We are now at the Last Supper. The disciples know that things are about to come to an end. There is great tension and fear in the air. Everything that Jesus says and does captures their most intense focus. They are worried for Jesus and for themselves. If he is taken, if he is captured, who will take care of them and lead them and love them? During this time, Jesus says some very profound things and some very simple things. Jesus had a gift for keeping the profound and the simple in tension.
An example of the latter: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15: 12-13)
I admit that I once didn’t like the song that began with these words, “What a friend we have in Jesus…” I thought that thinking about Jesus as a friend somehow diminished him. I thought that such sentiments were somehow undignified. I was a “song-snob.”
When Jesus first walked up to Peter and Andrew and James and John on the seashore, asking them to follow him, they didn’t think that he was the Messiah, the Son of God, or the Second Person of the Trinity. They thought of him as a new and exciting friend. When Jesus chose the rest of the 12, he was choosing them to be his followers, yes, but he was also choosing them because he wanted some friends. He wanted the support and encouragement and joy and camaraderie that friends can give. The human-Jesus wanted and needed friends.
We, too, need friends. I think that in many ways it can be harder to make friends the older you get. We seem to have less time. We feel so preoccupied with all the rest of life and work. But we never stop needing friends. I listen to a lot of lonely people in my office. Maybe loneliness is the most prevalent issue that I hear.
What a friend we have in Jesus. Maybe it is time to stop thinking about Jesus only theologically. Maybe it is time to also think about him as your friend. You need one (and, of course, I would suggest that you also work on other friendships as well), and he wants one, too. Yes, Jesus wants you as his friend. Novel concept for you, perhaps, but there it is right in scripture. He came to be our friend. He came to make friends. He wants you to be his.
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Hymn writer Joseph Scriven (1819-1886)
ReplyDeleteJoseph Scriven was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1819, and came from a prosperous family. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin. At the age of twenty-five he decided to leave his native country and migrated to Canada. His reasons for leaving seemed influenced by his religious beliefs and personal tragedy: the religious effect of the Plymouth Brethren upon his life that estranged him from his family, and the accidental drowning of his fiancée the night before their scheduled wedding. He fell in love again but tragedy came the second time when his bride to be contracted tuberculosis and died before their wedding could take place.
From that time Scriven developed a totally different life pattern. He took the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus literally. He gave freely of his limited possessions, even sharing the clothing from his own body, if necessary, and never once refused to help anyone in need. Because of this manner of life, Scriven was respected, at the same time, he was considered to be eccentric by those who knew him.
Scriven also died by accidental drowning. He became critically ill in October 1896. Delirious, he rose from his bed, went outdoors where he fell into a small creek. The citizens of Port Hope, Ontario, erected a monument on the Port Hope-Peterborough Highway, as a tribute to this simple and humble man.
Read more: What a Friend We Have in Jesus: Words by Joseph Scriven, Music by Charles C. Converse - http://christianmusic.suite101.com/article.cfm/what_a_friend_we_have_in_jesus#ixzz0BZM2VL8D