Today is the sixth Sunday of Easter.
What does it mean to be a friend? Most of us would say things like, being there for another person when they need us, listening, being willing to give honest feedback, spending time with the other person, things like that.
In today’s Gospel Jesus says that those who keep His commandments are His friends. He also says that no one has greater love than to lay down their life for a friend. When it comes to friendship with Jesus it’s a little different than our human friendship. At least in theory human friendship should be an equal give and take. We know at any given moment one party may give more than the other but over time it should balance out.
With Jesus it’s not that way. He, God incarnate, gave everything for us. He asks us to give a lot but, at least in most cases, we aren’t required to give our lives, or are we? How many times do we hear in the Scriptures to take up our cross and follow Him? It’s just that our cross is different from His, at least for most of us. Dying to self is the real price for most of us in being Jesus’ friend. Too many times we’re willing to say we’re a disciple, or a follower but we hold back. I think that’s human nature, maybe because of our fallen state, but most of us fall short of truly dying to self.
Following His commandments to love everyone, even our enemies, forgive everyone, even those who have badly hurt us, or those we love, and to serve all others, even those who don’t seem worth serving, forces us to die to self.
As we draw close to the end of this Easter season in two weeks let us pray for the courage to crucify those things in our own life that keep us from true friendship with Jesus.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.
I hope you have a great week.
Peace, Bob
P.S. I wrote this week’s post on Friday but in this morning’s (Sunday) Atlanta Journal-Constitution I saw three unrelated articles about friendship, not with Jesus mind you, but I still thought that was odd. Hmmm
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