God as friend or as judge?

A Reflection for Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter

Find today’s readings here.

If you spend a lot of time—at work or at prayer or elsewise—with Jesuits or others whose spiritual charism is Ignatian, you’re eventually going to learn the words to “Take Lord, Receive,” by osmosis if nothing else. Based on St. Ignatius’ “Suscipe” prayer from the “Contemplation to Attain Divine Love” in his Spiritual Exercises, the song in one version or another is a staple at Jesuit liturgy, a kind of “moldy oldy” that you don’t need the missal for.

For the first three decades of my life, spent mostly in Southern California, the version I heard was by John Foley, S.J., from the St. Louis Jesuits. (I suspect that’s the version you know too, though Brother Hoover here on staff says Dan Schutte’s version gains more traction in Jesuit communities every year.) Foley’s version is perhaps on the treacly side and could use a little mojo, but you sing with the one that brung ya, right? 

Then I moved to the East Coast.

Suddenly the placid, serene strains of Foley were replaced by something out of the “Army of Youth” songbook, what felt and sounded more like a military march than anything else. Gone were the tranquil words of “Take, Lord, receive, all is Yours now. Dispose of it, wholly according to Your will,” replaced instead by something that felt like it inspired or required goose-stepping.

Do Thou direct and govern all and sway
Do what Thou wilt, command, and I obey!

One gets used to it, I guess. And the Generalissimo did have some good marching music. But what does this all have to do with today’s Gospel? 

That “Contemplation to Attain Divine Love” from which those songs are drawn is part and parcel of a realization on the part of the person undertaking the Spiritual Exercises of how much Christ has given him or her: the unmerited gift of divine love and friendship. So too does Jesus in today’s Gospel prefigure exactly what will show his followers that they are his friends, not slaves. He is preparing to make the ultimate sacrifice, the sign of “no greater love,” giving up his own life on the cross. Because it’s the Gospel of John, we’re going to hear plenty more from him before that event, but it’s still looming on the horizon. And he is going to share with them everything they need to know and to tell others about The Way.

“You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing.” There’s that command—something that maybe we don’t associate with friendship, because it links their bond to their obedience. Do what Thou wilt, command, and I obey! But it is not blind obedience anymore, is it? It is the obedience of friends who have been told the stakes and know the plan: “I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.” 

One can imagine this sort of language being even more startling in the milieu of Jesus’ followers, in a culture and context where God-as-friend might not be language used as much as Lord of Hosts. But it can be startling for us as well, because a lot of us also have a hard time with the notion of God as friend instead of God as divine judge or ruler of all. The Jesus we meet in today’s Gospel, though, is more like the Jesus we sing to in “Take Lord, Receive”: One to whom we would like to share our gifts and our lives and our plans. A friend.

There is probably enough room in Ignatian spirituality for an understanding of Jesus as a friend as well as an appreciation of Jesus as the one who’s gonna do what he wilt and we’re gonna obey. But today’s Gospel is a reminder that no matter how much we want to resist that divine friendship, Jesus offers it nonetheless. 

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