Yesterday, Today, and Forever (11 page)

Chapter 15

“I Have Called You Friends”

The next day was one of those beautiful days which make every visitor exclaim at the view from our mountaintop. They have never seen anything like it. We wanted to make up to our friends who had been sitting indoors for quite some time, and we took them across the valley to the opposite mountain range up to the Stowe Pinnacle.

After a stiff climb of about two hours we emerged from the woods onto that huge rock which crowns the Pinnacle like a cupola. There we feasted our eyes on a 360-degree view. Then we had a picnic lunch.

Father Jones said, “I could hardly get to sleep last night. I kept thinking about our discussion. I wonder, could we do it once more and find out something about Our Lord and His friends?”

“I don’t think right now, Father,” I said, “because we would need our New Testaments.”

Lo and behold, out of coat pockets, vest pockets, and knapsacks appeared little books. Everybody had brought his New Testament — except me. Was this a conspiracy? No — everybody had just “hoped we would do it again.”

“I can truthfully say,” said Father Jackson, pipe dangling, “that I have read and meditated a great deal on the Scriptures in my life, but it never felt as good as yesterday with all of us working on one topic. Light just seemed to stream out of the lines. Did anyone else feel like that?”

Looking around, he met only with eager nods. I knew so well what he meant, from our family sessions. After all, our Lord had once said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). In earlier years when the children were small, we used to have an empty chair for our Lord, who had promised to be in our midst. This is an altogether different presence from the omnipresence of God. It is a very real presence, however, and one can always feel something of the sensation of the two disciples walking to Emmaus as they expressed it afterward: “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24:32).

We sat in a circle, and someone remarked, “This is almost as good as in the bay window.”

“Except for the coffee,” said Father Jackson swinging his pipe.

Soon we were deeply involved in turning pages, watching Jesus with His friends. All of us will remember this afternoon when we took such a deep look into the heart of a Friend.

There were first of all the 12 men He had picked out of a crowd. They were chosen by Himself. They didn’t know it at the beginning, but they were meant to be His friends. One day He would say so clearly and unmistakably to them, “No longer do I call you servants …but I have called you friends” (John 15:15). As we turn the pages of the Gospels, we see Him deal with them. According to tradition, Thomas and Judas were a little more educated, but the others seem to have been fishermen except for one, who was a tax collector. And their friend was the Son of God! What a time He had opening their minds to His revolutionary ideas; stopping them from being materialistic, from grabbing immediate reward; getting them out of their smallish provincialism with its “What will people say?” into the worldwide outlook of “Go therefore and make disciples of
all
nations” (Matt. 28:19, emphasis added), and “I tell you my, friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do” (Luke 12:4).

Sometimes He gets really exasperated when they don’t seem to get the point. “O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you?” (Matt. 17:17.) With their boats and nets they were certainly used to a hard life. They soon found out, however, that when they gave up everything they had been doing so far in order to follow Him, they were just going from one kind of hard work to another. Their Lord and Master, as they called Him at that time, was Himself the most hard-working man they had ever met, day and night, seven days a week — whenever anybody needed Him. Isn’t it somewhat significant that they said, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1), but never, “Lord, teach us to work.” There were no days off, and unending hours of work. He never set up headquarters with an office and office hours in Jerusalem or Capernaum, where the people could have come to see Him. He was always on the go after the lost sheep. What vast distances He would cover, either in tropical heat or torrential rains! And what He did, He expected of His friends. Peter remembered it after 30 long years. Often they were so rushed they didn’t even have time to eat!

At the same time, Jesus noticed what was going on, and once we see Him taking a rest. They had just gotten the news that John the Baptist had been killed. Our Lord’s heart was then so filled with sympathy toward His friends (some of whom had first been disciples of John), that He said: “Come away by yourselves …and rest a while” (Mark 6:31). How gratefully must they have crowded into Peter’s boat and taken a picnic lunch along and begun to row over the lake expecting a quiet weekend. But the crowd had outwitted them. The people saw what was going on, ran along the shore, and arrived before the boat. Immediately our Lord forgot His own exhaustion and began to talk to the people, and of course, He expected the same of His friends. Finally, He even told them to feed that big crowd (about five thousand). All we know from the Gospel is that the 12 had to minister to the people, and distribute bread and fish until everyone was satisfied. We don’t hear a word about what happened to them. Maybe when all their guests were happily gone, they could eat from the leftovers in the 12 baskets.

One of the toughest lessons for them must have been to realize that the time when they were in a safe business where one could calculate how much one would make and how one could build up for the future, was gone. We can see how worried they were about this fact when Peter asked our Lord outright just how much they were going to make for themselves. The answer was not encouraging. He was promised an ample reward after death. But they would not give up. Time and again they would come up with such questions. Two of them would even get their mother to make a petition, but then as before, it doesn’t seem to get them anywhere. “Even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve” (Matt. 20:28). “A disciple is not above his teacher” (Matt. 10:24).

All right. They had swallowed to some little extent this bitter pill. But couldn’t the ministering be restricted to nice people? Never mind the poor and the sick, but outcasts like tax collectors, bad women, and Samaritans! Was it really necessary for a respectable, honorable man to mix with them? Obviously it was. And it didn’t stop with talking to them, either. They had to learn to eat with them and learn from their Master, uncomfortable though they must have felt about it, how one can even understand and finally like and defend them. It must have been one of the minor shocks when they heard Him say, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you” (Matt. 21:31). Sometimes there seemed to be nothing refined about His taste.

All this time, however, their love for Him grew. So when our Lord would say on that fatal morning when many of the “nice” people turned their backs on Him, “Do you also wish to go away?” Peter could answer in the name of all: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:67–68). The great love and patience He had lavished on them were bearing fruit.

They must have been courageous men if they had worked on the Sea of Galilee. This big lake is famous and feared for the sudden squalls which arise. The people say that Lake Champlain, which is not very far from us in Stowe, has an ugly temper. That’s what people felt toward the Sea of Galilee. Now these men had to learn a new kind of courage. “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem,” He would say to them one day, “and everything that is written of the Son of man by the prophets will be accomplished” (Luke 18:31). And knowing all these dangers now, they still had to go. They were constantly mixed up with the priests and Pharisees, whom their Master almost seemed to provoke. One almost sees them wince when He had to cure somebody again on the Sabbath, knowing already the inevitable outcome.

With all His great love and endless patience, and in spite of their slow-growing understanding, once in a while He had to scold them. For instance, when they one day didn’t want mothers to bring their children to Him; or the crushing retort when Peter, meaning so well, advised Him to stay away from Jerusalem.

And all the while they didn’t have a steady income. They lived on alms. They had no income. They were worse off than the fox who had his den and the birds who had their nests — they had no security. And still we never hear them really complain. Sometimes they quarrel among themselves, not infrequently they behave stupidly, but they always appreciate that what He is asking of them is not even a small particle of what He demands of Himself.

Here I looked up and met Hester’s eyes smiling at me.

“Where is it, Hester?” I asked.

“At home in the file ‘Mother Private,’ ” she answered, “but I know it. Do you want to hear it?” And Hester, having recently typed up that little poem of which we spoke now because we thought it so nicely fitting, recited:

REPARTEE

by Alfred Barrett (1906–1985)

Because her bucking cart-mule

Showed scant respect for a saint,

There rose from a ditch near
Medina

Del Camp
this complaint.

“Why do you treat me thus, dear Lord?

I’d willingly shed my blood,

But I balk at the prospect of martyrdom

In this Castilian mud!”

Smiled Christ — “Thus do I treat My friends,

So, must I thus treat you….”

“No wonder, Lord,” sighed Teresa,

“No wonder You have so few.”
¹

Everybody laughed except Peter. He didn’t even listen, but stared, fascinated, into his New Testament. Peter had been a navy officer in the war, and he is our second oldest friend in America. The navy always finds the navy, and so he had become a special friend of my husband. We will never forget how we met him. It was on a day in September, a really unpleasant, wet, foggy, cold New England autumn day. It was our first summer in Stowe on the farm where the old house had fallen in and we camped in tents and barns doing as much work on the farm as we possibly could. On this day we had just finished digging the potatoes out and were now sorting them in a shed when a young navy officer climbed up our hill, clad in immaculate white, bringing greetings from Michael, a mutual friend. After the exchange of the first few polite phrases the incautious young man said, “Is there anything I could do to help?” Off he went in overalls to the potatoes.

For years to come we would have to listen to his funny descriptions of his aching back. Having a wonderful sense of humor, he very soon became famous for his storytelling. When the war was over and Peter wanted to go back into his former business, he met our Lord, who said, “Come, follow Me.” Unlike the rich young man, he sold everything he had and went and followed Him; and so the elegant young navy officer was now a seminarian. As he looked up from his book, there was a different expression on his face. His usually laughing eyes had a new and almost tender light.

“Please look up John,” he said, “beginning with the 13th chapter. If we have found out so far what He did with His friends, here we seem to learn how He really felt about them.”

We looked and — Peter was right. What a different language! One almost wonders whether this is the same person who had exclaimed a few pages before, “How long am I to be with you?” when He says now:

Little children, yet a little while I am with you (John 13:33).

Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me (John 14:1).

If you ask anything in my name, I will do it. If you love me, you will keep my commandments (John 14:14–15).

I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you (John 14:18).

He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him (John 14:21).

If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him (John 14:23).

These things I have spoken to you, while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you (John 14:25–27).

Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid (John 14:27).

As the Father has loved me, so have I 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 (John 15:9–10).

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you (John 15:11–15).

In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world (John 16:33).

We had long stopped looking at our books but were listening to Peter’s ringing voice solemnly reading this story of the greatest friendship the world has ever seen. But the greatest was still to come when our Lord, after having opened His Heart to His friends, raising His eyes to heaven, said to His Father:

I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world; thine they were, and thou gavest them to me, and they have kept thy word. Now they know that everything that thou hast given me is from thee …and they have believed that thou didst send me. I am praying for them; I am not praying for the world but for those whom thou hast given me (John 17:6–9).

I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee (John 17:20–21).