Sixth Sunday of Easter

Sunday, May 17, 2009

St. David’s Episcopal Church, DeWitt NY

The Rev. James C. Bresnahan, Interim Rector

“Friend”

 

John 15:9-17

9. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. 12. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14. You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15. 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 my Father. 16. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

 

In our praying the Lord’s Prayer, we borrow words from family life and call God “Father”, understanding ourselves as God’s children.  In the 23^rd Psalm, we borrow words from the world of agriculture and call God “Shepherd,” naming ourselves the sheep of God’s pasture. When we call God the judge of the living and the dead, we are using words from the courtroom, naming God as our judge and presenting ourselves as defendants who are accountable for our words and deeds.

 

Those three paired examples are but three of the many ways we use opposite terms to express ourselves in relationship to God. In most all cases these terms express how God is what we are not; how we are what God isn’t. 

 

Holy:sinful; immortal:mortal; master:servant; king:subject

 

Sallie McFague, in her book “Models of God,” proposed that we focus more on speaking to God as ‘friend’ – a term that shows up in today’s Gospel reading.

 

It is a simple and beautiful word – ‘friend.’ 

 

What is so interesting to me about calling God ‘friend’ is that the correlating word for ourselves is also ‘friend.’  God is our friend - which makes us God’s friends.  And what more kindlier and trustworthy word is there in the English language than that beautiful and intimate word Friend.

 

There is no fear associated with friendship, no dread, no distance or domination.  It is an expression of intimacy, constancy, and support.  A friend listens, is there for you, rejoices with you and weeps with you.  You trust a friend, confide in a friend, are honest with a friend.

 

It’s a beautiful term, warm and endearing. God is our friend, and we are friends of God.

 

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus declares: “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 my Father.”

 

Most often the language of friendship shows up in the hymnody of the church – particularly in songs that are melodious, and tunes that are lilting. 

 

Well known is one I early on had little affection for. I thought it a bit too schmaltzy, a bit too trite – until, until I read about the man who had penned it: Jospeh Scriven was his name - a man with a big heart who struggled deeply.

 

He was born in Ireland near to 200 years ago. His health was poor, likewise his grades in school.

 

While still young he became engaged to a most beautiful woman.

 

The evening before they were to marry, he stood ready to meet her at the end of a bridge over the river Bann.  As he saw her approaching on horseback, suddenly the horse reared.  She was thrown off and into the river, where she drowned.

 

Stricken with grief, he left Ireland soon thereafter on a ship named Perseverance to begin life anew in Canada. Not long afterward, after journeying to England, he met a woman he fell instantly in love with, but there was a rival, and the rival she chose.

 

The years passed. He prayed deeply and began writing a poem. One day he would complete it.

 

At the ago of 39 he became engaged once more - to Eliza whom he had known for years.  Before the wedding she was re-baptized by full immersion – in a lake whose waters had barely thawed from winter ice. Already seriously ill with consumption, Eliza developed pneumonia, grew weaker and died before they could marry.

 

Throughout his remaining life, Joseph Scriven suffered from continuing bouts of melancholy.

 

Out of a sadness and also to encourage his mother who had been ill, he finished and sent to her the poem he had begun years before after the death of his first fiancée.

 

He continued to live selflessly, a friend of the poor and generous to his own detriment. Never would he marry. Yet depression was his frequent companion down into his old age.

 

In the sixty-sixth year of his life, late one night after spending time among friends, he went to his room, while one friend stayed in a nearby room. That night Joseph Scriven disappeared.  Searching for him into the morning and half through the day, friends eventually found him – in the mill-pond nearby, where he had drowned.

 

His legacy: the poem he had written decades before to comfort his mother and to soothe his own grieving heart. The poem became a hymn. We know it as:

 

What a Friend We Have in Jesus.

 

I used to think, as I said, that the words were trite and much too schmaltzy, until I heard the story, and understood the depth of his grief and the friend he needed and sought in God. How important it was for him to hold on to God as friend.

 

“Can we find a friend so faithful

who will all our sorrows share?

Jesus knows our every weakness;

take it to the Lord in prayer.”

 

There has been much sorrow and grief in our congregation these past few weeks, and worry about the health and well-being of dear people.

 

All the more reason why in our prayers we should be encouraged to call on God as friend and turn to our friend in our every need, and grow in confidence that not illness, not death, not grief, can rip us from God’s heart.

 

Jesus said: 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 my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

 

I invite you, in your own prayer life, to address God as friend, and to see and understand yourself more and more as what Jesus named you: his friend.