speaking frankly and openly –  as we practice the sacred act of friendship is the big picture of our faith.

It’s easy to get lost among the trees. It’s easy to get caught up in the weeds. It’s tempting to give ourselves over to first world problems. But the big picture of our faith calls us to lay down our lives for our friends – to lay down the burdens that keep us so distracted that we don’t see the needs of our friends. This is what it means to love one another as Jesus loved.

I needed my friend to be with me this morning and she laid down a whole schedule of meetings and commitments to be here with me and you in a sacred act of friendship.