sermons
Summer at Reservoir
Friendship
Lydia Shiu
Aug 04, 2024
John 15:9-17
9 “As Abba has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Abba’s commands and remain in their love.
11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command.
15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know their master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Abba I have made known to you.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name Abba will give you.
17 This is my command: Love each other.
In Brene Brown’s book Dare to Lead, a book about developing brave leaders and courageous cultures, she tells a story about her daughter, Ellen, and a difficult experience she had related to trust with her classmates in elementary school.
One day after school Ellen came home crying, distressed, and Brene asked her daughter what happened. Ellen told her that she told a few of her friends something embarrassing and asked them to promise not to tell anyone but later in the day her entire classroom was laughing and talking about the thing. The teacher took out a bunch of marbles from their marble jar. When the class collectively makes good decisions they put marbles into the jar. When they collectively make bad decisions, marbles come out. Ellen said to her mom,
“I will never trust anyone ever again in my life.”
During the summer we don’t have a particular preaching series, but the Kids Church and Youth theme for the summer has been, “I Am the Church,” thinking about how we are the church and who am I in this community. They’ve been doing show and tell and tracing their bodies on butcher paper and decorating them, and making friendship bracelets. So I wanted to bring the friendship bracelets over to the grown ups and talk about what it means to be the church here.
As I was thinking about our church community and today’s text about love and friendship, this story from Brene struck me. Brene Brown, a research and data based expert on vulnerability and shame, translating really what love and belonging is for the work environment and leadership, made me wonder what her book would be like if the title was Dare to Church. I think it could help translate a little bit of what Jesus was trying to say here in the Book of John in the modern day context.
For the ancient near East context, the metaphor for God, the father in heaven God, moving from master-servant to friendship is a provocative one. The societal system was set up in a hierarchical manner, where status, title, social connections and means determined how you related with one another. A part of me wanted to say, yes back in the day, the caste system really was so strict and absurd, but I find myself that it isn’t too different to today.
I mean we’re able to quite subtly give cues with what brands we are able to afford and wear, or where we work, what we do, pretty immediately being able to place one another in the pecking order of our society. No, we don’t do this in our church at all but everyone else does it out there all the time.
That’s what I do love about the church. I’ve been in ministry for a few decades now, and grew up in church as a pastor’s kid. One of my favorite things about growing up as a pastor’s kid is that I knew all kinds of people and their lives. My dad, the pastor, and our family would be invited to a church member’s house. One that had literally pillars at their front door, winding down staircases, a room of mirrors for their ballroom dancing practices, and a backyard with a swimming pool in one area, a babbling brook in another, and even a little safe haven enclosed by hedges with ornate bench for your morning meditation, they owned a few pharmacies in town.
In the same week we’d visit another church member, who runs a bargain fashion store in a strip mall next to the grocery store. She’d give me and my sister a bag of clothes to take home. We knew professors, doctors, dentists, and laundromat, liquor store and bargain fashion store owners. Because the church was an equalizer. At church everyone, whether you are rich or important or poor and disregarded the rest of the week, on Sunday, we all got into our Sunday best and we sang together, we ate together, we prayed for each other. Not all churches are like this. Some churches are more… segregated. But you didn’t really have a choice in Korean immigrant churches.
Our church, Reservoir, is more diverse than any church I’ve been in. More diverse than a Korean church. And I see us connecting with one another with those in any other setting may never cross paths. I see us do it. And also we’re all creatures of comfort, going to the same people we know and already feel comfortable with.
And I just need to share with you, so many of you I meet with, tell me you’re lonely, that you don’t know many people at the church, that you feel disconnected. And I’m sitting there just knocking my brain, you two should know each other!
Some simple reasons may be, sure, our church has changed a lot through Covid and coming back together. We’re in Boston, it is actually a quite transient place, with grad/PhD/med students coming and going. And we have had many new families and folks join us in the last few years. Even folks who’ve been at Reservoir for 10+ years are like, “I don’t know anyone!” And also, I think there are some hard reasons that some of us, many of us are still not feeling connected. We’re afraid.
Like Brene’s daughter Ellen,
“I don’t ever want to trust anyone again!”
Maybe some of us feel this way. After all, we are a church that is trying hard to be an opening and welcoming place for, especially for folks who have been hurt by the church. One of our most attended classes is called Unpack, unpacking our church baggage at a church for crying out loud. We’ve got some hurt people, cautious people. We’ve got people. Who are not perfect. Who will disappoint you and make mistakes. Heck, there are some of you that I’ve personally offended by something I said or did. So how are we supposed to love?
We’re naturally drawn to people who have acted in such a way that would put marbles in and in again in the jar. People who have listened to you, honored your pain, remembered your important day or event. When people are mean, disrespectful, or judges you, the marbles come out. Brene asked her daughter if she had a friend who holds a full marble jar. Ellen said
“Yeah, Hannah and Emma are my marble jar friends.”
And she asked her how they got their marbles. Brene expected her to share some heavy lifting stories of friendship and connection. Instead she shared that at a soccer game Hannah saw that Umma and Oppa were there (those are Brene’s mom and step dad). And Brene said,
“and what happened?”
Ellen said, that’s it, she got a marble for just seeing her grandparents. And then she said,
“and Emma always does the half butt sit with me in the cafeteria.”
That’s when the cafeteria tables are all full and there aren’t many seats left and Emma scoots over to share a seat with her so they’re both sitting on half butt. Brene also shared her marble jar people and at first said, well I think it might be a little different for grown ups but then she thought about that same soccer game and how Aileen came up and said,
“hey David and DeAnne”
and Brene recalled how much it meant that she remembered their names.
Brene makes the point that she might’ve thought that trust is built through grand big gestures, but from this story and backed by much of her research and looking for trust earning behaviors and found that trust is in fact found in the smallest of moments. It made me begin to wonder how marble jars are filled or not filled in our relationships.
I really want to know how it is exactly that we should love. I mean, Jesus is summing up all that God commanded into one call:
Love one another.
So we have to ask ourselves,
- what does it mean to love one another?
- What does it mean to be a friend?
Such simple questions and we can easily wave it off like, yes yes, love, duh.
- But what does it look like?
- Is that really even what we’re trying to do here?
- If so, can we, like Brene Brown, think critically and strategically about how to do this well, how to do it better?
I’ll be honest, verse 13 doesn’t help me much.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
I don’t get many chances to lay down my life for a friend. I mean you only get one chance to do that literally. And this line gets very quickly connected to Jesus’ death of course, helping us to conclude that Jesus is the greatest friend of all who laid down his life for us, according to one way of looking at the atonement theory, why Jesus died and what Jesus dying did.
But look, that’s just a theory, one very helpful, or had been very helpful at one time or another, way of thinking about what Jesus accomplished. It’s also a very literal implication of all that Jesus did into one act. Jesus didn’t die just to die and do the deed of dying for someone. He died because he did many things, like touch the leper, see the sinful woman, eat with outcasts, and call out injustices.
Not only so that he can appease God’s wrath of needing to bring punishment down on someone and Jesus took the fall for all our sins. That’s, again, one way to put it, and if that theological thinking has helped you understand God’s love, that’s really beautiful, it has for me too. (Steve actually has a really great blog post on atonement you can look it up on our website, search, Why Did Jesus Die?) But the metaphor is beyond that. There’s more metaphors to describe and get at what Jesus was doing, what God was doing, than just this one thing.
There’s another text that Jesus talks about, of “taking up your own cross” or death in
Matthew 16: 24-25
“24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
25 For whoever would save his life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
So since the whole laying your life down for a friend is only a one time deal, I wonder how else we could think about what it looks like to love one another every other day aside from your death day. So not grand gestures or big dramatic acts like Brene was thinking about in building trust, but the small things. What small way can we lay down our lives?
I can still think of some big ways, that’s smaller than death, but that many people have put their lives down for friendship. I know people who have lost their whole livelihood, community, family, because they decided to come out and say that they support their gay friend. They were excommunicated by their church and their small group leader, and pastor, and many of their friends because they decided to not say that being gay is a sin but instead that God loves them just as they are and in fact God delights in them for who they are. And because of that they’ve lost jobs, had to find another career path, moved to another community, lost connections, even family.
But even smaller ways, I can think of, are big moves. When we let go of our egos and let the other person speak and listen deeply even if you completely disagree with them. Or when we let go of the need to be good and helpful and be honest and humble with vulnerability and ask for help from someone you didn’t think could help you. Maybe lay down your life long work in defending a particular kind of theology to hear and listen to someone’s hardship that cannot be made sense through what the church has been teaching.
It tore my heart the other day, when I heard someone say that they were afraid to share what they had been through because they didn’t want to offend anyone or get them upset because very powerful and influential voices in the church in the last few decades had decided that they are against a certain social political issue. When the reality is the church, I mean the Christian church tradition hadn’t always thought that. Look, we can believe different things, we obviously do.
Look at us. We’re a mix. We’ve got a fetal cardiologist and administrative assistant. We’ve got Harvard PhDs and no college degree grandmas. And you know what, we all work hard to make our lives work and we all have big audacious hearts of hope and faith in God. Actually, some of us are struggling even as we move billions of dollars in the financial industry with addiction problems. Some of us are struggling with heartbreak and loneliness at home while leading a whole company. Some of us are barely making ends meet and struggling with debilitating health issues. And I see all of us, gathering together here, humbled, saying,
“Jesus I need you.”
Saying to one another
“hey I need you”
and we’re deciding to be a community together because we know that you can’t do this alone and you need a friend.
And I don’t mean just nice friends who say oh hi how are you, good, thank you, and you. That’s not good enough. As Brene Brown would say, you got to lean in with more courage and vulnerability than that because people can smell fake miles away. And if you really want to do the work of deeply connecting, you can’t stay on the surface level. She says
“daring is not saying, okay I’m willing to risk failure.”
Daring is saying,
“I know I’ll eventually fail. And I’m still all in.”
Have you failed with a relationship with someone, maybe with someone sitting here in this room? Yes? Good. Hey we don’t all gotta be BFF’s. If you haven’t, if you haven’t gotten a text from someone saying,
“hey we got to talk”
or had to apologize for a misstep to someone, then you’re not stepping. You’re missing out.
The definition of vulnerability as the emotion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure has been described in her studies as these, when asked tell me about the time of vulnerability: first date after a divorce, talking about race with my team, trying to get pregnant after my second miscarriage and so on. These are the moments that come up that actually bind us, make us trust one another, how we love one another in these moments. If we’re not doing such moments, then we’re not doing love, we’re just being nice.
C.S. Lewis says,
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
I hung out with a new friend the other day. We did a playdate with the girls. Her house was so cute and well designed, she has a great eye. And I stepped up my visiting someone’s home game by bringing a fun summer drink. It had pureed strawberries and blueberries, with slices of oranges and lemon, mixed with some cranberry juice and ice. I was proud of myself and she was so impressed. I was sad that I didn’t not bring a cute straw and basil with it. And a full cup of that beautiful pink and red drink with all kinds of fruit juices in it, was spilled by my daughter onto their living room rug. I got on my knees and dabbed and rubbed. She felt bad that I was on my knees. I felt bad that I ruined her pretty house. I still think about that rug and want to text her and say,
“sorry about that rug again!”
but haven’t because I don’t want her to make her feel bad for making me feel bad and text about stupid things that she probably moved on from that I’m obviously still caught up on because I’m neurotic and crazy and I don’t want her to know that just yet cause I want to hang out with her again.
You know what? I’ve been talking about how to be vulnerable. How to be a good friend. How we should lean in or take charge. But this is not a TedTalk or a self help book. There are some helpful tips but, the thing is none of this matters. We try so hard to be good little Christians, good church goers, good friends, a good community. None of these trys and efforts don’t really matter if you don’t know the good good Friend Jesus.
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
Do you hear Jesus saying to you, I love you?
I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.
Do you hear Jesus saying to you, I am your friend?
I chose you, I approached you, I initiated, and I made you my friend when you didn’t even know it. I pursue you again and again. I text you. I call you. I come by your house. I make sure that you know my love, my joy. SO THAT YOU MIGHT GO AND BEAR FRUIT. And spill fruit juices all over someone’s house and they still call you for a next hangout.
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
I can’t tell you to go now and work on your friendship with vulnerability, because without knowing that God is your friend, it’ll be a fruitless effort.
God is vulnerable with you. God came to us as Jesus to just sit next to us at the well, to call us down from climbing a tree, so that we can come over at night to discuss urgent things, to feed us bread and wine. God is your friend.
Let me pray for us.
Hey Friend, thank you for loving us first, when we knew nothing of it. Help us to find your love again and again. Help us to hear your voice and listen to your heart with our hearts. Help us to grow our friendship with you and with those around us. Help us our most dearest sweet kind friend who loves us beyond our own understanding. Give us your wisdom to know and understand this mighty love we have from you. We pray, in Jesus name Amen.