 When I was newly ordained my first assignment was to a circuit of parishes in the northwest part of South Carolina. So I was in Clemson, Seneca, and Wohalla. And the University of Clemson was interesting because I arrived and while I was assigned to the parish I also of course had duties in terms of the chaplaincy, but it was the summertime. And so a lot of the international students or students who were for summer classes or sometimes the students were going to start in the fall they would have a pre-start. And so I got to know a small group of students while I was there. And one of the international students who was from the Middle East, he began to want more attention and ask for guidance and encouragement. His English was good but he was very subconscious about it. I got to know him pretty well. And he made a small group of really good friends that helped him to make the United States a second home as he was in his studies. And he really was close to these friends. Valued this friendship. And then the regular semester began. And all the other students came back. And these friends that he had made suddenly, well they didn't have time for him. They weren't available to him. They acted in some cases even almost embarrassed of him. And he couldn't understand it. And one occasion he came to the chaplaincy ages and tears. This is the strong robust young man, completely broken. I said, what's going on? He said, Valued, I don't understand. He said, I made all these friends. We spent so much time together. We became good friends and now they don't want to hang out with me. They don't want to spend time with me. I don't understand. I said, okay, let me explain it to you. In the West, we treat friendship like a commodity. We treat friendship very cheaply. And people will only spend time with their friends if they want to, or they don't have anything else to do, or they want their friends to entertain them, or they don't want to be alone. He was shocked. And he began to say, because understanding having been in the Middle East, that in his culture, friendship is very different. In biblical culture, friendship is very different. Friendship means relationship. Friendship means family. Friendship means that we are together. It means even if I don't feel like it, I'm going to spend time with you. And no matter with whom else I might be, I will not be embarrassed of you. Friendship is of the heart. And I want us to go to that biblical understanding of friendship, because friends as Christians, we have to retrieve this understanding of friendship. The Christian community cannot have holy fellowship among itself if there are not good friendships. And our moral theology crumbles. The way of the Lord Jesus has weakened if we do not have good friendships and holy fellowship within the Christian community. And of course, we look at the readings today, and this powerful feast day. I'm so grateful that Pope Francis extended this feast day. He added other family members in order for this to be a feast day, a friendship. And he made it a universal feast day. And I suspect in part because the Holy Spirit also wants to once again inspire the hearts of believers to be good friends to others, to receive the good friendship of others, and to nurture holy fellowship within the body of Christ, and then offering that holy fellowship to the unbelievers. In our readings today, we see the first reading. God offering his friendship to humanity, time and time again through his covenant. God reconciling offenses and seeking union, offering friendship to his children. And God's people saying, yes, yes, we want this. We want this. We repent of all the things that we've done and we want this covenant. We want your friendship, God. It's just interesting that God has never suspended his friendship. And we have just always rejected it. You can imagine God standing here, and then we sin, we step away, we sin, we step away, we sin, we step away, and we just keep going, keep going, and we get all the way over there, and we say, why is God so far away from me? And then we blame God. God's love is unconditional. His friendship is without limits. His love cuts to the very core of who we are, and will never be ceased nor diminished. But the question in life, and the question by which we work at our salvation by his grace, is whether we will accept and reciprocate that friendship to him. God has offered his friendship multiple times in the covenant, and he manifestly expressed and has offered that friendship to us in his son, Jesus Christ. And we see that reflected in the tender friendship that the Lord Jesus had with Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. My goodness, friends, we are told in the gospel that the Lord cried. He broke down. His heart was completely filled with sorrow when he heard about Lazarus. And he told his apostles, this death, this sickness will not end in death. Can you imagine the apostle saying, no, he's dead. The Lord waiting four days, three days for the usual range of time by which did we know that someone was completely dead. The Lord waited a purposeful fourth day before going to see his friend. And he goes and he visits Lazarus, and of course, resuscitates Lazarus, and he spends time there with Martha and Mary, and now with his friend brought back from the dead in order to celebrate friendship. You know, it's interesting in the Holy Land, the house of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary is actually called the house of friendship. And on this feast day, the holy leaders of God's people assemble at the house of friendship, and they offer the divine liturgy. It's a celebration of friendship. First, God's friendship to us. And again, we visibly, tangibly can see that in his son, Jesus Christ. We see it reflected in the friendship he's offered Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. Friends, he offers that same friendship to us. He decides to do the same signs and wonders for us. He seeks to dwell in our house and to make our homes, houses of friendship. How are we doing with that? Are we accepting the friendship of Jesus Christ? Are we clinging to him and seeking to follow his way? It's difficult to die to ourselves, to die to our thoughts, die to our feelings, to die to our preferences, and to make the declaration of faith that God's way is better than our way. To cooperate with his grace and to allow our thoughts to be transformed into his thoughts, our way of life to be transformed into his way of life, our feelings to be ordered according to his way of life. It's a total death, a total transformation of ourselves, and it happens through a friendship that is offered to us, a friendship we do not merit, we do not deserve, we could not expect, a friendship that is graciously offered out of God's sheer goodness and his immense love for us. And so this friendship begins with God offered to us in his Son Jesus Christ. Now once we understand the divine friendship, then we begin to understand the friendship we are called to have with one another. And suddenly friendship is raised above commodity. Suddenly we understand friendship means relationship, friendship means family. It's interesting that in the ancient world only family ate at the table. Guests, foreigners who were recipients of kindness, they ate outside. Only the family ate at the table. And family was considered the members of the extended family and the close friends who were family. They ate at the table. It's interesting that in the early church when Saint Peter was trying to give credibility in terms of his relationship with the Lord Jesus, he says, I ate with him. I ate with him. I sat at his table because say by extension he was my friend. He is my friend. And we can say the same. We have been invited to his house of friendship. We have been invited to this altar, his table, in order to be with him, to eat with him. We have been invited to the table to a friendship which every day we have to work on. Every day we have to ask for the grace in order to live up to the friendship that has been offered to us to make sure that the graciousness of God has not been given in vain. We do that by giving God that friendship back by the help of his grace and by offering that friendship to one another. And I knew I was going to preach this message. But as I heard Deacon Harold talking this morning, I thought there it is. When we're offering this friendship to one another in Jesus Christ, we have solutions to racism. We have solutions to isolation. We have solutions to suicide. We have solutions to the problems in our world today and our social dilemmas, our moral questions. I would even go so far as to say that if we were to retrieve the notion of friendship, we would cut the edge off of the LGBTQ plus movement because that movement is driven by isolation and loneliness in large part because people who are suffering have not been the recipients of good friendships. Two years ago I was at a buffet. I was there in my Roman collar and these two women they approached me and based on their display of affections to one another, we could assume that they were lesbians and they approached me. They came right up to me and they said, you think we're wrong. You think we're wrong. And so I pointed to their plate and I said, yeah, you're wrong. They got upset. What? I said, yeah, you're wrong. There are better options on this buffet than the food you chose. This is a buffet. And they had to laugh in spite of themselves. And then they asked me, what do you see when you look at us? That's a great question. That's a question we should be asking ourselves every day in prayer to the living God. They said, what do you see when you see us? I'll tell you the first thing I see. I see well-beloved daughters of God who want companionship and friendship, who want to share the joys and the sufferings of life with someone who want to know that they're not alone. That's the first thing I see. Well, their hearts just melted. And then of course I went to go sit down and of course they followed me. So we had a little more conversation and I had to address some of the social teachings and truths in terms of sexual expression. And we disagreed. But at the end we ended up just having a nice meal and a great conversation in exchange of friendship. And we're laughing and so on. I thought this is funny. Imagine other people looking saying, oh look it's the Catholic priest and two lesbians. That almost sounds like a joke, doesn't it? We have to offer a friendship to one another. First within the household of faith. Let the church become the house of friendship. We have to make sure as believers we don't get stuck on personalities or temperaments. Our bond is of the spirit and our friendship is grounded in the friendship that Jesus Christ has offered to us. We are called to be with one another and to be friends. And once we get that friendship to one another and we build holy fellowship, then we offer that friendship generously to the unbeliever. We offer to walk with them and to encourage them, to speak truth in love, to respect them, to let them know perhaps for the first time that they are truly loved unconditionally and that there is someone who chooses to be companion and friend to them. Our world today needs this. There's so many people who are isolated and alone. So many people who think that their life isn't worth much. So many people who are just so broken and they're miserable. And they feel just completely disconnected with everything. We Christians can fix that. We have been given the solution by their friendship offered to us by God and Jesus Christ. And the more we cooperate with his grace and the more we build that friendship and the more we give that friendship to one another, the more we will be a power for good, a power for friendship in the midst of our world today. And the more we will find the moral issues, that edge will start to fade. Things will still need to be addressed. Truth will still need to be spoken, but the edge would have been diminished because the rules and the way of the Lord Jesus have now been placed within a loving relationship in exchange of hearts, one heart speaking to the other. And that's the friendship we're called to build, their friends. First within the household of faith among believers and then to the whole world.