JESUS CALLS ME FRIEND

SAY TO a Christian What is your relationship with Christ? and very likely he will reply Jesus is my friend. Press him to explain and, like many people, he will describe his friendship with Jesus in conventional idioms--Jesus accepts me as I am, he's always there for me, etc.

THE CONVERSATION quickly dies with neither person having learned where there is. Nevertheless a palpable awkwardness inevitably lingers in the air like the whiff of a distracting odor. ME AS I AM probably has no idea what he really means. At best he holsters Jesus is my friend as a kind of ready faith flash card and, at worst, fires it as a ranging shot signaling incoming heavy bombardment of impersonal propaganda about a personal saviour.

VERY OFTEN the phrase Jesus is my friend functions as an all-purpose utility--a battle cry for saving lonely souls or perhaps a power-aide to rally the troops after a wrenching night of 12-step testimonies. Hundreds of Christian stores, perhaps thousands, sell theme-based religious merchandise trumpeting friendship with Jesus. Consider the millions of saccharine friendship magnets clinging to household refrigerators in these United States.

THE EXPRESSION Jesus is my friend is out-of-balance. The more people repeat it the less meaning it has, the less anyone cares. Perhaps it's because the word my skews the idea and obscures the underlying truth on which the phrase depends. Herein lies the danger. The generation in which we live is remarkably self-centered. Selfish people love the word my—my this, my that, my way. What about Christ's relationship to me? What about his perspective? What about him?

THE PRONOUN my is possessive in two ways—it alerts other people to some aspect of my own self or how I possess some object or shiny thing. The more I use me, my and mine the more I run the risk of merely adoring some aspect of my own self or worse, treating Jesus as my personal possession. However silly or superficial, self-exaltation is idolatry, and belittling Jesus as warm and cuddly is condescending blasphemy. So I need to think very carefully about what Jesus is my friend means. Or risk candying the Son of God in heavy syrup and pureeing the whole of his truth into baby food.

FRIENDSHIP WITH Christ consists in this: "not that we loved God but that he loved us". [1Jn 4:10] If one must speak at all, it's far better to venture Jesus calls me friend, because this puts the emphasis on Christ where it belongs and reminds me that his friendship is a gift, a manifestation of grace I can never earn by my own merits or cleverness or distillation. Christ will never offer his friendship to me as a thing or title or magnet. He will always offer his friendship to me as Grace.

CHRIST WILLS friendship with me into reality; his grace is the power that sustains it. Indeed, I should hasten to clarify that grace is reality itself. Grace is the continual outpouring of friendship (reality) by Christ to those faithful servants whom he and he alone names as friends. "But I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." [Jn 15: 15] What Christ continually offers is what I always should be conscious of receiving, in fact, living in.

I SAY receiving to mean life-giving. Grace is the down-payment of God's gift of salvation by which our mortal humanity is made immortal. God gives grace to me for the express purpose of drawing me into relationship with him and sustaining me in his friendship. No aspect of my humanity has power to accomplish this. No object or shiny thing in my possession can summon it.

GRACE IS the life-blood of friendship with Christ. By grace, the Lord calls me to be his brother yet categorically not his peer or equal. The fact that I have been adopted into the household of God does not privilege me to go eye to eye with the Son of the Eternal Father.

RATHER, ME AS I AM needs to prostrate himself before I AM WHO AM in sorrow for his most grievous unworthiness and as a sign that his overwrought tongue and under-worked mind are to be silent before the Lord who, if he were hungry, would not tell him. [cf. Psa 50:12] Before he can open his soul to receive the Will and Truth of Christ, however, he must turn off the overheated motors driving his own will and words. Bonum est praestolare cum silentio salutare Dei.

IN THE unfamiliar light of true silence in my soul, what does the Lord say? If you love me, you will obey me. "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments." [1Jn 5:3] What is service to Christ but the perfection of my obedience to his will and truth? To prefer his will and truth is to choose Christ himself and to cherish the relationship he graciously deigns to share with me.

THEREFORE THE proof of friendship with Christ (mine or anyone else's) is one's continual receiving of his will and truth and putting it into action. "Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother", says the Lord. [Mk 3:35] Take care, therefore, not to trivialize your friendship with Christ.