May 3, 1998

The late Mother Teresa visited Phoenix, Arizona back in 1989. She was there to open a home for the poor and destitute, and while she was in the city, an announcer for radio station KTAR asked her if there was anything he could do for her. The announcer was expecting, of course, that this saintly woman would ask for a donation, or for some media exposure for the project, but she surprised him. With that little loving smile of hers, Mother Teresa simply said, "Find somebody nobody else loves, and LOVE them!"

These are profound words for us to consider this morning, some nine years after Mother Teresa spoke them, and some four weeks now removed from Easter. It seems to me that this is a very dangerous season for those of us who believe that Christ is risen from the dead. How easy it would be to simply comfort ourselves by thinking of the resurrection as little more than a happy ending to what would otherwise be a very, very sad story. How simple it would be to relegate Christ's triumph over death to a place in our lives that has relevance only out there in the future when we face the prospect of our own dying. Oh, this post-Easter time is the most dangerous season of all because it's so easy to walk right past the point.

You see, the triumph of Jesus Christ means that the icy grip of death that latches on to people and squeezes the life out of them can be broken! It means that the unrelenting weight of evil that holds people down and keeps them from rising up to what God created them to be, can be lifted! It means that those who live in the dark night of suffering can find light, and those who are broken by life's hardships can be made whole!

To put it another way, God has unleashed in the world the power of new life through his son, Jesus Christ. And you and I are stewards of that power. And our mission, should we be willing to accept it (as they used to say on the old Mission Impossible TV show), is to take that new life of the resurrection... and touch people's lives with it every day, in practical ways!

During the month of May, I'll be preaching a series of sermons about some of these practical ways of sharing the gift of new life. Today, I want to begin with a Christian practice that's beautifully described in our Scripture reading from John 15. I guess I'd call it the art of Christian Friendship.

You know, one of the most frequent questions I'm asked about our church's Stephen Ministry - which is a specialized kind of Christian Friendship - is why there's so much training involved. As you know, Stephen Leaders are required to attend a week-long national training session with the staff of Stephen Ministries. Before commissioning, Stephen Ministers receive fifty-hours of training, and afterwards take part in continuing education and peer-group supervision. So the question usually comes out this way: Why so much training just to befriend people and care for them? Can't anybody can do that!

Well, to be honest, no. To be a Christian friend takes more than just secular friendship.

You see many of us have fallen victim to the dangerous idea that there is no difference between secular life and Christian life. But it's not true! It took me a long, long time to learn that being a husband is not the same thing as being a Christian husband. Do you hear what I'm saying? And to be painfully honest with you, being a Christian husband is not something I've become very skilled at yet. Just ask Sandy!

And we will both testify to the fact that there's a huge difference between being parents to our children, and being Christian parents. For instance, when our children achieved their personal stardom in youth athletics and were faced with games being played on Sunday mornings, Sandy and I struggled with what to do. Remember going through that one?

We quickly discovered that, in the families of most of our friends, there seemed to be no strong Christian value system that even questioned this. In fact, one of our friends said that they felt it was the Christian thing to do to let their kid play on Sunday. You see, this is what I mean about how many of us have been lured into this mindset in which secular values are seen as Christian values, and where, to be a Christian is to simply do what everybody else is doing!

Well, Sandy and I sure had a problem with this. And we wrestled over it. What do you do in a situation like this when the world says one thing and your faith says another? Destroy your kid's Little League career? Take away the top home run hitter on the team and spoil it for everyone else? Or teach your children that God is secondary to life? That you come to God only if you don't have something better to do? That Little League is more important than God?

Well, after a lot of prayer and agonizing thought, our approach to it was to stake out the claim that we wanted to be not just parents, but Christian parents. So as Peter faced his various All-Star endeavors, we sat down with him and told him what we believed. Our first value in life is our relationship with God, and our family's practice is to worship every Sunday, no matter where we are. We also told Peter that we didn't believe it was wrong for him to play and have recreation on Sunday, which was important for him to hear. So as we talked with him about this situation, we finally worked out an agreement that Peter could play on Sunday, so long as he found a way to worship the Lord somewhere that day in a corporate setting. And it was up to him to take the initiative and find a way to make it work.

So, the big weekend came. Peter went off to play his game. The rest of us went to church and arrived at the game later, only to learn that the kid had already hit two home runs. Good thing we let him go! Then, after the game, we drove home, and at four o'clock that afternoon, Peter asked me to drive him over to St. Mark's Catholic Church for their 4:30 Mass. He had found out it was the only worship service in town that late on Sunday. So he got out of the car, walked all alone down the path toward the door, but then ran into a couple of buddies from school. They disappeared together into the sanctuary, and we didn't see him again until he got home a while later and said with a smile, "What a great service! It was only thirty-minutes long and the guy wasn't nearly as longwinded as dad is!"

Well, for several weeks that summer, Peter went to the 4:30 Mass at St. Mark's Church. For a while there, he seemed so enthusiastic about the short service and the brief homily (as compared to his own father's) that Sandy and I actually thought he might convert! But he didn't. And although neither Sandy or I will try to tell you that this was a perfect solution or anything along the line of perfect parenting, we will tell you that the experience taught us that there's a world of difference between trying to live as parents and trying to live as Christian parents.

And, likewise, there's a difference between being a friend, and being a Christian friend.

Did you notice how Jesus describes Christian friendship in our Scripture lesson? Its so much different than what comes naturally. It's so unlike secular friendship. Why, there's a structure to it. And a discipline. And a spirituality.

Listen to Jesus in verse 15 on the subject of Christian friendship: "I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my father."

The first practical element I'd like you to notice about Christian Friendship is that it requires us to know who we are in relationship to God and the people we are befriending. When I was in seminary, I served in a large Methodist church that had a wonderful gift for helping to shape the ministries of young seminarians like myself. They and their pastor, Alan Moore, were a people of immense grace and patience, and I am grateful for all they taught me - most of which came in spite of myself!

One day, a woman by the name of Dorothy lost her mother. Alan Moore was out of town, so it fell upon me to visit Dorothy and counsel with her in the midst of her tragic loss. I spent a lot of time preparing myself for the visit. I re-read all the pertinent chapters in Clinebell's classic work, Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling. I went over in my mind the training I'd received in reflective listening techniques. I made mental notes of all the Scripture passages that might be helpful. I figured out just exactly how I was going to help Dorothy through this dark moment of the soul. So, armed with all this preparation, I went over to the house.

Dorothy greeted me at the door with a big, sobbing hug. Tears flowed freely from her eyes as we sat down and she started talking. And talking. And talking. I tried my best to get a word in edgewise, but Dorothy was just gushing out non-stop emotions and memories and thoughts about her mother. I began to feel very uncomfortable because all this talk was starting to really screw up my mental outline of how I was going to save this woman from her terrible pain. But on and on and on she went. For about two hours!

Finally, Dorothy ran out of gas. She stopped talking. But just as I opened up my mouth to share my wealth of wisdom with her, Dorothy stood up and said, "Thank you SO MUCH for coming!" She ran over to me and threw a big bear hug around me. "You will never know how much you've helped me!" she wept. So...I left.

A day or two later, Alan Moore called me into his office and said, "I don't know what it was you did for Dorothy, but she feels like you touched her with the power of God. She sent me this beautiful letter telling me how much you helped her." And he showed it to me.

Now, there is something to the power of just shutting up and listening to people. That can be very helpful and healing, and it's a skill we all need to learn. But in Dorothy's case, it was much more than that. She would tell you that God came to her in that time we spent together, and touched her in ways far deeper than any human being could. And in the many months that followed, as she worked through the normal process of grief over her mother's death, Dorothy found a deepening relationship with the living God that helped her through the experience, and that continues to this day.

So what did I do to facilitate God's love touching Dorothy's heart? Well, absolutely nothing, really. What I have come to believe is that the power of that moment for Dorothy did not come as a result of anything I did, but probably more likely as a part of my being present with her.

You see, if, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead and has the power to bring new life to people; and if, in fact, the living Christ dwells within us through faith, doesn't it stand to reason that what the Bible says is true? That there is operative in our lives as Christians the very power of the resurrection?

And if that is true, then whenever you are present in the life of another, you bring with you the power of God!

So the first step in the art of Christian Friendship is becoming aware of who you are in relationship to God and others. You are a Christian! Why, you are a vessel of the resurrection! And the power of your presence in the life of another, can lift them and free them and bring them healing grace.

I wonder if, during this week, you might carry with you into all your meetings and conversations with other people the thought that you are a vessel of the resurrection, and that there is spiritual power for others in your presence.

Now, a second step in the art of Christian Friendship is that it involves choosing. In the passage, Jesus says, "You did not choose me. I chose you!"

When you think about how Jesus befriended people, you'll notice that he was the one who always took the initiative to reach out to the other. He went out to the lakefront to talk Simon Peter and Andrew into becoming disciples. He started the conversation with the Samaritan woman by the well. When Simon's mother-in-law lay sick with a fever, Jesus went to where she was. And not only that, but even when Jesus was with his own circle of friends, he was always on the lookout for someone who needed a friend. So when the crowds cheered him as he entered the city of Jericho, he nonetheless discerned the whispered cry of a blind man who had been made invisible by the wall of spectators. Among all the loud shouts of the tumultuous crowd, Jesus heard the tiniest whisper of all. "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!"

To be a Christian Friend requires us to adopt the discipline of choosing others. One of the dearest friendships I have got started one day on the outside edges of a conference room filled with people I didn't know. I must have looked pretty lonely, standing there in the crowd, not knowing just what to do. Most of the others already knew each other, and were politely friendly. But after a few cursory "hellos" they tended to drift back into their own little groups.

And then, all of a sudden, he was there. "Hi, I'm Len." I noticed that he had left the group of people he was talking with to come over to talk with me. He suggested we get a cup of coffee, and showed me the way to the coffeepot. Then he invited me to sit with him as the meeting began. Later, during a break, Len asked me a lot of questions about myself, and when he found out that I had a pilot's license but didn't have an airplane, he laughed because he owned an airplane, but didn't have a license. We became fast friends, and there is no one whose friendship I value more.

But it happened because he chose me. He saw beyond the circle of his present friendships, and chose to step beyond it to start a new circle with me. Just like Jesus did.

The art of Christian Friendship calls us to make the deliberate choice to reach out in friendship to those who are not our friends yet! Recently, one of our fine members told me that his last church has a rule that, in the first ten minutes of the coffee hour following the service, you have to go and meet people you don't know. I like that. Sounds like something Jesus would do! Sounds like something we could do right here!

You have to know who you are and how powerful your life can be for others! You have to develop the discipline of reaching outside your circle to form a new circle around people at the edges.

And finally, you have to call people to the higher values, goals and dreams of the kingdom of God! Jesus did not teach the disciples to love each other. He taught them to love each other as he loved them! And there isn't any standard of love that's higher than that!

You see, what Mother Teresa was doing in the life of that radio announcer was exactly that. His idea of what he could to help was to give some money, or to make some announcements on the radio. But Mother Teresa revealed a way to help that is so much larger!

As we come to the Table this morning, I invite you to commit yourself to developing more and more in your life the art of Christian Friendship. Go this week and practice it! Be aware of the power of your presence! Take up the discipline of choosing. And introduce to the people you meet this week, something higher, something larger!

Thanks be to God!