Frozen Chosen Friends 5-5-24
Frozen Chosen Friends
Michael Coffey; John 15:9-17
Friending
You friended us, Jesus, and we clicked ‘like’ and you said meet you at the Ocotillo Pub we had a few beers and played darts and BS about our conquests and glory days until you told us what your embodied friending exacts of us, of yourself; The non-virtual friend lays down real life like combat buddies on the front line the one who hurdles to take the bullet the one who treads the mine field first or in the battlefield of the warring soul who listens to the lacerations without flinching who puts down his smartphone distractions and remove the taciturn armor of self-protection who prods your sore spots until you curse and admit that bandages have not healed and bro hugs you strong until you both know you’re going to weep on each other’s shoulders and throw another dart or two drinking Trappist brew hanging out until the say; last call. You’re gone now, friend, but we still go to the pub limping along like Jacob from our old injuries slaking our thirst in good company, befriending strangers with gaping wounds, raising a glass to you.
John 15:9-17
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 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. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends in order to do what I command you. 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.
Prayer – You have called us to love, to be true in our love with one another, to help when needed, to care when things are going wrong, to sustain when the end of the rope is tied. You have given us the name of friends, not just acquaintances, but friends. People who hang out together for reasons and perhaps not for reasons. Remind us once again, that as your friends, we are to love as you have loved, we are to bear fruit as you have borne fruit, all to show the world about what it means to have you as our friend – amen.
A week ago at the hospital I was involved in a very difficult case. A young woman was flown to BAS, following complications after lithotripsy for kidney stones. She had gone into Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome, ARDS, which is almost like having Covid in that a person’s lungs get very rigid and inflexible, making difficult for a person to get adequate oxygenation. She was placed on VV ECMO, which is the highest level of care for someone in her condition. Hooked up to a ventilator, ECMO, as many tubes going in as going out, for nearly a month and she was just beginning to get better. Earlier that Wednesday she had gotten up on the side of the bed with PT. Her husband who is a police officer had come in from Abilene to have a day with her which was unusual because he typically only came on weekends. She had some complications that required both chest tubes and a pericardial drain when she had some bleeding around her heart. With no drainage from that pericardial drain, the CV surgeon felt it was safe to pull that drain. They did, and shortly thereafter, she began to bleed into the pericardial sac around her heart quickly causing her heart to stop. A code was called and I went to the bedside to support her husband who I had met previously on several occasions. Every effort possible was made to resuscitate her, including cracking her chest and doing open heart massage. After 40 minutes, the team called it and she was pronounced dead.
Standing with her husband, the surgeon came out and told him that she had died, despite every effort we tried. The pain and grief erupted from his soul, and I stood by him, bearing witness to those moments when his world crashed down around him. I was also aware of the tears streaming down the face of the surgeon, the nurses, the therapists – all who had participated in caring for this 38 yo woman. Over the course of the next few hours, I stood with her husband, informed her aunt who came rushing in, not knowing that her niece had died. Had coached him on how to tell his two kids at home that mom wasn’t coming home after all.
That evening, as I was driving home from the hospital, I called my friend Randy, a chaplain colleague in SC. He answered the phone and I shared with him the pain and grief I felt from that day. I needed to bare my soul with a friend who could listen, could understand and who would give me space to feel and unburden. By the time I arrived home, I felt the lifting spirit from having a friend that ‘gets it.’
Wednesday this week I was teaching a class on talking to pt’s and families with a group of chaplains and social workers. I got a text from Randy – F***, my turn today, 1 yo in cardiac arrest after being left unattended in a tub. Over an hour being down, this isn’t going to end well. Call when you have a minute. So as I was driving down here for the Chosen on Wed evening, I was a friend to Randy just as he had been a friend to me the week before.
As I reflected upon our passage this morning a couple of things stood out to me, particularly in light of the past week or so, but as well as we watched ‘The Chosen’ on Wed evening. Jesus chose his friends, his disciples, they didn’t choose him. He didn’t pick the cream of the religious crop to be his friends. He picked normal, everyday people, with problems and flaws, some redeemable qualities and characteristics. But all in all, just people. And as he befriended them, there were times when they responded with passion and fervor, and other times, they were the frozen chosen, unsure of what to do, or perhaps too scared to follow closely on Jesus’ path to the cross. The frozen chosen friends, which is ironically what many people call Presbyterians.
Many years ago when I was still doing youth ministry, I can remember doing a Sunday evening lesson on friends and peer pressure. I asked the youth how they would define a friend. Though I can’t recall their direct comments I do remember that they reflected a friend is someone who lets you be yourself; a friend is someone who is nice, kind, and perhaps most important – there when you need them; a friend is someone who will listen to your problems and still be your friend afterwards; a friend cares about yours and other people’s opinions, and respects them, even if they disagree. They all could say what a friend isn’t as well, someone who stabs you in the back, or will talk about you behind your back.
I suspect if I asked you about who you chose as your friends, they would have many of those same qualities. I also am aware that many descriptions of friends often reflects how that person acts, not just how he or she may feel or what they may say. If this saying of Jesus from our gospel passage this morning, which ironically is set as he gathers with his friends around the Passover table on the night when he was both betrayed and denied, then I also wonder what kinds of friends we find in church today. Are they frozen chosen friends, or are they friends we can count on, who say positive things about and to one another? Do our friendships in the church reflect the love one another that Jesus speaks about in our passage this morning – does our friendship bear fruit or does the fruit simply rot on the limb?
“The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to a friend,” the book of Exodus says, just as the book of Isaiah says that God himself called Abraham his friend. It is perhaps staggering thought to imagine God calling someone a friend. The love of God; the mercy of God; the judgment of God. You take the shoes off your feet and stand as you would before a mountain or at the edge of the sea. But the friendship of God? It just isn’t something that God does. But yet, it is something Abraham and God, or Moses and God, do together. Not even God himself can be a friend all by himself. Picture in your mind for just a second, Abraham, sitting down, loosening his prayer shawl, trimming the end off of his cigar and pouring a glass of sherry for himself and God so they can catch up as only old friends can. For just a moment imagine, God taking off the Creator hat to share a sacred moment with the one whose descendants outnumber the stars in the sky. They are simply being together, the two of them, and being themselves.
Today, Jesus calls his disciples ‘friends.’ At least in John’s telling now, his criteria for what makes a friend a friend is made up of three characteristics. Jesus’ friends are those who love one another. His friends are not merely servants, although we are to serve Christ, because he has pulled us up to a level on par with his own. Jesus doesn’t leave us in the dark; rather, he shares what it is he knows about God with his friends. And, finally to be Jesus’ friend means that he chose us to be this long before we chose him. To be friends with Jesus doesn’t mean being frozen while chosen.
For modern readers, Jesus’ definition of love and friendship in John – to lay down one’s life for one’s friend – is completely unprecedented. Most contemporary language about friendship doesn’t speak in terms of life and death. We celebrate our friends, we eat and drink with friends, we take vacations with friends, we are there when a friend is in need; but the modern ideal of friendship is not someone who lays down his/her life on behalf of another. In the ancient world, however, Jesus’ words articulated a well-known ideal for friendship, not a brand new idea. This doesn’t mean that people laid down their lives for their friends in the ancient world any more than they are inclined to do so today – but it does show that the ideal of doing so belonged to the ancient perspective of friendship.
For Jesus, his own act of life-giving friendship is not the end of the story. Jesus doesn’t merely talk the language of friendship, he lives out his life and death as a friend and commands that his followers do the same. The commandment to love as Jesus has loved may be the most radical words of the Gospel because it claims that the love that enabled Jesus to lay down his life for his friends is not unique to him. The love can be replicated and embodied over and over again by his followers and friends. To keep Jesus’ commandment is to enact his love in our own lives. Jesus affirms the significance of this commandment by stating that his followers are his friends as they keep his commandment.
Jesus’ words here invite us to reexamine the frozen chosen way we sometimes refer to Jesus as our friend. The mark of friendship with Jesus is not what Jesus does for us – listen to our sorrows, walk beside us, hear our prayers – but what we do in response to Jesus’ love for us. For John, there is no point in asking at each moment of decision related to friendship, ‘what would Jesus do?’ because Jesus has already acted decisively in love. Jesus has been the ultimate friend – he gave love to every person he met – befriending them even if he never saw them again. Our opportunity, our calling is to be Jesus’ friend, which means that we love one another as he has loved us.
Week before last I needed a friend, someone to talk with regarding one of those difficult situations I frequently encounter in the hospital. I called Randy and he is/was and always will be the friend I needed in that moment. This week, Randy needed a friend, someone he could talk to regarding a tragic situation in his work in the hospital. He called because, just as I know, he knows that I will be the friend to respond with love and compassion in that moment. It may seen like a little thing, but there isn’t many friends that I know I can call who can sit with me in that pain and sorrow and grief – he can and he did.
This passage reminded me that just like Jesus we chose our friends. Perhaps we use the same criteria of whether they can love us as a friend. I know that I only call a friend whom I trust to share what is biggest and sometimes heaviest on my heart, what is truest in that particular moment. I also realize that we choose our friends, and sometimes those friendships come about from shared struggles, shared joys, and shared life – and when they are authentic friendships, we give everything to and for those people we call friends, even our frozen chosen friends.
Jesus gave everything to his friends – his knowledge of God and his very life. Jesus is a model of friendship – because he loved without limits – and he makes it possible for us to live a life of friendship – because we have been transformed by everything he shared with us. Through friendship we come to know who and what God is and it is through friendship we enact the love of God with our friends. WE can risk being friends because Jesus has been and will always be our friend even if, or when, we are frozen chosen friends – thanks be to God – amen.