Sermon for the 6th Sunday of Easter

“No longer do I call you servants…I have called you friends.” (1 John 15:15)

These last few weeks of our Easter season have taken on a slight melancholy air. Jesus is raised, and his disciples have seen him. But last week, we took a turn in our celebration of the Risen Christ. We hear again, as we did last Sunday, from chapter 15 of John’s Gospel. It comes in the middle of what is called Jesus’s “Farewell Discourse,” which began in ch. 13 with Jesus telling his disciples, “Where I am going, you cannot come.”

At this point in John’s Gospel, Jesus is referring principally to the Passion of the Cross that he is about to undergo. But each year in Eastertide, the Church gives us sections of this Farewell Discourse because, as happy as we have been to relive the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior, we know that Jesus of Nazareth is not here with us in the flesh. And so we hear Jesus telling his disciples, then and now, that he is present in ways that transcend his human presence.

Today, we hear Jesus tell us, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”

“No longer do I call your servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing.” In some translations, the word used here is “slave,” so that we hear Jesus say, “I have not called you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing.” Indeed, a master doesn’t have to waste his precious time explaining anything to his slave. A slave has no freedom. Therefore a slave has no reason to risk taking any initiative. There’s no extra reward for thinking independently when you’re a slave, when your very life is at the disposal and pleasure of the master.

But, Jesus says, “I have called you friends; literally, I have called you those who are loved. When you love someone, you confide in them. You care what they say. It is your friends who can tell you you’re wrong, without you reacting defensively, because you trust that their correction of you does not come from self-centeredness, but from a desire to watch you succeed.
Your friend is your partner. And when Jesus calls us his friends, he is calling us his partners. In this thing called Church, Jesus has made us partners, with him and with each other. It takes years for attorneys to earn that name in a law firm. And when they do, they share in the ownership of the firm. They can vote on decisions the firm makes. Jesus has already made us his partners.

There is a time for us to come to the altar on our knees, trusting in God’s grace. And when we have received that grace in the bread and the wine, we should stand, and claim our status as redeemed people, as partners in this ministry. We have Jesus’s words to guide us, we have Jesus’s example to inspire us, and we have Jesus’s grace to empower us. We are Jesus’s partners, his friends whom he loves.

Indeed, what is the greatest sign of love? That "someone should lay down his life for his friends.” Because we are Jesus’s friends, we are friends of each other. God made this world, and God redeemed this world through Jesus Christ. And we are to love those in the world. But before we love those in the world, we must learn to love each other as Jesus loved us. Young and old, white, black or brown, male and female, we all must learn to be friends in Christ Jesus.