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05/09/21 – Choosing Friends

CHOOSING FRIENDS

May 9, 2021
6th Sunday of Easter
Ps. 98; Acts 10:44-48; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17
Rev. Denise Clark-Jones

How do you choose your friends? On Facebook, we can choose to include people as “friends” and we can even change our minds and “defriend” them with a stroke of our keyboards. Our readings for today explore the boundaries we create when we choose our friends, and the boundaries Jesus broke through to become our friend.

Since we won’t hear the account of Peter preaching to Jews from all tribes and nations gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Pentecost for two more weeks, I’ll provide the chronological context for today’s reading. Peter had a dream in which a sheet of unkosher animals fell down from heaven. A voice instructs Peter to “get up and eat.” Three times Peter refuses, but the voice declares: ““What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”  Then he is instructed to go to the house of the Roman centurion, Cornelius. As a Jew, Peter was not allowed to fraternize with Gentiles – certainly not enter their homes and eat a meal with them! Peter’s understanding had been that Jesus, a Jew, was sent to God’s Chosen People and to them alone. Cornelius is also informed in a dream that he is to welcome Peter into his home. Like Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, the Holy Spirit arranges this holy encounter.

According to Luke, the author of Acts, the pivotal point for the early Christian Church was this encounter between Peter and Cornelius, a God-fearing gentile. The verses read this morning are the final words of a sermon Peter preached at the home of Cornelius in Caesarea. Immediately after Peter finishes his sermon, the Holy Spirit falls upon the gentiles gathered at Cornelius’ house and they began to speak in tongues, just as had the Jewish crowd at the Pentecost festival. Peter and his Jewish entourage were amazed that God had given these gentiles the gift of the Holy Spirit. Their perception of how God operates was transformed. The boundaries that once separated them from gentiles had been torn down.  Peter proclaimed, rhetorically: “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” Here the words of the Ethiopian eunuch to Philip are echoed: “What is to prevent me from being baptized.” Cornelius and all those present from his household were baptized. This story is referred to as “The Gentile Pentecost,” and it marked the beginning of the mission to the gentiles.

It should not have taken this long for Peter to understand the necessity of breaking down barriers between people to fulfill Christ’s commission to his disciples.  Look back to those who Jesus befriended — sinners and Samaritans, poor folk and prostitutes, tax collectors and lepers, and the list goes on. Jesus didn’t hang out with the “in crowd,” he brought the unchosen into his circle of love.

Neither should it take so long for us to recognize the necessity for us to break down the barriers we have placed to separate ourselves from people we consider different from us. For example, racism against people of African ancestry did not end with releasing them from slavery with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. From the start of their lives as “free people,” legal and institutional barriers were placed against them voting, owning property, owning property near the homes of white people, getting an education, getting jobs and the list goes on. A black pastor could be jailed for preaching without permission from the local white law enforcement authority. The Bible is a dangerous book to those who seek to dominate, oppress, exploit and exclude. Incarceration as a tool to erect barriers for black men to rise out of poverty began as soon as they became free.

White soldiers returning from World War II were given the GI bill to further their education and generous government loans to buy their first homes. Affordable housing was built for them to buy. These homes could not be sold to blacks. Few Black veterans were able to use the GI Bill because they were regulated to the very few black colleges, which could not handle the demand of the large numbers of black veterans. These two benefits, largely unavailable to blacks, are significant because the rise of the white Middle class began with the education and home loans given to white World War Two veterans. The wealth and opportunities they gained were then passed on to their children. There is no time in this hour to trace the consequences of the unjust barriers placed to prevent blacks from receiving the opportunities afforded whites and to isolate them from white neighborhoods and schools. (See notes for links to more information) It should not have taken Christians this long to understand, but this injustice continues and now continues with renewed passion. Engineered racial segregation created a boundary that prevented whites from becoming friends with blacks. Living in a white bubble, most whites are ignorant of the extent of the barriers that have had exponential consequences for blacks’ ability to rise in social status and increase economic and political power.

Our epistle reading from John’s first letter ends a long exhortation to love and urges the readers to believe and be faithful. John encourages belief and faith by reassuring that they are manifested in active love. Love of one another demonstrates the love of God, and love of God is revealed through love of neighbor. It was known to the original audience that Jesus’ final commandment in John’s Gospel was to ‘love others as I have loved you and that Jesus had put forth the “Greatest Commandment” – to love God and neighbor.’ This is summarized in v.21 of the preceding chapter: “The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” Love knows no boundaries. Our placing boundaries that put others outside the love Jesus commanded strikes against the core message of the gospel and the whole bible.

In our reading from John’s gospel, Jesus refers to his disciples as friends. In the age of Facebook, the word, “friend,” has been reduced to denote relationships built on nothing but words and images passed around the Internet with people we may never have even met. We might “like” what someone posts without knowing anything about them. Friendship is not personal. We place boundaries on who we allow being friends and we can easily “defriend” someone if their worldview does not agree with ours. The love Jesus spoke about, “agape” love is deeply personal. Jesus claimed to love someone is to be willing to sacrifice for another. In our current political and social climate we are not seeing many examples of this spirit.

“As the Father has loved me,” Jesus says, “so I have loved you,” Jesus says these powerful words in his Farewell Address on the eve of his crucifixion. He demonstrated this love when he submitted to pain and death on the cross. Rather than a gruesome reminder of Jesus’ tortuous death, John tells us the cross is the sign of Christ’s love for us. Jesus explains: “No one has greater love than this, that you lay down your life for your friends.” This cross reminds us that there is no length to which God would not go to embrace us in love. There is nothing that God wouldn’t do to save us through love. What greater comfort do we have? What greater comfort can we give to those who believe there is no hope or purpose for their lives, for those beaten down by oppression or rejection, believing themselves to be among the unchosen?

The Greek word translated here as “friend”, literally means “loved ones” (Interpreter’s Bible) To love someone is not the same as to like them. Jesus said: “I have called you friends (loved ones) because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” The love that Jesus loved his friends is not silent or invisible in the face of injustice, exclusion, or exploitation. This love does not place boundaries based on ego-based fears and pretentions. Jesus says his love abides, meaning it remains present. Jesus urges his disciples to abide in his love, that is to make our love present to others and be present within us in our perception of others. Jesus goes on to share the reason he has asked them to keep his commandments. He explains:

“You will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” A friend, one who loves, desires another’s joy. How often do we think in those terms? Too often we operate on the perception that life is a zero-sum game. But fruits of the Spirit, such as peace, love, joy, justice are not diminished for one if given to another.

Here is John’s gospel in a nutshell. We can risk love, even when we receive no love in return. This is a way of sacrificing our own lives. We can risk loving because Jesus took that risk for us. We can sacrifice our own security and privilege to be Christ’s disciples in a hostile world because we have a safety net – God’s love.

May we be as generous and inclusive with our love as Christ has been with us.

Amen.
May it be so!

 

Notes:

Erin Blakemore. “How the GI Bill’s Promise was Denied to a Million Black WW II Veterans.” The History Channel. Original article published June 21, 2019, updated April 20, 2021. https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits

Terry Gross, NPR interview with Richard Rothstein, author “The Color Of Law: A Forgotten History Of How Our Government Segregated America.”  May 3, 2017, 12:47 PM ET. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/526655831

 

 

 

 

© Rev. Denise Clark-Jones, 2021, All Rights Reserved
Westminster Presbyterian Church | 1420 W. Moss Ave. | Peoria, Illinois 61606
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