I heard on Wednesday how the Christian Union up in St Andrews went round other students in the university with a camera and asked “If you met God at the pearly gates, what questions would you ask him?” Interestingly there were very few questions about bone cancer or wasps that live inside eyes. No the questions asked were not what the CU were expecting. They were things like “what does it mean to be good?” “What is a good life?” or “How can I form deeper friendships”.
That last question stuck with me. I realised - I don’t think I have ever preached a sermon on friendship.
So I went on line, and I looked up sermons on friendship - and all the sermons I could find had a similar pattern. They started by saying one or two uncontroversial things about human friendship and then led on to the point that God can be our friend. Do we want to be friends with Jesus.
Now I have preached lots of sermons about being friends with God. Isn’t it amazing when you read that passage from the last supper and Jesus says “I do not call you servants any longer… but I have called you friends” (John 15:15). Who can’t be moved if we start singing
What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!....
Are we weak and heavy-laden,
Cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge—
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In His arms He’ll take and shield thee,
Thou wilt find a solace there.
on the same sort of them - possibly my favourite quote from outside the bible comes from Cardinal Basil Hume “Holiness involves friendship with God. There comes a point in our walk with God when we need to move from being Sunday Aquaintances to weekday friends”
I could go on - Theresa of Avila says “Prayer is nothing else than being on terms on friendship with God”
So yes - I have given plenty of sermons about being friends with God. But what about us being friends with each other? I realised I have never yet preached on that.
And that Got me thinking -does Christianity have anything to say about friendship? In a moment I am (don’t worry I am) going to ask that question specifically to the Gospel reading we have just heard from Mark 9:2-11 about the Transfiguration).
But before we do that, let’s think of some of the problems about asking this question.
You see Christianity says some quite unusual stuff about love. In Matthew 5:44 we are told to “love our enemies” to pray for those who treat us like (no I won’t use that word here). “Love our enemies” Elsewhere we are told are told to love our neighbours. That’s more comfortable. I can be good mates with my next door neighbour. And then someone stupidly asks Jesus “but who is my neighbour” and he tells the story of the Good Samaritan. Now that is less comfortable, because Jews and Samaritans [pretend to spit to one side] hated one another. It’s like asking the Ulster Protestant to love the Catholic who lives next door, the Muslim to love the Jew who lives next door, The Tamil to love the Singhalese who lives next door.
The bible says some pretty challenging stuff about love. We are clearly meant to love EVERYONE, even those people we would naturally dislike. we are meant to be kind to people and serve them and do favours for them, regardless of how well we know them or what they do to us. We are meant to forgive people, even when they do pretty horrid stuff to us.
So that’s love. Where does that leave friendship? Afterall, if you ask most people out there, your friends are the people you love. Your friends are the people you are kind to, the people you serve and do favours to, Your friends are the people you forgive (unless it’s so bad that your friendship is over). All that stuff that people out there think friendship is all about - we are told to do to everyone. So where does that leave friendship?
In the 19th and early 20th century there was an idea that parish priests should not have friends - because of course you are meant to love everyone. If you have no friends, you have no favourites. Isn’t that the ideal? Well I have to say, I think that is WRONG, but what does the bible have to say about that? Or am I wrong?
Let’s then ask this question to the passage from Mark 9 - the story of the Transfiguration. Here we see Jesus with three of his friends.
Now, we all know, because the Council of Chalcedon tells us, Jesus was 100% human as well as 100% God. He wasn’t half and half. He was 100% both. So if human beings need friends, then Jesus being 100% human needs friends as much as you or I do. I am suggesting that while on earth, Jesus models particular friendships with a small number of particular people, so once he has risen and asceended into heaven he can have that level of friendship with each one of us and we can each sing “what a friend we have in Jesus”.
So “Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter, James and John and led them up a high mountain”. Why Peter, James and John? Is it there turn and next week Nathaniel, Simon Zealotes and Bartholomew will get to go? No. Time and again, Jesus picks Peter, James, John and sometimes Andrew. There are certain disciples who he is closer to than others. There are certain disciples he spends more time with than others.
I think that is that is the first of four things that this passage implies friendship is about. Friends make time for each other. According to Facebook I have 1078 friends. Katie is lagging behind with a mere 648 friends. But there is an enormous difference between Facebook friends and real friends. Real friends are people you spend time with. I would have to see three of my supposed Facebook friends everyday for a year to be able to actually see all my Facebook friends. And that is not going to happen. That would be like having the sort of diary the queen has. Real friends it takes time to make. Jesus took time out with sometimes four, sometime three people. A very small number of people whom over that three year period he could get to know really well. Simon, James, John, and sometimes Andrew. These are the people he goes off with quietly to pray, or quietly far off places where he is not known like the syrophoenician town, or in this case up a mountain. Not 1078, not 648. But just three. We all know as Christians that if we want to grown our relationship with Jesus we have to spend time with him in prayer. We event probably agree that if we want to grown in fellowship as a church we need to spend time together. That’s why things like homegroups, lent groups or even coming to church each Sunday as so important. But the lesson from today’s gospel is it doesn’t just apply to spiritual things. It applies to friendship. We have to spend time with our friends. The bible reading at Mass on Thursday was from Genesis 2 - “It’s not good for man to be alone”. We need each other.Human being need friendship, and if we are model healthy friendship we need to make time for each other.
The second lesson this passage teaches us I believe, if that friends are people we can let our guard down with. Jesus let’s his guard down with Peter, James and John. “He was transfigured before them and his clothes became dazzling white, such that no one on earth could bleach them” (Mk9:3) “Then a cloud overshaddowed them and from the cloud came a voice, “This is my beloved son”.
It is not that Jesus is suddenly upgraded into something he wasn’t before, rather it is like Clark Kent taking off his glasses and revealing to Lois Lane that he is superman. Jesus is taking the risk of revealing to his friends who he really is. Just like Clark Kent with Lois Lane, it is a risk. Revealing yourself, risks being misunderstood, Worse it risks showing what you are really like and they won’t like who you really are.
C.S.Lewis says “Eros (sexual attraction) is about naked bodies, but friendship is about naked personalities”. Taking our guard down and revealing who we really are. That doesn’t mean of course that our lover can’t be our friend. Christian teaching is that at the heart of marriage should be frienship and indeed that naked personalities should be a necessary pre-condition for naked bodies. But we are talking about that ONE special friend or our other close friends, friendship is about letting our guard down.
Note that Peter, James and John are not the only people Jesus shows love to. As soon as they are down the mountain, vs 14 following, Jesus is showing loving care to a complete stranger - a teenage boy suffering from epilepsy. When everyone else has let him down, Jesus heals him. But Jesus doesn’t show him the transfiguration. Just as superman saves thousands of strangers but only takes his glasses off for lois lane, we are called to love our enamies, love our neighbours, love the stranger, but our friends are those we take our glasses off with.
The third things about friends are that they are people we can share the bad times with as well as the good. The transfiguration marks a turning point in the Gospel. Up until now, Jesus has been wandering around Gallilee where he is loved and popular. Now he heads south. As the Luke version of the story (Luke 9:53) puts it, he “sets his face towards Jerusalem” towards controversy and eventual death. In chapter 8, immediately before the transfiguration, Jesus has told the disciples “that the son of man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and after three days rise again”. (Mk 8.31) In the Luke version of the story, when Moses and Elijah appear they talk with Jesus about the “Exodus, the departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” ie his death.
The transfiguration is the place from which we get the phrase “mountain top experience” - and Jesus shares both that and the valley with his friends. The valley of the shadow of death with is friends. Friendship isn’t just about letting our friends share their tough times with us so we can help them. Friendship is about sharing our tough times with our friends so they can help us.
And fourthly friendship is about trust. You may not trust your boss at work after what he did last year, but you can still be kind and loving towards him. But friendship is about trust. “As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen until after the Son of man had risen from the dead” (Mark 9:9). It’s a bit late then isn’t it? If they choose to tell all, there is sod all he can do to stop them. But that is frienship.
Contrast another story big in the media at the moment. Christian Gray, before he will start a relationship with Anastasia demands she signs a non-disclosure agreement. Before he will reveal anything about himself, Christian demands a watertight legal agreement that Anastasia will not tell anyone. Jesus on the other hand first lowers his guard and then trusts his disciples not to tell anyone else. Jesus shows friendship in that he trusts his friends.
So what is the point of frienship? CS Lewis says “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”
I read in one sermon “ There once was a lady who began coming to church. She came for weeks all alone to the Sunday morning service. She would come in right as the service began and would be the first one to leave the church because she would rush out during the closing song. One day she decided to stop going to church, after a few weeks the preacher went and visited the woman and she said she didn’t come back because she did not build any relationships in the church. I think a lot of times people are like that woman, they come into church and they leave before anyone can talk to them, and then they wonder why they have not built any relationships. “ So says Fr Jason Cole {sermon on this site}.
Now St Barnabas isn’t like that. People here make a real effort here to get to know one another, to be friendly towards one another. But I think it does point to why God has given us the gift of friendship.
Mother Theresa said “Loneliness is the leprosy of modern society”. We live in a very lonely world and “it is not good for man (or woman) to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). As Christians we are called to ease that loneliness for others. We are called to genuinely love others. Friendship is the place where we learn to love.
All that talk in the 19th century about how it was bad for priests to have friends because then they would have favourites is codswallop - because the sort of priest who emerges from that is cold and uncaring. Like the human Jesus (and remember Jesus was 100% human as well as 100% God), we need friends to learn to love.
First we experience love from God. Then we learn to love by letting our guard down with our friends. Then we experience fellowship Koinoinia with our fellow church members. And then we love everyone, even the most unlovable. Because that is how God loves.
Perhaps in heaven we will be able to have that degree of closeness with everyone. But for now we need friendship. Like Clark Kent, we may only take our glasses off for a few, but that is what gives us the strength to serve everyone.
