I Have Called You Friends
Martin Elfert
Easter 6
May 10, 2015
Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17
I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing:
I have called you friends.
There are four contexts in which a human being will perform an act of service for another, four models in which you or I will do something that another person wants or needs.
The first model is maybe the most obvious in the culture in which we live; it is what we might call a transactional model, what people who write contracts call quid pro quo. If any of you stopped for coffee on the way to church this morning, you experienced the transactional model: in return for money, the barista made you a tall, non-fat, half-caff latte with caramel drizzle and 2% foam.
The transactional works pretty well a lot of the time. I’m glad to be able to pay my dentist to take care of my teeth, glad to be able to pay the telephone company to deliver a distant loved one’s voice in my home, glad that be able to get those chocolate-covered raisins at Trader Joe’s. And my sense is that the folks whom I pay for these services are generally content with the arrangement as well. They are gainfully employed and, if the affect of the Trader Joe’s employees is anything to go by, they are happy and they find some meaning in their jobs. It’s an all around win.
The second context in which one person will perform an act of service for another is what we might call a power model. And notwithstanding its somewhat ominous title – we’re used to mad scientists plotting for power and world domination – this model is also works pretty well a lot of the time. In this model, service is rendered because one person has power or authority over another.
If you are a parent who has said “clean up your room” or “you have to go to bed now” or “don’t put that fork in the electrical outlet,” you have participated in the power model. If you are a teacher who has said, “this is when the essay is due,” if you are a boss who has said, “this is when you have to get to work,” if you are a police officer or a lawyer who has said, “these are the laws you must obey,” you have participated in the power model. And the world is probably a better and safer place because you did so.
The third model is what we might call need-based service. (I’m not sure if that’s the best or most accurate title for it, but I haven’t come up with anything better.) This is the kind of service that we do freely in order to meet a real or perceived need in another. Again, parenthood is a prime example, although this time it is the parent serving the child. Think of changing an infant’s diaper, of bath time and story time, of preparing thousands of meals as your children grow, of shuttling your children from one extra-curricular event to another. Think of Family Promise, the ministry that we host here at the Cathedral four times a year, in which we respond to the Gospel imperative to help the homeless find stable housing. Think also of those caregivers who provide for the needs of an aging parent or spouse as that loved one’s health declines.
All three of these models are tools. Like all popular tools – hammers, adjustable wrenches, pens, smart phones, cars, and scissors – they are amoral, they are neither positive nor negative in and of themselves. And like all of those tools, the right use of these tools has facilitated a lot of good, it has made a lot of things possible.
The danger comes when we idealise one of these models, when we make them into something inevitably moral, inevitably selfless, inevitably Christ-like. That’s probably the biggest risk with the third one, with need-based service. Caring for a loved one in decline is harder work – physically, spiritually, and emotionally – than most of us can even guess at. We say thanks for that. Family Promise is important work. We say thanks for that. And on this Mother’s Day, we remember that there are few people who work harder than a hard-working Mom. We say thanks for that.
And at the same time we remember that, like the transactional and power-based service, need-based service can become perverse. All three kinds of service are at risk of becoming poisoned by domination or exploitation.
Transactional service becomes exploitative when an individual buys or sells something that we believe ought to be free or, maybe more accurately, that we believe ought to be priceless. We hold, to give an obvious example, that it’s wrong to pay for sex, that prostitution is definitively exploitative. Similarly, spending money in such a way as to perpetuate sweatshops or to degrade the earth is wrong. And we’re not so sure if it’s okay to pay for a kidney or to jump to the front of a hospital queue or, as a recent article in The Atlantic explored, to pay for a reservation at a restaurant.
Power-based service becomes exploitative when the dignity of the one with less power is ignored or forgotten. Think of slavery, think of an abusive king or border guard or bureaucrat or jailer, think of a cruel teacher.
And need-based service becomes exploitative when the caregiver is secretly meeting his own needs through his service. Think of a parent who won’t let a child grow up, think of the priest who is terrified of his congregation becoming educated or empowered.
And now notice that Jesus’ model of service falls into none of these categories. Jesus serves us not because we have paid him or otherwise given him something in order to do so, not because we have power over him, and not because he has seen a need in us (although, let’s be clear, that need is very much there, in my life and in yours). No. Jesus serves us for a fourth reason. Here are his words in John:
I have called you friends.
Jesus serves us out of friendship.
This Sunday, the lectionary gives us a reading from what scholars call The Farewell Discourse. Extending from John Chapter 14 through Chapter 17, the Farewell Discourse takes place after the Last Supper, it takes place on the night before the crucifixion. In it, Jesus stands in the upper room with the remaining eleven disciples and looks back on his ministry, looks ahead to the crucifixion, and tells them what we expects of them once he is gone. If this were a 21st Century corporate context, we might say that this is the moment when Jesus unveils his mission statement.
Sandra Schneiders, the Johannine scholar who profoundly influenced me in the writing of this sermon (and, for that matter, who has profoundly influenced just about everything that I have said about the Gospel of John), argues that we can only understand the part of the Farewell Discourse that focuses on service – the part that we hear this morning – in light of the scene that comes before it. We can only understand it in light of that story that we tell every Maundy Thursday, in which Jesus puts on a towel and washes his disciples’ feet.
Schneiders tells us that, in the Ancient Near East, it was forbidden for a slave-owner to order his slave to wash his feet. To put that another way, foot washing was not something that one person could demand or expect or pay another to do: it was something that would not occur within a transactional model or a power model. It might happen in a need-based model, so that a parent might wash the feet of a child or a caregiver wash the feet of an elder. But between two able-bodied adults, the only context in which foot washing could occur is the fourth model that we encounter this morning: friendship.
That gives us some idea why, when Jesus offers to wash Peter’s feet, Peter reacts with scandalised rejection. Remember his words? You will never wash my feet! Jesus is proposing to do something for Peter, he insisting on doing something for Peter, that is transgressive in its intimacy, that fundamentally destabilises and reinvents their relationship. By engaging in an act of service that could not be expected even of the lowest of slaves, Jesus embodies what we hear him say this morning.
I have called you friends.
Now, to be clear, when Jesus speaks of friendship, he is not using it in the cheap sense that we often use it today. He is not using it in the Facebook sense where, at last count, I have 597 friends. By friends, Jesus is referring to the people whom you can call on no notice and say, We’re having an emergency – can you come pick up my kids? He’s referring to the people whom you can say, We’re having a hard year – can we move into your basement? He’s referring to the people who can make that same kind of phone call to you and to whom you will say yes. These are the people with whom you don’t keep score, the people with whom you have an easy reciprocity, the people whom you want to help be happy and free and thriving even when there’s nothing in it for you. These are the people for whom you might even lay down your life.
I don’t know about you, but there aren’t 597 people in my life like that.
Notice two things about this model of service. First, Christ-like friendship is the only model of service that is definitively moral, that is inevitably selfless. And second, Christ-like friendship is the hardest of the four models. No wonder that Peter is afraid of it. No wonder we are afraid of it. It would be easier if we had a transactional model in which we paid Jesus – in money or in right belief or in right action – to let us follow him. It would be easier if we had a power model and Jesus made us follow him, if we knew we were on the right path at the right time because our prison doors clicked open and the guard told us where to go. It would be easier of all if we had a need-based model and Jesus picked us up and carried us like children.
But watch as Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, listen as he speaks to the Farewell Discourse. In his actions and words, hear the hard and liberating news that discipleship doesn’t look like that, the hard and liberating news that service is something that we do within a context of total love and freedom.
Jesus speaks to Peter and the other disciples. Through them, he speaks to you and me.
This is what Jesus says to you:
You and me. We are not merchant and customer. We are not parent and child. We are not master and servant.
You and me. We are friends.
