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What are friends for?                        John 15: 9-17                   May 17, 2009

I recently signed up for a Facebook account. For those of you who are either intentionally or accidentally unaware of this phenomenon - and believe me, it is a phenomenon - Facebook is one of several so-called "social networking" websites that have sprung up on the Internet in the last few years.

Its name, by the way, comes from the name often attributed to the picture directory that is handed out on college campuses at the beginning of each year. Picture two sophomores trying to land dates on a given weekend and a conversation between them going something like this: "Do you know Mary Johnson?" "No, but her picture in the "facebook" is interesting."

You get the picture.

From what I can tell, as a new member of this network, it has a much broader reach than I ever imagined. I have been invited to be "friends" with lots of other clergy, denominational executives, bishops, young people - and not so young people - in our congregation, relatives (actually, Kris's relatives to be precise) from Norway - who have the unsurprising but annoying habit of posting messages in Norwegian - and people with whom I graduated from high school.

I've learned a couple of things in the month or so that I've had a Facebook account.

First, I never knew I had so many friends! In the beginning, when you first open an account, you get dozens of "friend requests" and "friend suggestions" - some from people you know and some from people who know people you know. It's kind of a giant pyramid that keeps growing and growing. The volume tails off after a while, but I still get a message or two each week letting me know that someone wants to have me as a friend.

And second, I've learned that that I am something of a Facebook introvert. While others on my list if friends seem to truly enjoy talking about the things they are doing during the day, laying their thoughts and feelings and actions out there for all to see, I find that I have little interest in telling other people what I am thinking or doing - and even less interest in hearing what other people are doing.

For example, I really don't need to know that one of the young clergy who I am now connected to via Facebook is going to walk her dog, that a certain Seminarian is going to take a nap after finishing a paper or that a nephew is playing a video game - even if he is winning.

All of this causes me to ask a simple question, "What are friends for?" - a question that has been asked, and answered, in many forms, hundreds of times, over hundreds of years.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who, of course, said lots of profound things, described three kinds of friendship. Some friends give us pleasure, he said - people we just enjoy being around. Some are useful - people who help us accomplish our goals. But for Aristotle, the best kind of friend is one who is a friend just for the sake of friendship. Such friends, he goes on to point out, are few and far between.

When Jesus says, in our Gospel lesson for this morning, that "You are my friends if you do what I command you," he is referring to this third kind of friendship. The kind Aristotle calls the best kind.

This lesson is the last message of Jesus that we will reflect upon during this post-Easter season. While I'm not usually a fan of "paraphrased" translations of the Bible, in this instance Eugene Peterson's paraphrase in The Message is a good one. Listen while I read it:

"This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you," Jesus says. "This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I'm no longer calling you servants because servants don't understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I've named you friends because I've let you in on everything I've heard from the Father."

This saying of Jesus points to a recurring theme - one that we have been focusing on for the past few weeks.

Two weeks ago we read that Jesus told his disciples, "I am the Good Shepherd," explained that the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, and commanded them to follow. Last week, we read that Jesus told his disciples, "I am the vine, you are the branches," and then explained that if they wanted to be disciples they need to bear fruit by staying connected to his love, and connected to one another. And this morning, we read that the way to love one another is to put our life on the line for our friends - in the same way Jesus put his life on the line for us.

The recurring theme that emerges from all three of these messages of Jesus is that he expects us to see him as our role model. "I have shown you what it means to love one another," he says. "I have shown you what it means to be friends. Do as I have done."

Our popular culture, unfortunately, trivializes the whole notion of friends. It's nice to send someone a text message or post a greeting on their Facebook "wall" to let them know you're thinking about them, but that is not a substitute for a true act of friendship.

And, just so we older folks - we who don't text message or post on Facebook - just so we older folks don't get complacent and shake our fingers at the "younger generation," our view of friendship may not be quite so electronic, but it is no less trivial.

A month ago I mentioned in my article in our monthly Newsletter that I had read The Soloist, the touching book about the unlikely friendship between Los Angeles Times (and formerly Philadelphia Inquirer) columnist Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless, paranoid schizophrenic classical musician whom he first encounters playing Beethoven on a two-stringed violin on the streets of Los Angeles' Skid Row.

Well, Kris and I recently saw the movie version of the story, and I was reminded, once again, of how powerful a friendship can be. The relationship that develops between these two men is literally life changing. For both of them.

About two-thirds of the way through the story, Lopez is frustrated by what he perceives to be his friend Nathaniel's lack of progress. Mostly, he is frustrated because he has failed to lure him off the street and into a shelter. Lopez lashes out at one of the mental health workers at the shelter, demanding that Nathaniel be sent to a doctor who can get him properly medicated. The shelter staffer calmly reminds Lopez that Nathaniel will come inside when he is ready - and explains to him that the thing he needs most, to make that change possible, is not medication but friendship - a friendship that can actually change his brain chemistry.

Truth be told, I don't have many friends like that. And my guess is that you don't either. My guess is that all of us need to hear Jesus' command, this morning, and reflect on what it might say to that person we see each morning when we look in the mirror.

What does it mean for me to love you as Christ has loved me? I don't really know for sure. What does it mean for you to love me, and love each other, as Christ has loved us? I don't really know that either.

What I do know, is that if you and I promise to figure it out with one another, God will bless us richly. As individuals and as a congregation.

I mentioned a few minutes ago that when I signed up for Facebook I discovered that suddenly I had lots of friends - and that in the world of Facebook, friendship happens much like a pyramid as friends multiply geometrically.

I believe Jesus would say that that is not what friends are for. The kind of friendship Jesus was talking about - the kind we need to learn to develop - isn't like a pyramid at all. It's much more like a circle - a circle that can't be stretched too thin but one that binds us together in ways that can literally change our lives.

So what are friends for? Though she certainly doesn't rise to the level of the author of John's Gospel or the writings of Aristotle, lyricist Carole Bayer Sager said it correctly, I think, when she wrote, in the song popularized by Dionne Warwick:

Keep smiling, keep shining
Knowing you can always count on me, for sure
That's what friends are for.
For good times and bad times
I'll be on your side forever more.
That's what friends are for.

Am I suggesting, on this Moravian Music Sunday, that Jesus is a Dionne Warwick fan? Actually, I am. And fortunately, he is also a fan of every one of us as well. A friend who chooses us and calls on us to choose one another, and be willing, as he was, to put our lives on the line.

That's what friends are for.

                                                                             AMEN

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