What a Friend We Have in Jesus

What a Friend We Have in Jesus

The Rev. Dr. J. Barry Vaughn., Ph.D.

Sermon delivered at the Integrity Eucharist

St. Aelred's Day. January 17, 1997.

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

Birmingham, Alabama

Text: John 15.9-17.

"What a friend we have in Jesus..." I'll bet that at least half of us here tonight grew up singing that hymn and other gospel songs. And you like I probably have a bit of a love/hate relationship with gospel songs. Among other criticisms we could level at them, the theology of such hymns seems too saccharine, too sickly sweet.

I had a teacher who was full of contempt for the hymn "What a friend we have in Jesus". "Jesus, our friend? The Lord of heaven and earth our pal?" For a long time I would have agreed with him, but I don't think I do any longer.

"What a friend we have in Jesus" would be a perfectly appropriate hymn to sing at a service celebrating Aelred of Rievaulx. Aelred's best known book was Spiritual Friendship and in his other works, the idea of friendship plays an important part.

I think it is Aelred's deep understanding of friendship that makes him such an appropriate patron for Integrity.

A priest in this diocese preached a sermon a few years ago in which he rhetorically asked the congregation how many friends they had whom they could call at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. Following the service, a friend of mine in the congregation said to the priest, "Sometime ask the gays and lesbians in this congregation how many friends they have whom they could call at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning".

I would not go so far as to say that the gay and lesbian community has a special talent for friendship; unfortunately, the gay and lesbian community is as prone to jealousy and gossip as any group of folks, if not more so. However, I do believe that friendship has special importance for gays and lesbians.

I think that the importance of friendship among gays and lesbians is related to the "coming out" process. When persons "come out", that is, acknowledge to themselves and others that they are gay or lesbian, they often turn first to their friends. I think it is often the acceptance, support, and understanding of friends that enables gays and lesbians to accept themselves and begin to build a mature and strong self-image as a gay or lesbian person.

And those accepting friends to whom they first "come out" are indeed cherished and priceless.

It is often said that for gays and lesbians friends became "families of choice". That is another reason that friendship is so important in the gay and lesbian community. Friends become family because families still so often reject gay sons and lesbian daughters, or at least keep them at arms' length. Gays and lesbians also build "families of choice" because it is still uncommon for them to have their own children.

Perhaps it is the existence of these families of choice that has led the religious right to charge that gays and lesbians do not possess so-called "family values". I would say to the religious right that there is remarkably little support in the New Testament for what they call "family values".

To be sure, the New Testament encourages love and respect for one's father and mother, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters. However, St. Paul urged his readers to refrain from marrying and having children because he believed that the end of the world was just around the corner. And Jesus appears to have preferred his "family of choice" to his biological family. In chapter 3 of Mark's gospel, the mother and brothers of Jesus call to Jesus, presumably to come home with them and give up his ministry, and Jesus, "looking around on those who sat about him, ...said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.'" (Mark 3.32-34)

As Bruce Bawer remarked, "If Jesus were walking our streets today, what would the TV preachers make of his 'family' of 12 men?" (The Advocate, March 19, 1996, p. 74.)

Aelred had a unique understanding of the importance of friendship. In his Mirror of Love, he wrote:

But what does all this have to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Much in every way.

In tonight's gospel reading, Jesus says, "You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants... I have called you friends..." (John 15.14-15)

Of course, Jesus is Lord and Master, Savior and Redeemer, but the divine humility which prompted God to come among us as one of us, also prompts the Incarnate Word to call us his friends.

A friend is someone who accepts us. As Aelred put it, a friend is "someone in whom our weary spirit may find rest, and to whom we may pour out our souls..." But a friend is also someone who holds us to high standards or perhaps more accurately someone whom we don't want to disappoint.

"I have called you friends", Jesus says to us. For us, then, again to use Aelred's words, Jesus is "someone whose soul will be to us a refuge to creep into when the world is altogether too much for us; someone to whom we can confide all our thoughts. His spirit will give us the comforting kiss that heals all the sickness of our preoccupied hearts. He will weep with us when we are troubled, and rejoice with us when we are happy, and he will always be there to consult when we are in doubt. And we will be so deeply bound to him in our hearts that even when he is far away, we shall find him together with us in spirit, together and alone."

So, perhaps the theology of "What a friend we have in Jesus" is not so out of line after all. Aelred understood Jesus to be the friend par excellence.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is our example in this too, for we know that there was one whom He loved above all the rest. If anyone should look askance at such a love let him remember how Jesus came to take pity on us, transforming our love by showing us His. He showed us that love by giving His heart as a resting place for one head in particular. This was a special sign of love for the beloved disciple, given to one alone, not to all. All were loved equally, no one doubts it, but for Saint John He had a special love, as we can see by the name he gives himself, "the disciple whom Jesus loved". (Aelred of Rievaulx, The Mirror of Charity, tran. Geoffrey Webb and Adrian Walker, London: The Catholic Book Club (1962), pp. 139-140)

"Aelred is a saint for our time, a man who put his life together and lived it with integrity. He saw that [humankind's] search for God requires the discovery of self through the embrace of one's neighbor. Like Aelred, we his modern offspring can feel confused about sexuality and insecure about identity. But like him we have the possibility of forging communities... where we become each others' brothers, sisters, and lovers." (Brian Patrick McGuire, Brother and Lover: Aelred of Rievaulx, New York: Crossroad (1994), p. 158)

St. Aelred

Ps 36.5-10

Phil 2.1-4

John 15.9-17

Mark 12.28-34a

The sweetness of God that we taste in this life is given us, not so much for enjoyment as for a consolation and encouragement for our weakness. That is why it is such a great joy to have the consolation of someone's affection -- someone to whom one is deeply united by the bonds of love; someone in whom our weary spirit may find rest, and to whom we may pour out our souls... someone whose conversation is as sweet as a song in the tedium of our daily life. He must be someone whose soul will be to us a refuge to creep into when the world is altogether too much for us; someone to whom we can confide all our thoughts. His spirit will give us the comforting kiss that heals all the sickness of our preoccupied hearts. He will weep with us when we are troubled, and rejoice with us when we are happy, and he will always be there to consult when we are in doubt. And we will be so deeply bound to him in our hearts that even when he is far away, we shall find him together with us in spirit, together and alone. The world will fall asleep all round you, you will find, and your soul will rest, embraced in absolute peace. Your two hearts will lie quiet together, united as if they were one, as the grace of the Holy Spirit flows over you both. In this life on earth we can love a few people in this way, with heart and mind together, for they are more bound to us by the ties of love than any others. Our Lord Jesus Christ is our example in this too, for we know that there was one whom He loved above all the rest. If anyone should look askance at such a love let him remember how Jesus came to take pity on us, transforming our love by showing us His. He showed us that love by giving His heart as a resting place for one head in particular. This was a special sign of love for the beloved disciple, given to one alone, not to all. All were loved equally, no one doubts it, but for Saint John He had a special love, as we can see by the name he gives himself, "the disciple whom Jesus loved". (Aelred of Rievaulx, The Mirror of Charity, tran. Geoffrey Webb and Adrian Walker, London: The Catholic Book Club (1962), pp. 139-140)

The absence of women, Aelred's confession of his own passion, and the knight's obscenities all indicate that Aelred at the court of King David lost his head, his heart, and perhaps his body to another young man. (Brian Patrick McGuire, Brother and Lover: Aelred of Rievaulx, New York: Crossroad (1994), p. 49.)

Aelred is a saint for our time, a man who put his life together and lived it with integrity. He saw that the monk's search for God requires the discovery of self through the embrace of one's neighbor. Like Aelred, we his modern offspring can feel confused about sexuality and insecure about identity. But like him we have the possibility of forging communities, whether monastic or not, where we become each others' brothers, sisters, and lovers. (McGuire, p. 158)