Community Week 2026 Sermon by Ruth Harvey first given on 26th July 2026
On Friendship
Reading: John 15: 9 – 17 (from the Message and the Inclusive Bible)
‘Jesus said to his disciples:
I’ve loved you the way Abba God has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done – I’ve kept Abba God’s commands and made myself home in their love.
I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy be wholly mature. Now, I tell you – Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love – put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends; now, live out my words. I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t know what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from Abba God. You didn’t choose me, remember; I chose you, to go forth and bear fruit, fruit that will last; whatever you ask of Abba God in my name, God will give you. So, remember the root command: Love one another.’
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Listen once more for wisdom from Scripture:
“Make yourselves at home in my love.
If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love….
Now, I tell you: Love one another the way I loved you.
This is the very best way to love.
Put your life on the line for your friends.
You are my friends; now, live out my words.
I’m no longer calling you servants….
No, I’ve named you friends because
I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from Abba God.”
Friends, it is good to be with you this morning. Whichever community you belong to – maybe you’re here as part of the community of day visitors or holiday makers; perhaps you belong to the community of island residents or seasonal workers; you might be here, staying or working in the Abbey as part of the Iona Community or as part of our Six Pack Spirits online Mini Community Week, or you might belong to
multiple of these communities, friends, however you belong in community
in the world, you are here – we are here as friends.
Together we belong to the community of believers and doubters, sceptics and faith-filled followers, God’s ‘new community of hope’ across the globe. Welcome friends!
And it is the nature of friendship in community that I would like to focus on in these reflections. This is where our reading from the Gospel of John takes us.
In these verses, Jesus invites us to explore both the spirituality, and the gritty reality, of friendship. He draws a distinction between servant and friend.
Whereas a servant relationship is transactional, defined by one having power over the other: a servant not being privy to the views of the master. A friendship relationship, on the other hand, is mutual: defined by an equality and an intimacy, or love between both: a friend being ‘let in on’ all.
The equality inherent in friendship points to a divine economy where all are treated equally regardless of status conferred on them by society. So we, like the disciples, are invited to friendship. We are also aware that this kind of friendship, of mutual accounting with one another, may come at a cost.
We must be willing to ‘put out lives on the line’ for our friends. This will no doubt be uncomfortable.
The intimacy inherent in friendship points to a divine love imbued with total rather than conditional acceptance. We may not necessarily like our friends, but we are expected to love them.
In all of this, we find Jesus, on his way to the final reckoning in Jerusalem.
Having just broken bread with Judas, the one who we know is to betray him, we find him inviting all humanity – including the band of people around him, his disciples, his friends, to re-set all relationships.
The central message here: we are being called by Jesus to lean on values of equality and intimacy ahead of the storm that he knows is to come.
And what of our very own storms? As we imagine storms to come; and as we look around at current storms raging across our globe: at wild fires devastating wildlife and threatening lives in highland Scotland, across mainland Europe and the globe; the storm of countless wars waged needlessly; the storm of inequality; displacement and injustice…as we approach all storms to come, this text invites us to consider the radically transformative power of relationship – of friendship rooted in mutuality and intimate love, and to trust Jesus that it is this way of relating that will defy all storms.
So considering storms ahead, it’s what happens next in our scripture story that is particularly compelling: Jesus enters Jerusalem. He is arrested on trumped up charges and sentenced by a kangaroo court and a baying, frenzied crowd. And he is tortured, terrorized and murdered by the brutal, occupying dictatorship of the time.
And what of the ones he implored to call him ‘friend’?
What of the intimacy, the love, the equality that he had spoken of only a few nights before? What actually happened to this bunch of confused followers whom he had just called “friends”? Who he had commanded to love as he loved, if they were really to be his friends?
The truth is that, with the exception of a few, they bottled it completely. Nearly all of the disciples misunderstood Jesus’ request or his meaning. One of them betrayed him – sold his story for a bag of silver and handed him over to the torturers. They fell asleep when he asked them to look out for him. They deserted him, and they claimed, as Peter did, that they did not even know him. Then “they forsook him and fled”!
It was only after the Cross and the Resurrection that these friends eventually, with help, got around to confessing, to realising: “oh my, so THAT’s what he was on about!” And only then did they begin to try to live out his teaching, with His risen help.
So we can preach and teach and implore as much as we like, with as lofty, as inspiring and as uplifting words as we can muster about the mutuality and intimacy of friendship. But this does not necessarily lead to the whole world being friends – not then, nor now.
Let me share with you just some of the challenges at the moment within the Iona
Community, as we struggle to live lives of mutual, loving friendship in the face of
today’s pressures:
We, all of us, are struggling in Community to discern God’s will for our future youth work in the face of financial and other pressures. What way do we go with the future of our
adventure centre on Mull, aware that it is a transformative place for so many, particularly vulnerable young people?
We, all of us, are struggling in Community to discern God’s will as we gather on 1st August at Faslane Naval Base to protest the presence of nuclear weapons in the world. How do we model an alternative to violence in a world so addicted to war with at least 65 wars currently raging as we speak?
We, all of us, are struggling in Community to discern God’s will in responding to climate chaos when the world needs more renewable energy, but the scale and scope of the wind farm proposed locally defies sense?
These are just some of our struggles, some of our ‘demanding common tasks’ as
we say within the Iona Community.
And these are not struggles only for us as a religious Community. These are very
common struggles. These are surely also struggles for the whole Church, for each nation, for our United Nations, indeed for all humanity
“You are my friends;” says Jesus. “Now, live out my words.”
And so we wrestle and struggle and discern, while all the same time holding onto the Gospel call to mutual trust and friendship; being alert to misunderstandings like the disciples; accepting the sacrifice that friendship often entails; modelling ways of living in community that offer ‘radical hospitality’, hospitality that will transform both host and guest, that equalises talent rather than rewarding the powerful; accounting with one another – for the ways we live in the world, including our behaviours with one another.
Confessing daily, sometimes hourly, when we don’t get things right. And above all, this means keeping on loving each other in the midst of the struggle.
We can surely only keep on at it with the grace of God, and the companionship of God’s crucified and risen Christ.
For if we are to remain human, if we are to face the storms that are ahead together and not give way to despair, then we must follow the risen Christ, the one who says to each of us: “You are my friends;” says Jesus. “Now, live out my words.”
Image credit: Storm clouds over Iona Abbey, Iona Community/ D. Stewart
USA North East