What A Friend We Have In Jesus

A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on May 17, 2009
It is not news to you that someone like me who is so involved in movie ministries watches a lot of movies. Recently Carl and I saw an outstanding movie: The Things We Lost in The Fire. If you have not seen it, rent it. It’s one of those movies that opens your heart and searches for the truth.
The story begins on the day of Brian’s funeral. Audrey, Brian’s wife, sends her brother to pick up Jerry, Brian’s best friend and a junkie, and bring Jerry to the funeral. With the exception of the Reel Jesus movies, Brian must be the best person ever depicted in a movie: a loving father to his two children Harper and Dory, an adoring husband to his wife Audrey, a successful real estate developer and a loyal friend to his best friend from grammar school, Jerry, a lawyer turned junkie.
Brian embodies what Jesus spoke about in today’s Gospel: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (Jn 15: 13) One night, Brian ventured forth to get some ice cream for Audrey and the children. Coming out of the store, he witnesses a man brutally beating up a woman. When Brian steps in between them, the man shoots and kills Brian.
In a series of flashbacks, you see how Brian unsuccessfully struggled to get Jerry to kick his drug habit and how Audrey becomes increasingly disturbed that Brian is placing himself in danger whenever he visits Jerry in the worst section of the city. Audrey invites Jerry to come live in a one room house on their property and help around the house. Jerry provides Audrey, Harper and Dory with emotional support as they manage their collective grief. But as Jerry draws closer to Harper and Dory, Audrey cannot tolerate how Jerry can get the children to do things Brian could not. In her anger against the senselessness of Brian’s death, Audrey banishes Jerry from the house and Jerry tumbles back into his drug use. As she realizes her mistake, Audrey gets Jerry to enter a rehab program and as the movie ends we are left with the impression that Jerry is on the road to recovery.
All these people, Audrey, Harper, Dory and Jerry were transformed by the life of this one Christ like man: Brian. The heart of the story is about friendship, just as the heart of today’s gospel is about friendship. Brian was a man who could do nothing but good. He ardently believed in the power of love to change people. Yet he could not change his friend Jerry. Jerry was not ready to change. Only after Brian’s death could Jerry begin that road to recovery, only when Jerry began to act responsibly for Audrey, Harper and Dory could he climb out of the pit of addiction.
Friendship exerts such power in our lives. I am sure each of you can think of a person whose friendship you treasured and whose friendship changed your life. I am sure that each of us can think of a person who was there with us when we graduated from school and who held us at the funeral of a member of our family. Friendship brings us to that place of the heart where we find total acceptance, unconditional love, a sometime brutal honesty, and fidelity in the face of the worst crisis.
We might feel surprised when Jesus calls us his friends: “I no longer call you servants…I have called you friends” (Jn. 15:15) Yet everything that Jesus has been saying and doing in the Gospel according to John was leading to this disclosure: that Jesus has been in search of friends and then proving on the cross that he is the true friend. Just think for a minute about Jesus in this gospel, how he goes about drawing people into the circle of his friendship.
Jesus calls his disciples and we see Jesus sharing his life with them and drawing them closer to him and to one another. We meet Lazarus, Martha and Mary, Jesus’ family of friends. Lazarus is described as the one whom Jesus loved and Jesus raises Lazarus from the tomb. Mary would later anoint Jesus’ head with costly perfume as a sign of her love for her friend.
Jesus is preparing them for the greatest reversal of all, when he reveals to them that they are no longer servants but friends.
All too often we address Jesus as Lord Christ, Master, Rabbi, Messiah. All these titles place Jesus in a position above us, as superior to us. Should we not give him respect? Should we not revere him? Yet Jesus is the one who invites us to consider ourselves not as servants but as his friends. Such an invitation opens up to us a relationship of mutuality, of care, of trust, of honesty, of love.
All friendship begins with love and so the beginning of our friendship with Jesus begins with Jesus loving us: “As the Father has loved, so I have loved you. Abide in my love (Jn 15: 10) Love unites us with Jesus.
Yet Jesus asks even more of us in our friendship, Jesus asks that we should love as he loves: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (Jn 15: 12) Even as Jesus went about gathering friends around him, so does he continue to gather friends not only around him but with one another.
Many times, we imagine the church as the family of God. I would suggest that Jesus offers us a different model, a community of friends. Into this community of friends, Jesus invites you, invites you to love the other friends of Jesus with a love that accepts, that cherishes, that challenges, that supports.
We are not all called to give our lives for one another as Jesus did for us. Yet we are all called to that difficult task of loving one another with that same passionate love that carried Jesus through the cross to the transformation of the resurrection.
Jesus opens his arms to you in friendship. Jesus opens his arms to you in sacrifice. Will you follow and do the same?

Engaging the Wild Things
A Sermon by the Rev. Peter De Franco
on the First Sunday in Lent
given at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, NJ

Today, I would like to read to you a story, Where The Wild Things Are. “The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another. His mother called him “Wild Thing!” And Max said “I’ll eat you up!” So he was sent to bed without eating anything. That very night in Max’s room a forest grew and grew. And grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around. And an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are.
And when he came to the place where the wild things are they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws. Till Max said “BE STILL!” and tamed them with the magic trick of staring into their yellow eyes without blinking once and they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all and made him king of all wild things. “And now,” cried Max, “let the wild rumpus start!”
“Now stop!” Max said and sent the wild things off to bed without their supper. And Max the king of all wild things was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.
Then all around from far away across the world he smell good things to eat so he gave up being king of where the wild things are.
But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go – we’ll eat you up – we love you so!” And Max said, “No!”
The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into his private boat and waved good bye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him and it was still hot.
On the first Sunday in Lent, we always hear the story of Jesus in the desert. The Spirit of God drives Jesus out into the wilderness. Jesus goes into the desert.
Now if any of you have gone into a desert you are in for a life changing experience. Deserts have little water, little protection from the ravages of the hot sun, little contact with people who can comfort you. There are wild things in the desert.
Jesus goes into that wasteland for forty days. Mark tells us that in the desert Jesus was tempted by Satan. But we do not know how Satan tempted Jesus. Mark tells us that Jesus was with the wild beasts. Mark also tells us that the angels waited on Jesus. For forty days….that is why we have forty days of Lent, so that we too like Jesus can go into the desert. I wonder what this story has to tell us?
Like Jesus, we are all entering into a desert. That desert is called Lent. I hope that each of you has selected something special do to during Lent. I hope that each of you has a plan for yourself. That plan should be for you to work on something you want to improve about yourself.
So some of you might try not to talk back to people. Some of you might want to work on the way you act when you get angry. Some of you might want to change the way you relate to other people be that giving up the need to control people, giving up patterns of manipulating people to do what you want them to do. Some of you might want to work on your addictions: to food, to computers, to video games, to talking on the phone, to texting, to spend hours on Facebook and not interacting face to face. Some of you might want to pay more attention to your body, to give yourself more exercise, to spend less time as a couch potato. Each of us has our own desert place to go, our own Lenten strategy of change, our own plan of self improvement.
But before we can start that plan, we have to take another look at the Gospel story. Because an important thing happens to Jesus before he goes into the desert. Before Jesus confronts the hard things in his life, something phenomenal happens to Jesus. Jesus is baptized.
When Jesus is baptized, he not only has water poured over him. God speaks to Jesus in his heart. God tells Jesus that he is God’s child. God tells Jesus that God loves Jesus. God tells Jesus that God is pleased with Jesus.
So before you go into the desert this lent, I invite you to rediscover your own Baptism experience. Take some time during this Holy Eucharist to listen to that soft silent voice of God who speaks to you in your heart and tells you: “You are my child, You make me very happy, I love you.” Hear that voice of God telling you: “You are my child, You make me very happy, I love you.”
Say these words with me: “I am God’s child. I make God very happy. God loves me.
Let’s say them again: “I am God’s child. I make God very happy. God loves me.”



Now you can go into the desert. Now you can go into the desert and not fear the wild beasts that you will meet there. For like Max, you will discover that the wild things are not that savage, that the wild things can be tamed, that the wild things can become your friends.
Now you can do battle with the evil forces that restrict you, that limit your freedom, that prevent you from becoming the person you want to become. And not fear that you are not strong enough to come out the winner. For God has started out ahead of you. God assures you that you are loved, that you are God’s beloved.
And at the end of your Lenten journey you will find yourself on the other side of your fear, on the other side of your faults, on the resurrection side of the world.

Becoming like the Good Shepherd

A Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Peter De Franco
on Good Shepherd Sunday,
May 3, 2009
at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church

Of all the psalms in the bible, perhaps all of us know the words of Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. Every fourth Sunday of Easter, we read the story of the Good Shepherd, we say Psalm 23, at one service we sing various settings of Psalm 23.
The feeling we tend to get is one of comfort, of feeling good, of knowing that we have a shepherd who is with us. I wonder if you feel that Jesus is always with you, constantly by your side, opening your lives to that experience of being loved and cared for by our God. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Say those words with me. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
I hope that all of you feel that those words bring you comfort and peace, a sense that God loves you. Jesus is indeed our shepherd. We are all the members of the flock of Jesus. We are all sheep in Jesus’ flock.
If any of you have been paying attention to the news, a different animal has dominated the headlines. I wonder what animal that is? (PIGS!)
I am going to do something and I will ask you not to tell the bishop. I am going to call this good pigherd Sunday. So today, I would like to tell you the story of a pig and a flock of sheep.
Perhaps some of you know the story of Babe. Now this is a very sweet story, perhaps too sweet for some of you, so some of you might want to take a shot of insulin before we begin.
Babe was a baby pig, the smallest baby pig in the litter. Do any of you know what they call the smallest pig in the litter? The Runt!
Well, Babe was taken away from his brothers and sisters and brought to a country fair where Babe was the prize for the person who can guess his weight. When Farmer Hogget sees Babe, he connects with the pig, Farmer Hogger felt a common destiny with the pig. I imagine he felt like the way Jesus feels about us. Like the way Jesus looks at us, Farmer Hoggert looks at Babe and knows that Babe is going to be his pig. Just like Jesus looks at us and knows that we are his special people.
Farmer Hogget wins Babe and takes him home to the farm. Babe finds no other pigs on the farm so Babe is adopted by the Fly, the mother sheepdog, and her puppies. Babe begins to get confused and Babe thinks he is a sheepdog. Babe starts to act like a sheep dog. Rex, the father sheepdog, does not like Babe. Rex thinks dogs should herd sheep and pigs should stay on the farm and get fat.
One day, Farmer Hoggert takes Babe with Fly and Rex out to the pasture with the sheep. Babe sees how Fly and Rex herd the sheep, running down the meadow, forcing the sheep to return to the sheep fold. Let’s take a look and see what happens to Babe.
You might wonder what does Babe have to do with Jesus the Good Shepherd. I wonder what would happen if we thought of Farmer Hoggert as a symbol of God? And if we thought of ourselves as Babe.
We all could help the Good Shepherd with the sheep. We all could be good shepherds. We all could help the good shepherd with the sheep.
There is a phrase in today’s gospel that I want us too look at closely. “I have other sheep that are not of this fold, I must bring them also.” (Jn 10: 16)
We all think of ourselves as part of the herd of Jesus. And we all belong to that herd of Jesus. Jesus is going to bring new sheep to this herd.
At least once a month, you see new people come into this church. Perhaps you are among those new people. Perhaps you have heard Jesus calling you to come to this herd of Jesus.Perhaps you are among those who welcome the new members into the church.
We all are like Babe, all of us have heard Jesus calling us here, all of us are like Babe, we are all invited to become sheep dogs, inviting others into this flock, protecting the flock like Babe, caring for the sheep like Babe did: with a gentle manner, a loving heart, a kind soul.
Jesus is indeed our good shepherd. But we too are shepherds. Loving the one another. Caring for each other.
Perhaps you do not feel like a sheep dog. But there is a shepherd out there who knows that you can bring in new sheep. Just try it. See how Jesus will make you into a good shepherd. Then we all can not only say: The Lord is my shepherd. But I am also a shepherd.