Sermon: Friends of Jesus

Three times at the lakeside Jesus asks the question ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?'.  There's a memory of the first time Peter set eyes on Jesus; how he looked at him and said: ‘you are Simon, son of John'.  Three times Peter replies in the affirmative.  Three times Jesus charges him to care for his flock.  Three times, for each of the three times Peter had denied him on the night of the passion.  And then Jesus goes on to predict that Peter too will lay down his life for the sake of the Good Shepherd whom he follows.  For where Jesus has gone is precisely where Peter must also go for love of him.  It will be the cost of discipleship for Peter, of saying yes to the summons of the risen Lord, ‘follow me'. 

Preachers have a bad habit of making simple things complicated, but there is more to the Greek text of this passage from St John than meets the eye. In this threefold exchange between Jesus and Peter, St John uses different words for ‘love', different words for ‘feed' and different words for ‘sheep'. Let me try and translate so as to catch the nuances.  When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these others here do?' He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord: you know that I am your friend.' Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs'. A second time he said to him,‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?' He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I am your friend.' Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep'. He said to him the third time,‘Simon, son of John, are you my friend?' Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Are you my friend?' And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything. You know that I am your friend.' Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my little sheep.'

Most translations despair of separating out these shades of meaning. Yet we love St John for his reverence for words and the subtle artistry he achieves with them.  This theologian of the incarnate Word is deeply aware that gospel-telling involves word-painting: every word carries its unique palette of colours and tones that evoke associations and awaken memories.  So let me take just one of those words. When Jesus asks ‘Do you love me?' the first two times, he uses the great theological word for love agapao, the self-giving altruistic love with which God loves us to the end, as John says.  In the upper room at the footwashing, this is how we are to be as a community of grace and truth: ‘as I have loved you, so you also must love one another'. What kind of answer is it for Peter to answer with quite a different word, phileo, and say, ‘Yes Lord, you know that I am your friend'? Philia in classical Greek means loyal friendship, an affection that is stable and committed, not like the more charged but wayward eros with its merged bodies and emotions, not a New Testament word.  Not agape, not eros - as if Peter is responding rather weakly, like the contrast between the warmth of lovers and the coolness of those who are just good friends.

But St John brings together these same two words in another saying of Jesus. ‘Greater love (agape) has no-one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends (philia). You are my friends if you do as I have commanded you.'A ‘friend' is one who is loved specifically and personally, chosen because of who he or she is. In classical Greek, the love of friends is the highest form of love there is. The word suggests strong, even passionate affection for a specific person. Your friend is someone who is there for you. When Jesus wept at Lazarus' grave, the crowd said of him, ‘See how he loved him!' The same word expresses how Jesus loved the beloved disciple, and even, in one place, how the Father loves his only Son. So when Jesus speaks of laying down one's life for one's friends, he is saying how personally and passionately he loves every one of us whom he calls no longer slaves but friends, who know his mind and heart, those for whom he is there.

‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?' ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I am your friend'. Aristotle says that a ‘friend' is someone who is publicly loyal to you, has shared your struggles. ‘You are those who have continued with me in my trials' says Jesus to his disciples. In the upper room, Jesus speaks of laying down his own life for his friends: Peter among them. Now, it is the other way about: Peter who will lay down his life for Jesus. ‘"When you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you, and take you where you do not wish to go." (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.)'. To be a friend of Jesus means loving him personally, passionately, and publicly, because that is the way he loves us. It means embracing the price of friendship, not caring about my life so much that I wouldn't be prepared to give it up for him.  It means imitating the Good Shepherd not only in caring for his people, his flock, but in laying down his life for them. 

So it is not that Peter will not rise to the challenge Jesus three times puts to him.  Quite the opposite.  For now he has at last understood what it will mean for him to follow faithfully.  In the power of the resurrection he can now put Maundy Thursday behind him, when he so dismally failed the test of friendship.  Easter has transformed the coward of the courtyard into the loving friend of the lakeside.  And I dare say that of all the disciples, his journey is most like ours, for we too need constantly to be enticed from the twilight of half-commitment into the full day of loyal love, ‘out of darkness into his marvellous light' as a Letter of Peter says.  We need to be able to say: ‘yes Lord, we are your friends'.  We need conversion of life, turning round, not once but each day we live. 

Jesus asks us to live and die for him, just as he died and lives for us, even if it takes us where we do not wish to go. Perhaps on good days we can begin to wish to go there for his sake, for where the Master is, there will his servant be.  And whatever awaits us on that road, we know that we must embody and express our love of Jesus by feeding his sheep. For Peter and for us, that includes living within the circle of love we call the Christian community. But love always looks beyond itself. To be friends of Jesus means being friends to those he especially cherishes: the vulnerable and voiceless and poor, those whom he calls his brothers and sisters. As we approach an election, should we not renew our Christian commitment to care for those who most need our help and friendship, and as we cast our votes think not of our own self-interest but of the common good, and especially the good of those most in need in our society and our world?  Voting is a chance to serve, to show caring, compassionate friendship. ‘Feed my sheep.'

Once Peter said, when Jesus asked if the disciples would abandon him:  ‘Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life'.  Perhaps the words came too easily.  Sometimes they do in a fit of enthusiasm.  ‘I will lay down my life for you' he'd exclaimed in that moment of heightened intensity in the upper room, hardly knowing what he was saying.  But he knows now.  At the lakeside Jesus puts the test once more, and this time he rises to the challenge.   ‘Lord, you know that I am your friend.  You know I could not love you more.'  On the other side of the passion he understands what this means, what it will cost him.   It is his greatest moment. I ask myself, and I ask you, whether ours is yet to come, and how passionate we shall be when it does.

Michael Sadgrove

Durham Cathedral, 18 April 2010 (3^rd Sunday of Easter)

John 21: 1-19