Friendship: virtue, choice and glue

 St Barnabas 2023: Acts 11:19-end, Galatians 2:1-10 and John 15:12-17

Call to mind for a moment, if you will, one of your friends. 

Perhaps it’s someone you've not seen for a while, someone you speak to regularly or someone you were close to for a particular season of life. A friend you’ve known for years or someone you’ve recently connected with. 

As you call them to mind, give thanks for them - their personality or influence, kindness or wisdom. As you think of them, notice the love or encouragement you’ve received from them; what you might appreciate as a particular grace from God in them.

In his 2015 poem, ‘The Friend’ Matt Hart writes:

You put your hand on her shoulder,

or you put your hand on his shoulder.

The friend is indefinite…

… you’re talking

together about the glue of this life…

He goes on to explore this hand on shoulder way of relating in friendship: the nearness and familiarity; there in the crisis and as we recount the best of things; in the dreams and the imaginings, in faith and belief;  the specific and the universal colliding and coinciding - we find, he suggests, a higher power in such a friend.

As we give thanks for the life of Barnabas the apostle today, we are drawn into a rich and enriching way of thinking about friendship. 

In him, we are given an example of someone who was generous in his time, resources and judgements. Someone who was unselfish in his service to others, even or especially in the face of disagreement. Someone who was gifted with a particular grace of being able to encourage.

Thomas Aquinas regarded friendship as one of the things to be most prized and valued on earth. Such high regard comes not from the good fortune of simply being blessed by a good friend, but by the way in which God, in Jesus, relates to us as friends.

For Aquinas, human flourishing and charity could be summed up as friendship with God. This gives us a common ground and equality which opens up the possibility of freely relating to God; it also opens up the possibility of friendship with those who are different to us or with whom we disagree. 

This takes us to the heart of John’s Gospel - where Jesus speaks not only of keeping God’s commandments of love, but also of abiding deeply in God’s love. Such abiding is joyous; such loving is generous. 

The one who had abided close to the Father’s heart comes near to us - placing a hand on our shoulder, inviting us into a life of loving service. A life rooted in friendship with God and each other - showing honour, sharing delight, growing in wisdom, deep trust and mutual love.  

This kind of friendship flows from the Father’s love for us - a love intimately involved in the whole of creation, revealed in Jesus and continued in the Spirit - a higher power of life, fullness and flourishing.

Aquinas dwells on the passage we heard today and asks: when all our Lord’s sacred discourses are full of his commandments, why does he give this special commandment respecting love, if it is not that every commandment teaches love, and all precepts are one? Yet, he goes on to note that the highest, the only proof of love, is to love our adversary…. Our Lord came to die for his enemies, but he says that he is going to lay down his life for his friends, to show that by loving we are able to gain over our enemies, so that they who persecute us are by anticipation our friends.

That sounds like a lot for us to take on - when our friendships are both close and indefinite, when our love of them forms part of the glue of life, how can we be bold enough to extend such love into the realm of disagreement?

My friend and colleague Gabby [Thomas] has reflected on this challenge in relation to areas of disagreement within the life of the church - and the calling, choice or invitation to mutual flourishing. She locates this first in God’s grace. Friendship located within God’s grace - putting friendship with God first and then friendship with the other.

Jesus says to the disciples: you did not choose  me, I chose you. And perhaps it is that habit of choice that we also take into our friendships - the familiar, easy, challenging and complex. This is Gabby notes a movement towards God and others in the Holy Spirit - it does mean calling out unkind or ungenerous behaviour, as well as offering encouragement and consolation. 

This kind of friendship, writes Aquinas, is: a kind of virtue in as much as it is a habit of choice.

Icon of Barnabas

Such habits and choices become the Spirit-infused glue of our life together.  We see this in Barnabas’ life - in the risks he took, in the boundaries he crossed, in the gifts he affirmed in others and in his patient encouragement in the face of disagreement.

He is described in Acts as: a good person, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith. He was fully himself as Barnabas - created, called and chosen by God, with his own particular gifts and goodness. He was also a person of faith, open to the work of the Spirit in those daily, moment by moment choices and habits of friendship. 

He was so united with the apostles in prayer, fellowship and the breaking of bread, that he gave all that he was and all that he had to support the church. Personally, this meant selling a field and giving the proceeds to the apostles to build up the community and strengthen or sustain their witness. Collectively, it meant as we hear Paul recount in Galatians, that within the economy of grace and friendship, the poor were never forgotten.

We see the habits of generosity and encouragement in his dealings with others - with friends within the fellowship of Jesus. 

He gave the younger man Mark a second chance - making allowances for youthful energy and enthusiasm. He was a wise elder, taking time to understand and giving him space to grow in maturity. He consoled, encouraged and supported him. 

He gave the older man Paul a chance too - being generous in his judgement of him, based on his own values rather than the opinions and fears of others. With Paul in particular, he not only rejoices in the grace and gifts of others, but committed to the work of building up Christian community and shared ministry. He was reliable, compassionate and kind over the year they spent together.

It was in Antioch that we see Paul and Barnabas reaching across theological divides and disagreements; bridging Jewish and Gentile communities, building trust and loyalty, collaborating with patience and enthusiasm. Together, they listened to the prompting of the Spirit as they faced the struggles of the present - attentive both to the legacy of the past and the hopes for the future.

 

Barnabus in particular connects Jerusalem and Antioch in himself - in his friendships and loyalties, bound together as bodies within the Body of Christ. Through the one Spirit, two peoples and communities are drawn into a shared life. In friendships forged across differences, a new reality is made possible. 

 

Such friendship was not about being like-minded but the choice to spend time together and to find in that the gift of mutual flourishing. The commitment to friendship in community was a conviction of both heart and mind - building bonds of trust and offering time and money to that work. Their collaboration, their friendship, begins to remake the world.

Friendship is a way of holiness - habits, choices, practices which draw us more deeply into the life of God for the sake of the world. Such friendship embodies the depth of God’s love, the life and teaching of Jesus and the vitality of the Spirit, breath by breath. 

As friends, hands are raised in signs of forgiveness and blessing - tracing the cross in bodies and in air; the hands we extend towards each other also reach out to receive Christ Jesus in the gift of the sacrament.  Friendships may be indefinite, but here we are  talking together about the glue of this life…

The glue of God’s love mediated friendship with Jesus; the glue of the life-giving Spirit sculpting and reforming. In worship we attend to the dazzling brightness of such love; in the world, we are involved in responding to human need, to those places of loving concern, human and divine. 

In that task, may we be friends: united in prayer and the breaking of bread; generous in judgement and service; encouraging and building up; choosing those habits of goodness and kindness. All this, in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Spirit.

(C) Julie Gittoes 2023

You. Are. Loved

Today we marked Bible Sunday at our Cathedral Eucharist. In preparing to preach - commentary in one hand, an interview with Russell Brand in the other - I pondered what is 'different' about preaching on this Sunday compared to any other. Aren't we always engaging with and preaching on Scripture, in attentiveness to the reality of our life in the world? I have a similar niggle on Trinity Sunday - why do preachers panic then, when surely we are called to explore the mystery of God as Trinity every time we step into the pulpit? Anyway, I guess in part a way of focusing on the particular so that we don't become complacent - taking Scripture for granted or neglecting its enduring impact as we read, mark learn and inwardly digest. 

At one point I thought I'd begin by reflecting on the crowds which filed past on of the only surviving copies of the Tyndale Bible in St Paul's; I was so struck by the risk and cost of translation; of God's word being read and heard in the vernacular. In the end, I was struck by the sense of uncertainty and crisis - named by Russell Brand - and the way it is met with Jesus' words of assurance. Brand is someone I find endlessly fascinating as he both names the frailty of our human nature and also seeks after something 'true'. Is he challenging us to have more confidence in the Bible in naming both vice and virtue - keeping the rumour of grace alive?  The texts were: Nehemiah 8:1-12; Colossians 3:12-17; Matthew 24:30-35

Russell Brand isn’t a conventional comedian; he’s controversial, certainly. 

He self-identifies as ‘a trickster, a joker, a playful person’; someone ‘on the edge of the community’. He’s someone extremely compulsive, drawn to fame like a moth to light. Having struggled with addictions he has found stability by following a 12-step recovery programme. 

Russell Brand: Desert Island Discs

‘Society is collapsing’, he says, ‘and people are starting to recognise that the reason they feel like they're mentally ill is that they're living in a system that's not designed to suit the human spirit’.

‘Society is collapsing’: perhaps that thought flashed through Nehemiah’s mind in exile as he grieves over the situation in Jerusalem.

Perhaps it was a concern for Paul as he wrote from his prison cell about the threat of false teaching and practices. 

Did that prospect run through the disciples’ minds as Jesus spoke to the Temple’s destruction and things passing away?

On Bible Sunday, we remember that our scriptures have always spoken into times of dissatisfaction and fear; when it seems as if familiar social order is fragmenting and the future uncertain, God’s word remains.  

The Tyndale Bible

The Bible continues to speak of the freedom, forgiveness and delight to be found in God’s love for us; of the promise of all things being made new; of a Kingdom of justice and mercy which does indeed suit the human spirit. 

Prophets, poets, historians, letter writers, psalmists, evangelists: all of them address our questions and struggles. They name our deepest longings and our misdirected desires. 

They continue to whisper:

you

are

loved.  

They declare that ‘God loves us’. 

They inspire us to ‘love one another’.

Today we hear how Nehemiah invited people to hear that law of love afresh. He was practical and a well-organised leader; someone of spiritual depth. He was rooted in prayer; stood firm against intimidation; sought justice for slaves. Having overseen the rebuilding of Jerusalem, he knew the returning exiles needed to be spiritually ‘rebuilt’.

As we rejoice in a restored cathedral we, like them, are invited to pay deep attention to God’s word, distilled into the commandment to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbour as ourself.

These words set us free: sometimes we will weep when we confront our failures. But now as then we are encouraged to rejoice in the strength of God’s grace and to care for those who are in need.  The words of scripture are taken to heart; they shape the life of the community.  To hear God’s word of love was a cause for celebration and feasting.

Ezra reads the law to the people

Gustave Dore illustration of La Grande Bible de Tours

Today’s Gospel sounds like a dramatic shift in tone: there’s a sense of urgency and foreboding in Jesus’ words. He had been speaking of the dangers of false teachers and the threat of persecution; even the Temple at the heart of the city would be destroyed.  It isn’t hard for us to imagine such cosmic collapse. 

Every time we open a newspaper, watch Question Time or scroll through our Twitter feed, we are aware of situations of political volatility and tension. We see images of destruction and ruin as a result of war or environmental degradation.  We read of the concern around student mental health; we’re shocked when politicians make jokes about sexual assault. 

The sorrow stirred up by our fragile world can’t be measured in words.

And yet… and yet… Scripture reminds us that God’s word of judgement confronts us in the midst of crisis and collapse.

Jesus says: the old order will come to an end; a new thing will emerge.

Amidst dire events, we see signs of God’s Kingdom.  Jesus invites us to look at the world through a horticultural lens: first the bud, then green shoots; leaves unfurling on a tree destined to fruit.

When we worry that society is collapsing, we are called back to God’s word. Our scriptures name not only our human propensity to get things wrong; but they also name the persistent melody of God’s healing love. The words of the Bible point us to God’s Word made flesh; God is with us in Christ Jesus. His life expresses the fullness of love. His death destroys death; his risen life brings life to others. 

We live with merging horizons:  knowing that in Christ something decisive has happened, yet watching the whole creation groan with longing for the liberty of God’s Kingdom. Jesus doesn’t give us dates and details. Instead he invites us to have confidence in his words of life and love. We are to pay deep attention to where we see glimpses of God’s activity - and we are to build God’s Kingdom through our own acts of care; to seek it in our pursuit of justice. 

Society is collapsing, say Brand as he names our vices, anxieties and addictions; our experience of loneliness, disappointment or exploitation; our attempts to make ourselves feel better. He says  ‘the secularisation, the materialisation, the individualisation of the way we see the world now excludes us from a life that has meaning. And I don’t think pop culture can fill that gap any more.’ He continues, ‘people need to be able to connect with something that is essential and beautiful and valuable and true’.

Is Russell Brand unwittingly calling us back to the truth expressed in the Bible? 

Our book of books contains100s of stories of human beings grappling with hurt, fragmentation and failure; what Brand calls vice, we call sin. Scripture contains100s of stories of humanity reaching out to God; what he calls a higher power. The Bible is 100s of stories of God revealing Godself to us; what Brand calls beautiful, valuable and true.

In Scripture God breathes 100s of times: 

You.

Are. 

Loved.

Such love isn’t an abstract concept.  It is something with which we are to cloth ourselves. Something we grow into and make our own. Love is to be our appearance;  and what we see in others. 

Brand is right to name our bad moral habits, our ‘vices’. In Colossians, Paul names good moral habits, or ‘virtues’. As we put on love we cloth ourselves in these Christ-like character traits. We increase our capacity to do what is good and true: acting with compassion and kindness, practicing patience, expressing gratitude, learning to forgive. 

In You are what you love, James K A Smith reminds us that we can’t think our way into this pattern of life. We truly learn God’s commandments to love by adopting practices of imitation.  Our love is learnt in worship - it’s a process of ‘reformation' not simply ‘acquiring information'. He writes, ‘the orientation of the heart happens from the bottom up, through the  formation of our habits of desire. Learning to love (God) takes practice’.

In this Eucharist we are clothed anew. We read, mark and learn the words of Scripture which unfold the story of God’s love for us. Here we practice love in community.  We received forgiveness and share peace.  We inwardly digest God’s Word in bread and wine, receiving what we are; becoming Christ’s body in and for the world.

When we worry that society is collapsing, here our vision of God’s Kingdom is renewed. And in the power of the Spirit we are sent out in peace to love and serve. May we see green shoots appearing; may we be to others hopeful signs of new life.

© Julie Gittoes