Beyond Forgiveness: A Transforming Friendship

It is very important to remember and to always keep before your mind this fact:
You are an unceasing spiritual being, created for an intimate and transforming friendship with the creative Community that is the Trinity.
On the Sixth Sunday of Easter we hear these remarkable words of Jesus:
“I 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.”  John 15:15
What is God’s passionate desire? What does God deeply want? For us? 
 

We are here because God wants us here. We have been desired into life. Our very existence embodies God’s passionate longing for our friendship. 

 
Jesus calls us to follow him, to make our home in his love: “Just as the Father has loved me – there! – That is how much I have loved you.” Being a Christ follower is to be his cooperative friend.
 
I concluded my sermon by referring to a very moving Icon: The Icon of Christ and His Friend (see above).
 

Nowhere is this image of God drawing close to us more profoundly demonstrated than in this, the oldest known Coptic icon, written in the 8th century in Egypt and depicting Christ and Abba (Abbot) Mena (285-309 A.D.) currently hanging in the Louvre in Paris.
 
In the icon we notice the unusual position of Christ with his arm around ‘the friend’. This embrace can be seen as demonstrating the change of status we have with Christ. He no longer calls us servants but rather friends. 

 
Christianity is more than forgiveness of sins. It is at its core, a Transforming Friendship.
 
Thanks to Trevor Hudson and William A. Barry, SJ for their writings on the subject of God’s desire for a transforming friendship, a friendship like no other! 
 
With you on The Journey, 
 
Rob+
 
– Ambient music by Rob Lord+