“I no longer call you servants…instead, I have called you friends.”  Wow!  If I were texting this on my phone instead of preaching it out loud, I would insert one of those “mind blown” memes right now.  Jesus, calling us friends?  Has he met us?  I mean, we can be pretty wonderful.  But we, or at least I, can be not at all wonderful, too!  It makes we wonder, just want kind of friendship are we talking about here?

Well, we can assume from the text that it is a friendship that involves a lot of connection.  Jesus told his disciples, “I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.”  He went on to say that apart from him, we can do nothing.  The vine and the branches share a crucial closeness, a vital continuity.  Jesus is our connection, our lifeline, our sustenance.  Jesus says his Father is the gardener, who prunes and tends to the branches.  God wants to cultivate closeness with us.

I like that idea, of cultivating closeness, but different people have different ideas about how closeness is cultivated.  Recently my husband Phil and I were talking about friendship, and how he is perfectly content to talk to his best friend two or three times a year.  Both Phil and his friend would say they are really close!  But “really close” in my book requires more than just talking two or three times a year.  I like talking on the phone, doing fun things together, spending time with each other frequently and regularly.  To me, closeness cannot be formed without time, putting a lot of intention into the relationship.

But, in our passage today, Jesus never mentions a specific amount of time needed in order to cultivate closeness.  He does mention some other specifics, though, including obedience.  Jesus isn’t nearly as interested in how many devotional books we read every day as he is in whether or not we love our neighbors as ourselves, and work for justice, and overcome evil with good.  Closeness with God is cultivated through obedience—doing what God wants us to do.  As Paul would go on later to observe in Galatians 5:6, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

The ultimate expression of faith expressing itself through love is being willing to lay down our life for someone else.  Jesus said, “Love each other as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”  I don’t know about you, but most of my friends have a hard time asking for a ride to the airport, or for help taking care of their dog.  No one has ever asked me to lay down my life for them!  But in Jesus’ day, this was a widely known ideal of friendship.  Sacrifice was an expected part of friendship in the ancient world.  It was the way true friendship was distinguished from faux friendship—relationships that appeared friendly but were really self-serving.  If I’m cultivating closeness with you so I can get my needs met, that’s not really friendship, is it?  That’s about advancing my own agenda and shows I care about myself more than I care about you.  True friendship is the opposite of that.  It shows caring so deep for the other person that it is willing to sacrifice.

The friendship Jesus is inviting us into involves much more than hanging out a few times a year.  It involves much more than calling each other on the phone once a month, or even seeing each other on a daily basis.  It’s not about the frequency of the connection.  It’s about the depth!  It’s about a closeness that sustains us, a closeness we can’t live without, a closeness built on sacrifice and obedience.

Sometimes developing that closeness requires speaking and hearing hard truths.  Jesus told his disciples that every branch that does not bear fruit will be pruned so it will bear more fruit.  But then he says not to worry, you are already clean by the word I have spoken to you.  This week as I was reading about friendship in the ancient world, one of the hallmarks cited was “the use of frank and open speech”.  True friends tell each other the truth.  They don’t just talk about the weather, or the Phillies, or current events.  True friends talk about things that really matter, even if it’s pointing out flaws and mistakes.  Part of being branches connected to the vine is this painful reality, that we are not perfect, but we are all connected, and our limitations and short-comings may have a profound and hurtful effect on others.  True friends don’t let that go.  They find a way to speak the truth in love.

Over the last few weeks, I have been making many phone calls to other churches to set up meetings in my role as a disaffiliation guide, and I have also been talking to more clergy than normal as we make plans for charge conference in November, and learn more about the pathways program our Eastern PA conference is offering to all local churches.  I don’t think I’ve talked to as many pastors in the last two years as I have in the last two months!  And you know what I am hearing, time and time again, from pastors?  That there is someone, or a few someones, in their congregation, whose behavior is hurting the body.  But no one knows what to do.  No one wants to talk to them about it.  They are filled with fear, not with love.  And so they stay stuck.

In the ancient world, friendship was understood as being a very unique kind of relationship.  It was NOT a master-servant relationship, where only one party is free to speak their mind.  It was NOT a teacher-student relationship, where both parties might be free to speak, but only one party had authority.  Jesus said, now I call you friends.  Friends who love sacrificially.  Friends who speak the truth in love.  The most common Greek word for love in the New Testament is “phileo”, sometimes referred to as friendly love.  It’s the root behind the name of our city, Philadelphia.  Phileo love is a love that is reciprocal.  A love where there is a mutual duty to care for one another.  A love relationship that lasts through thick and thin.

Today is World Communion Sunday today, and this idea of friendship, phileo love, is at the heart of this annual tradition.  In 1933, America was in the throes of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.  The national unemployment rate was about 15%.  A state of emergency was declared making it illegal for American citizens to own gold.  Albert Einstein came to America to escape Nazi Germany.  Tensions were rising.  From within and without, we were a nation in great distress.  Many people were on the brink of despair.

But Dr. Hugh Thompson Kerr, pastor at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, had a vision of all the Christians in the world celebrating communion on the same day.  He believed the gospel of Jesus Christ was the antidote to despair, and that Christians were called to a special kind of love, a friendship with God and each other.  He asked his church to set aside the first Sunday in October,1933,  as a “world-wide communion Sunday”, to build unity within the church universal.  They did, and although the idea took several years to build momentum, during World War II it became very popular.  World Communion Sunday became a powerful witness to how Christians all over the world, despite varying political viewpoints and doctrinal differences, are committed to abiding in Christ.  We are committed to connecting to God and each other.  We are committed to friendship with Jesus and loving one another as best we can.

While every communion celebration is meaningful, World Communion Sunday is one of my favorite days of the church year.  On this day we celebrate that Jesus is the vine, and all of us are branches.  So often we think about what divides us.  But all of us are equally in need of this holy meal, and all of us our equally welcomed.  World Communion Sunday gives us a way to connect with people throughout time and space, and it is a reminder that communion is possible, even when we don’t all agree.  Communion is possible, even with our enemies.  Communion is possible, friendship with God is possible, not because we are so wonderful.  But because God is.

This week I got a book out of the library for Phil and me to listen to in the car while we do some driving.  We don’t always like the same kind of books, but I’m hoping this one will interest him because it’s about history, and I think I will like it because it’s about a preacher by the name of Henry Ward Beecher.  You’ve probably heard of his sister, Harriet Beecher Stow, who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Henry was the youngest child in a large family, and no one expected much out of him.  But, turns out, he was a very skilled orator and a charismatic church leader.  He was also, rumor has it, unfaithful to his wife.

What got me interested in his biography is a story of how he went to Yale in 1872 to deliver a lecture in front of a very prestigious group of scholars and ministers.  An hour before his scheduled appearance, he was in his hotel room, with no idea of what he was going to say in his speech.  While he was shaving, though, he had an epiphany.  He dropped his razor, seized his pencil, and with his face still covered with shaving cream, jotted down the notes he would need for his speech.  Afterwards, he returned to shaving, only to be so distracted by his situation that he cut himself badly.

His biographer wondered, was Henry Ward Beecher distracted by the deep trouble he was in, or the deep trouble that was in him?  Gossip about his relationship with a parishioner had turned to written letters of complaint, and that had turned into criminal charges filed against him.  A public trial for adultery was not far off.  Here he was, a man of flesh and blood, getting ready to preach to other men of flesh and blood.  Don’t you wonder what he said in that sermon?

When I read that description of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, I felt compassion for him.  The truth is, we are all people of flesh and blood.  And although we have not all committed the same sins, we all had fallen short of the glory of God.  All of us have been distracted by the trouble we’ve gotten ourselves into, and the trouble inside of us.  All of us have bled a little.  We have all carried the burden of being human, of not being perfect, of not being able to do all the good we want to do, and continuing to do the bad we don’t want to do.  All of us need to stay connected to the vine.  We know all too painfully well, that apart from Jesus, we can do nothing.

I am anxious to read more about Henry Ward Beecher.  I wonder if he is a good guy or a bad guy, or if he is, like the rest of us, a mix.  I wonder what I will learn about him as we delve into his story, and what I will learn about myself. And I wonder what I will learn about this mysterious friendship that Jesus invites us into.  Jesus is a friend who expects obedience but offers mercy.  He is a friend who holds us accountable, speaking the truth in love, but who also offers us the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and try again.  Jesus is a friend so overflowing with love he is willing to lay down his life for us.  He models how to tolerate the pain truth brings so we can become the people God means for us to be.

“I am the true vine,” Jesus said. “No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.”  May the truth of these words set us free to live with great joy.  Amen.