Sermon for Remembrance Day / Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity
“I have called you friends”
It is one of the most extraordinary passages in the Scriptures and perhaps in the history of religious philosophy. It belongs especially, it seems to me, to the rich tradition of the literature of consolation. It teaches us something profound and wonderful about the real meaning of the ethical principle upon which our lives radically depend.
Against a utilitarian or consequentialist view of ethics which merely looks at the consequences real or imagined that arise from certain actions, the outcomes, as it were, we have with the words of Jesus the very principle that shapes and informs our actions. This passage is read on The Feast of St. Barnabas (BCP, p.227) who is sometimes called the son of consolation. Here is our real consolation and comfort in the face of the great evils of our world and day. Jesus’s words reveal to us the great ethic of sacrificial love as the real defining principle in our lives. It can only be about that principle in usas this passage makes clear. “Ye are my friends,” Jesus says, an outstanding claim. The very idea of a friendship between God and man is almost unthinkable for ancient philosophy and religion, the distance between God and man far too incommensurate. And yet, Jesus says, “I have called you friends.”
But only if we do whatsoever he commands us. Our friendship with God in Christ depends upon his Word being alive in us. And that means our knowing, each according to our own capacities, what God seeks for us in our lives. Somehow this passage strengthens us in the face of the great evils of the world, particularly the evils of war.
Today we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the ending of the First World War. We are only beginning to begin to understand and to come to terms with the evil of our humanity. Remembrance Day marks the ending of the First World War; yet the significance of this is so great that it is on this day that we also remember the Second World War, itself an extension of the first, as well as remembering a multitude of other wars and their human cost. Somehow we remember them through this remembrance. We contemplate the dark horrors of the twentieth century unleashed by our humanity upon our humanity in unprecedented ways. We confront the deadly and destructive capacities of our technocratic world. That we try to remember, that we can remember at all, is the signal virtue of this day.
O Lord our God, whose name only is excellent and thy praise above heaven and earth: We give thee high praise and hearty thanks for all those who counted not their lives dear unto themselves but laid them down for their friends; beseeching thee to give them a part and a lot in those good things which thou has prepared for all those whose names are written in the Book of Life; and grant to us, that having them always in remembrance, we may imitate their faithfulness and with them inherit the new name which thou has promised to them that overcome; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
