{"id":2398,"date":"2021-05-04T16:59:27","date_gmt":"2021-05-04T15:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/?p=2398"},"modified":"2021-05-04T16:59:27","modified_gmt":"2021-05-04T15:59:27","slug":"friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/2021\/05\/04\/friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From next Sunday’s Lectionary<\/a>, the way John’s Gospel has it, Jesus says this… “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s a lot in that little bit from the Last Supper story, some of which is hard to understand. But there’s a real change signalled here, in what Jesus says about his disciples’ relationship with him. They are ‘friends’. Sure, he has issued commands, but the disciples are ‘friends’. They are close to him, they know his mind. And therefore they are also ‘friends’ with one another – signifying relationships of equal status if not always the same roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Quakers make this explicit in naming themselves the ‘Society of Friends’ – and in practices like making everyone’s gravestone alike. I wish all Christians could be ‘friends’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From next Sunday’s Lectionary, the way John’s Gospel has it, Jesus says this… “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Friends”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2399,"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398\/revisions\/2399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}