Richard T. Hughes
Sermon at Grantham Church
Grantham, PA
Valentine’s Day, 2010


The Meaning of Friendship in the Kingdom of God
Luke 6:27-36

On a day like today—on Valentine’s Day—it makes good sense to talk about friendship. For on this day we tell our dearest friends just how much they mean to us.

But if we ask what friendship might mean in the context of the kingdom of God, we may be in for a rather rude awakening. For friendship in the kingdom of God goes far beyond the way we typically think of friendship on Valentine’s Day.

The Meaning of the Kingdom of God
To discover what friendship in the kingdom of God might mean, we must first be clear on what the Bible means when it speaks of the “kingdom of God.” The actual phrase, “kingdom of God,” never appears in the Hebrew Bible, though the concept appears there with great regularity. But in the New Testament, the actual phrase, “kingdom of God”—or its equivalent, kingdom of heaven—shows up well over 100 times. The mere fact that the phrase, “kingdom of God,” shows up with such frequency in the New Testament should tell us that this is a theme that is central to the biblical message and central to the Christian religion.

Over the centuries, Christians have understood the meaning of the kingdom of God in a wide variety of ways. For example, some have claimed that the kingdom of God has nothing to do with life on this earth but everything to do with life in the world to come. But if we take the trouble to read the many verses that mention the kingdom of God, and if we read those verses in their context, it becomes very clear very quickly that the kingdom of God has everything to do with life on this earth in the here and now.

For when the New Testament uses the phrase, “kingdom of God,” the context almost always involves feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sharing our goods with the destitute and the poor, and liberating those who are oppressed by the principalities and powers of this world.

Let me offer just a few passages that make this point abundantly clear.

In his famous “Sermon on the Plain,” for example, Jesus pointedly said, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).

Or again, all three synoptic gospels report the story of the rich young ruler who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. When Jesus told him to keep the commandments, the young man was delighted since, as he put it, “All these I have observed from my youth.” But then Jesus told him, there is “one thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor.” But the text reports that when the young man heard this, “he became very sad, for he was very rich.” Then Jesus said, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God.” Once again we see the clear connection the New Testament makes between the kingdom of God and our obligations to the oppressed, the hungry, and the poor.

But perhaps no text in the entire Bible draws the connection between the kingdom of God and our obligations to the poor more graphically than the last judgment scene in Matthew 25. You recall that passage, I’m sure—how Jesus gathers all humanity before his throne and then separates the sheep from the goats. Then he says to the sheep, “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” When the sheep inquire when they had done these things, Jesus responds, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

And then to the goats he says, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” The text then says that these who cared nothing for the plight of the poor “will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

In his marvelous book, Doing the Truth in Love, Michael Himes helps us grasp the revolutionary meaning of this passage by pointing out what the passage does not say. Here is Himes:
To the best of my knowledge, this is the only passage in the whole of the collection of documents which we call the New Testament which describes the last judgment. . . . And notice what the only criterion of the last judgment is. There is not a word about whether you belonged to the church, not a word about whether you were baptized, not a syllable about whether you ever celebrated the Eucharist, not a question about whether you prayed, nothing at all about what creed you professed or what you knew about doctrine or theology. . . . Not one doctrine, not one specifically religious act of worship or ritual turns out to be relevant to the criterion for the last judgment. The only criterion for that final judgment according to Matthew 25, is how you treated your brothers and sisters.

As a Roman Catholic priest, Himes clearly does not intend to say that theology and church and the sacraments are unimportant, but he does wish to underscore what is central to the biblical vision of the kingdom of God—how we respond to those Jesus called “the least of these.”

Neither Jesus nor Himes says anything here that is radically different from the biblical vision of the kingdom of God that we encounter in the Hebrew Bible. For example, in the book of Amos, God thunders against Israel for their concern with liturgy and ritual while neglecting justice for the poor. Thus, God says,
I hate, I despise your feasts
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings,
I will not accept them,
and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
(Amos 5:21-24)

The Meaning of Friendship in the Kingdom of God: Friendship with “the Least of These”
With that background, we must now turn our attention to the central question for this day, namely, what is the meaning of friendship in the kingdom of God?

Luke 14 gives us a marvelous clue that helps us to answer that question. There, Jesus offers these pointed words to a ruler who had invited him to dine at his table,
When you give a dinner, or a banquet, do not invite your friends [italics mine] or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. (Luke 14:12-14)

In this passage, Jesus clearly draws a clear distinction between those whom we would naturally invite as our friends and those who must become our friends if we are to be faithful to the biblical vision of the kingdom of God.

Typically, those we call our friends are those with whom we share common ground—common interests, for example, or a common social standing or a common economic background. But Jesus tells us that when we give a dinner, these are not the friends we should invite. Rather, he says, we should invite those who might not normally be our friends, and we must invite them precisely because they belong to that group of people Jesus calls “the least of these.” Further, Jesus insists, they must become our friends.

But how can we build friendship with people with whom we may share no common ground at all? After all, friendship usually builds on common interests, common levels of education, and common social standing. How can we possibly establish friendship when these commonalities we often think are so basic to friendship are so thoroughly lacking?

According to the biblical text, the answer to this question is simply this: we love others because God first loved us. The first epistle of John makes this point abundantly clear.
Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but the he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (I John 4:7-11)
Let’s hear that last sentence one more time: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” And the truth of God’s infinite love for each of us is the only criterion and the only motivation for friendship in the context of the kingdom of God.

Elsewhere 1 John makes this point even more clearly. “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning,” John writes,
that we should love one another . . . . By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But if any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word and speech but in deed and in truth.” (1 John 3:11, 16-18)
In other words, we love, not because the object of our friendship is loveable, and not because the object of our friendship shares our interests or shares our educational level or our social standing. No, in the kingdom of God, we love for only one reason—because God first loved us.

The Meaning of Friendship in the Kingdom of God: the Call to Peacemaking
All that we have heard so far is enough to turn our worlds upside down. But if we explore the biblical vision of the kingdom of God a bit further, we quickly discover that this vision is even more unsettling—even more revolutionary—than anything we have encountered to this point. For in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers these pointed and uncompromising words. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” In other words, we must love not only those with whom we may have no natural common ground, but also those we might view as enemies, or those our friends might view as enemies, or those whom members of our race or social class might view as enemies, or those our nation has designated as its enemies.

Paul picks up on this radical teaching in Romans 12. “Bless those who persecute you,” he writes.
Bless and do not curse them. . . . Repay no one evil for evil . . . . If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves . . . . No, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:14, 17-21)

These teachings, so paramount in the Christian scriptures, introduce us to a second meaning of friendship in the kingdom of God. The first meaning of friendship in the kingdom of God really has to do with social justice—that is, caring for the hungry, the naked, the poor, the oppressed, and those in prison.

But the second meaning of friendship in the kingdom of God points us toward peacemaking—that is, reaching out to those who have abused us and mistreated us and who, for all those reasons, we would normally view as our enemies.

In fact, if the call to social justice resounds not only in the New Testament but also in the Hebrew Bible, so does the call to peacemaking. Thus, Isaiah writes,
For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders, and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:5-6)
Or again, the prophet Zechariah spoke of the King who would eliminate war from the earth.
Rejoice greatly, O Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey . . . . He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut of, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. (Zechariah (9:9-10)

This is the prophetic tradition to which Jesus appeals when he counsels us to “love your enemies” and to which Paul appeals when he tells us to “bless those who persecute you.” Nor should we think that peacemaking is a minor note in the biblical text, for the call to make peace is every bit as central as the call to do justice. As we have seen, Jesus tells his followers, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” But he also tells them, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Luke 5:7, 9)

As time went on, this mandate for making peace with those who hate us and for loving those who despise us became a central theme in the life of the early church. Tertullian (c. 155-239 CE), for example, claimed that Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies was what he called the “principal precept” of the Christian religion. In that light, he asked, “If we are enjoined to love our enemies, whom have we to hate? If injured we are forbidden to retaliate. Who then can suffer at our hands?” And Cyprian (c. 200-258 CE) summarized the heart of the Christian faith like this:
That you should not curse, that you should not seek again your goods when taken from you, when buffeted you should turn the other cheek, and forgive not seven times but seventy times seven. . . . That you should love your enemies and pray for your adversaries and persecutors.

If we wonder what this kind of radical peace-making might look like in actual practice, examples are near at hand. One thinks, for example, of the Amish who quickly forgave the man who murdered their children in the school house at Nickel Mines.

Or one thinks of the parents of Amy Biehl, a Stanford University student and a fervent anti-apartheid activist who was studying in Cape Town, South Africa when a mob stoned and stabbed her to death. Her parents forgave her killers and supported their release from prison. At the trial, her father shook hands with each of the four men accused of his daughter’s murder, and then spoke these incredible words.
The most important vehicle of reconciliation is open and honest dialogue . . . . We are here to reconcile a human life which was taken without an opportunity for dialogue. When we are finished with this process we must move forward with linked arms.

Or consider this example. John Perkins, a black American and an impoverished sharecropper, grew up on the receiving end of systemic white racism in the American South. As he grew older, he determined to respond, not with hate and vengeance, but with deeds of reconciliation. Today the John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation and Development, based in Jackson, Mississippi, builds bridges between whites and blacks throughout the American South.

Or consider an even more familiar example, that of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who urged blacks in the American South—people who had suffered from slavery and lynchings and segregation and a million other forms of daily oppression—to “love your enemies.”

I’m guessing that you may be asking right now exactly what I’m asking, and it’s this: Where can we possibly find the power, where can we possibly find the inner resources to love those who hate us, to love those who abuse us, and to make peace even with those who hold us in contempt? To this question, the Bible gives a simple, straightforward answer: we love because God first loved us. But to simply say that we love because God first loved us doesn’t fully explain the power behind that motivation. The reason God’s love for us is such a powerful incentive for us to love our enemies is simply because God loved us even when we had turned against him. Paul develops this point when he writes in Romans these extraordinarily poignant words:
While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8)

Conclusions
So how could we summarize this lesson this morning? It’s really quite simple. In the context of the kingdom of God, friendship doesn’t mean that we love those who love us, or that we love those who treat us well, or that we send valentines only to our best friends. Rather, in the context of the kingdom of God, friendship points us first toward social justice—that we befriend the poor and the dispossessed and all those whom Jesus called “the least of these.” And it points us, second, toward peacemaking, even with those who hate us, even with those who abuse us, even with our enemies. And we draw the strength to love in this way because God first loved us.

The truth is this—that we have spoken today of the two great themes that lie at the heart of the Christian gospel, and those themes are these: God has extended unmerited grace to each of us, and we are now called to extend unmerited grace to all those with whom we come into contact. This is the meaning of friendship in the kingdom of God.

May God richly bless this meditation on His word, and may it bear rich and abundant fruit in each of our lives.