Friendship - how to conceive of it Christianly?

Related to a previous post: something i wrote on friendship.

Jesus speaks of the love of one ‘laying down his life for his friends’ (Jn 15:13): that is the greatest love. It is love that he exemplifies; but it is the kind of love that will also be at the heart of discipleship. His public life was a life lived amongst his friends over and against even his own family (Luke 8:17-19). Friendship with him was a matter of performing his words (Jn 15:14); which elevates the status of disciple from servant to friend. However, the fickleness of human friendship was of course something Jesus himself experienced. Not only did he count among his friends Judas, who betrayed him; but at the crucial moment of testing, his disciples fled and left him alone. He went to cross solo; watched only from distance. Unsurprisingly, then, part of his teaching to his friends was that they were risking the possibility of this affliction themselves. In Luke 21, he prophesies their betrayal by family and friends (21:16-17). ‘You will be hated by all because of my name.’ The experience of martyrdom is clearly on view here. Archbishop Thomas the disciple does not count the experience of friendship with the King as a matter of expedience – even though it is now over. However, Christian discipleship is promised by Jesus to have a destabilizing effect on these earthly relationships, which may even result in violent rejection. Perhaps laying down one’s life for one’s friend may mean dying at his hand.

But the connection of love with friendship by Jesus is the key here. The divine love of Jesus for real human beings represents a turning toward human beings in friendship despite and even through their violent enmity towards him. In death, Jesus alone stands in the place of his fellow human beings, bearing their implacable hatred towards God on his shoulders. And yet, the point at which he suffers betrayal, rejection, torture and death becomes the point of greatest divine love for human beings and human love for God. (See Romans 5:1-11). In turn, this great realized and actual love of God for human beings and of one human being for God becomes the great example of love for the disciples of Christ (John 15:13-15; 1 John 4:1ff; see also the language of sacrifice in Rom 12:1-2). That such a love will involve concrete, actual bodily sacrifice is unmistakable in the language of the NT. This love is shot through with pain – possibly the pain of unreciprococity. This means for the Archbishop that he cannot abandon the King altogether, though there may be violent consequences. Though Thomas has been offered the chance to shut the door on Henry by the Third Tempter, this is not ultimately for him a Christian possibility. Rather, he calls out ‘Open the door!’ (II.??); and, with this, calls down on himself his own murder.