FRIENDS

First Reading: 1 Samuel 18: 1-9

Second Reading: 1 Samuel 20

Dr. Matthew S. Brown

July 9, 2006

I’m sure it is not as big as I remember it, and if I were to return I would wonder why it had shrunken so. In my childhood, our back yard bordered the un-manicured acreage behind a large estate owned by the Stark family whose name became known by the apple and pear trees that your parents or grandparents might have planted in their yards.

Reality may mock me, but it seemed like a large, long and wide hill to me. And, when it was covered with packed snow and a good layer of ice, it made for an exhilarating morning of manic sledding.

Now, one would think, particularly here in the South where snow is rare and sleds gather dust, that gliding swiftly down the hill or maybe even building a small jump for the sleds some ¾ the way down would be enough, but Luke and I just were not satisfied and so we came up with the ingenious idea that it would be more fun if we started at different sides of the slope and aimed our sleds in a way that they would collide once we reached maximum speed. (It’s no wonder that I didn’t even bother with Physics in high school).

Well, I will say that those few moments before the collision were indeed exhilarating and a whole lot of fun. However, the moments after were marked by searing joint pain, blurry images and severe headaches. What were we thinking?

It is a story that still comes to mind when I think of the friend I knew even before we entered the Humpty Dumpty Kindergarten in the basement of the small Midwestern town’s library. I’ve known Luke longer than I’ve known how to tie my shoes. And though I moved away by the time we entered high school; though I now live some 850 miles away from Luke; and though I have continually failed to make even marginal efforts to keep in touch, the thread of relationship remains because Luke has taken the initiative, because Luke has assumed the burden of communication, because Luke has approached the friendship as a covenant that shall not be broken.

I exist with the intake of oxygen and the ingestion of calories, but I live because of the presence of and prospect for relationship, or more particularly friendships. Certainly the sun would still rise and my eyes might still notice the beauty of the sun setting without the presence of those people who make the effort to connect with me, but would I actually be living? I think not. God said that it is not good for man to be alone, and among the first and possibly most important gifts of creation was someone else and the potential for friendship.

Peter Gomes, professor and pastor at Harvard University, wrote that: “At the end of the day we tote up our score, not for or against the great social or intellectual systems of the world, but in terms of how we stand with the people we value, and perhaps even love.” He says, “The search for friendship is a defense against an anonymous and indifferent world. It is our chance, our hope, to make something more of our time here than mere survival or existence, and that is why the gift of friendship is so great a gift from God. The risks are worth taking because the prospect of the alternative is too grim even to think about.” It was Aristotle who suggested that, “Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.”

We gather in this place around a cross because the reason for creation itself was the desire of God for relationship.

What do your friendships mean to you? Now, I’m not speaking of that circle of superficial acquaintances we abide but seldom enjoy. Meg Greenfield speaks of our being so focused on our images that our relationships can’t help but be affected and our friendships become disingenuous. She says we “begin to live lives of pantomime, in which gesture is all. [We] spend more and more time attending social functions with ‘friends’ [we] don’t much like, smiling when [we] want to frown or yell or tell someone off.” I’m not speaking of such image centered friendships. Nor am I speaking of those obligatory relationships we have all endured. A phone number appears on your ringing cell phone and you are suddenly groaning with a sense of dread.

These are not the friendships of which I am speaking. No, I am speaking of those friends who have enjoyed you at your best but have also tolerated you at your worst. I’m speaking of those friends who have loved you enough to tell you when you are “out of line,” “off balance,” “out in left field.” I’m speaking of those friends who have identified, affirmed, and even brought out gifts in you that you were too self conscious or too intimidated to share, or that you didn’t even know you had.

Greg Jones speaks of those “holy friends” who help us “dream God’s dreams [for us] in ways we never would have” but who also challenge “the sins we have come to love” and tend “to hide from others and even from ourselves.” They know us well enough to see the sins that mark our lives. These friends help to hold us accountable and yet, also open our eyes to dreams and possibilities we never would have pursued on our own. (Jones, The Christian Century) George Herbert wrote that “the best mirror is an old friend.”

How many of us here can look back to meaningful conversations with friends, conversations that marked the genesis of the vocations we practice, the marriages we enjoy, the faith we hold dear, the commitments at the core of our lives? Do you remember those conversations? Where would I be without the commitment, love, and even sacrifice of these friends.

What have your friendships meant to you?

One of history’s great holy friendships is demonstrated in the relationship between Jonathan and David. The value God places on relationships/friendships is seen in the way God has continually chosen to work through our relationships and friendships to carry forward his promise and purpose. Reading our text this morning, can you imagine David becoming the David we know without Jonathan?

Jonathan’s actions toward David confirmed Samuel’s anointing of David. Jonathan’s gifts to David allowed David to discover the power of God at work in him. Jonathan’s protection of David literally saved David’s life. Jonathan’s sacrifice for David opened the way for David to become the king God had anointed him to be. Can you imagine? Jonathan was in line to be king. But Jonathan saw the hand of God upon the friend he loved, and so set aside any thoughts of his own claim to the throne. What a powerful witness to what Jesus Christ would later say and do: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Think of the significance of Jonathan’s friendship for David, for Israel.

Of what value are our friendships? They have the capacity to carry forward the promise and purpose of God.

Many times, not always, not perfectly, but many times it is in the community of faith that these friendships are formed and nurtured. Greg Jones asked a devout Christian who is also a well-known lawyer what sustained him in his vocation. And the man “described a small group of people in his church who had covenanted to meet every week to focus on their spiritual lives and their vocations.” He said, “My life has been very different, and my commitment to Christ much richer, because of the sustenance I receive from these friends. They tell me what I need to hear, and I’m learning to tell them what they need to hear.”

The meaning of those friendships is discovered in a most profound way at critical points in our lives. I will never forget what an elder of the church I was serving in Hickory said following the death of her father. Virginia grew up in the small mountain town of Rutherfordton. Her father was the surgeon for a generation in the life of that community. Everybody knew Virginia because everyone’s life had in some way been touched by Virginia’s father.

When he died, Virginia headed down the road from Hickory toward Rutherfordton, and when we’re driving toward the towns and cities in which we spent our childhood and where our relatives may still live, we’ll speak of it as “going home.”

Virginia said that once she arrived the family went about making plans and greeting the hordes of visitors who came by the house and lined up at the funeral home. She said she was surrounded by relatives and the people who had known her all her life, but somehow she felt disconnected, out of place.

And then a group of friends showed up from the church in Hickory and she was overwhelmed with tears. These were the friends she had studied the Bible with, sung in the choir with, planted the church garden with, argued on the Session with, shared wine with, prayed with. These were the friend’s whose snores kept her awake on church mission trips, friends whose children coveted the Dominoes pizza she would place in the midst of the sea of chicken casseroles at church family night dinners, friends who borrowed her bicycle, played practical jokes on her and who placed their hands on her shoulders at her ordination.

And her tears at that moment weren’t tears of grief, though the grief was still there. No, the emotions sprang forth, she said, because their arrival made her suddenly feel at home. Surrounded by family and the people who remembered her as a freckled child, home wasn’t felt until the arrival of those friends from her church some 70 miles away. I always thought of that as a poignant story until we experienced it as a powerful reality last week.

How valuable are the friendships God creates and through which God works in this place? They have the capacity to carry the promises and bear the presence of God.

As soon as the boy had gone, David rose from beside the stone heap and prostrated himself with his face to the ground. He bowed three times, and they kissed each other, and wept with each other; David wept the more. Then Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, since both of us have sworn in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘the Lord shall be between me and you, and between my descendants and your descendants, forever.’”

Amen.

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