From the Lectionary for 5 May 2024 (Easter 6B)

John 15:9-17 (NRSV Updated Edition)

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

“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. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

~

"I hope you can see that there would be a glitch in this passage if we were to assume the moralistic “authority gives instruction” mode of teaching. Because in that mode, Jesus has friends, and lays down his life for them, and then commands them, who are already his friends, to do the same to others.

"However, that’s not what the passage says! The passage presupposes that those for whom he gives his life are not yet his friends. On the contrary, he is opening up the possibility for them to become his friends by his doing something for them, on the inside of which they will then be able to find themselves as multipliers of exactly what he has done, which is how they will become his equals, his friends. They will become people who are going to be empowered to give themselves away, freely acting out of being insiders in something that has been opened up for them by someone who loved them.

"In other words, the gift of creating this possibility for his friends, and the commandment to create it are the same thing. There is no moralism here! There would be moralism if something were done, and as a result of it something were then commanded. That could indeed be a sort of emotional blackmail: “Look at me, I’ve done something for you, gone to so much trouble and suffering for you - now at least show that I have purchase on your heartstrings: do what I say.”

"Instead of that, what we have is a personal invitation, so that each one of the disciples, which is each one of us, finds him- or herself being taken out of the realm of blind commandments into that sharing in equality of spirit which is friendship. [...]

"Servants are told to do something, and if they don’t understand why they should do it, they’re told “You don’t need to understand why, just do it, you’re a servant. I, the Master, know why I want it done, and your ways are not my ways.” Morals are often taught in this way!

"Friends, however, are chosen freely, and become trusted insiders on a level of equality with each other. They are not given compartmentalized tasks, but are entrusted with being imaginative, creative sharers in the whole project. As they share in a project, discovering for themselves the open-ended parameters which have been made available by the One who gave himself, so they will find that they are not only friends of the one who inaugurated the project, but brothers, heirs, the ultimate insiders, fully adopted into the life of the Son.

"Jesus makes it possible for us to share his desire at the level of equality, which is that of friendship. So we are enabled to desire as Jesus desires, according to the Father. Given that, it makes perfect sense to ask the Father for whatever we want, as if we were the Son, because we will in fact be becoming the Son, the ultimate insider in the life of God."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pp. 553-55 (from Essay 12, “Neighbors and Insiders: What’s It Like to Dwell in a Non-moralistic Commandment?”)

~

"[The] extraordinary privilege of finding yourself chosen to be a friend by Jesus... that's what this is about, sitting in the sense of: this [has] all been set up by someone else, this is all for us, this is not a task, this is not a duty, this is much more like an invitation [from] someone who's actually chosen us, who thinks we're worth something, who wants us to bear fruit.

"And it says, “and I appointed you to go and bear fruit” [v 16].  This word “appointed” - strangely it's the same word [Greek: tithemi] as “laying down” one's life. It's “to place” ... “No one has greater love than 'to place' one's life for his friends” [v 13]. “And I 'placed' you to go and bear fruit” [v 16].

"I think there's a very delicate sense here which... becomes rather official with the word “appointed.”  [Instead I think the sense is,] “I've placed you, I've put you in the place where you will be able to go and bear fruit.”  In other words, not only have I chosen you as a friend, but I've placed you, you're going to be in the right place.  You'll be pruned (and how), but there is a place for you and that place will enable you, sharing in the joy, to be able to achieve and fulfill all the things that my Father has planned for you.

"“I appointed you to go and bear fruit, placed you to bear fruit, fruit that will last so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.”  And here he goes back to the sense of the vine, that he is the one in whose name, in whose person, we are going to be able to desire and want and be fulfilled.

"“I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”  Remember that the command is, before it's an instruction, it's the gift, it's the illustration, it's the whole life [of Jesus] that is being lived out of love, knowingly and joyfully knowing that he was loved, so that we can get on the inside of that, reproduce it for others, and find ourselves on the inside of the life of God."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwtQK-qa2xs)

[Source of James Alison quote from "Jesus the Forgiving Victim" and for discussion of all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/easter6b/]