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1. Act
10:25-26,34-35,44-48
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2. 1John
4:7-10
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Gospel: John
15:9-17
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Servants or Friends
In today's Gospel, St.
John the evangelist gives us two models of personal relationship to Jesus: as a servant or as a friend. With
this in mind we can understand that at any point of our faith journey one of
these two models of relationship can be dominant. Either we see our
relationship to Christ mainly in terms of master-servant or in terms of friend-
friend. In today's gospel Jesus is
challenging us to root out from our minds this notion of master- servant and keep
in our hearts friend -friend relationship. Christ himself prefers to relate
with his disciples as friend to friend rather than as master to servant: "
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" ( John 15:15)
Our relationship with
Christ goes through different stages. First it starts off as a master-servant.
This is evident when Jesus says that he would no longer call his disciples
servants. This seems to indicate that he called them servants until then. This
is the stage of relationship with Jesus when we are new to the faith. The next
stage is when our relationship with Christ deepens, it changes into a less
formal friend-friend type of relationship, it is the stage whereby each one of
us is called to deepen his/her faith in Christ.
Sometimes we face this
objection that is raised by those who
accept and promote the master-servant model of relating to Christ, is the
concern that we are unworthy. In fact we are, however, Jesus has already taken
that into consideration. He reminds us that " You did not choose me but I chose you"( John 15:16). If he has
decided to chose us in our unworthiness and to love and accept us as we are,
then we should not fix our gaze on ourselves and ask, " who am I, Lord,
that you should love me?" Rather we should fix our gaze on him and ask,
" Who are you, Lord, that you love me so?"
The Lord's offer to us
of friendship and intimacy with him should not be an excuse for callousness and
indifference. Just as God showed His love for us in deed by sending his Son to
die for us, so is true love for God always shown in deed by the way we keep the
twin commandments of love of God and neighbor. By this we can know if we are
truly Christ's friends, because, " You
are my friends if you do what I command you." ( John 15:14)
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