John 16:25-33

 John 16:25-33

Jesus’ teaching on Earth comes to an end. The next chapter is Jesus's Priestly prayer, then it's to the Garden, the trials, and the cross. In this passage Jesus gets to the core of our struggle in faith. "...for the Father Himself loves you..."   There is more difficulty with these words than we care to admit, imagine, or accept.   The love of God towards us is the fundamental point of our faith.  “For God so loved the world...” But there is a change in this passage. In John 3:16 Jesus used the word Agape for love. Agape is the self-sacrificing love for the well being of the other. God loves the pedophile, and the pimp, God loves the lust-filled adulteress, and the drug lord He loves the liar and a thief. He loves them so much that He gives His Son as a sacrifice for them and for us. But the word love here is different. The word here is Philia.  It is the word for the love of a friend. Being a friend of God is different from being the object of His salvation sacrificial love.

God wants to be with us, He likes us, our company and doing stuff with us, we are delightful to Him. This frankly is hard for us to wrap our minds around. We have no trouble seeing God as the holy judge who punishes sin. We have very little trouble seeing God as one who saves us by the cross motivated by Agape.   But God as a friend who wants to be rolling through life with us that's harder for us to comprehend. Especially when we struggle with hardships, frustrations, failures, and questions, and we wonder why God doesn't come riding in on a charger and save the day. Perhaps that is the wrong image, the wrong way for us to think about God.

Like all analogies this one will break down if pressed too hard. But hear me out. There is a redneck saying that goes, “A good friend will come and bail you out of jail in the middle of the night.  A great friend will be sitting beside you saying, ‘Man wasn't that great’”. We tend to think of God as a friend who will come and post the bail and sign us out of jail. But He wants to be the one who is in jail with us. Now only a fool would propose that we should engage in riotous behavior that lands us in jail. But the best times of life are the times of high-risk shared with friends. Close companionship plus difficulty or suffering equals a bond closer than all others. I have read numerous accounts of men who have fought wars together.  They report a bond that is closer than the bond of family.  Sports teams that survive the trials that are the hardest have friendships that last the longest.

Perhaps the struggle with being a friend of God is because we play it too safe. We risk too little so that we will never struggle. Maybe what we need is not more cushions on our pews, or better climate control in our sanctuary, or nicer music in our ears.  Maybe what we need is more blood on our knuckles, sweat in our armpits and more adrenaline in our blood.  In our grasping for security at home, at church, and in life we have removed the very thing that will help us understand God as a friend.  Jesus concluded his teaching on Earth by saying, “In this world you will have tribulation but take courage I have overcome the world.”  We work really hard at trying to avoid tribulation.  So our friendship with God is bland and insipid.  Maybe we should engage those Kingdom things where we may get bloodied but we will walk away saying, “Man was that great or what?”

“Lord, grant me a great heart to risk great things with You. AMEN”