The Text: “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
 
This sermon is divided into three parts. The first part consists of two stories, the second
part is Bible study, and the third part is a word to those being ordained and to the church.
 
First Story: Basil Pennington, OCSO, monk and author, tells the following story in his
book Seeking His Mind: 40 Meetings with Christ.
 
Joe was coming home from school. Ahead of him he saw a classmate, one he knew only
by sight. The fellow was struggling with quite a load of stuff, and suddenly he lost the
battle. Books, sneakers, athletic equipment all went in different directions. Joe went up,
helped him retrieve some of the straying items and walked along with him, carrying part
of this huge load. He learned that his classmate’s name was Li.  
 
When he reached Li’s house, Joe was invited in for a coke. The two boys started talking.
It was three hours before they said goodbye.
 
They graduated from the same high school and their acquaintance continued. On the day
they both were to graduate from high school waiting for the ceremonies to begin, Li came
over to Joe and said, “I want to thank you.”  
 
“For what?”  
 
“For today, for so much more, for my life.” 
Since Joe’s face showed that he did not understand, Li continued. “Did you ever wonder,
that afternoon when you helped me, why I was carrying so much stuff home from school?
Well, I had cleaned out my locker because I did not want to leave the job to anyone else.
I had gotten a bottle of pills, and I was going to commit suicide that night. But then you
came along, and we spent three good hours together. When you left, I thought: If I had
killed myself I would never have had these three good hours – and maybe many more
like them. So I threw the pills away thanks to you.”
 
Friendship is a matter of life and death, at least sometimes.  
 
Second Story: I was 24 years old when I received ordination as a deacon. My first job
was as a curate at a large suburban parish. There were tons of folks who needed private
communion at Christmas, and my rector was all too happy for me to do them all. I was
probably on call number three or four of eight, and Mrs. Tennyson smiled as I entered her
apartment. Collect for Christmas, Luke’s nativity, confession, Lord’s Prayer, body,
blood, and I was almost out of there. Four down, four to go. She asked me with a sweet
smile – and slightly sad, liquid blue eyes – if I might have a cookie.
 
With every fiber of my being I wanted to get on with the day’s task so I could grab a few
Christmas Eve minutes with Barbara and my one and a half year old daughter. Somehow,
by the grace of God, I said that would be great. She retrieved a lovely, small silver tray
with a lace napkin on it and about six delicious home-baked cookies. She also poured me
a nice cup of eggnog. We shared the cookies, and I stood to leave. “Thank you for
staying,” she said. “I know that you must be very busy today. But those cookies we just
shared will be my only Christmas party. I have no family. My husband died, and our only
daughter died in infancy. Thank you for making the holiday so very special.”  
 
Bible Study: John 15 is packed with rich images. The community is seen organically,
even biologically as a grape vine. The life of the vine depends on the branches abiding,
knowing that their life depends on sticking with the body. Jesus identifies himself with
the vine, and if we don’t stick together in Him, we can do nothing. Sticking together is
following his command to love, even to the extent of giving up one’s life for a friend.
Clearly there is service to be done even at the cost of one’s own life, but it is to be service
grounded in friendship. Even though he commands the way a master of servants
commands, he does it as friend to friend, bound by mutual love. In Jesus, service and
friendship are joined forever.
 
In St. John’s gospel we see the highest and most developed theology of Christ’s divinity
— this is seen particularly in the great I AM statements. We also have the clear
affirmation that Jesus had a beloved friend who slept on his chest. Jesus did not command
what he had not known was a matter of his own wholeness as fully human. Jesus needed
a friend, and he had one.
Service bound in friendship avoids several horrific possibilities. God save me from
service that is purely objective duty. That kind of service feels like a dental hygienist
scraping away without a word. Service grounded in friendship also saves us from service
that is frenzied, trying to establish a relationship, like the service one receives from a
used car salesman trying to make a quota assigned by his manager.  
 
The service grounded in friendship commanded by Jesus looks more like the service
described in the very popular book Tuesdays with Morrie. A former student hears that his
professor and mentor is dying. He sets aside each Tuesday and flies to the town where his
friend lives. They spend the day in conversation or silence or whatever seems right. This
service, grounded in friendship, is devoid of sterile duty or pious condescension. I
recently heard an account of a NPR reporter (I think it was Ira Flatow) describing the
arrival of a new rabbi in his parent’s congregation. Mr. Flatow senior was already in the
process of dying when the rabbi arrived. One day the rabbi showed up at the door,
unannounced, and asked to spend some time with Ira’s Dad. When Ira gently asked his
father if the rabbi could come in –  
that he really wanted to see him – Mr. Flatow said, “OK, if you think it might do him
some good!” Service that is not grounded in friendship is something to be endured.
 
So, to these three distinctly wonderful human beings we are making servants tonight, I
say with some boldness, “Be a servant friend the way Jesus was.” In order to be servant
friend the way Jesus was, three things will be necessary: The willingness to stop, the
willingness to choose, and the willingness to track in your heart.
 
When Jesus was hounded by the beggar on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, his
disciples and others tried to hush the blind beggar. I have a hunch that the beggar was
being seriously irritating. Well positioned to test this rabbi who was passing by, he said,
“Jesus have mercy on me.” The crowd tells him to shut up, but Jesus does something
essential: the text says, “Jesus stood still.”  
 
It is hard to do servant ministry grounded in the reality of our friendship with Jesus while
on the run. There is a kind of tempting careerism that keeps clergy in perpetual motion.
All three of you are stars. One of you is a recognized leader in the United States Navy,
two of you are leaders in your respective seminaries, and all three of you are A students.
It is clear that you are gifted and clearly in motion. The question will be for all three of
you as it certainly is for me – do you know when to stand still and listen to what is being
asked? At one moment in my ministry, a colleague had to confront me, he said, “Ted, Mr.
Kates thinks you are always looking beyond him.” I never stopped for him or so he
thought. Like the priest and Levite in the parable of the good Samaritan, there are
compelling reasons that keep us moving, and sometimes movement is the call, but service
grounded in friendship – incarnational servant ministry – involves stopping ... and being
present. It involves listening, occasionally asking the right question, and intentional
engagement through time, touch and thought.
 
The second thing I have noticed about Jesus, servant and friend, is that he also chooses.
When healing the leper he was asked a tough question. “If you choose, you can make me
clean.” For Jesus to exercise the very important capacity for choice will mean trouble
with the law and the priesthood. To choose to touch will mean the violation of Torah and
to render himself unclean. To choose in this context is also to take over the role of the
priest. Servant friendship will, from time to time, require very difficult choices. Ministry
grounded in our friendship with Jesus is always going to be a ministry of hard choices.
As he made friends with the woman with a hemorrhage, the woman at the well, the traitor
Matthew, the thief Zachaeus, the Centurion with a beloved servant, all of these choices
lead to a cup of suffering and a cross of wood. Choose faithfully.
 
The third and final thing I would have us notice about the servant friend Jesus is that he
had the capacity to track in his heart those whom he loves. “Our friend Lazarus has fallen
asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” Lazarus is in Judea, the place where Jesus
almost was stoned to death. The disciples are against the visit. Tracking Lazarus in his
heart, Jesus, servant friend goes anyway. The bishop of Alaska loves the native people,
whose ancestral land is in the Arctic wildlife refuge where those feeling what President
Bush has rightly identified as our oil addiction want to drill. The bishop’s love for these
people, their land and their way of life takes him to Congress several times a year to beg
senators not to give in to the powers that be. Tracking in our hearts is costly; the bishop is
at odds with many influential people in his state and yet he bears this challenge because it
is what his servant friendship to the people he serves demands.  
 
Amy, Ellen, Brad. Jesus Christ calls you his friends. Because of his passionate friendship
for you and your passionate friendship for him, service will never be simply your duty. It
is also your destiny. Here the words of Luke 12:37, traditionally read at deacons’
ordinations, apply: “ Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he
comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat and he will
come and serve them.” George Herbert reflecting on this passage writes:
 
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,  
 Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-eye’d Love, observing me grow slack
 From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
 If I lacked anything.
A guest, I answere’d worthy to be here:
 Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkinde, ungreatfull? Ah my deare,
 I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
 Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
 Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not sayes Love, who bore the blame?
 My deare, then I will serve.
You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:
 So I did sit and eat.
 
In your serving, in your stopping, choosing and tracking, may all know full well that you
serve having known your friend who stopped for you, chose a cross for you, tracks you in
his heart and will never let you go! Serve in and with your friend even Jesus Christ our
Lord! Amen