I don’t call you servants, because a servant implies a master; I call you friends, because I open my heart to you, and I share everything I know. -Jesus in John’s Gospel (my paraphrase)
Many years ago I had a philosophy professor who upended my view of the world. It wasn’t merely the concepts he taught—which I didn’t always grasp; it was the way he taught. It wasn’t the text so much as the teacher, that tilted my reality.
Everything flowed. Beliefs, enshrined, cherished, or nascent, were not in need of protection, all were open to examination. He had no fear of being wrecked by a rogue wave, as though tied to some dock of received dogma. He lived, it seemed to me, upon the waves, with only the steadying effect of big abiding faith in life—his sea-anchor.
Sitting with him in his office, or meeting for coffee in the cafeteria, the oxygen seemed denser, the energy livelier. It flowed through him and you felt your own energy responding. He had a superior mind. A student/teacher relationship, should it have ended there, would have been natural. But instead he offered me friendship, freely, like that of a fellow traveller.
While my picayune beliefs surrounding the Jesus Story have leaned this way and that, there’s never been a time the Story left me. Now, in these narrowing days, it’s reasserting itself at something like ground level; and I do mean ground: take a moment away from the ugliness and you glimpse it: mineral, animal, human, all matter, this universe, imbued by divinity, by Christ, the creative, vital, evolutionary energy of love. The love that made and the love that holds together the tiny planetary system called atom.
What I’ve always found astonishing about the central protagonist of the Story, is that he offers those he meets along the dusty roads of Galilee, this same kind of ego-less friendship. Declining the power inherent in his unique position of knowledge and impossible-to-fathom status, he became, “…just a slob like one of us (Joan Osborne).”
No obvious pedigree, celebrity, prestige, clout. What this suffering scullion offers, is friendship. But it must be said, a somewhat destabilizing one, unscripted, unformatted, radical, and revealing. Friendship with Christ is not Christianity, not a denomination or even, an added dimension, but a new orientation. Too grandiose? Then compare it with finding a soul-mate, it’s a start.
We’ve just come through Easter—the axial moment of the Jesus Story—the pan-historic moment that subverts death, destroys our anxiety about death and transforms us into people, living as though death were past. No longer run by death, we’re existentially and psychologically free to look at reality and still love, still have an abiding faith in life.
It wasn’t part of some transaction, Jesus died out of radical friendship. Some deep desire to evolve us, free us from our asphyxiating fears—which underlie our distorted structures of power, forms of violence, planet devastation, hatred, greed, racism, war—and gather us together as friends.
Amen to that, Stephen. Thanks ever so much for this inspired posting, and for all the others.
Thank you Allan! I so appreciate hearing from you.
Yes!! Thanks for putting words around these ideas (that I, too, have) about what comes next and what is possible and who is Jesus. I love being in a boat with you.
Thank you fellow seafarer! It really is about what’s possible; and our next evolutionary stage is unity, love, or else it’s dissolution.
Yes! A friend who “knows you best but still loves you most.” 🙂
Thanks, Marcia. That’s a friend.
As always when I read your thoughts, Stephen, I wish we could sit down together and have a good chat. Blessings on you as you put out the Story’s open invitation to everyone….Everyone.
Thank you, Ann. I’ll buy coffee.
For kind understanding,
I thank you
most
I do appreciate you
so -^-
Thank you, Tamara, for this little poem of blessing!
I want to tell you that very often when i read your posts, I sneeze, and something old and weary seems to dissolve
for which I am very grateful
🙂
Ha! I’m happy for your particular allergy. Thank you, Leelah!
What a beautiful portrayal of friendship, transformation and teacher-hood, Stephen. I appreciate the lack of ‘conditioning’ of your teacher and his offering of friendship. When I read your opening quote with your statement, ‘my paraphrase’, I couldn’t help thinking that John also paraphrased, that the truth is within the stories and the gift is within our own unconditioned discernment.
Thank you, Kirk, and I like your thinking regarding, truth, unguardedly discerned within the story, making it your own. Not unlike John.
Of all your writing, this is one of the best – gospel witness, apologetics, and more.
I enjoyed the critique: “tied to a dock of dogma.” All the creeds and confessions and statements of faith that seek to nail down the essence fail to do so and also distract from that essence – what a Friend we have in Jesus. When all is said and done, the story remains.
Thank you, Sam, for your eminent encouragement.
I only had time to skim this piece when it first was published, but I came back to it last night as I was thinking about this topic. Once again, Stephen, you have expressed deep truth with beauty and insight, and your experience with the philosophy professor resonates with some of my own friendship experiences. Thank you for sharing these words. We’ve never met in real life, but I can see that you maintain a broad range of friendships while still finding time to write. Peace and gratitude.