illustration by Barry Falls/heart agency
I got the call on Monday. She said her husband had passed away a couple of days before and she couldn't find a preacher to come out to her rural community to do the funeral. Her sister-in-law had told her about me.
Saturday found me and Larri in the local Legion set up on a stage opposite the bar. As a troubadour for the Lord, most often it's just me and my guitar representing Christ and his church in these rural, remote Cariboo communities. There was a sizeable crowd out, about 150, a good portion of the surrounding community. I had worked hard over the past days travelling out to the community, getting to know the deceased, his family and some of his friends, and developing the service. In true Presbyterian fashion though, most of my efforts had gone into my sermon. I was convinced that my exposition of the biblical text was just what everyone needed to hear. And so Larri and I launched into the first hymn, country style.
After the first hymn I asked a fella by the name of Peter to come forward to give the eulogy. I had never met Peter before and I was fraught with my usual preacher anal-retentiveness. What would this guy say? How appropriate would it be? How long would he go on? To be honest, I just wanted Peter to get done so we could get on with the real important stuff: what I had to say.
Peter came forward to the stage, a rugged woodsman type dressed in blue jeans and a plaid shirt. He stuffed both hands into his pockets and in a very relaxed and affable manner began to speak. Here is what he said almost verbatim from the notes I scribbled down hastily on the back of my sermon.
“Leonard was my friend. What I mean is not what most of you are thinking. A friend is not someone who you go fishing with regularly, although you might. A friend is not someone you go hunting with all the time, although you could. A friend is not someone you spend countless hours with or someone you have lots in common with or someone who does lots of things for you or someone you are friendly with all the time; they might be but not necessarily. In my experience, friends are not something you have a lot of. You all know me as a pretty friendly guy. But if I look back through all of my long life and count the number of friends I have had, I can number them on one hand and still have most of my fingers left over. A friend is rare. That is because whatever else a friend is, a friend is someone who believes in you, someone who totally believes in you. That is exceptionally rare and precious and powerful. That is what Leonard did for me.”
Peter finished what he had to say and sat down. The preacher was speechless. What rendered me wordless was not that I had come prepared with the message from God and then someone else from within the gathered community had delivered it. This happens to me all the time in the hermeneutical communities or house churches that I find myself in at least a half dozen times a week. But you see, I had lost my friend Jim suddenly and unexpectedly about five months before this and I was missing him so much it was near killing me. For the life of me I couldn't figure it out. Jim's passing was ripping me up more than all the loved ones I had lost over the years, including close family and favourite dogs. We had known each other right on 30 years. And though Jim and I talked at least a couple of times a week, even when we did not share the same geography anymore, we did not have a lot in common, or do a lot of friendly stuff together, or even agree on most things. We did not have all the same core beliefs or demonstrate gushy feelings towards one another. Sometimes Jim left me completely exasperated and I know I returned the favour countless times. But Jim believed in me … unconditionally believed in me. He believed in me so much that he inspired me to believe in me too. And it hurts so much to lose him that I am weeping just writing this down. Jim was my friend and in nigh on 60 years I have only had about one other.
What Peter said helped me to understand Jim and me, and to understand the depth of my mourning. But oddly, what Peter had to say in words and what Jim said in a lifetime of friendship has provided me with an epiphany concerning Jesus. Magi-like I am placed before Jesus with a sudden and striking understanding. Jesus says to his disciples, and I just know that includes me and you: “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends” (John15:15a). What is striking is that after Peter's description of what a friend is, after experiencing a true believing friend in Jim, I now understand that this means Jesus believes in me. Biblical exegesis proves it.
Rabbi Jesus calls his followers “friends” in the act of instructing them to love like he loves, to act like he acts, even down to washing feet and laying down one's life (John 13-17). This is exactly what you would expect a rabbi to say to his disciples because a disciple of a rabbi was in the process of becoming like the rabbi. In Jesus' day, if your were passionate for God's Word, were exceptionally gifted scholastically and felt God's call on your life, you would likely seek to become a rabbi. First, you would need to become the disciple of a rabbi. You would search for a rabbi whom you really respected and believed in, either from the various synagogues around or perhaps an itinerant one, and then you would choose to follow him, to learn from him and become like him in every way (see Luke 6:40). You would believe in this rabbi so much that you would choose him to become like. It was only the religious and scholastically elite who would be qualified to enter this discipleship school of a rabbi. The large majority of people entered the family business and became fishermen and the like.
But in the act of calling his disciples “friends,” Rabbi Jesus says: “You did not choose Me, but I chose you” (John15:16a). Over and over in the gospels we see Rabbi Jesus doing just this, choosing and calling disciples to come and follow him, to become like him. He took the initiative because he believed in them. And he consistently chose those, who for what ever reason, couldn't make it in some other rabbi school – else why were they fishing and the like? This is strikingly different from the first century norm concerning rabbis and disciples. The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament succinctly points this out: “A basic feature of discipleship is that it begins with a call in which Jesus takes the initiative (Mark 1:17; Matthew 4:19; Luke 9:49; John 1:43). This differs sharply from rabbinic practice, in which it is the student's duty to find a teacher. A further point is that Jesus calls those who seem to lack the necessary qualifications (Mark 2:13ff.).”
The striking thing in all of this is that with disciples then and now, Jesus chooses me and you to become like him. The striking thing is that this means he believes in us. With me he definitely chose the unqualified. Jesus has looked into my being and seen something that I probably couldn't see in myself, something that would cause him to believe in me, to believe that I could, with the help of the Holy Spirit of course, become like him. And so, Jesus calls his disciples “friends,” and this is no small thing. In a world where it is extremely rare to find anyone who believes in me, that Jesus is my friend and believes in me blows me away.
It strikes me as a powerful enabling thing to be named a friend of the Lord, to be believed in by the divine creative Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. I always knew I had to believe in him, but it never occurred to me that he believes in me. This is the Epiphany with which I begin 2009. And oh yeah, Jesus is the one believing friend whom I will never lose. He is Risen!
