Jesus – the friendship at the center of our life

Abbé Ména and Jesus – original in the Louvre

 Abbé Ména was an Egyptian martyr of the third century. Jesus stands with him in a wonderfully familiar pose. The icon above is a fragment of a painting on wood (tempera on fig tree), produced in the sixth or seventh century. It was found at the site of Bawit (or Baouit) in Egypt.

The Coptic Ména has been interpreted as "everyman", and as one commentator put it:

It is easy to see why the image has received its popular title ‘icon of friendship’, as the two friends stand comfortably alongside each other with the arm of Jesus about the shoulder of his companion.

Let's think a little more about the friendship of God for humankind – for each and every individual – made visible by Jesus' life. Helping us explore this fulfilling musing is David Stephenson, an Anglican priest in Cotham, England. He wrote a blog post for Lent 2019 with the title "Praying with the Icon of Friendship". It's out of season, with the Easter "alleluia" continuing to be sounded, but it's all good for the soul and worth going back to. He writes:

I’d like to suggest a few ways in which the icon might inspire us to prayer in its spirit of friendship. First, and most fundamentally, as an image it communicates powerfully that Jesus is near to us, alongside us, with (as it were) a hand about our shoulder. Jesus is modelled as our companion who walks alongside us; who shares our place and space. Friendship can be exclusive, pictured with two faces gazing at each other. However, this image suggests a very different reality – as our friend Jesus looks where we look, and he looks upon who we look upon. 

Conversely we can be encouraged that in friendship with Jesus we can look at what his eyes of love turn towards – we can see what he sees. The icon invites us to ask where is Jesus looking and what is he telling me about what he sees? Friendship with Jesus is shared compassion, longing, vision, insight, as we gaze with his eyes of love. Perhaps this is a good summary of prayer – to look with Jesus and share his gaze of love; to know that he shares our gaze, that he sees the world through our eyes.

 Although the icon is a relatively simple composition, it has much more detail than immediately seems apparent. First we can notice the hands of Abbé Ména – in one he holds a scroll and with the other he blesses. The scroll probably represents the rule of life of his community; or, like the scroll Jesus takes up in the synagogue of Nazareth, the scripture that is his own commission (‘the Lord has anointed me to…’). What does our scroll contain? What rule of life shapes our praying and living, what is our commission from Jesus our friend? These are good questions to explore prayerfully during Lent.

Meanwhile the hand of blessing is an invitation for us to recognise that prayer is the way in which we connect with God’s benediction – the face of blessing for us and for the world. As God’s people we are called to be people of blessing – not in a trite way (“aww, bless”!) but rather by noticing and naming God’s gracious presence and good intention. John O’Donohue’s fine book Benedictus is a master class in such noticing and naming; perhaps in an age of complaint and negativity we can begin our apprenticeship as people of benediction.

May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the facade of your life there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening. May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride, and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.

— John O’Donohue

Stephenson enjoys the thoughts arising from the image of Jesus as a friend who accompanies: 

Lastly, the icon’s age has worn away the feet of Jesus but the feet of Abbé Ména are shown to be bare. In company with Jesus he treads gently on the earth, and this place and moment of shared encounter is ‘holy ground’. Friendship with Jesus calls us to friendship with the earth – to re-connection and recognition of our absolute felt connection with the rest of creation. We begin Lent with the reminder that we come from dust and shall return to dust – this is not only an expression of our mortality but also a reminder that we are ‘of’ the earth. Praying with bare feet, especially outside, might be a good Lent prayer practice – a practice commended by Barbara Brown Taylor in her excellent book An Altar in the World: Finding the sacred beneath our feet.

This is what the publisher says about Taylor's spiritual insights:

While people will often go to extraordinary lengths in search of a 'spiritual experience', she shows that the stuff of our everyday lives is a holy ground where we can encounter God at every turn. For her, as for Jacob in the Genesis story, even barren, empty deserts can become "the house of God and the gate of heaven", places where a ladder of angels connects heaven to earth and earth to heaven.

An Altar in the World reveals concrete ways to discover the sacred in such ordinary occurrences as hanging out the washing, doing the supermarket shop, feeding an animal, or losing our way. It will transform our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in, and renew our sense of wonder at the extraordinary gift of life. 

Stephenson concludes: 

As we look towards Lent, and enter it as a season of prayer, I hope it will also be a season of growing friendship. [...] Our friendship in faith with each other is inseparable from our friendship with Jesus.

Friendship with Jesus is friendship as service within the world around us, and to and with the others who God puts in our life. This means our consciousness is awakened to what has been given to us, to the reality that everything within our world is a gift. The natural world, the built world, the cultural world, each individual – gift, gift, gift, gift! We can discover the sacred in the ordinary elements of our life. Knowing that Jesus is a friend we can give our hearts to, we are able to open ourselves to all the enchantment that life offers.

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