Introduction
There is a fascinating logic in this short passage this week that I think carries some interesting things to think about.
Of course, this is following right on the heels of last week’s text (the vine and the branches) and so if you went a different direction last week, you could reference my commentary from last week for some other perspectives.
But what a lot of introductions and prayers talk about this week is friendship and love. But today, Jesus indicates that friendship wasn’t possible until this moment. So, what does it mean that Jesus is introducing the idea of friendship now? And how does that inform us as a church?
Power Dynamics
Jesus says to the disciples, 12“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”
There is a lot going on here. And truthfully, I think there’s a lot that we could choose to get upset about.
We are only Jesus’ friends if we do what Jesus commands us? That feels a little like icky power dynamics.
We are no longer servants and so now we can be friends? That also sounds like backwards subservient language.
I think we could choose to get our hackles up about this because this is language that the Church has used to bully and police people. “We know what’s best for you.” “You are disciples if you follow the rules of the church.”
But I’m going to repeat an idea that I put forward last week. Jesus is not the institutional Church and the institutional Church is not Jesus. Jesus is the vine not Church. God is the vinegrower, not the Church. It is Jesus’ commandment that we are to follow, not (necessarily) the rules and policy of the institutional Church.
We can confront this verse and talk about ways in which the Church has tried to claim undue authority and has abused its power. BUT, we then have to return to this verse and interpret it appropriately.
Jesus’ Command and Friendship
If we look at this with a sense of curiosity or positivity, we can see that it’s actually a beautiful example of humility and appropriate power dynamics.
Jesus says, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
Well, what has Jesus commanded them? Just a few moments ago, just after Jesus has taken the role of servant and washed the disciples’ feet, he commands them, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (13:34).”
The command that Jesus is talking about isn’t being obedient in all things. It’s not that we have to take up our cross. It’s not that we have to sell all our possessions. It’s doesn’t even say that we HAVE to love Jesus.
Jesus’ command is to love one another as Jesus has loved us. More on this in a second.
Jesus then goes on to say, “15I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”
This is actually a brilliant display of appropriate leadership and power dynamics. Jesus in this Farwell discourse is sharing everything that he knows. He is sharing that he will die and that he is going away, not just at the crucifixion but in the ascension as well. He is sharing that the Spirit, the Advocate will be given to them. He is sharing that they will be entrusted to continue this work without his physical presence being around them. He is laying everything on the table. And it is now that they can enter into mutual friendship. Before now, Jesus knew too many things. It was improper power dynamics. He knew where they were heading, the threats to come. But now they know everything too. And now the disciples can choose to enter into a mutual friendship if they want to.
Here’s the thing about this text, the disciples have a choice here. They could walk away from Jesus right now. They could choose not to be his friend. They could choose not to follow him any longer. But if they choose to stay, they will have to love one another.
Love one another after each of them run away. Love Peter after he denies Jesus three times. Love Thomas after he is away from them in their hiding.
Again, I think this is actually an amazing example of good leadership in this scene. Jesus acknowledges that friendship can’t exist while one has knowledge that the others don’t. And Jesus never demands that the love be directed toward him. Jesus states that he is loved if they love one another.
But while so much of this is directed on our love, there’s a promise that’s constantly embedded within this that doesn’t seem to have any qualification or condition: Jesus’ love for us.
Jesus Always Loves Us
All of the commands indicate that Jesus’ love for us is never in question. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” The choice language here is really only one direction. It is our choice to love another but, no matter what, Jesus always loves us.
Philip Yancy in What’s So Amazing about Grace? writes about this:
Not long ago I received in the mail a postcard from a friend that had on it only six words, “I am the one Jesus loves.” I smiled when I saw the return address, for my strange friend excels at these pious slogans. When I called him, though, he told me the slogan came from the author and speaker Brennan Manning. At a seminar, Manning referred to Jesus’ closest friend on earth, the disciple named John, identified in the Gospels as “the one Jesus loved.” Manning said, “If John were to be asked, ‘What is your primary identity in life?’ he would not reply, ‘I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,’ but rather, ‘I am the one Jesus loves.'”
What would it mean, I ask myself, if I too came to the place where I saw my primary identity in life as “the one Jesus loves”? How differently would I view myself at the end of a day?[1]
The threat that Jesus won’t love us is never given in this text. But truthfully, I think we’ve been somewhat conditioned to think that in our world today. Love always comes with a price. Friendship comes with a price.
I hope you’re immediately reading that with some rejection. I hope that you have some relationships in your life where mutual love exists, and it doesn’t feel conditional. But I think there are a lot more occasions nowadays when those conditions do exist. And I feel like I’ve been hearing it more and more in terms of friendship.
This text is not really talking about romantic love. This is agape love which signifies a kind of social, unconditional kind of love.
Though Gail O’Day writes,
The Fourth Gospel uses the two Greek verbs for “love (agapao and phileo) interchangeably (cf., eg., 13:2 and 20:2; 5:20 and 10:17), so when Jesus speaks of friends [philos] here, he is really saying “those who are loved” (cf. the description of Lazarus at 11:3, 11)…. A comparison of 14:15 and 21 with 15:14 suggests that to be Jesus’ friend and to love Jesus are synonymous, because both are defined as keeping Jesus’ commandments.[2]
This text is about love of friendship, a social group of mutual caring. Which helps us to see that this “choice” language of us loving one another isn’t even individual in nature. It is all of the disciples agreeing to mutually love and support one another. When all of us show love and support for one another, we show love for Jesus.
Preaching Possibilities
Why does this matter?
I was listening to Trevor Noah’s newer podcast, “What Now?” And this past week he was talking with Josh Johnson and Christiana Mbakwe about a crisis of community that is taking place around the world, most especially with young men who are feeling isolated and unloved (romantically) and then only find community in hostile online spaces that fuel rage and anger. While their conversation is brilliant and nuanced, time and time again they were lifting up the concern over a lack of community in all people’s lives. And this struck me. Because I think that’s what we are seeing around us right now. There is a lack of community in people’s lives and real friendship.
Josh Johnson lifted up that he thinks there’s been too much of a prioritization around romantic love. People are putting all their eggs in that basket. And if we find that love, then we are expecting our partner to fulfill all of our social needs: romantic, sexual, fun and amusement, therapeutic, coaching, processing, visioning, and so many others. And if we don’t find that love, then we are viewed as a failure, and we don’t have access to any of those things. Josh Johnson thinks there needs to be a three-pronged communal love and support: Romantic, Friendship, and Parental/Family.
There could absolutely be more prongs to this (Trevor actually lifted up Church at the end), but I think this sentiment is exactly right. Why does Jesus lift up this communal love as the most essential way of living into Jesus’ command? Because we as individuals need to care for one another in community systems in order to actually receive all the care and support that we really need.
The phrase, “It takes a village” used to be thrown around a lot more in describing raising a child. But really the phrase applies to all of us throughout our entire lives. We need people, lots of people, to be fully cared for. And we need to be with other people, lots of people, when caring for others.
But truthfully, we’re isolating more and more. All of us. It’s easier to just not be around people. It’s easier not to get into the messiness of other people’s lives. It’s better if other people don’t know the messiness of my own life.
But we can’t carry all of this on our own. And we can’t expect our partner to carry it for us. And we can’t rely on just one friend to always be there. It takes a village. And we have to be willing to admit that and open ourselves to mutual communal love.
And so, Jesus’ words in this text are coming at just the right time.
Knowing that our love for one another is not conditional to receive the love of Jesus, how do we support and love one another as a community? How do we enter into mutual community being a part of a larger group that cares for one another?
[1] Philip Yancy, What’s So Amazing about Grace?, 68.
[2] Gail O’Day, John: New Interpreters Bible, 758.
Micah Krey 
Leave a comment