Friends of Jesus!

John 15:12-17

“I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. 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. “You didn’t choose me, remember; I chose you, and put you in the world to bear fruit, fruit that won’t spoil. As fruit bearers, whatever you ask the Father in relation to me, he gives you. “But remember the root command: Love one another."

Food for thought!

The central words of this passage are those in which Jesus says that his disciples have not chosen him, but he has chosen them. It was not we who chose God, but God who, in his grace, approached us with a call and an offer made out of his love. Sometimes we wonder why some people are not Christians. Well, the answer is given by Christ: «I chose you.» No one can make themselves Christians; becoming a Christian is a gift, as Jesus once said: «No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.» (John 6:44)

Out of today's gospel we can compile a list of the 7 things for which we are chosen and to which we are called.

(1) We are chosen for joy. However hard the Christian way is, it is, both in the travelling and in the goal, the way of joy. There is always a joy in doing the right thing. The Christian is the man of joy, the laughing cavalier of Christ. A gloomy Christian is a contradiction in terms, and nothing in all religious history has done Christianity more harm than its connection with sadness and long faces. It is true that the Christian is a sinner, but he is a redeemed sinner; and therein lies his joy. How can any man fail to be happy when he walks the ways of life with Jesus?

(2) We are chosen for love. We are sent out into the world to love one another. Sometimes we live as if we were sent into the world to compete with one another, or to dispute with one another, or even to quarrel with one another. But the Christian is to live in such a way that he shows what is meant by loving his fellow men.

(3) We are chosen to be his friends. What does it mean to be friend of God? It means that no longer do we need to gaze longingly at God from afar off; we are not like slaves who have no right whatever to enter into the presence of their master. Jesus gave us an intimacy with God, so that he is no longer a distant stranger, but our close friend.

(4) We are chosen to be his partners. A servant is never partner of his master. His master never opens his mind to him. But Jesus says: «You are not my servants; you are my partners. I have told you everything; I have told you what I am trying to do, and why I am trying to do it. I have told you everything which God told me.» Jesus has shared his mind with us, and opened his heart to us. We do well to open ours to him, as friends do.

(5) We are chosen to be ambassadors. «I have chosen you,» he says, «to send you out.» He did not choose us to live a life retired from the world, but to represent him in the world; Jesus called you and me to make him present wherever we are, not only in churches but on the Main Street, as well. Jesus called us, first to come in to him, and then to go out in his name to all the world. And that must be the daily pattern and rhythm of our lives. Christ is wherever the Christian is.

(6) We are chosen to be advertisements. He chose us to go out to bear fruit, and to bear fruit which will stand the test of time. The way to spread Christianity is to be Christian. Jesus sends us out, not to argue people into Christianity, but to attract them into it; so to live that its fruits may be so wonderful that others will desire them for themselves. We were chosen not to mis-represent but to represent Christ in our place of work, our home, wherever we are.

(7) We were chosen to be privileged members of the family of God. He chose us so that whatever we ask in his name the Father will give to us. Jesus chose us to be privileged members of the family of God. We can and must take everything to God in prayer; but when we have done so we must accept the answer which God in his perfect wisdom and perfect love sends to us. And the more we love God, the easier it will be to do that.