Sermon: Love, Sacrifice and Equality

Preacher:

Steve Summers

Date:

Sunday 12th October 2025

Venue:

Guildford Cathedral

Service:

6pm Choral Evensong

Nehemiah 6.1-16, John 15.12-27

In 1964 the folk singer Bob Dylan sang:

I ain’t lookin’ to compete with you
Beat or cheat or mistreat you
Simplify you, classify you
Deny, defy or crucify you
All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you

And so on for a further 5 verses, contrasting friendship with control, with mistreatment, and with the desire to change one’s friend.  Whilst Bob Dylan wouldn’t have made it through an audition for our choir, he did have a knack for identifying key aspects of human relationship.

Friendship is an enduring relationship that defies compartmentalisation, it is understood slightly differently across cultures, and carries differing social weight across the world.  But one thing is agreed….friendship matters.

It connects with each of us, it is part of the engine of a healthy society: and it is also going through something of a crisis in contemporary times, with the advent of virtual friendships, and most recently the offering of AI ‘friends’.

Which brings us to consider the central section of our gospel text this evening.  We have a quite unique description of discipleship in the description by Jesus of his disciples as friends.  In this passage John – unique amongst his fellow gospel authors – pins down the nature of the disciples’ relationship with Jesus in direct terms.  No symbolic language, no metaphor, no parable.  Here Jesus identifies the nature of his relationship of those formerly known as ‘servants’ or ‘disciples’ as his friends.  And, of course, this has implications for those who, in the ensuing centuries, would consider themselves to be disciples of Christ too.

For a few minutes I want to consider the three aspects of friendship that Jesus identifies here: love, sacrifice and equality.  And I hope that you get a sense of the seismic difference this passage can make to us, if we can truly grasp its implications.  If we could consider ourselves to be ‘friends of Christ’. 

Firstly, by way of context - note the radical nature of Jesus’ pronouncement.  We are used to descriptions of disciples as just that: ‘disciples’ - ones who learn from a Rabbi, a teacher.  We might also be familiar with the ‘family’ metaphor, seeing followers of Jesus as parallelling our self-understanding as children of our divine heavenly father.

Or perhaps ‘servants of God’; those who do God’s bidding, and work in God’s Kingdom (or vineyard).  Or maybe as worshippers or supplicants – a picture drawn from Judaism’s Temple in Jerusalem – where believers come to worship or venerate God.  Perhaps that is part of the mix for us this evening at Evensong – a service of worship.  But in our text, these are not the descriptions or metaphors used.  Here, quite specifically, servanthood is ruled out, and a new understanding is offered by Jesus, in this intimate address to his followers.  In it, three aspects of friendship are laid out: love, sacrifice and equality.

Love - most evidently friendship is a loving relationship – we love our friends.  And straight away we hit a problem.  English is not the best at capturing the nuance here.  St. John’s gospel relies heavily on a Greek worldview (remember the prologue to the gospel), and in Greek there are four words for love:

agape - a communal love, and the word used most commonly for love of the divine.

eros - most associated with sexual attraction

storge – the love we have for family members

philia – friendship love, and the underpinning of civic interrelationships

Jesus is speaking here, most likely in Aramaic, to a group who are well versed in Greek language, culture and practices; and a Greek understanding underpins the culture and worldview of their Roman occupiers.

Hence a particular Greco-Roman understanding of friendship love would be understood by his hearers, as would the Judaistic notion of friendship.  These two understandings differ, but are not mutually exclusive.

The Greco-Roman world placed friendship in the civic as well as the personal arena.  It formed the basis of how free men (yes, only men) related to each other.  The Judaistic understanding was more aligned with the notion of ‘kith & kin’, such that friends were considered ‘fictive kin’.  Embraced by the family and expected to operate within the complexities of the honour/shame culture, a friend was expected to bolster their friend’s family honour, and avoiding bringing shame on them.

And the Greco-Roman understanding of friendship?  It was much more nuanced than ours.  Plato speaks of it, Aristotle develops it significantly, and Cicero recognises its vital place in Roman society.

For Aristotle, there were friendships of utility – people whom it was useful to know.  Also, friendships of pleasure - those whose company we enjoy, but like utility friendships, when circumstances change, these friends may leave us.  But there were also virtuous friendships – people who mirror our values, and provide a reciprocal nourishing.  These are the friends who help us become the best version of ourselves, as we help them to discover virtuous living.  For Aristotle, this is so important that it forms a pillar of eudaimonia – true happiness or better translated ‘living the best possible life’.

It is certainly this latter notion that seems to be foregrounded in Jesus’ description here.  Love has implications: sometimes costly ones, but friendship love is a description of the best way for humans to be with each other.  There is a richness to this passage that is not immediately evident.

Which brings us to the second word, sacrifice.  Laying down ones’ life for ones’ friends is spelled out quite clearly here.  The ultimate sacrifice, and reminiscent of military descriptions, where the friendship bond is so strong as to override self-preservation, in order to protect ones’ friend – love even to death.

The valuing of a friend over oneself is so counter-cultural as to be surprising.  In a culture of self-fulfilment, self-promotion and self-advancement, this aspect of friendship elevates it to a different level of understanding when set alongside a long list of ‘Facebook friends’ or social media ‘followers’.

Finally, we see equality as part of Jesus’ description; and this is perhaps the most counterintuitive of all.  Notice how St. John has Jesus labour the point – the servant metaphor is deliberately discounted.  Servants don’t know what the master is up to, they just do as instructed.  But the friend knows the mind of their friend.  They understand, there is parity, equality and reciprocity.

And equality has another dimension.  Notice the line; ‘You did not choose me, but I chose you’.   This places all the hearers in the same boat – they have intimate knowledge of Jesus, their friend.  They have knowledge of his motivations and purposes, are recipients of his revelations.  But they all know this, they have all been chosen, there is no hierarchy in this friendship – the equality is between them, as well as with Jesus.

In this short section on friendship – and I’m not going to look at any more of our readings tonight – we have a striking picture.  We have a description by Jesus of his own followers, that should be of interest to us.  If it filters down the millenia to us, we are not described as ‘learners’, not as children, not as subjects in a Kingdom, and quite specifically not servants.  We are placed in a position of significant responsibility and, crucially, equitable relationship.  A place of knowing and being known, loving and being loved, participating and understanding.

There are enough theological implications here to keep us going for a while.  It might feel oddly awkward – like we are overreaching our place with the divine?  But it is impossible to ignore the vision of ourselves that the phrase ‘Friends of Christ’ conjures up.

Ask yourself, if this is a description of who I am in God’s eyes, how does it affect my self-understanding?  How does it affect how I am with my fellow Christians, and co-friends of Christ?   And how does it impact my missional activity; how I relate to those who are not yet in this divine relationship?  Perhaps this is where we discover the ‘fruit that will last’ (vs 16)?