Friends

 I do not call you servants any longer… but I have called you friends.  -  John 15.15

Jesus ups the ante for his disciples in this past Sunday’s gospel reading from John, claiming them as more than disciples, now as friends, intimate equals. He recognizes that what he sent to  teach them is now complete, having passed on all that the Father has sent him to teach them, and commands them to love one another as He has loved them, His final summation of the law.

What does it mean to love like Jesus loves, for each of us ? How have we felt this sacrificial love in our own lives, and how do we live it out, and pass it on, in our own world and time ?

These are challenging and polarized times, an extreme distortion of a former time which was marked by more civility, where opposing worldviews have become pathologized, and the bearers of dissent are dismissed as enemies.

Come, let us reason together, and see one another through the eyes of unquenchable love, by the One sent to demonstrate the love of God, and who calls us into Holy Friendship, with Him, and with each other.

—  Kathy Gray, Deacon

Jesus will have no hierarchies,
no separations or divisions,
not even between us and him.
“Call no one good but God.”
There are no greater and lesser,
no servants and masters,
no insiders and outsiders.
Not even believers and unbelievers.
Only friends, peers, siblings, companions.
Every stranger is a sibling.
Every person you meet is a friend
for whom you would lay down your life.
There is no “them.” There is only us.
In the love of Christ, befriend this world
and everyone in it;
you will never be alone.

Friends by Steve Garnaas-Holmes