Church of the Holy City

You Are My Friends If

You Are My Friends If
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
March 29, 2009

Exodus 33:7-17 John 15:9-17

Last Sunday we saw that love is the final measure of good and evil. A so-called sinful woman poured out love for Jesus and in this outpouring of love her sins were forgiven. The passage is challenging because it confuses our notions of judgment. It challenges traditional categories of right and wrong. Today I thought I’d explore the difficult terrain of judgment in relation to love.
It seems that the issue we will look at today is captured by Jesus’ words to His disciples. Jesus calls them friends, but He also adds the important word IF– “You are my friends if.” In this line, we see that entering into a relationship with God is conditional. That phrase contains the very important and very conditional word “if”. And the “if” means that we are Jesus’ friends if we do what He commands. Jesus as God incarnate loves everyone. But not everyone is Jesus’ friend. Friendship requires mutuality. Those are Jesus’ friends who love Jesus back. And not everybody loves Jesus back. And loving Jesus back is doing the things He commands. What is involved here was said well by Aristotle. Aristotle says that only the virtuous can be true and lasting friends. He says further that friendship is actually friendship with virtue itself, when we see it in a person. Swedenborg, with his excellent Classical education, adopts Aristotle’s teachings on friendships of virtue and states it in Christian language.
Even a bad man can love the neighbor for the sake of the good or the use that there is in the neighbor for himself; none but a good man, however, can love the neighbor from the good or the use that there is in himself for the neighbor; for it is from good that he loves good, or it is from affection for use that he loves use. . . . One does not love the neighbor interiorly unless he is himself in what is good, and from this loves the neighbor’s good; he is thus in charity, but the other is a friendship which is not charity. He who from charity loves the neighbor, conjoins himself with his good, and not with his person, except in so far as and as long as he is in good. This is spiritual; and he loves the neighbor spiritually. But he who loves the neighbor from friendship alone, conjoins himself with his person, and then at the same time with his evil. After death, the latter can scarcely be separated from the person who is in evil, but the other can (Doctrine of Faith #21).
Our Friendship with Jesus is like the friendship of the virtuous. Our friendship with Jesus occurs when we are like Jesus. Our friendship with Jesus occurs when we are Christ-like. Our friendship with Jesus occurs when we do the things he commands. We are friends of Jesus when we are in good.
So friendship involves mutuality and virtue. Love, on the other hand, is different. There can be a kind of love that is purely giving. There is a kind of love that doesn’t need to be returned. This kind of love wishes what is well for everyone. It wishes that everyone find what their heart most desires. This kind of love is happy when it sees another in happiness. But this kind of love is not friendship. It doesn’t seek a mutual relationship. It doesn’t join its life with the other in the kind of intimate union of friendship.
These two different forms of affection relate to our spiritual life. Jesus calls upon us to love everyone—even our enemies. But He doesn’t call us to friendship with everyone. As we saw above, friendship with evil can be harmful to us. It can bring us into spiritual company with evil, and it can cause evil delights to flow into our own affections. Furthermore, we are finite creatures. There are going to be people we resonate with better than others. There is nothing bad about befriending people with whom we get along well. And there is nothing bad about not befriending people with whom we don’t seem to click.
But this is far different from withholding spiritual love from others. That, we are not permitted to do. We are called to extend love unconditionally to others. This means we are to wish well to others, we are to forgive others, we are to want the best for others—whether we are their friends or not. We are not allowed to withhold love from people we judge to be undeserving. We are not in a position to judge who is or who is not worthy of love. As we saw last Sunday, this is what God does with us. He sends His infinite love to everyone. It is how we respond to God’s love that makes us His friend or not.
I do not mean to suggest that we ignore judgment altogether. When we are in good, and love good, we will seek to encourage those qualities in others. Remember that spiritual friendship is friendship to what is good first and foremost. In some cases, our expressions of love will look like correction and discipline. This is how judgment enters our love relationships. Swedenborg comments on this in a rather black and white way. But I think we can all get the main point he is trying to express. He writes,
To love the neighbor is not alone to wish well and do good to a relative, a friend, or a good man, but also to a stranger, an enemy, or a bad man. But charity is to be exercised toward the latter in one way and toward the former in another; toward a relative or friend by direct benefits; toward an enemy or a bad man by indirect benefits, which are rendered by exhortation, discipline, punishment, and consequent amendment. This may be illustrated thus: A judge who punishes an evil-doer in accordance with law and justice, loves his neighbor; for so he makes him better, and consults the welfare of the citizens that he may not do them harm. Everyone knows that a father who chastises his children when they do wrong, loves them, and that, on the other hand, he who does not chastise them therefore, loves their evils, and this cannot be called charity (TCR 407).
This may be a hard teaching for us. It means that we care enough about someone who is heading in a bad direction, that we remain in relationship with him or her. We struggle with them. We work to help them back on their feet, point them in a better direction. As Tolle points out, we are all connected. Tolle wouldn’t like Swedenborg’s language of good and evil, but he would like the notion that we remain in relation with others. It’s easier to avoid conflict, and turn our back on them and ignore them. But this is not what Christ calls us to do. It is not what Christ Himself did. The point here, is that we are called to care about everyone. And we are called to be open to friendly relations with all who are seeking good according to their own lights and to labor to help those who are in need of ammendment.
Jesus also calls us to account for our own feelings about others. The spiritually advanced person wishes well for everyone. But it is easy for us to carry grudges and resentments for certain people in the private spaces of our own mind. These resentments can be poison to our spiritual welfare. In AA we call that “giving people free rent in our head”. Whether we know it or not, filling our minds with poisonous resentments for others actually puts us in relationship with them on the spiritual plane. I found a most interesting passage in Swedenborg when I was researching this talk. He writes,
In the other life . . . when anyone is there thought of intently, he becomes present; hence it is that in the other life friends meet together, and also enemies, and from the latter they suffer severely (AC 6893).
We put ourselves into spiritual relationship when we dwell intently on our enemies. I have been told that if I’m carrying a resentment against someone to walk up and shake their hand as soon as I see them. I’ve also been told to picture them in light and to pray for their well being. What we need to do, in whatever way works best for you, is to let go of grudges that fill our mind with resentment. What we need to do is to find a way to feel good about the people we encounter.
Our relationships are the measure of our spirituality. We are called to love everyone. We are called to wish well to everyone. Though we will form friendships and intimate relations according to the good qualities we share with others. As Jesus says in John, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” When we are truly Jesus’ friend, we will make friends according to how we understand what good is. We will befriend the good we see in others according to the good we have incorporated into our own lives. But these friendships will always be limited according to the good we ourselves have embodied and according to the good qualities we see in others. So we need to be very careful about the judgments we use with other people. Certainly, how we show love, and whom we bond with in friendships depends on our judgments of good. But we need always remember that our judgments of good are finite and limited by our own level of spiritual advancement. We can only say of another person, “I see you this way, but I may not see the whole picture.” We need remain humble in our judgments, and leave the final judgment to God alone, as to another’s spiritual condition. Relations with others are a touch-stone for our own spiritual development. Relations with others are a measure of our capacity to love, our embodiment of good, and our commitment to the teachings of Jesus. While God loves everyone, we are only His friends if.