FRIENDS OF JESUS John M, Buchanan
John 15:12-17 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
October 14, 1979 Columbus, Ohio

None of his friends had ever seen him cry. He is an educator, a consumately
rational man, successful in his field, respected by his colleagues, an effective
participant in his church and other community organizations. One of the admirable
things about him is that he doesn't get upset. In the midst of heated debate, when
other tempers are flaring, you can count on him to be level-headed, cool, rational,
In fact, none of his friends remember him becoming terribly excited about anything.
But earlier this year, for the first time, he attended a reunion of old friends, the
outfit with which he served in the Second World War, As is the case with many men
his age, he went to war as a youngster in 1942, survived, put the whole experience
on a back shelf in his mind, and proceeded with the business of living, working and
having a family. His outfit had been caught in the Battle of the Bulge; a slight
limp is the only reminder, He had driven a jeep out of it, loaded with wounded men
through some difficult conditions, He hadn't seen any of them since, And as he
told about the experience, after the reunion, he was still weeping.

Now, there are many overtones to that story. A person who shares with other
people something as harrowing, intense and dangerous as the Battle of the Bulge and
a spectacular ride to safety, will always feel a close emotional tie with those
people. Few of us have anything quite that dramatic in our story, but we know that
one of the characteristics, or requirements, of friendship is shared suffering. The
dimension which interests me is fairly common. Many people look back to another
time in their own history as the time of friendship; back to the War or at least to
military service, back to college days and life in the Fraternity or Sorority House.
"Those were the days, my friends! We thought they'd never end."

Some of ‘that is normal. But people who think deeply and analytically about
our culture are suggesting that some of it is new and peculiar to our time, I am
discovering a whole new group of scholars called "Futurists", who, with one voice,
are warning that a major characteristic of the new world we are building is severe
strain in personal relationships, that the whole spectrum of human relationships
from friendship to marriage, to parent-child, is undergoing a total upheaval. We
look backward to define friendship, they are saying, because for many people there
is no such thing in the present and no possibilities in the future.

Most of us read Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984 long ago, were stim-
ulated and amazed, and relegated them to some obscure corner of our minds reserved
for Science Fiction. They were, twenty-six years ago, interesting, provocative
reading, but"far-out" - particularly that business about human beings reduced to
automotons, the allure and mystery of romantic love reduced to biological necessity,
which could be accommodated effectively in test tubes, friendship reduced to simple
functional transactions devoid of feeling, and Big Brother watching it all very
carefully. If you dismissed that, as I did in the bland days of the late 50's as
irrelevant, perhaps you share my dismay at the realization that 1984 is now just
five ‘years away, and that Brave New World resembles the evening news far more than
Star Wars.

In those books, remember, technology became the means by which the humanity of
the race was gradually eroded, The idea was that the more technically proficient
we become, the less human we would be, Thoughtful people are concerned that it has
already happened to us. Paul Tournier, Swiss physician - theologian, has written

a De

a superb new book on violence in which he suggests that technology has deprived us
of our humanity and made us more tolerant of violence in ourselves and others,

(The Violence Within, p.191).

I was astounded to discover that Sigmund Freud, who knew a little bit about
human relationships, worried and wondered if any kind of "community" would be
possible in the coming industrial-technocratic age.

This is a concern of ours today, not only because this is Friendship Sunday,
a designation which allows dignified, private Presbyterians to act like Baptists and
invite someone to church; but also because it has to do with the essence of Christian
Faith. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is global, historical: it has to do with vast
movements in history; it relates to structures and institutions, But it is none of
that if it is not personal. It is nothing if it does not treat, somehow, human
beings, and human relationships. Each age gives the church its purpose. Our pur-
pose in the age which is emerging may be to celebrate and defend the humanity of the
race, and to be the place where human relationships are valued.

The very worst thing his enemies could think to call Jesus, becomes in retro-
spect one of His grandest titles. "Behold - a friend of sinners." And in our lesson
this morning the Fourth Gospel reports that among the last things He talked about
with His disciples was friendship. This,then, is our business. But first, think a
bit more about the problem,

Relationships with others ~ friendships, if you will - are as necessary to
full life as food and drink, We know the physiological reality of that thesis. We
know that babies get sick and die if they are isolated from human contact, We know
that the memory of relationship and the anticipation of its renewal can keep a man
alive for a long, long time in North Vietnam POW camp, or chained to a tree some-
where in the jungles of South America. Henri Nouwen, Dutch theologian, presents a
case study of a middle aged man in the hospital who expressed his fear of dying
during surgery to a student chaplain the night before the operation. His operation
was not particularly critical, but in fact he did just that. He died. Analyzing
the conversation Nouwen discovered that the student had asked the man what was
waiting for him after he came home from the hospital. The man, who was already
exhibiting many symptoms of depression, said, "Nothing and nobody. Just hard work,"
Nouwen comments, "No man can stay alive when nobody is waiting for him. Everyone
who returns from a long and difficult trip is looking for someone waiting for him
at the station or airport, Everyone wants to tell his story and share his moments
of pain and exhilaration with someone who stayed home, waiting for him to come
back." (The Wounded Healer,p.66).

What we need to understand, and what we have difficulty seeing, because we are
part of the problem ourselves, is that the industrial technological culture and the
way of life it has created, not only provides us with unheard of comforts, but
deprives us, or at least militates against a part of our humanity which is fragile
and very precious.

I do not think that it would be possible, or good, or interesting for very
many of us to go to the Rockies and live in a cabin, as simply as John Denver.
Besides, most of us can't afford the cost of the 4,000 gallon tank of gasoline Mr.
Denver has in case he wants to keep in touch with the industrial technological
society from which he has made so much money escaping. I do not think Tom Hayden

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and Jane Fonda have much to offer even disguised in the garb of the upper middle
class and charging $5,000 per speech. But I do think you and I need to be reminded
over and over again that our humanity is at stake: that our culture does not value
it very highly, in fact doesn't value it at all. I think we need to be reminded
that what our culture values most is productivity and accumulation; that being gets
lost in the midst of making, owning, using; that the system demands allegience no
religion ever gets from us, that we will work till we drop in our shoes, that we
will neglect our children, ruin our marriages and destroy our health - we will lay
down our lives if need be when the company calls - because we think we must, I
think it was John Ciardi who wrote something to the effect that "an ulcer, after all,
is nothing more than a poem unwritten, an aria unsung, a romance unfulfilled, a
landscape unpainted", and - I would add - a prayer not prayed,

I do not want to turn back the clock or calendar, But I do want to remember
that technology has spawned a whole new catalog of idolatries; that middle America
is convinced that busyness is next to Godliness; that effectiveness really means
efficiency which means speed; that in those most human of vocations - medicine and
ministry - we lust after professionalism so thoroughly that not getting involved
emotionally with our patients - parishoners is a goal to be pursued and a skill to
be learned, not a sin to be avoided. I do not pine for the good old days when
people died of T.B, and Polio, when appendicitis was fatal and a broken hip meant
the inevitable end, But I do wish to preserve the humanity of the patient whose
admission to a modern hospital is accompanied by awe, fear and perplexity; who enters
a world of strange machinery, esoteric vocabulary, curious smells, sounds and equip-
ment - who will lie in bed waiting, sometimes for days, for someone to say some-
thing personal.

I am not suggesting a simple minded nostalgia but a recollection that God gives
each of us both need and ability to establish and enjoy human relationships: that as
children it was easy but the older we got the more difficult it became, that instead
of expanding our circle of relationship and our own capacity for intimacy, many of
us have been closing in, withdrawing, retreating since the far side of adolescence,

"Friend of sinners" they called Jesus. Friend, that is to say of gluttons,
crooks, street people - those nobody much counted as people who mattered - those who
had no friends but one another. In the Fourth Gospel - and only in this incident -
He called His disciples His friends. He defined it as love which is faithful - to
the end. Love which lays down life itself, They had been followers, students,
disciples. But now, just hours before His arrest, He wanted them to know they wore
a new and glorious mantle - they were His friends, Think of it! Not martyrs,
servants of God, chosen apostles, Bishops, Kings - but friends. "No longer do I call
you servants.,.but friends,.,This I command you, to love one another."

It's an intriguing thought: a moving one, for me at least. Aristotle wrote
about philia, love between brothers and friends, and taught that it was only possible
with peers, social and economic equals, Hierarchical political philosophers have
always preferred Aristotle and that's one of the reasons. He tells us we can Con-
form our friendships to people just like us, But in human history there is a con-
trary voice. Sometimes it erupts in the scornful compliment paid to Jesus - "Friend
of sinners", It begins early in the story. At the beginning - Abraham, then Moses,
are called, of all things, Friends of God. It's a staggering assertion against the
sterile backdrop of Aristotle - that the relationship between God and human beings,
Creator and creature, might be called friendship! But there is it throughout and

she

it was clearly the intent of Jesus that one of the visible, identifying character-
istics of His church would be that they were friends - of His, and of one another,
It was clearly His intent that something so special would start happening between
them that others would be startled when they saw it, intrigued by it, compelled by
it, "People are going to believe in God", He promised them, "when they see how
you are getting along."

They fought, of course. They probably fought over the definition of love. The
church never has been perfect. But the most damning criticism of all - the worst
indictment - is unfriendliness, uncaring, impersonal, We cannot be that and be
church,

Arnold Come, President of San Francisco Seminary, told a group of clergy this
summer that the only churches he knew which were growing in the Bay Area were those,
in his words, "Where every person is cared for by someone, and nobody gets lost,"

And Juergen Moltmann, a theologian so German and so sophisticated that more
people own his books than understand what's in them, writes in a recent one that
the only really accurate title for any church is a "Fellowship of Friends of Jesus."

It is, I would submit, what we are about fundamentally. It is, I believe,
what Jesus wanted for His disciples and what God wants for His church, It is, I
am convinced, the ultimate goal - the happiest ending to all human relationships.

Jesus said it in terms His men understood ~ no longer Master and servants, but
friends. And we need to hear His word in terms we understand, Like rich-poor,
management-labor, or even more intimately man-woman, Friendship is the goal, not
simply our possibility, the ultimate, the purpose. Neurotically and obsessively
our culture makes one of the means to the relationship the end, Sex, in spite of
the pornography industry, is not the goal. It is a bridge on the way to friend-
ship. Good marriage means friendship, Even Masters and Johnsons conclude that
good and healthy sex means the same,

And parent-child, We never stop being either, regardless of our age. But at
its best it does become friendship and when it does there is nothing better!

And it proceeds to the level of divine-human relationships.

"hat a friend we have in Jesus," the old Gospel song goes - and while the
music is not our choice and the words don't fit our theology, it says what we
Presbyterians need to sing about on occasion.

"A personal relationship with Jesus Christ" our more evangelical brothers
and sisters keep talking about; and while they need us to remind them of the sins
of individualism, we do need them to remind us that it is personal,

We prefer it academically, so listen to Karl Barth:

"The grace of God to sinful man is that..,

he calls him not merely to the humility of a servant
and the thankfulness of a child but to the intimacy
and boldness of a friend."

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tt is a radical idea, that. God wills to be known among us as a friend,
He has ~- for us - affection, réspect, faithfulness and acceptance, He shares
our suffering. He shares our joy. He waits for us, takes us seriously and
stands with us. In Jesus Christ he lays down His life for His friends.

There is no more radieal idea than that, If we think about it a bit: if we
allow it to work among us, in our intimacies, in our acquaintances, who knows?

Maybe "They will know we are Christians by our love,"
Amen.

We are not always comfortable with intimacy, 0 God. We confess that when
Someone comes close, we back away. We confess that we have backed away from You.
Help us now to draw near; to understand who You are and what You wart in new
ways. 0 God, help us to be to one another, what you, in Jesus TZhrist, have

been to us,
Amen,