Preached at St Mary's, Primrose Hill, 21 May 2006, by The Reverend Robert Atwell

According to the poet, Philip Larkin, 'sexual intercourse began in 1964'. Some people might say that it had been around a bit before then, but what is certainly true is that over the last forty years we have become preoccupied with sex and its genital expression. Today, anyone who appears not to be in a sexual relationship is thought an oddity and is immediately suspect. You are either a) an emotional cripple b) a hypocrite or c) repressed; or most likely a combination of all three.

One of the sad casualties of our sexual liberation has been the devaluing of friendship. As a generation we are fast losing the art of maintaining intimacy without the need for erotic engagement. There is something special about friendship when there is no hidden agenda. And as far as marriage is concerned, one of the reasons why some marriages die is not because the sex is grim but because the dimension of friendship is missing - or perhaps was never there in the first place.

So what are we to make of Jesus' words to us in this morning's gospel, 'I call you not servants, but friends'? (John 15.15) What sort of friendship is Jesus inviting us into?

In the ancient world, friendship was very different from how we think of it today. People assumed, for example, that friends would be of the same sex, and from a similar social and educational background. The possibility of friendship flourishing across class or racial divides, or between men and women, except possibly in marriage, was rarely entertained. Friendship assumed (as we do today) that our love must be selective: we choose our friends. And in the ancient world a willingness to die for one's friend was held to be the ultimate test of your love.

About forty years before Jesus was born the great Roman orator, Cicero, wrote a book on the nature of friendship. He said that true friendship rests on the presence of goodness and virtue in both parties. It is virtue, he said, that draws out of us affection. Thus, he concluded, it is only for a good friend that it is a noble and worthwhile thing to die.

Put like that, we can begin to see just how revolutionary the teaching of the New Testament is.

St Paul was a Greek-speaker and probably never read Cicero who wrote in Latin, but he had certainly absorbed the traditions of friendship that were common throughout the classical world of his day. However, when writing to the Church in Rome at some point in the early 50s, he says this: 'God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.'(Romans 5.5) And what is the quality of this love of which he speaks?

This is his answer: 'Christ died for the ungodly. 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.'

This statement must have verged on the scandalous to Paul's contemporaries. Good people die for the good, not for the worthless. The Christian understanding of friendship turned the classical model of friendship on its head, and went on to make the most extraordinary claim of all: that the God who reveals himself to us in Christ is not a tyrant but our friend. Furthermore, Christ died for us to prove it.

'A greater love has no man than this,' says Jesus in today's gospel reading, 'that a man lay down his life for his friends.' Every good Greek and Roman would have nodded agreement to this statement - provided they were friends 'of the right sort'. And this is precisely the point. Jesus embraced everyone in his friendship because with God there are no outsiders.

Throughout the Gospels we see Jesus crossing social and religious boundaries. He kept very mixed company, and was castigated for being the friend of prostitutes, tax-gatherers and lepers - the three standard outcasts in ancient society. He shared meals with Gentiles, which no self-respecting rabbi would ever do, and worse still, he talked to women and actually allowed them to touch him. Again, this was absolutely forbidden in Jewish custom.

In other words throughout his life we witness Jesus challenging and redrawing the boundaries of the covenant. His death and resurrection sealed a new covenant, a reality he had exemplified in the way he lived, that God seeks the friendship of all people in all ages. God has no favourites or outsiders. And we are the inheritors of this quiet revolution.

'I call you not servants, but friends,' says Jesus. And it is this truth that we, as children of this new covenant, are called upon to live out. As the Body of Christ in this place we are literally to embody this new way of ordering human society and relationships. There must be no inside crowd - just generous, affirming friendship.

What is more we are called to be not only friends of each other, but friends of God. With friends you can share your heart: there is nothing to fear - and the same is true of God. As our friendship with God deepens, so we will discover another wonderful thing: the gift of joy bubbling up inside. As Jesus says: 'I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete.'

May we know the gift of friendship in our own lives now, and may the joy that it brings us be ours both now and for eternity. Amen.

© Robert Atwell, 2006