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Jesus says that we are to love one another as he as loved us. OK, but how, exactly has he loved us? For starters, by welcoming, feeding, healing, forgiving, exhorting, challenging, reframing, remaining and dying. And that is precisely what we are to do with our friends. Be Jesus to them. The trouble is, Jesus redefines who are friends are.

They are all people. Everyone. People we don’t like. People who aren’t like us. People at the borders. People at the margins. People who don’t fit into boxes and certainly not our boxes.

Everyone is to be our friend. We are to be friends with everyone. We are to engage in simple connection, shared experiences, laughter, comfort, honesty, welcome, healing, forgiving, exhorting, challenging, reframing, remaining and dying with all our friends.

With all people? Even that one? Yup, even that one. Even those people? Yup. Even those people. In Christ, they, too, are our friends, because we are in Christ, and Christ has called us, all of us, his friends.

This message is excepted from “Not just friends” by Anna Madsen in the March 2019 Gather magazine.