I had a conversation with a young man this week who was in a pretty low spot in his life. He was trying to love the people around him, but at every attempt he felt rejected, it was like they kept refusing him and his love for them. Hence he was in a dark place, and he had turned to God, and that’s why he was talking to me. He didn’t grow up going to any church, but he had recently started reading the Bible, starting with the Old Testament, and he was a little shocked by how angry God seemed - he had expected to find a more loving God.
And it might seem like that to us too, it might seem to us like God even changed: the God of the Old Testament was angry, the God of the New Testament is all about love. But God hasn’t changed, He just changed His approach, and today’s readings are that pivot point, clearly showing that change in approach. See, in the Old Testament, God was very present to His people, appearing to them in the Exodus for example, leading them out of Egypt in a cloud of fire, telling them to “do this” and “not to do that.” He would appear to them in fire and in thunder and the people were scared of Him, they would do what he asked but it was out of fear. In our Gospel today, Jesus says, “I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.” Now I can’t find anywhere when God calls anyone His slave, not even in the OT, but my sense is it had to feel like that kind of a relationship to them, “do this, don’t to that, if not I will be angry,” well that’s kind of a master/slave relationship. Jesus is changing God’s approach towards us: He wants us to be friends, but then He says “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” “Wait, what? What kind of a friendship says we are friends only on the condition that you, ‘do what I command you’?” So clearly this is a different type of friendship than what we are used to, so I want to break this down a bit.
First this is a relationship with the God who created us out of love for us. He didn’t need to create us, He wanted to. So His love for us is unconditional: God doesn’t love us if, God doesn’t love us when, God doesn’t love us because, God loves us, period. There are no conditions to His love. But there are conditions to His friendship, there’s a difference (and that’s okay because He is God after all). “Jesus said to his disciples: "As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love…” Love can be rejected. Just like the young man I was talking to earlier this week, people can choose to reject our love. So the first thing to understand is, as I told him, we have to be confident in our status as beloved children of God. We are sons and daughters of God the Father, that is our primary identity, and once we are confident of that, if our love is rejected in the world, it is okay, our Father’s love was rejected in the world also.
Second, where the deeper friendship comes in has to do with our response to His love. We have the choice to reciprocate God’s love, by keeping God’s commandments, starting with this one, Jesus said: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.” Love one another, as I love you, self- sacrificially. Jesus showed His true love for us on the cross, and then He asked us to love others that way. This sacrifice only makes sense when we are able to see ourselves first as God’s beloved children, when we are able to receive His loving sacrifice first, then we can live self-sacrificially as well. That’s a characteristic of friendship, right, that we have things in common with our friends, we do things together? Well, if Jesus loved sacrificially and was rejected by others, that will happen to us too, but, despite that, one of the craziest things about this passage is when Jesus says, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.” Often we think we will only have joy if we do what we want, not what others want. The world says “you do you” meaning don’t worry about what others think and you will be happy, but God says, “love one another, sacrifice for one another, and you will have joy.” What does He know that we don’t? Well, mainly, He created us for love, He loves us and hopes we might reciprocate His love by loving others in the same way He did, and when we do, it is then that we will have joy.
See this young man was loving for his own sake, he was loving to receive affirmation, to feel affection in return, to solidify his identity in the world, but he was being rejected and disappointed along the way. So I told him he had to flip it, first he had to realize his primary identity was found in God, no matter what He had done, or how far away he felt from God, God still loved Him as an adopted child. After flipping the identity, it was then that he could go out and love others, like he had been trying to do anyway, secure in who he was, a beloved son, and loving for God’s sake, not his own. If he was still rejected, well, at least he knew he was in good company with God who was rejected by the world also. When we love for God’s sake and not our own, it is then that we experience joy, because it is then that we will know real friendship with our God, united with Him in the way He loves, reflecting His love in the world.