God’s Friends
John 15:9-17
The Shack by Wm. Paul Young, pages 84-85
A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
 

Angry and overwhelmed by horrific loss of his youngest daughter, Mack Phillips meets God for 48 hours in Wm. Paul Young’s novel, The Shack.  In the shack, Mack meets God in three persons.  Now, traditional language in the church talks about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or we would say Creator, Christ, and Spirit.  Here, in The Shack, this three-person God is:  a large extravagant African American woman, a distinctively Asian woman who was still in the midst of shimmering movement, and a Middle Eastern man in a plaid shirt that would not stand out in a crowd.

This novel has stirred up controversy among Christians offended by its creative, unorthodox and joyful vision of the Trinity.  I think that The Shack is a flawed but fabulous invitation to “re-think relationship” in God and with God.

At the Epworth Retreat this weekend in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Dr. Christina Hutchins, theologian ... and Poet Laureate of the City of Albany, led the adult program.  She invited us to re-think relationship in God and with God ... not a distant relationship in which God is an immutable being, a static noun ... but an intimate relationship in which God is a verb, creating and changing even as we are creating and changing.

Our Gospel reading this morning from John 15 might be controversial as well if we dare to take seriously, “what a friend we have in Jesus.”  Jesus says, “I do not call you servants or slaves... but I have called you friends...”

One thing we know about friendship is that both friends give and both friends receive.  In a true friendship both friends laugh and weep ... both are strengthened and challenged and changed.

This is Jesus ... this is God, of many colors!  Not dominating judgment and control ... but abiding friendship.

Think about the difference between doing something for your boss and doing something for your friend. Think about the difference between being a slave to God, and being God’s friend.  In friendship there is Love ... Freedom ... Mutuality ... Joy. The good of a friend is not an external obligation, but a loving inclination, a caring choice, a way of life.

Submission to the needs of a friend stretches us far beyond the obligations to authority.  In friendship’s deep connection, love springs a living relationship.  The Gospel of John uses a familiar image: a living relationship with God is as organic as that of new-growth branches reaching out from one vine.

The sovereignty of God is rooted in abiding in God as branches grow from and bear fruit from the vine.

In another excerpt from The Shack. Jesus invites Mack to step out onto the water and walk with him. Mack was afraid and asks, “’What am I afraid of?’.... Then Jesus asked, ‘...where do you spend most of your time in your mind, in your imagination:  in the present, in the past, or in the future?’

Mack thought for a moment before answering. ‘I suppose I would have to say that I spend very little time in the present.  I spend a big piece in the past, but most of the rest of the time, I am trying to figure out the future.’ Then Jesus said, ‘... When I dwell with you, I do so in the present – I live in the present. Not the past, although much can be remembered and learned by looking back, but only for a visit, not an extended stay.  Mack, ...do you realize that your imagination of the future, ...which is almost always dictated by fear of some kind,... rarely, if ever, pictures me there with you?....You try to play God, imagining the evil that you fear becoming reality, and then you try to make plans and contingencies to avoid what you fear.’

‘So why do I have so much fear in my life?’

‘Because...you don’t know that we love you... You sing about it, you talk about it, but you don’t know.’”   (pp. 143f)

How much more compelling and challenging and empowering is it to live as Jesus’ friend?  Jesus says, “there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friend.”

Jesus also says, “Abide in my love.”  

Think about the difference between abiding and obeying.

To abide in Jesus’ love means to stay with, dwell in, to hang in with that love.  To lay down ego to discover self; to lay down individualism to recover community; to lay down one’s life... for one’s friends. Jesus invites his disciples to stay with and live in the same love he has for us, so that the Spirit will guide the community into the world. Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

There is a small word in the Greek translation of this text, Kathos, translated “just as.” Kathos can signify comparison OR cause.  It’s one thing to say “you will abide in my love, just as I abide in God’s love.”  It is quite another to say “you will abide in my love, since I abide in God’s love.”

There’s more than comparison here ... there is cause.  There is an abundant, compelling, joyful love in which Jesus abides, and which therefore is ours ... It is the extravagant, inexhaustible love in which we can ... and do ... abide.

Think about friendships you have that have lasted ... perhaps more than half of your lifetime ... What is it that keeps the sense of connection alive through the inevitably changing seasons of our lives?  Who has given?  Who has received? What have you celebrated?  What have you lost? ... An old friend you haven’t seen for a very long time ... and yet the sense of connection is immediate ... and all that has been, is and might be are fresh in that connection.  Jesus invites us to abide with him as that kind of friend ... immediate, mutual, changing, and enduring.

A community of Jesus’ friends lives with assurance and accepts responsibility ... to extend this freedom and joy and mutuality of friendship wherever we go.  A beloved community ... what Dr. Martin Luther King called “a colony of heaven” ... learns and lives the ways of care.

It was vivid this weekend in a thousand intergenerational affirmations and interactions among the 86 people in the Santa Cruz mountains. At breakfast on Saturday, one five year old said with a sense of wonder and amazement, “Mom, you know what? There are a lot of church people here!”  There are a lot of church people here.  In one small simple moment after another, I watch as we work out what it means to watch over each other in love, as we practice abiding in Jesus’ love ... and the Spirit moves us out into the world.  

So it’s not what do we believe about God ... it’s how we are in living, loving relationship ... with God ... with each other ... with creation. For where love is, there is God!