14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15I 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. 16You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. John 15:14-17
“I have called you friends,” Jesus says in John 15. With these words, Jesus announces a new way of being in community, not only with one another but also with God. Friends share plans and values with each other. Friends imagine and build relationships of trust and generous grace. Friends advocate for each other, even when the cost is giving one’s life for the other.
Jesus turns the master-slave system on its head in these verses by making a radical distinction between servanthood and friendship. The two do not exist together. True friendship where people abide in God’s love? The kind of friendship that eradicates oppression.
In these verses, Jesus crumbles hierarchies–divine and human–and “commands” those gathered around him to relate to each other as equal collaborators with God in the work of bearing fruit that lasts. And what is this lasting fruit? Destructive forms of relating to each other die on the vine while friendship–Jesus’ radical form of friendship–endures to transform the world.
Jesus’ words invite us to consider anew what it means to “friend” other people. Consider. As we “friend” people in our lives, how can we do so in such a way that we embody Jesus’ call to turn oppression on its head and give birth to communities where love flourishes?
more than friended
“like” me as you would
have me “like” you
“friend” me
“but I have called you more than friended”
not virtually—
actually
appointed
given to each other
commanded
freed
to spin tapestries
in place of enslaving webs
chosen
to birth and bear
love
Note: I am grateful to my colleague, Professor Katherine Shaner, whose New Testament scholarship has invited me to read biblical texts with new eyes. Check out her book, Enslaved Leadership in Early Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Salt 