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Foundry United Rev. |
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“See How He Loved” Sunday, April 13, 2008 |
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John 11: 28-37
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I saw
an exceedingly passive-aggressive T-shirt some time ago. It said in large
letters “Jesus loves you.” In smaller letters underneath it added: “But then
he loves everybody.” Ouch. Biblically
speaking, in the New Testament, in the Gospels, if Jesus loved everybody, he
did not love everybody the same way. Some people he loved by confronting them;
it probably didn’t even feel like love to them at the time or, I’d guess,
later. Some Jesus loved by teaching them in large impersonal crowds. Some he
loved by touching and healing them and then going on his way. Some he loved
by disciplining them. Some he loved by forgiving them. Some he loved in an
intimate and personal way. Our
Lenten booklet this year was on the theme of “Jesus as Friend.” I contributed
a little meditation but frankly I found it difficult to write. So it helped
me to read the reflections of other people on the theme “Jesus as Friend.” I
realized there are different meanings for the word “friend.” You could see some
of the differing meanings as you read the meditations from day to day. There
is a use of the word “friend” that has the meaning of being on somebody’s
side, like saying that FDR was a friend of the common people or Coolidge was
a friend of big business. Jesus was a friend of sinners. Then there can be
friends you don’t necessarily know all that well but who show their
friendship by reaching out to you in a time of need – a friend in deed. There
can also be intimate friends who are closer to you than a brother or a sister
– best friends – and sometimes they are a brother or a sister. It is
always interesting to me when a speaker introduces his or her partner or
spouse, and says something like this: “I’d like to introduce so-and-so who is
not only my wife but my best friend.” What is the assumption behind that –
that most partners and spouses are not best friends? Maybe so! There are
different ways to love. There are different ways to be a friend. Jesus
loved different people in different ways. Jesus befriended different people
in different ways. Our
scripture lesson today is about one of Jesus’ intimate friends…perhaps his
best friend. His name was Lazarus. He lived with his two sisters Mary and
Martha in the town of When
Lazarus became ill, the sisters send a message to Jesus that said, “Lord, the
one whom you love is ill.” (John 11: 3) They didn’t even mention Lazarus’
name but assumed that Jesus would know who they were talking about when they
referred to “the one whom you love.” Jesus
waited two days to go to Jesus
would eventually raise Lazarus from the dead in the story, but before that, the
Gospel of John gives us a very intimate picture of Jesus’ grief at the death
of a friend, someone he loved in an intimate and personal way…perhaps Jesus’
best friend. As far
as we know, Jesus had very few personal and intimate friends during his life
on earth: Lazarus, Martha and her sister Mary…perhaps John, the beloved
disciple. Jesus’ disciples were not really his friends in an intimate sense.
Disciples were a master’s students and servants. They served the master in
exchange for the learning they received. You remember it was only the night
before his death that Jesus, after washing the feet of his disciples, said to
them: “I no longer call you servants but friends.” (John 15: 15) Biblically,
Jesus is, first of all, Lord and Savior and Teacher. Jesus’ goal on earth was
not so much to have us love him as it was teach us how to love one another. For
those in the teaching, helping and healing professions, friendships are
sometimes complicated, as Jesus’ relationships must have been. Working on
this sermon, I became curious so I called one of the physicians in our
congregation and asked him how doctors deal with having patients who become
friends. He said that when it happens doctors have to sometimes ask the
patient to find another doctor or else suggest that they back-off from the
friendship because it can get in the way of good medical decision-making. I know
there have been times when my friendships with parishioners have made it hard
for me to be their pastor. I find myself walking past their hospital room 4
or 5 times before I go in because I am so personally distressed by their
illness that I am not sure how to be their pastor. This is
especially true when the illness is terminal. One of a pastor’s jobs is to
give people permission to die. If we
ourselves can’t let go of someone, it gets in the way of doing what it is our
job to do. Oddly enough, loving in an intimate personal way can get in the
way of loving pastorally. Jesus
had an intimate friend, a best friend, like Lazarus, because he needed a
friend to make his life complete, not because it made Jesus a better Lord and
savior for Lazarus. Matter of fact, being Jesus’ friend was costly for
Lazarus. It cost him a second death. Jesus
needed an intimate friend, a best friend like Lazarus, so that he would know
what it feels like to love someone – some specific individual – with all your
heart. And, I suspect, he needed a best friend so he would know what it feels
like to have someone you love with all your heart die. “See
how he loved him,” they said about Jesus as he wept for Lazarus and his own
broken heart. New
Testament Greek has different words for love. It has a word that means
romantic love and a word that means the love between friends and a word that
refers to love like the love of God. The word for the love between friends is
philia, like the first half of The
biblical scholar D.A. Carson, in his book The
Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, notes how often in the New
Testament the Greek words philia and
agape are used almost interchangeably
so that it is hard to distinguish a difference in meaning between them.[i] I think
the significance of this is what it suggests about friendship – that friendship,
intimate friendship, best friends, may be the human experience we have in
this life closest to the experience of the love of God. Jesus
instructs us to love everybody…even our enemies. This is in Matthew. In the
Gospel of John we are instructed especially to love everyone else in the
church. This is the new commandment Jesus gives us in John 15: 12: “This is
my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Look
around you this morning. We are commanded to love everyone here…even people
we have never spoken to. And it happens. I have seen people weep at the death
of someone they never spoke more than a word or two to personally, but he sat
6 pews in front of her every Sunday for years, and even though they never
spoke to each other, they loved each other. And when he died, she came to his
memorial service and wept. See how she loved him. Jesus
commands us to love everyone here, but remember there are different ways of
loving different people. Just before Jane and I came here to Foundry, after
our appointment here had been announced, Jane’s father died. Phil Wogaman mentioned
it during concerns and asked if someone would write a note, and somebody did.
We felt the love of people we had never met through those notes. They were a
very special and real expression of love during a time we needed to be loved.
They were exactly the right way to love us then; they wanted nothing in
return. More would have been less. I hope
you know how important things like notes and phone calls and offers to help
and casseroles are when people are going through things. They are powerful and
profound. They are profound ways of loving one another. When
Jesus says to love one another sometimes all he has in mind is a note or a
casserole. We love
one another by using whatever spiritual gifts we have. Jesus loved crowds of
people he never met personally by teaching. If you want to love and you have
the gift of teaching, teach. If you have the gift of teaching children, teach
children. You will never be forgotten. I will never forget any one of my
Sunday school teachers. There are teachers who live inside of me who have
been dead for 40 years. Teaching is a way of loving one another.
Administering is a way of loving one another. Coming out to a Trustees
cleanup day and painting the walls is a way of loving one another. What I
am trying to say here is that you don’t have to become somebody’s best friend
to love them. Jesus had very few intimate close friends but he loved
everybody. There is a way to love everybody here this morning. Not all
love takes the form of close intimate friendship, but all of us need a Lazarus
or two in our life. All of us need intimate, close friends. One of these can
be a partner or a spouse but a partner or a spouse is not enough. We need
someone with whom to be as close as Jesus was with Lazarus. We need
this for many reasons, I suppose, but one of the reasons is spiritual. We
can’t really understand the profundity of the love of God unless we have
profound friendships. We will
sometimes discover that what we thought might be a friendship will turn out
to have been merely an alliance. An alliance is agenda driven – in an
alliance people are pulled together be a shared common concern or interest. In
the Washington Interfaith Network where we work with other congregations for
social change, one of our mantras is “No permanent friends; no permanent
enemies.” A friend on one issue may turn out to be an enemy on another.
Alliances are agenda driven. It is very disappointing when we discover that what
we thought was a friendship turns out to have been on the part of another or
others merely an alliance. Some politicians have experienced that with WIN.
What they thought was a friendship turned out to be an alliance. It is one
thing for that to happen in a social change movement; another for it to
happen in a personal relationship. A
friendship may have agendas, but the relationship transcends the agenda.
Friends may find themselves on different sides of this or that issue but the
friendship is deeper than the issue. Unless
we have the experience of this kind of love – philia and agape mixed
together – we can’t understand God. God has an agenda for our world, but
God’s love is not agenda-driven. The
other reason we need profound friendships spiritually is because there is no
more accepting relationship than a true friendship. I had a sort of minor
breakthrough in understanding something about myself recently…a discovery
about why I have sometimes been dysfunctional in this particular little
corner of my life. It wasn’t a very complimentary discovery, I was
embarrassed about what I discovered about myself, but I immediately knew that
I wanted to call a certain friend and tell him about it…someone I went to
seminary with and with whom I talk a half-dozen times a year, sometimes more,
sometimes less. I knew that knowing this about me would help him understand
me better and I want him to know me…even the parts of me that aren’t very
attractive. He is a friend. Unless
we have friends like that, we can’t quite understand God who wants to know us
and understand us – even the parts we think aren’t very attractive. One of
the functions of church is to be a place where we find friends…friends of all
kinds…but at least one or two profound friendships. Friends whose friendship
is deeper than any shared agenda. I am not talking about alliances, but
friendships. When we build friendships within the congregation, it deepens
the love of the congregation. There
may be someone in this room this morning who is a missing jigsaw puzzle piece
in your life. If we are prayerful and open and not anxious, God will allow us
to find one another, just as Jesus and Lazarus found one another. If we let
it, love will happen. We can’t make it happen but if we open ourselves to it,
love will happen. They said about Jesus, “See how he loved him.” www.foundryumc.org |
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