DO YOU SEE THE SAME TRUTH?
John 15: 9-17
(Since spoken communication differs from written, some of the grammar and syntax of this transcript may seem awkward in written form. To keep integrity with the spirit of the original delivery, the transcript seeks to stay close to the exact words spoken).
Before I begin my sermon I want to share this passage of scripture from the end of John's gospel, the 21st chapter, verses 15 through 17. This scene happens after Jesus' resurrection when he appears to his disciples and has breakfast with them. Let us listen for God's word.
"When they had finished breakfast Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him 'Yes Lord, you know that I love you.' Jesus said to him "Feed my lambs." A second time he said to him "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes Lord, you know that I love you." He said to him "Tend my sheep." He said to him a third time "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him a third time do you love me? And he said to him "Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you." And Jesus said to him "Feed my sheep."
This is the second of a three part series on the nature of love. Last week we spoke about Eros and I want to say that this is a time when I feel great dissatisfaction with the mode with which we do preaching. Preaching at its best ought to be a conversation between text, preacher and congregation. It's unfortunate that in most ways it has to be a one-way sort of affair. And when I actually explored some of this material, in an earlier sermon in Hyannis Port this summer, it was through a dialogue with them, a conversation. So someday I'm going to go down and we're actually going to have a conversation. But I encourage you--some people wrote e-mails, some have spoken with me, especially about last Sunday's sermon; I also have a blog. I really encourage a conversation around this material. It's so much more complicated than one can portray in a twenty-minute sermon.
So...Eros we spoke of last Sunday. We're using three words in Greek to structure our reflection on the nature of love. Today we're going to reflect on Philia or "friendship" love. And next Sunday we're going to conclude with a sermon about Agape or "self-giving" love.
Before I begin in earnest today's sermon, let's take just a moment to be in prayer together. Let us pray.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our rock, and our Redeemer. Amen.
A few weeks ago I was in a meeting for an ecumenical project I'm involved with, and the meeting broke up and we were all kind of gathering and chatting. And as we were leaving a friend of mine who I think is more spiritually evolved than I am--in fact I know he is--said to me, "I love you." I heard those words and I was like, as the young people would say, like...whoa. I was really blown away by hearing those three words that we almost exclusively connect with the kind of love that we were reflecting on last Sunday--Eros--romantic love. I can assure you there was nothing like that going on in those three words between him and me. But it just struck me what an amazing thing to hear those words...again not connected with Eros or romance. And it reminded me of how seldom we use those words in that context. In the context of friendship.
In my blog this week I posed the question, and this again is where I wish we could have a conversation, "Have you ever said that to a friend, someone who is not in any way a part of your romantic aims--'I love you'?" A guy saying that to another guy? That's pretty "out there" in a lot of ways, and I'd love to know--have you ever done that? It may be also a different thing for men than for women, although I think that's pretty complicated too. Because, let's face it, the reason we don't say those three words to a friend and we confine them almost exclusively to the realm of Eros is that Eros is in the background when we say them, right? If we say them as a guy to another guy--"I love you"--then that might mean that we're gay or something, and with all the ambivalence and ambiguity our culture places upon that--and certainly our faith as well--that's complicated stuff. But I think it points out a real hunger in our culture for not just friendship, not just friendship on a surface level; but on a deep level. I find this especially as a man a real hunger among men and for me as well. Not just for friendship but for love in friendship.
Did you know that there's a whole genre of movies that has been spawned around, I think, this cultural hunger that we're experiencing. You might call it "friend-hunger." I found out this week that they call them "bro-mances." I don't know if you've seen Judd Apatow's...I know I've mentioned Judd Apatow's movies in previous sermons, but have you seen his move Super Bad? Have you seen that? It's about two teenage boys going off to college and at the end there's a really excellent, tender scene where they say "I love you" to each other. They confess their love. Not the erotic, romantic kind of love but exactly the kind of love that we're talking about today. Philia. Friendship love. That's a perfect way of describing the nature of this love. Then there's also John Hamburg's movie, I Love You, Man which is about a guy who is getting married and has no male friends; and it's his search for a Best Man for his wedding. I haven't seen it yet but it's on my list.
I think those movies are in a way a reaction again to the fact that our culture has lost the art of friendship, an art that was certainly a bedrock aspect of our culture in ancient times. A hunger, not just for friendship but for friendship love--for Philia--the kind of love we experience in friendship. So today we're going to explore this kind of love, which was absolutely common in the ancient world, in the time of Jesus, certainly in ancient Greek culture. The hope is that if we talk about, maybe understand this kind of love we might know the need in our own soul for it that we're lacking, especially in our modern culture. But also in understanding it perhaps it might help us as Christians experience and know the full range of love that is innate to being human.
So first of all I want to say something that I said last Sunday about romantic love. I just want remind us of a point I was trying to make last Sunday...that Romantic love came onto the scene relatively recently in the history of human culture, around the Middle Ages. But this other kind of love, Philia, really was the most commonly recognizable form of love...if Romantic love is "it" in our culture, what was "it" in ancient cultures, like the culture of Jesus, was this type of love--Philia. If you know anything about The Iliad, the ancient epic poem by Homer, you may know that one of the main plot points in that epic has to do with the relationship between the hero Achilles and his armor-bearer, his comrade-in-arms Patroclus. When Patroclus dies, that's a major point in the drama. And the kind of love they shared is as intimate and deep as any romantic relationship we might imagine in our own culture.
I know it's very strange for us to think that way but that was very common in the ancient world. In the world of Jesus, the New Testament, it's very clear in reading the scriptures that Jesus was, as his disciples were, very comfortable with this kind of love, Philia, friendship love. In John's gospel we know of a disciple called the beloved disciple who was especially close to Jesus--the disciple whom Jesus loved. Further, at the end of John's gospel I read to you a few verses in which Jesus asks Peter, "Do you love me?" It's very interesting that there's an interplay in that scripture lesson between the words Agape and Philia as Jesus says do you Agape me, do you love me with the highest love and Peter says yes, you know I Philo you, I love you as a friend. And there's this interplay. The implication being to get to the highest love we need to know this kind of love--friendship love. And so, as C. S. Lewis says, if love is a great feast, in our modern culture this type of love, Philia, would be a little tiny appetizer whereas in the ancient world it would be the main course.
And so if you're going to incorporate this kind of love into our lives perhaps it might be useful to get a more accurate definition of what we're speaking about. And I think that the scripture that Brandt read might help us to do that--might give us some scriptural guidance about a good understanding of what is going on in Philia--friendship love. If you want, I invite you to take your Bible out for a spin and follow along with me, page 983 and 984 in John 15. What are we talking about if we have some scriptural definition of friendship love as Jesus, in a sense, defines it? The beginning of this passage, if you look in verse 12, has to do with Jesus being like a master--he's commanding things. And the thing he's commanding is to love each other, which is the aim is this kind of love, the highest type of love. The implication is that what friendship is about is actually doing what's asked of you. But it's clear that the implication here is this: to get to this kind of love we need to also cultivate friendship. In verse 15, I think Jesus gives a very interesting definition of what friendship is about. He says "No longer do I call you servants...now I call you friends, for the Master does not let the servant know what he's doing," what he knows: "Everything I have heard from the Father, I have told you." So the implication is that friends share the same truth. "Everything I have heard, I have made known to you."
Emerson gives this definition of friendship. He says that friendship is about the question: "Do you see the same truth?" I think that's a very useful definition--or test of--this kind of friendship. And it's especially clear, it seems to me here, that it's what Jesus is getting at. It's in a way the ultimate friendship--if friendship is based on common interest the ultimate friendship is based on the common interest to find the Truth. "Do you see the same truth?" is, in a way, the definition of friendship based on common interest. And the ultimate common interest is the pursuit of truth. In joining together we get a fuller grasp of truth than we could get on our own--what's real and right in relationship. It's friendship that makes life sweet.
I love talking about woodworking and I love talking about woodworking with someone who loves woodworking. I could talk for hours with somebody who loves woodworking. Our relationship, our friendship, is based on a common interest. Do you see the same truth about...sandpaper? Whether to use stearated, aluminum oxide? I could talk for hours, probably, about that. It's interesting too, if you compare this kind of love with the type we were speaking about last Sunday, Eros: if that romantic kind of love is divided, it diminishes. My romantic love is aimed at one person with whom I have covenanted to love; divide that, aim it at someone else...that destroys it. But this type of love--Philia--increases when shared and divided. What makes friendship sweeter...but more friends? So, perhaps that's a definition of friendship. Based on seeing the same truth, a common love; it's love that's sweeter when divided.
We might also mention that there are kinds of friendship that might be helpful to know about if we are seeking to practice friendship in our life. This is where it's helpful to bring in an ancient source that was written by Aristotle many years ago--the great philosopher. The Nichomachean Ethics of Aristotle really talks about what kind of life is most worth living. What kind of life is most worthy of human beings? That's the general topic he deals with, and in the midst of that he says friendship is an integral part of the life most worthy of living. And he has a lot to say about what friendship consists in, what types of friendships we can have.
He says there are three different kinds of friendship. The first kind of friendship that he lists, he calls it "friendship of utility." The kind of friendship that we all know--that most of us practice as friendship in our professional life, for example. I'm a pharmaceutical rep and I'm very good friends with all my clients. And it may be that absent my professional life I'd be friends with them but truth is I have to be friends with them because if I'm not, it's bad for business. You see? So friendships of utility are based on the usefulness that we have for each other in social relations.
The second kind of friendship that he lists he calls "friendship of pleasure." I know this may be the most common type of friendship in our own culture. We are, again, together because we see the same truth. We have a common interest together. I like woodworking, you like woodworking, or bird watching, or model trains, and our relationship is based on the fact that we give each other pleasure.
One thing that I think is important to say in mentioning all of this...if we think about our intimate covenanted relationships, our marriage relationships, and so forth, our romantic relationships. Sometimes we do know that required for healthy relationships are all three types of love. Friendship has to be part of a healthy marriage. But if we're relying on all our friendship needs to be met by our spouse, it puts an awful lot of pressure on the relationship. If you're a nuclear scientist and you come home from work after a hard day and expect your spouse to be able to talk about nuclear science and to have friendship based on that, that's a recipe for disaster. So we need beyond our most intimate relationships a place where we can experience friendships of pleasure to get those needs met.
The final kind of friendship that Aristotle mentions, the highest form, is "friendship of virtue." I don't know about you but there's certain people I hang out with in whose presence I feel sort of smart and relaxed, most like myself; at ease. And there are certainly people in whose presence I feel the opposite, you know: sort of cut-down-to-size or dumb. But the former are the kind of friendships I think Aristotle is talking about--the kind of friend who's interested in not necessarily what he or she can get out of this relationship, but making you the best person that you can be. This is the kind of friendships whose interest is bringing out the good in you.
Maybe Twelve-Step programs are illustrations of that kind of friendship. My friendship with you is based on my desire that you become a whole person. It's important to say that in this kind of friendship, one of the worst things is flattery. "Does my butt look fat in this?" you know? Another reason we need to have these kinds of friendships, aside from our spousal relationships, are people who tell the truth--people who kick your behind if you need it to help you become the best kind of person that you can be. One thing to note here about these kind of friendships, which maybe we'll return to next week when we discuss Agape love...all these previous kinds of love (Eros, Philia) are based on some sort of reciprocity. Even if my desire is to bring out the best in you, you have to be worthy of my friendship. And if you're not worthy of my friendship, as in a Twelve-Step program, then we have to get a friend divorce. The kind of love we'll be discussing next Sunday is a love not based on that kind of reciprocity. The mutual giving and taking--or mutual requirement of each other.
Well to end today, I want to circle back to the scripture lesson just for a moment. I hope you've hung with me. I realize I've thrown a lot of stuff at you. I want to speak for just a brief moment about the pattern of friendship and how that pattern for Christians is set by Christ. In the text that Brandt read we really are asked the question: "Do you want to be a friend of God?"--a God who came to us in human form so that we might see the same truth as God. But the fact of the matter is the only way to practice friendship with God, as I was speaking about last week, is to practice human friendship. Is to make a lab of that kind of love we experience with God those relationships we share with people around us. The resources for love come from God but the only way we can experience love is with people. So I'm wondering if this might be an invitation to practice friendship love in your life, in our life.
What if we started a counter-cultural movement as Christians, maybe beginning right here, in practicing Philia. Why not tell a friend "I love you"? Try it. Be clear about the boundaries and what you mean. But, what the heck, see what happens. What if we sought to grow as Christians and as humans by seeking deep and abiding and intimate relationships with others not based just on Eros, on romance, but on Philia, friendship love. How might that enable us to see the ultimate friend, the friend that is God, more clearly? Why not give it a try? Amen.
February 7, 2010
The Reverend Jeffrey A. Vamos
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