Easter Vi Friends

Easter VI Jesus says: I call you friends.

Much of religion created by human beings is faith turned into fear.

A seer, a prophet, a teacher brings forth an insight about the Divine. This insight may possess immense beauty. It may hold the complexity of creation in the chalice of clarity and the songs of simplicity. It may inspire artists, poets and musicians to creative heights of accomplishment. But, some how the gift of faith the new insight brings always transforms in one of two ways.
The first transformation of faith is fear. The second is indifference. This should be no surprise. Such transformation is revealed in the Bible right from the beginning of human life on this planet. The Bible is a brutally honest account of how faith transforms to fear, and how fear brings pain and suffering into the world.

From time to time Christians have made a cursory judgment of the Old Testament and described it as revealing a god of wrath. Nothing could be further from the truth. The love of God appears in every book of the Old Testament. It is the word most used by Moses and the Prophets to describe God.

The wrath revealed in the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments as well as in the Apocrypha, comes when people make a real choice to transform faith into fear. For the religious, fear always produces wrath. More often than not, the wrath that fear produces is the working out of the impersonal aspect of God as revealed in God’s holy laws.

It is not that humans break God’s laws and then God punishes them. The Law of God cannot be broken. The Law of God is grounded in the fundamental pattern of the universe. That pattern is choice, cause and effect, and consequence. That pattern proceeds from the very essence of God by which, through which, and for which we and the entire universe exists.

That essential quality of God is love. Love gives the law in the same way a parent tells a child: no, you cannot play with the pretty flames on the gas burner. They are dangerous to touch.
Of course, we all remember how that scenario plays out. For human beings "no" is the signal to disobey and rebel. The gas stove does not punish the child who ignores the parent. The pain of disobedience is simply the consequence of a choice that entered into the world of cause and effect.

People have a tendency to blame God when we ignore natural law and suffer consequences. That blame helps transform faith into fear. The solution to the problem is not more Law or even more knowledge. The tendency to blame, to avoid another basic law- the law of self responsibility, resides within each of us. And so, the solution can only come from one source. That one source is God.

The solution God chose for the problem is Jesus Christ.

Jesus came to preach, to teach and to heal. He did those things with a plan and a purpose. The plan is the Plan of Salvation. The purpose is to re establish the broken relationship between God and humans, to restore the broken relationships among humans, and to repair the shattered image of God in the human soul- to bring unity to our divided psyches.

Jesus reveals to us this morning how he accomplishes this task.

First: Jesus reminds his students, and all of us, that God just doesn’t have love or show love, God is love. Despite the message of Moses and the Prophets few, if any, of the people Jesus spoke with understood this. Their faith had transformed to fear. They looked for salvation within the categories of fear: knowledge, law, power.

Second: Jesus uses the word abide to show how we can choose to receive divine love. As in last week’s gospel reading, Jesus offers us an invitation to turn fear back into faith. The word abide means to live in, to dwell in, to participate in the divine life of the Holy and Blessed and Eternal Trinity.

Third: Jesus offers us a new commandment. This new commandment is a summary commandment that informs and further describes all of the prior commandments God gave to Moses. The new commandment is for people to love each other.
The word the Holy Spirit directed the beloved apostle John to use to communicate Jesus’ message is the Greek word agape.

Agape is the highest form of love. It is the selfless act of seeking the best for another person. It has been described as unconditional love, a love that simply gives without any thought of return or reward. It is a steadfast love that nothing can erode or change. It is a holy love that has no self interest or self serving motive attached to it. It simply pours itself out for the benefit of the beloved regardless of the cost. It is the divine love of Jesus who emptied himself of his divine power in order to become one of us. It is the love that makes worship of God its priority and service to others as its expression.

Agape is impossible for broken, lonely and isolated human beings to manufacture. And so, Jesus reveals the fourth truth that makes this possible. The fourth truth is Jesus’ statement: I call you friends.

Friendship with Jesus is what initiates divine love in our souls and continues on a daily basis to infuse divine love into our souls. The Book of Proverbs says as iron sharpens iron so a friend sharpens his friend.

Friendship with Jesus is friendship with God. That friendship challenges us and encourages as a human friend may challenge us and encourage us to do better. But there is a more profound consequence to our friendship with Jesus. Jesus reveals this more profound consequence when he tells us the Great Mystery: you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.

You are not an accident. You exist because God has called you into existence. You are a unique manifestation of divine love here at this time and in this place. You are here to share the divine friendship of Jesus Christ who reaches out to you, to all of you, to each of you personally with the words: I have chosen you. I have chosen you to be my friend.

There is a fifth principle Jesus reveals. It is the principle of transformation. Because Jesus has chosen us to be his friends he pours forth his divine essence into us. It is a gift. It is grace. That grace will, if we choose to accept it into our lives, produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit in all of our thoughts, feelings, choices and human relationships.

The transformation process is three fold. First, our desire to separate from God and to change faith into fear is transformed back in to reunification with God. In that reunification we begin to see the Law of God not as wrath that inflicts pain but rather as the perfect mirror to our souls that brings healing. In that process, fear transforms back into faith.

The second part of the transformation we experience as we grow in our friendship with Jesus is in the way we treat other people. The first aspect of that transformation is to change blame into blessing. Has some one insulted you? Bless. Do not curse. Has some one misunderstood you or failed to meet your expectations? Bless. Do not blame. The life of friendship with Jesus is a life of blessing. Jesus fills us with the grace of divine blessing so that we may in turn bless others.
The third part of the transformation Jesus offers us through his friendship is the reintegration of our souls. The individual human psyche is divided against itself. It is in a process of greater disintegration and disorder as it rebels against divine law and separates from divine love. Friendship with Jesus initiates and continues a healing process.

This healing process brings clarity to our thoughts so we no longer speak of having a divided mind. This healing process brings purity to our hearts so that our desires emerge from the place of truth rather than suffering and self deceit. This healing brings holiness to our wills so that we may perceive that self will is not free will. Only divine will is free will. Self will is slavery to separation, rebellion and suffering.

How do we then become friends with Jesus? How do we continue in his friendship? The key is choice. Jesus has already stated: I have chosen you. It is our response to that choice that cultivates the friendship.

Jesus is the constant loyal but unobtrusive friend who is always willing to bless. His friendship changes us in ways we can scarcely imagine or anticipate. As with any friendship Jesus invites us to share with him our time and attention. We do this through worship, Bible study, prayer and service to others. We do this as we make a conscious choice to cultivate the one relationship that enters into the world of cause and effect to produce eternal consequences.

In that choice we discover the perfection of our desires and the fulfillment of our desires. In that choice we learn how to live life as it is rather than to fight against life in a vain effort to impose our will on other people, the world, and God.

Jesus speaks to us today and says: I call you friends. In the friendship Jesus offers is the transformation of fear into faith, of indifference into spiritual passion. A new and more joyful life awaits us as we hear the word of God, as we believe the word of God, as we live the word of God: I call you friends.