Speaker 1: Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to comm.church for more information.
Speaker 2: We've been talking about friendship to start the year, partly because we often take some time in January to set up the year by focusing on relationships as part of our rhythm here, but also because these past couple of years really have put a lot of strain on a lot of our friendships, and on the skills that we use to maintain them. First of all, just distance, like social distance. They say it makes the heart grow fonder, but sometimes I think it just makes things a lot harder. But then of course, all of the stress, and the partisanship, and the rank or, and the way that very real disagreements have divided us these past few years, all of this has just made friendship that much tougher. And so, wanted to start the year grounding ourselves back in some of the core human needs that we share, and some of those practices that help us build those connections with each other.
So, we started this series with just a reminder of our need for friends. The fact that Jesus had personal, private, off screen friendships from the Gospels, friendships that you and I really don't get to see very much of, and I just love this idea that there were private parts of Jesus' life for him, not for us, and that included some of his friends. Scott talked about loneliness, shared some of his own experience of moving cities, and starting over again, and needing to rebuild support networks. He talked about the Apostle Paul, and those brief moments where we get to see into just how emotionally dependent he was on friendships. Paul's probably not a guy that we associate with a lot of emotional need.
That in itself is kind of fascinating though, because there's a lot of research that says our experience of loneliness is less about the number of close friends we have, and instead the gap between our expectations and our reality. And sometimes, end up just looking around and thinking everybody else has more friends than we do, and that ends up making us lonely. But part of the problem is that competing and comparing with what we think other people are doing or experiencing. And so, maybe seeing someone like Paul, someone who maybe we don't think of as very friendly, actually lean into and depend on a small tight knit group of friends, maybe that helps us recalibrate our expectations. Like socializing is great, but loneliness is met in intimacy, not activity.
So, Paul may not have been a social butterfly, but he certainly understood his need for friends. And then last week, Bobby talked about Job, really one of the most beautiful poetic books in the Bible. It's funny though, because we were talking in the office that week about how she was going to approach that sermon. Job is just this huge collection of poetry, it's a long book. It goes on and on as each of the friends take their crack at Job's story, but at the same time, not really much happens in the story.
Job goes through a rough season, his friends are all unhelpful, he and God get in a big fight, and in the end, everything works out. That's kinda the whole story. Except that in there, there's some beautiful poignant poetry along the way, and still Bobby did this arresting job of pulling out the fact that Job is not a theological book trying to give us an answer to suffering. It's a story that invites us into the complexity of navigating life and suffering together. And I love this line she used, Honesty is the work of trying on language for experience of the world until we get to the truth.
Because the question in friendship is not about being right, the question is about becoming kind enough and learning to listen well enough, becoming empathetic enough to know not just what to say, but how and when and why and where to say it. And if we're going to learn how to do friendship well, we need to remember the difference between blurting out our opinions, and actually reflecting on how our experience in the world can be helpful for someone else. Those are not always the same thing, and Twitter is not helping any of us with that skill. I love Twitter, so don't me, but still. Today though, we have one more conversation, and we want to talk about affection hacks, making space for each other, conflict between friends, and when we get it all wrong.
First though, let's pray. God who is our friend, who embodies our need for connection and intimacy, who has been a dance of friendship and gift from before there was time. Would you be near to us today? Friend for those who are lonely, comfort to those who mourn. Reminder to all of us who feel forgotten in this moment that we are deeply loved and remembered.
By your spirit, would you help us to remember how to befriend each other well? How to come near, how to listen, how to argue, how to laugh, how to find ourselves in the other, and ultimately, how to see you in those we encounter every day. In that, through each other, as we work to love each other, as strangers become friends, and outsiders neighbors. Might we sense your love and kindness that surrounds us with friendship always. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray, Amen.
Okay. Today, we're going to look at an interaction between Jesus and Peter, and it's one we've talked about before. I actually wrote about this story in the introduction to Dirt and Stardust, so it's possible you may have actually read about this recently, but we are going to take it in a little bit of a different direction today, so stick with me on this. First though, a story from my life. My daughter is two, she just turned two this month, and by the way, have asked a lot, how is she doing, and she is doing so well.
She's growing, and healthy, and happy, and her and her birth mother have been just beautiful gifts to our family. We're so grateful to have them in our lives these past two years, but she has recently discovered the power of an Aui. It's funny because this beautiful little girl was born just before COVID hit, and so we wondered what growing up in a socially distanced world would do to her socialization, and the answer is absolutely nothing. She is incredibly social, definitely gets that from her birth mother, not Rachel and I, but she craves not just attention, but affection, and play, and eye contact, and she loves to just take my face in her little hands and stare into my eyes, it would creepy be if it wasn't so painfully beautiful. But, she has recently learned this new hack for contact, and that is calling out owie.
Now, mean, what monster doesn't immediately drop everything to attend to a baby that has an owie? I mean, it's obvious. But the funny thing is, she does this all the time, and she started doing this at day care. So last week, the care workers noted this, and they asked my wife Rachel, they were like, your daughter is convinced she has an owie, but we're pretty sure nothing happened. Have you seen this?
Is she okay? We had to explain, yes, absolutely, it just means that she loves you, and she wants your affection. She's fine. Now hear me, if your child says, Awe, take that seriously, please. But my daughter, at two years old, has successfully hacked the system in our hearts to get her attention whenever she needs it.
I wonder if we could learn a little bit from this. What if we made it more socially acceptable to just raise our hand and say, Owie, whenever we needed some affection? I think that would be a good thing. I think we have started to understand how profound that can be, but we have a lot of ways to go in society still. However, I'm intrigued by the ways that we can intentionally create space for each other before we need to call Awe.
Peter and Jesus, they're quite a pair. Probably more than any of the other disciples, these two are linked together throughout the stories. There's the disciple Jesus loved, and there's also Lazarus, who we talked about in the opening of this series, but in terms of sheer volume of stories, it's Peter and Jesus. Peter even becoming the rock, that starting point that the Jesus community is built from. I think part of the reason the Gospel writers are so fascinated with Peter is his every man quality.
He's good hearted, but he's also pretty hot tempered, and he's earnest, but he's not always the quickest. And it's kind of easy to see ourselves in him, and I think that's a big part of what I like about this story today. Here, Peter very much is a stand in for all of us. The story takes place in Matthew 16, it's also recorded in Mark eight, and that's where we'll get to today. But for some context here, Jesus has just fed some 4,000 people with a few scraps of food, and that after feeding 5,000 people a couple chapters earlier.
Now, the significant difference between those two stories is that the first miraculous meal was in the Galilee with an audience of Jewish persons. This time, the miracle happens in the region of the Decapolis with an audience of Gentile or non Jewish people. And Jesus talking about this moment with his disciples, he says, we went across the Sea Of Galilee to those who have at times been our enemy and labeled the other, and we fed them and what happened? There was more than enough, right? There were leftovers in fact, do you understand?
Now, leaves it at that. We don't get an answer from his disciples, but it seems to me at least that Jesus is hinting at the idea that his presence in the world, the kingdom of God is about the story of God expanding the way that it always does. As it gets bigger, as gift and generosity expand, that does not mean there's less for you, in fact that produces an abundance. Next though, they encounter a man who is blind, and Jesus touches him and asks if he can see and he says, well, sort of, I can see some shapes and shadows, but they're hard to make out. So Jesus touches him again, and this time his vision becomes clear, and so Jesus sends him home to his family.
And again, there's this sort of theme that's building in the story, this question, are you starting to see? Do you understand? Are things becoming more clear to you? Is that theme Mark is building here? And so, it's after these two stories, after the crowds have gone home with full bellies, and after this man has returned to his family with clear vision, that Jesus is alone with his disciples and he asks this question, who do people say I am?
Now, particularly in the Gospel of Mark, there is something that we call the Messianic secret. Jesus seems to not want people to know who he is until the right moment. So, the man whose vision is healed is told to go home rather than to go public, And if you read the story of the feeding of the 4,000, it is so under the radar that the disciples are the only people who even realize anything miraculous has happened. And then here in this quiet moment away from the crowds with his friends when no one is watching, Jesus asks, what are they saying about me? And I'm intrigued by this moment, because even though Jesus wants to keep things on the down low, I don't think he wants to be misunderstood.
Nobody wants that. He's been teaching, and doing miracles, and drawing a crowd. At the same time, he's clearly trying to hold people off from jumping to conclusions. It seems instead to prefer that people come to know him slowly rather than be rushed along. That itself is an interesting contrast to this idea of alter calls and decision moments that we love so much in church.
And Jesus seems to think our relationship with him should be more like a friendship that evolves slowly over time than a sales pitch, but still, it's got to be kind of frustrating when his friends reply. They say, well some think you're John the Baptist, others say Elijah, still others think you're one of the prophets. It's an intriguing set of possibilities. John the Baptist is dead, Jesus cousin had been murdered earlier in the story and Jesus took that pretty hard. Elijah had lived centuries earlier, but he had not died.
According to the Hebrew scriptures, he had been taken up into heaven by a chariot of fire, so maybe Jesus was Elijah returned, who knows? And there's the more generic reference to one of the prophets, and there's a question here, and whether that meant another specific prophet like Elijah, or whether that's just an acknowledgement that Jesus was a voice in the tradition, in the lineage of the Hebrew prophets. But either way, all of these are big compliments. Right? They're all intended to signal that people see something special in Jesus.
Still, none of them really let Jesus be Jesus on his own terms. It's nice to be compared to someone you admire, but at some point, you wanna chart your own course in the world. And I think that might be part of what Jesus is looking for here. You know, all of us at some level, we know where we came from. Even if it was hard, we know that we're shaped by our family story, we've learned from that history that's behind us, but that's not all that we are.
We grow, and we change, and we add something new to the world, and sometimes it seems that people want us to be something that we're not, or maybe that we're not anymore. I think it's just really interesting to imagine Jesus wrestling with that same dynamic, that same expectation. I have something new to offer and people keep wanting me to be something more familiar to them. But, that's just the setup for the story. Right?
Jesus asked the question, he listens to the answers, he internalizes that feedback and then he gets to the heart of it. And you, who do you say I am? Now, is a really crucial moment in Mark's gospel. Up to this point, Jesus has been saying, look, don't tell anyone about me. Don't talk about what I've done.
This this is just between us. And of course, word gets out, right? I mean, people have formulated their ideas and a crowd has built, but up to this point, nobody has actually said out loud what Peter is about to. Because Peter answered, you are the Messiah. Again, pretty big moment here.
All the disciples have been thinking it, probably most of the crowds too, to be honest, but the disciples, I mean, they left their homes to follow this guy. They've been seeing him do miraculous things up close. He's opened the scriptures to them in ways they have never understood. Of course, he's the Messiah. Right?
I mean, if not, what are we all doing here? And yeah, as the reader, you and I, we're not supposed to be surprised by this moment. That's not what Mark is getting at. This is not a big moment, this is a big moment. Like finally, we can all say what we've wanted to.
Finally, we can let out all the hope that we've been holding on to. You are the Messiah we've been waiting for. Right? Now, I really think that's a big part of what Mark is doing in the way that he structured this gospel. Jesus will perform a miracle and ask, do you understand?
And then he will heal a person and say, go home to your family, don't go public with this. And every time we feel a bit of that tension, he holds back and we lean in. And so, when we get to this point, and Peter finally says what we've all been waiting to say, it's kind of like a big exhale for all of us. And I just really like this idea that Jesus leaves the opportunity to name the most important reality of his presence to us. I mean think about that, more important to God than declaring divine presence in the world was creating room for us to see it.
But what that does, delicate balance of being fully present to each other, and also making room for each other, is it creates the space for vulnerability and intimacy. That right there is the stuff of friendship. In Greek, there are four different words for love. There's agape, and and is that idea of friendship, brotherly love, Philadelphia, and all that. But CS Lewis writing about the four loves talks about filia.
He has this great analogy. He talks about how two lovers standing face to face being absorbed by each other, that's love, But friendship is like standing side by side, viewing the world together, and that too is love. And he kind of mixes his ideas together here with Ralph Waldo Emerson, when he writes, in friendship, as Emerson said, do you love me means do you see the same truth? Or at the very least, do you care about the same truth? The person who agrees with us that some small question, little regarded by others, is of great importance, this person can be our friend.
They need not even agree with us about the answer. It's about seeing the world together. Now, am I saying that it doesn't matter whether the disciples agree with Jesus about his identity? No, of course that matters a lot. But what I'm saying is that here in this moment, Jesus cares not only about the agreement, but also that his friends have a space to name their truth, their experience.
He doesn't just tell them what to think, he invites them to discover the incarnation with him. And that act of intentionally creating space for each other is really profound in our friendships. Except, here's the part I really want to get today. All that so far, just set up. Because all of this, all of that invitation, all of that standing side by side and viewing the world together, all of that disclosure, all of that is what makes friendship so important.
But it's also what makes friendship so hard to hold on to. Because as soon as we start to make room for each other to open up this way, we inevitably make room for each other to get it wrong. And this is, I think, part of what we need to relearn about friendship, particularly right now, where in a lot of ways, I think we all feel more divided than ever. Friendships based exclusively on the things you share. Everything you agree about already, things like the LA Rams deserve to win the Super Bowl this year.
I mean, come on, it's been such a long time since the greatest show on turf, and we just need Matt Stafford to finally win. Forget the fact that a surefire hall of famer like Aaron Donald deserves a ring on his finger. Friendships based exclusively on those kind of obvious observations of the world, that's unlikely to survive real life. Because we need something more than just agreement in our friendships. Now, don't misunderstand me.
There are very real deal breakers in the world. White supremacy, homophobia, people who don't take your story seriously, or hold it with the dignity it deserves, people who feel the need to fly a Nazi flag anytime for any reason. It's okay to set your boundaries, in fact, it's necessary that you enforce them. But what can happen is that when those hard lines that we absolutely should hold on to keep getting pushed as much as they seem to right now in the world. It can create so much anxiety, and so much fatigue, that we can start to feel like we don't have the capacity for any disagreement, or any vulnerability, or any intimacy with our friends.
And what happens is we end up with a pool of shallow relationships that I think leave us feeling pretty hollow. Intimacy, vulnerability are what create the space to be known, but they are also the context in which we learn how to navigate our differences as human beings. So, let's go back to our story one more time. Jesus is looking for some validation here. I'm pouring my heart out guys, is anybody getting it?
And his friends answer, well, sort of, but not really. So he switches gears and he ups the ante and he asks, well, what about you? Do you understand me? And Peter jumps in and he names his experience of Jesus, he puts it on the line everything he and we have been wanting to say for a very long time now, and in that moment, you can imagine Jesus just sighing with a breath of relief. Okay, it's not a lost cause, they get it.
It's like he breathes in Peter's words like fresh air, and then it's like he just exhales everything he's been keeping to himself. He starts to tell them about what it means to be the Messiah, and what's going to happen to him. He realizes now that a lot of people are just not going to get it. That ultimately, he's going to be rejected and die and suffer and this is not going to end well. And Peter, who's just proclaimed Jesus the Messiah, who's opened up these flood gates for Jesus, he now takes him aside and begins to rebuke him.
He's like, we would never let that happen. It will never go that way. Stop being so pessimistic Jesus. And Jesus looked at his disciples, perhaps to see their expression. He turns back to Peter and he says, get behind me Satan.
You do not have in mind the concerns of God, only your own perspective on the world. Now, theologically, there's a lot going on here, I get it. I don't think Jesus is actually calling Peter Satan, I think he recognizes within Peter's words, the temptation that comes from somewhere dark and selfish. But, this is also a really important moment between two friends. Jesus has made space for his friend to name something that's important to him.
In return, Jesus has opened something vulnerable about himself, and now this. I mean imagine, pouring out your deepest fear to someone, all of your anxiety and despair and they say, ah, don't worry, it's not that bad. I mean, maybe you don't even have to imagine that. Maybe you have lived that, maybe recently, but that's what's happening here. Jesus has made space for Peter and in that, he wanted to make some space for himself and it hasn't worked out the way that he hoped it would.
And so Jesus feels like he has to name that with his friend. In fact, he has to name it with some pretty pointed language to bring attention to the break that's happened here. Except here's the thing. That clarity doesn't end the friendship, in fact I would argue that this moment is uniquely significant in the friendship between Peter and Jesus. See, here's the thing.
I don't think we talk enough about the importance of conflict in our friendships. Like we talk about conflict at work, and we talk about conflict in our marriages, but learning how to set boundaries and receive feedback, and how to listen actively without jumping on top of somebody, how to create space, and how to occupy that space with kindness, all of that is the stuff of friendship. And when we get it in our heads that friendship should always be easy, or that friendship should be breezy, or that friendship should be less work than we put into any of our other relationships. I think we end up with something like friendship light, and I think that's sometimes why we feel lonely. Again, don't misunderstand me.
You should have boundaries, and you should enforce them, and you should know what they are, and you should not be fighting with your friends all the time, that's not healthy either. But we also don't want to let the fraughtness of the world steal from us the complexity of what it takes to be friends in the model of the God who makes room for us to be wrong sometimes. To be heard, to be corrected, to be loved, and to be healed in those friendships. My hope is that as we end this series and we begin this new year together, this third year of pandemic weirdness for all of us. That we would still remember the power of self disclosure, and how that can help us know ourselves in new ways through the eyes of our friends.
But also that commitment to continue to create space for each other to be known, even in our differences, and made better through those vulnerable encounters. May you cultivate vulnerable intimate moments with friends this week. May you do that by finding people that care deeply about you and inviting their perspective to inform yours. Might you always challenge any assumption that diminishes you as a person, but still recognize your need to be known by someone. And may each of us, may we experience those sacred moments where our friends are who help us discover God's grace in new ways.
Let's pray. God, right now we are so caught up in the complexity of the world and all that divides us. The anxiety, the despair that we feel sometimes over hard lines that should never be crossed. Yet sometimes that feels like it steals from us our capacity to be open, vulnerable, intimate with people who we know do care about us deeply. God, would you help us?
To have the courage to keep our lines, but also the courage to be vulnerable with those who love us deeply. And when we are wrong, be only open to hearing correction, to change course and head in a better movement? May we also offer ourselves and our opinion to those that we love about helping them to move in better ways as well. But may that happen in the context of deep committed friendships. Where our intimacy and our vulnerability is honored and taken care of.
Where that can be a gift to us in the same way that you have opened your heart to ours. Through all of this, may we slowly become conformed to the way of Jesus. And move to the world with our dignity and grace intact. In the strong name, the risen Christ we pray. Amen.