our companions
How do we choose our friends? The people with whom you will eat, travel, suffer and celebrate. What are the most important traits? Loyalty, generosity, honesty. Shared vision, shared humor, shared passion. Who will hang with you when the going gets rough?
During that time, Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night long. At daybreak, he called together his disciples. He chose twelve of them whom he called apostles…. Luke 6:12-13
Who would they become? What kinds of responsibility could they handle? Campaign managers, treasurers, publicists. Event planners, caterers, speech writers. Someone to betray him. Jesus lived with this choice for three years. Loving each of them, knowing their strengths and weaknesses.
Jesus depended on others too. Women who financed his ministry. Women who challenged his boundaries. Women who hosted and fed him. Women who listened and understood.
Lazarus and his sisters hosted a dinner for him. Martha served and Lazarus was among those who joined him at the table. Then Mary took an extraordinary amount, almost three-quarters of a pound, of very expensive perfume made of pure nard. She anointed Jesus’ feet with it, then wiped his feet dry with her hair. The house was filled with the aroma of the perfume. John 12:2-3
Where do we place ourselves in this scene? Serving, reclining, observing, or anointing? The extravagance, the sheer inappropriateness, of this love is staggering. Mary understood what the disciples couldn’t grasp- that Jesus’ time at their table was almost over. They wouldn’t grow old together. The time to love on Jesus was now; he would not always be with them.
The gospels haven’t said much about Judas until this point. Their focus has been on Jesus, and rightly so. His teaching, his miracles. The reasons they all left their jobs and families to follow him. Judas has been with them all along. They didn’t suspect him. Who made Judas the treasurer? Did he volunteer?
Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), complained, “This perfume was worth a year’s wages! Why wasn’t it sold and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief. He carried the money bag and would take what was in it.) John 12:4-6
Only John includes these details about Judas’ character. John wants us to know that Judas had issues. The betrayal of his best friend by one of their own companions seems to hit John especially hard. Perhaps because he heard it first, whispered in his ear at the table, after Jesus had washed all their feet. When Judas left their table that night, Jesus instructs those who remain:
“I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other.” John 13:34-35
This is friendship in the family of God, that we love each other as Jesus has loved us. It is a high calling. Richard Rohr says that knowing we fail at love is how we stay on the path of learning how to love. “Constant failure at loving is ironically and paradoxically what keeps us learning how to love. When we think we’re there, there’s nothing to learn.”
May our failures at loving keep us learning how to love. Like Peter. Like Mary. Like John. Like Jesus.
–Renée