Performing the funeral gave me opportunity to visit with various family members and friends the day before the service. It was really enjoyable to sit with people and listen to their stories of my late uncle. The most enlightening conversation I had was with a friend of my uncle’s whom I will call Steve. Steve knew my uncle for most of his life. They grew up together. They would hang out every weekend. In the last year of my uncle’s life they lived within walking distance of one another and saw each other nearly every day. As we stood in Steve’s garage reminiscing about the past Steve said of my uncle, “He was the only man outside of my family whom I loved.” It reminded me of what Jesus said in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”.
My uncle had 3 friends in particular who were as close to him as brothers. Most of their time, I must admit, was spent drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, but they were by no means always drunk when together. Drinking and smoking was simply what they did to pass the time away. But ever since the funeral I have wondered how many Christians have the depth of friendship together that I learned my uncle had with his 3 drinking buddies? While it is true that people should look at the relationships of a Christian and say, “I want what he has”, the reality is that many Christians today would look at the friendships my uncle had and say, “I want what he had”. My uncle had a connection with his friends I rarely see today, especially among Christian men.
With the presence of the Holy Spirit inside of us Christians ought to be able to take brotherly love to a whole new dimension. We ought to have a level of love flowing among ourselves that finds no secular counterpart. Imagine the depth of friendship my uncle could have had with his friends if the Holy Spirit were present. Imagine how much further brotherly love could have gone if each friend was personally committed to imitating Jesus Christ in their lives. I believe the level of love possible when Christ is at the center of relationships is to a degree most of us are unaware- especially today.
What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall when Jesus sat down to commune with His disciples on the night he was betrayed by Judas. What level of love would I have seen? What display of brotherly love would I have been privy to? During their supper John asked Jesus a personal question. The Scriptures say, “Then, leaning back on Jesus’ breast, he said to Him, “Lord, who is it?” (Jn.13:25). “Leaning back on Jesus’ breast”? What was going on here? We can be assured nothing of an impure nature was taking place in this scene. Instead, the depth of brotherly love between Jesus and His disciples was such that embracing each other was natural. For most Christians today brotherly love to this degree is not natural, would you agree?
The sad thing is that it was probably more natural for my uncle to embrace his friends in this manner, with a beer and a cigarette in hand, than for Christian brothers to embrace one another with a Bible in hand today. But why?
Well very simply we do not give the Holy Spirit opportunity to grow such love among us. We are not involved in each other’s lives daily as my uncle was with his friends. Our Christian brothers and sisters are not the people we live out our Christian lives with; they are acquaintances; people we see once a week; people we have 5 minute conversations with; people we know of not about. My uncle’s friends, on the other hand, were people who could come over unannounced and feel like they could stay forever. You really miss those kind of friends when they’re gone.
I come back from a sad funeral convicted that if we want the Holy Spirit to be alive in our churches we had better allow Him to grow brotherly love among us. This cannot happen at “church”; it must happen at every other time and be brought into the “church”. I want to be a part of a congregation where the Holy Spirit radiates out of our community like static on a child’s head down the slide (there’ s a visual for you). And so in an effort to build this type of church I will
- Make time for people
- Come over ‘just because’
- Invite you over ‘just because’
- Buy you coffee
- Paint your deck with you
- Call you just to say hi
- Laugh with you
- Cry with you
- Let you borrow my car and not demand gas money
- See you more face-to-face than on facebook
- In short I will consider my Christian brother better than myself
