The American elections are one week from today. There is much bad news — about COVID, the Trump administration’s abrogation of responsibility to protect Americans from the virus, increasing coronavirus denial, and the confirmation of a new right-wing justice to the Supreme Court.
In the midst of it all, I’ve been editing my next book — Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence. As a break from the news, I’m sharing a passage from the upcoming book (a sneak peek for readers here at The Cottage) about friendship with God and others. This week, one of my closest friends was traveling through Virginia and stopped by for dinner. We sat in the backyard (safe and appropriately distanced!) and drank wine, talked about everything, and laughed. It felt good. And her visit helped put some things in perspective.
I hope these words remind you of the healing power of friends, and the remarkable beauty of God befriending us.
Freeing Jesus releases March 30, 2021. Click here for more information (and yes, the publisher is aware of and is fixing the cover issue on the e-book page!).
From Freeing Jesus, Chapter 1:
In August 2019, at the beginning of the school year in the United States, a photo showing two little boys holding hands went viral. Connor, an autistic boy entering the second grade, was going to school alone for the first time. Although the bus trip went well, when he arrived at the school, he froze with fear and started to cry; he hid in a corner, unable to walk into the building. Christian, another boy, saw Connor and went to comfort him. Then he took Connor by the hand and led him inside the building. “He found me and held my hand, and I got happy tears,” Connor later told a reporter when asked about Christian. “He was kind to me. I was in the first day of school, and I started crying. Then he helped me, and I was happy.” Connor’s mother said, “Christian is Conner’s first real friend.” And Christian’s mother explained, “They have an inseparable bond.”
Like millions of others who saw the photograph and read this story, I felt verklempt, unable to hold back small tears of joy. I also laughed—because who would believe it without a picture? A white boy named Connor huddled in a corner, a black boy named Christian—Christian!—reaching out to help him. It was an updated American parable, a rewrite of A Pilgrim’s Progress for an age of racial anxiety and political division. As I looked at the photograph, it seemed an icon for these days, a Jesus tenderly leading a frightened boy toward a new world. “This is my commandment,” said Jesus, “that you love one another as I have loved you.…You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:12–14).
I am not sure if I ever knew what to make of those words of Jesus: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” It all sounded so conditional. What kind of friendship was that? The story of Connor and Christian clarified it, though. Friendship is contingent on love—real love: compassion, empathy, reaching out, going beyond what we imagine is possible. That is the command: love. And if we reach out in love, friendship is the result, even friendship with God. Friendship is mutual, a hand extended and another reaching back.
When I think of friendship with Jesus, I imagine that hand extended. It happens in different ways, of course. Sometimes, the hand is part of an ancient story, the hand of Jesus outstretched to embrace little children or to invite us to follow him. But more often it is the hand of another person. When I feel afraid, huddled in a corner, unable to move forward, it is the hand that reaches out to comfort me, remind me that I am not alone, or guide me toward the next step on my journey. St. Teresa of Ávila once said, “God has no hands but yours.…Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.” Sometimes, I am the one who needs the hand; at other times, mine is the hand that reaches. Friendship is an eternal circle, the ceaseless reaching toward one another that strengthens us and gives us joy.
“I do not call you servants,” Jesus said, “but I have called you friends.” Astonishing.
Imagine how Jesus’s close followers felt when they heard those words for the first time. Of course, he was their friend. They had been through so much together, years of wandering homeless in Israel, learning from and teaching each other, sharing meals and prayers. They had come to suspect their companion was something more than a regular friend—a great rabbi, a spiritual healer, a mystical prophet, the Son of God. That last made no intellectual or doctrinal sense to them. They were Jews, and there was only one God. Yet this friend of theirs knew and loved God more intimately and more uniquely than they had ever imagined possible.
Jesus brought them to the very heart of God and then revealed that God’s heart longed for friendship. They had heard this story before—Abraham, Moses, and Miriam were friends of God, as were the prophets and seers of ancient times and the great heroes of Israel like Ruth and Naomi, Esther, and David and Jonathan. They were more than servants to God. God was their friend; and they were friends of God. Servanthood, although admirable, is the lesser thing. Friendship, the knowing, loving, and free and joyful giving to another, is the passionate desire of God.
And now Jesus is saying, “I have called you friends,” not just to special people of the past whose names were recorded in sacred memory, but to the ragged fishermen and curious women, sitting around him listening to his tales, trusting for the first time that the God of Israel had not forgotten them, souls broken under the weight of Roman oppression, suffering under imperial slavery. They were not slaves, not even servants. They were friends of Jesus, friends of God.
In that world, Caesar was a god. Everyone feared him. He had no friends. The Egyptians and Persians had gods. None were friends. They were to be satisfied, their wrath appeased. There were gods aplenty, all awaiting your servile sacrifices and terrified loyalty, cold and isolated and distant in their marble and gold temples. The gods demanded so much of you, craving blood to prove obeisance, even your own if and when the whim suggested itself.
Jesus calls us friends. God reaches toward us, not as a fearsome master or judge, but a friend, beckoning us to reach back. Memories of Eden flood the heart, that ancient longing for friendship with God. The exile is ended, the embrace endures. Once, we were created by that hand that reached to dust and rib; now that same hand joins ours again and again, the clasp of the unfailing friend.
INSPIRATION:
Jesus kept on telling us we should try to be like children, and be more open to life, curious about it, trusting of it; and be less cynical and skeptical and full of ourselves, as we so often are when we get older.
—Dorothy Day
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
― Henri Nouwen
I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.
― Helen Keller
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.
― Alice Walker
Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?
― Abraham Lincoln
When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.
― Fred Rogers
And the spirit longs to trust,
trust without limits.
disgusted by the mob
that feeds in the shadow of the good
on envy, suspicion and prying,
by the snake-like hissing
of poisoned tongues,
which fear, hate, and malign
the mystery of free thought
and upright heart,
the spirit longs
to cast of all deceit
and reveal itself fully
to its kindred spirit,
to ally itself with it freely and loyally.
Ungrudgingly, it longs to affirm,
longs to acknowledge,
longs to thank,
longs to gain joy and strength
from the other spirit.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
and has no one to help them up.
—Ecclesiastes 4:9-10
A Personal Note:
Please vote on November 3 — or sooner if early voting is an option in your state. No surprise to regular readers here: I’ve publicly endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for President and Vice-President and I invite you to join me in that support.
Pray for safety on election day and beyond. Consider how you can help your neighbors ensure peace and make sure every vote is counted in your community.
Remember to breathe this week. Wear your mask. Reach out to the anxious and fearful. Remind your friends how much they mean to you.
Thank you ! I am so glad to hear your thoughts and can't wait for this book to come out. God's blessings!
Thank you for the thoughts and teachings on friendship and what it means and how important it is. I cherish my friends for who they are not which political party they belong to! we are all children of God.