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St. Andrew's Church
An Anglican Church • Grimsby, Ontario, Canada
Preached by
Stuart Pike
Rector
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Easter 6 B - A Friend Calling
St. Andrew's Church, Grimsby
21 May, 2006
When you grow up in the military as I did, you quickly learn that if you want to make friends you must do it quickly. We moved every year or two, or sometimes three. Sometimes we lived in a city on an ordinary street like most people do. Often we lived on a military base. It always seemed easier to make friends on base because everyone was in the same boat. We all seemed to have this urgency to connect with others: to find some kind of communal meaning in a shifting social life far from extended family.
I remember the year we moved to Winnipeg, or Winterpeg, as we used to call it. I was fifteen. Although we went to an ordinary High School we lived on the base which was right in the city of Winnipeg. My brother and I quickly tried to make some friends. My brother and I were used to being outsiders trying to get in. We were almost always the shortest and skinniest kids in our class.
Whenever it came to choosing teams for any sports activity, we would always be picked last. We didn't look very promising physically. But we were quick and wiry. Our best friend that year turned out to be Chris Melnuk. We were an odd-looking trio because Chris was tall and gangly. He had an impetuous nature and an infectious grin which displayed severely protruding front teeth. And he had a raucous, goofy laugh. He was always curious and looking for the most fun angle from which to view any particular situation. It didn't take long for those picking the teams to figure out that Chris, though tall, wasn't that good a pick either.
You see, although he was tall, Chris was terribly uncoordinated. I remember one day my brother and I decided to set up a long row of chairs in the gym so that we could zig-zag down the gym hurdling back and forth over the chairs. Tall and gangly Chris decided that if we could do it, he certainly could. He never made the first hurdle! His first leg made it, but his second one didn't. He went down in a heap scattering chairs and groaning in agony. Everyone in the gym, especially the boys, looked at him with a kind of horrified, sympathetic awe as he was carted away by some big kids to the nurse's office. He didn't make it back to school for two days and we all wondered if he would ever have children. From then on his justifiable reputation as a klutz was permanent. We three were an alliance of the unchosen and perhaps this is what first made us fast friends.
Perhaps you know what it feels like to be among the unchosen. I think most people have been made to feel unwanted or unlovely at some point in their lives. Some people feel that way about themselves almost all the time.
In today's Gospel lesson Jesus says to his disciples, "You did not choose me, but I chose you." We didn't just stumble through out lives until at one point we decided that Jesus would be our saviour. No, God chose us before we were born. We were selected. We live in a world which plays the game of winners and losers. But God seems to pick us all, especially the losers.
St. Paul writes, "God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of the world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are..."
It is often especially when we are feeling weak and lost that, if we stop to listen, we can hear God's call to us, choosing us to serve the kingdom. This is a continuation of the theme from last week's Gospel lesson. We are branches all joined to Christ, the true vine in order to bear fruit. And this week, Jesus tells us what that fruit is. It is about loving others as he has loved us.
One of the things which Chris and my brother and I used to love to do was to take our bikes to Assinaboine park and ride in the dirt trails. When Winter came our game was halted by the snow and so, one day we dragged a toboggan all the way to the park. My brother and I, in our wisdom, decided to cross the recently frozen river even though Chris warned us not to. He was afraid of water and couldn't swim well. "It's flowing water under there", he said, "if you go under you'll be swept away!" We decided we would go slowly and I started out, inching my way across the ice. It wasn't long before we heard the ice cracking and I stopped, not wanting to risk movement. Water was starting to pool on top of the ice and suddenly there was Chris dashing out across the ice to help me.
Well, Chris was never the brightest bulb in the pack. But who was I to think that: I was the hair-brained idiot walking across a frozen river! And here he was, the heaviest one of us, the one who couldn't swim, joining me on the cracking ice. Within seconds we both went through the ice and stood there on the bottom of the river with the water just above the ankles. Realizing how shallow it was we all laughed. We had survived! We were alive! With very wet and cold feet! Immediately after we laughed we all seemed to realize what Chris had done. He had risked himself to help me. He did it without thinking: obviously! But his impulse in that situation was not to think of himself, but to try to help his friend. And this was a friend who we had only known for about four months! In the year that followed I remember stopping and reflecting many times with wonderment about what my friend Chris had done. He was a true friend.
Jesus commands us, in today's Gospel lesson to love one another as he has loved us. "No one has greater love than this", Jesus says, "Than to lay down one's life for one's friends. What does Jesus mean by that? Well, if we are to look at Jesus' example, we see that he literally gave his life for us. He loved us to the very end of his life and beyond.
Does Jesus then mean that we need to put ourselves in harms way for our friends? What does he mean, "lay down one's life?" Well, there are many ways of laying down one's life. I think the deepest way is in terms of deciding how we will use up our life. It doesn't mean giving up our life foolishly and unthinkingly at the earliest convenient opportunity!
Laying down one's life means to decide to live it: but not for ourselves - for others. Laying down one's life means to know that life is infinitely precious and is to be treasured, and that it is too precious to spend it selfishly. Laying down one's life means to use up our life well and in relationship with others. When we learn this secret, we find out that in spending our lives for others, we don't lose our life, but we find it to be fuller and richer than we could ever imagine.
Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, "For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their live for my sake will find it."
Jesus says to lay down one's life for one's friends. And then he shows us that we are all his friends. And if we are all friends of Jesus, then we need to be friends of each other, and to spend our lives for the good of each other.
What greater purpose could anyone have? How could anyone do anything greater than that? It was Mother Teresa who said, "We can do no great things. Only small things with love."
We only lived that one year in Winnipeg. We moved on from place to place. We all finished school in different places and went our separate ways until, eight years later, my brother and I and Chris were all together when I stopped for a few days in Winnipeg in the middle of a chillingly cold winter to where my brother had moved and where Chris still lived. We went to Chris's for dinner where we met his wife and his son: his biological son, I might add. And Chris was still tall and skinny with his easy smile and goofy laugh. And though we didn't talk about that incident on that frozen river, and though Chris probably wouldn't even recall it, I remembered that he was my friend.
Can we strive to live our lives as friends: as Jesus would have us live?
