Loneliness can kill. That isn’t my opinion but is hard scientific fact: statistics show that it’s as deadly as smoking, is linked to an increased likelihood of developing coronary heart disease, strokes and high blood pressure, puts people at greater risk of dementia and – of course – can lead to depression and even suicide. The risk to health that it can bring is higher than obesity, physical inactivity or air pollution. It’s estimated that there are nine million lonely people in Britain, of whom nearly half are older people. So it’s good to know that there is now a “Campaign to End Loneliness” which says that people “need connections that matter” to sustain their mental and emotional health.

I’m sure we can all think of elderly folk whose only social contacts are with the postman or the milkman. But loneliness touches young people as well: perhaps because they have recently moved schools and find it hard to penetrate social networks in their classes, or because they don’t get on with their family or live in care, or because they have an illness or disability which can lead to bullying. Some young people have spent long periods cut off from their peers during the Covid pandemic and are now finding it difficult to pick up their former relationships.

The antidote to loneliness must surely be friendship. But even that is fraught with difficulties as, while some people are naturally good at socialising and seem to make friends at the drop of a hat, others find the very thought of meeting other people hugely frightening. They’ll find excuses to not attend parties or, if they do attend, will stand quietly in a corner hardly daring to open their mouth for fear of saying the wrong thing. This is where a good host can draw people together and hopefully get a conversation started, one which leads to a meeting of minds and ultimately a deep and lasting friendship. For we all need friends, even if it’s only to argue about football or discuss the price of fish. Humans are social creatures who need companionship if they are to flourish: as God says in Genesis 2: “It is not good for the man to live alone”. That’s why prolonged solitary confinement (as suffered by Terry Waite in Beirut) is a cruel form of torture, even where no physical violence is involved.

Christians take comfort from their belief that, even if they are cut off from society or unable to make strong personal relationships, they still have a close friend (albeit one they cannot see): Jesus. They believe that he can – indeed will – advise and guide them, rejoice in their happiness, and share their burdens and fears. Equally churches may be regarded as places where human friendships can be made and nurtured, giving isolated individuals the human interaction which they crave. And, of course, they base the belief that they can have a personal relationship with Jesus on those words which he spoke to his disciples: “I do not call you servants any longer; instead, I call you friends”. We’ll look at the exact nature of that friendship later on.

But first we have to ask if the very idea of friendship with Jesus is nothing more than a sad delusion. The comedian Jimmy Carr, brought up as a Roman Catholic, certainly thinks that it is: “When I was a kid and until I was 26 I had an imaginary friend called Jesus. I used to think that he went everywhere with me, and that I could talk to him and that he could hear me, and that he could grant me wishes and stuff. Then I grew up, and I stopped going to church”. I don’t know what made him change his mind about Christianity; but he does say, “It’s a slight sadness. People never talk about losing one’s faith, but you sort of miss it”.

Does Jimmy have a point? Are we Christians just indulging in wishful fantasy when we claim that Jesus is our friend, when we sing, “He walks with me and talks with me along lives narrow way”? Have generations of Sunday School teachers indoctrinated children into thinking that “Jesus is a friend of theirs”? Is this Jesus no more than a crutch we’ve invented as a way of getting us through the tough patches of life, or a projection that stems from our conscious and subconscious hopes, fears and desires? These are important questions which we must face up to; and I’d like to suggest two responses to them.

The first is the answer of religious experience. Over the centuries countless thousands, even millions, of Christians have sensed that Jesus was beside them, have felt that he was listening when they spoke to him in prayer, have believed that things have happened as a direct response to their prayers, have experienced his Spirit nudging them into decisions. Some Christians have of course claimed more: they’ve been convinced that Jesus has come to them in a dream, that they’ve seen him in a vision or that they’ve heard his voice speaking into their ear. Now none of these incidents, taken individually, can give us conclusive proof of Jesus’ friendship: after all, our minds can play clever tricks on us and we’ve all turned round because we thought we heard someone calling our name, only to find that we were mistaken. But I think we’d be wrong to ignore the cumulative experiences of so many. Have all of us been hoodwinked or deceived by our own minds? Atheists say that that’s exactly what has happened; but I would – of course – disagree.

The other response is to say that – unlike a small child – we’re not making up our ‘imaginary friend’ out of thin air. Even if we strip away all the history and tradition of the Church, we still have the Bible to fall back on. Now people can obviously say that the Bible is a fake or a forgery, but it is probably the best attested and most studied of all ancient books. And even if we ignore its stories of peoples’ personal experiences of God we are still left with history, poetry, wisdom and law. In particular we are left with the Gospel records which purport to be accurate (although carefully edited) accounts of Jesus’ life and deeds. And it is in those Gospels that we don’t just find Jesus saying, “I no longer call you servants … but now call you friends” but also, “I will be with you to the end of the age”. In other words – and unless we decide to chuck out the Bible entirely – we discover that friendship with Jesus isn’t something that we have created: it was he who made the first move.

So what did Jesus mean? Well, we need to realise that friendship in the ancient world meant much more than the easy-come, easy-go sort of undemanding acquaintance that we often think of today. In fact it was an important matter in the cultures in which the New Testament was written and the Early Church took shape. Greek philosophers such as Aristotle regarded friendship as a relationship that was vital if society was to function properly, as it spoke of the obligation which each person had to everyone else. Its highest and noblest level was seen when a person chose to lay down their life for the good of their friends and country. We may be surprised to hear that, as we may have thought that this phrase was invented by Jesus. It wasn’t; in fact he was simply repeating and underlining a concept of friendship which was common knowledge.

We also need to realise that ancient society was riddled with notions of status. Everyone knew their place so it was difficult to make friends with someone of higher or lower status than yourself – in “Downton Abbey” terms, it was simply not the done thing for the duchess to get too close to the gardener! This meant that true friendship was comparatively rare, especially between a patron and his clients, a master and his slaves or – perhaps – a respected teacher and his pupils. So, when Jesus told his disciples that he now regarded them as friends rather than as servants, he was actually saying something rather remarkable. At a stroke, both the dynamics between them and the normal structures of society were turned upside-down; their relationship was no longer one of privilege and subservience but one of equals. Let’s just reflect on that for a moment: we are friends of the Creator of the universe, the Saviour of the world!

I’d like to mention one other facet of friendship in Jesus’ time which I’ve only just discovered (though it ought to have been fairly obvious!) It’s that the strength of friendship was measured by how much two people were willing to be frank and open as they talked together. Philosophers told people – especially those of higher rank who had something to give – to sense whether so-called “friends” were really speaking honestly and openly or whether they were simply engaging in flattery to further their own ends. Plutarch wrote an essay on the subject, and said “Frankness of speech, by common report and belief, is the language of friendship; on the other hand, that lack of frankness is unfriendly and ignoble”.

So the concepts of friendship that Jesus was talking about here weren’t at all new. What was crucial was the way in which he lived them out. For he didn’t just talk about laying down his life for his friends: he did it, and actually went further because he died for his enemies as well. Nor was Jesus concerned with maintaining status: the words we’ve heard were spoken only a short time after the disciples saw him take the role of a lowly slave by offering to wash their smelly feet. Equally, he here spoke very frankly to his disciples: “I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” – wow, he’s told the disciples all that he knows about God! It’s clear that Jesus had gone and was to go far beyond what would have been expected of even the best friend.

I believe that Jesus is my friend – because I believe that he’s said so. I can’t say that I always, or even often, feel Jesus walking beside me or holding my hand: perhaps some of you have a much more intimate experience of him than I do. But, having thought deeply about this passage, I’m beginning to think that many of us have been “barking up the wrong tree”. For perhaps the most important thing is not whether we “feel” that Jesus is our friend – although I hope that we do feel that, at least sometimes. At the end of the day, what’s crucial is that we model our human friendships and service on his perfect and selfless example.

We believe that we have been transformed by Jesus and all that he has done for us. We believe that, through him, we have been brought into a new relationship with God. It is our God-given task to make friends with other people and through those friendships live out God’s love to them. Making friends is a risky business; we lay ourselves open to rejection, exploitation and pain as well as the possibility of love and great joy. We dare to take that risk : because Jesus has been and still is a friend to us.