11-4-07 The Rare Gift of True Friendship
WESTMINSTER PULPIT
The Rev. Dr. David Thompson
November 4, 2007 “The Rare Gift of True Friendship”
Text:David got up from behind the mound and bowed humbly three times. Then David and Jonathan kissed one another and shed tears together, until David’s grief was even greater than Jonathan’s.
When tragedy strikes, when we lose our job, when our marriage crashes, when we get depressed, when our career falters, when we don’t get that promotion, when we get sick, when we really need to laugh and get perspective, when it is our turn to die, we discover that there is no greater gift in all the world than friendship!
In great friendships there are a lot of dynamics. With a true friend you learn to suspend judgment. You see your friend at their best and worst and still love them anyway and try to help them. In deep friendship trust is vital, and trust is given to those who trust others. In true friendship there is deep kindness and caring for each other. We laugh and cry together and dream together and life sparkles in each other’s presence.
The story of David and Jonathan in the Bible is a story of true friendship. David and Jonathan make a solemn compact together to love each other as dearly as themselves. But they have a problem. It is Jonathan’s father King Saul. Saul is jealous of David and he is upset that his son is David’s friend. And so he systematically tries to break them up. Jonathan has to sort out his loyalties. To whom will he be true, to his own father, or to his friend David?
When his father makes the decision to kill David, Jonathan makes his decision to back David. He speaks up for David risking his father’s anger. Saul thinks that he sees through David’s friendship with Jonathan and says: “As long as Jesse’s son remains alive on earth, neither you nor your crown will be safe.” Jonathan, loyal to David, warns David of Saul’s plan to kill him. In what is one of the great moving moments of Scripture they kiss one another, shed tears together and then reaffirm their pledge to each other in the name of God and then part. To the day of his death Jonathan remains loyal to David and David remains loyal to Jonathan. The friendship survives the most difficult of tests. Why? Integrity! They both have it in spades. They keep their word to each other. They both have a strong sense of what is right backed by their belief in God. Neither would ask the other to test the friendship by doing something wrong.
Jonathan I think has the harder of the two roles to play. He is his father’s son and likely heir to the throne. But Jonathan follows the compass of his integrity. He knows that what his father wants to do is wrong and thus if he gives his loyalty to his father and loses his own conscience, he will lose his very soul. But that soul he has given to David. Jonathan has a bottom in his friendship basket that will hold against the tests: integrity. Only integrity can sustain the weight of true friendship. Do we have integrity?
There are many types of friendships in life. We can have friendships from the workplace, from our early lives, friends that come to us as we support causes and when the cause comes on strong the friendships can deepen. Friendships have levels of intensity. Friendships will come and go over the years. One of the reasons for this is that we are only one person and one person can only sustain a certain number of friends at any one time. Good friends know that and make allowances.
Sometimes we expect too much from a friendship. Some friendships are more casual and some are deeper. A mistake we often make is to expect too much of a friend. One way to deal with this is to give more than we expect to get back. We keep our side of the friendship bank account with a positive balance.
Some friendships have an almost mystical element about them. Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “I didn’t find my friends; the good God gave them to me.” There is a great truth here! The famous preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick once said: “Friends are necessary for a happy life. When friendship deserts us we are lonely and helpless as a ship left by the tide, high up on the shore. When friendship returns to us, it is as though the tide came back, gave us buoyancy and freedom, and opened to us the wide places of the world.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes tells us not to flatter ourselves that friendship authorizes us to say disagreeable things to our intimates. He says, “The nearer you come into a relationship with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.”
Some of us have difficulty because we bond through our wounds. Carolyn Meiss has an excellent book on “woundology”. She shows that this works with a negative mindset and the bond may be deep with someone who has suffered a similar tragedy. But when a person gets well again and chooses to stop playing the victim the friend who has bonded through the wound may be confused and the friendship may suffer as a result.
Others of us have difficulty with friendships because we guilt our friends. A problem comes into our life and we expect that our friend will realize that we are in trouble and come to our aid. Perhaps our friend does come around initially, but then as the problem goes on, our friend does not realize that we are still in trouble. We don’t tell our friend that we are still having trouble. We argue to our self: Hey! He/she should get it that I am hurting. Meanwhile our friend is oblivious. One day we see our friend and we blurt out, “Where were you when I needed you? You should have been there for me,” and we guilt our friend.
But true friends always take time to walk a mile in the other person’s shoes, to see where they hurt. They are super slow to make judgments. Guilt can destroy a friendship in the same way that forgiveness can restore a friendship. If we value a friendship it is so important to work through the tests that inevitably come.
In William Gladwell’s recent book BLINK he shows that relationships cannot survive contempt. Rolling of our eyes is a sign of contempt. Never as Christians should we roll our eyes. It does not come from love or integrity to put someone down like that and if we value the relationship at all it is the most destructive thing we can do. On NPR this week there was a report on micro-expressions that we use on our faces of which we are not aware. Studying the video tapes of Osama Bin Laden over the years there has been a progression in his micro-expressions that indicate increasing contempt for America. The commentator said that only contempt leads to genocide. A courageous America needs to ask: Why the contempt? What is it a response to? What perceptions are out there about us internationally, real or imagined that can lead to radicalization and contempt? Friendships, personal or between nations, do not survive contempt…
One thing we learn about Jesus is his hard headed realism about human nature. He says: “Even your parents and brothers, your relations and friends will betray you.” Both David and Jesus were betrayed by a friend. Jesus refers to Judas even in the moment of betrayal as a friend. The only sure defense against betrayal is integrity. There is no other.
In a traditional marriage ceremony the commitment to integrity is made “… for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer till death us do part.” When both partners commit to this, this is a friendship which can be trusted and invested in. It is also the foundation of family life. But if one of the partners in a relationship does not have integrity, true friendships cannot grow, no matter how much integrity the other partner may have.
So what is integrity? “Moral uprightness, honesty, wholeness, completeness, soundness, an uncorrupted condition.” In my view Jesus loved like this and that is why his disciples were willing to die for him. Jesus said that we couldn’t have greater love than to die for a friend. To be willing to die for a friend is what Jesus did. I used to ask myself as a teenager, “Would I be willing to die for a friend?”
Whatever we think of the war in Iraq, soldiers are willing to die for their friends and even the collective they know as America. Friendships forged in the crucible of war are very deep. Similarly if you are a firefighter or a policeperson there are times when you have to rely on your partner being willing to set down their life to protect you. Friendships built in that crucible also can become very deep. People who everyday are willing to set down their lives for us deserve our greatest gratitude and respect.
But Jesus also taught us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek and to do good to those who despitefully use us. He personally gave love that was not returned. This kind of loving only comes from a deep integrity. That is what we discover when we meet Jesus and when Jesus becomes more to us than a distant figure in history he becomes our friend in our hearts. So I want to ask you, have you made Jesus your friend?
If so and you lack a deep integrity and are a very needy person, ask Jesus for help. Integrity is something Jesus has in spades! So, “Ask and you shall receive, Knock and it shall be opened to you. Seek and you shall find.”
I want to close with a final challenge about friendship. I began this sermon by saying that true friendship is a rare gift. Let’s suppose that you have this rare gift with some wonderful friend or even more than one very deep friendship. This is someone with whom you share a mutual relationship of unconditional love and integrity. Because we are fallible beings, we let our friends down all too often. But occasionally in friendship we will come across someone who loves us unconditionally and with integrity. Never lose that friend we say, but what happens when your friend dies? Isn’t there a huge hazard in this kind of friendship? Won’t we be devastated when the friend dies? If the relationship is very deep how will we go on?
Phyllis was a nurse in a care facility. She was an astute judge of friendship, so when she saw an elderly couple, Kate and Chris, in the rest home she instantly recognized their deep love. They would hold hands as they walked down the halls. At night Chris would very tenderly tuck Kate in bed, lovingly placing the covers around her frail body. The care facility did not permit husband and wife to sleep together and so Chris and Kate quietly accepted that.
How very foolish such practices are thought Phyllis as she watched every night Chris reach up and turn the light off above Kate’s bed. Then he would tenderly bend and they would gently kiss. Chris would then pat her cheek and they would both smile. He would pull up the side rail on her bed and only then would he accept his own medication. As Phyllis walked into the hall she could hear Chris say; “good night Kate and her returning voice,“ good night Chris.”
Phyllis and the staff used to talk about what would happen if one of them were to die. They all knew that Chris was the strong one and that Kate was dependent. How would Kate function if Chris were to die first? Phyllis took a few days off and when she got back she learned that Chris had died. “How is Kate taking it?” she asked. “Bad!” was the reply. Phyllis saw how deeply Kate was taking the loss. Night time was the hardest. Kate asked to be moved to Chris’s bed. She remained silent and withdrawn. Passing her room an hour after she had been tucked in Phyllis would find her awake, staring at the ceiling.
Weeks passed as Phyllis pondered the problem. How could she be a friend to Kate; Kate who had known the rare gift of friendship reciprocated at the deepest levels and full of a deep integrity? There was no bringing Chris back. Non-plussed, Phyllis continued to ponder the problem, how could she be a true friend to Kate?
Then she says, one night, as I walked into Kate’s room only to find her wide awake, she said impulsively, “Kate could it be that you miss your good night kiss?” And bending down she kissed her wrinkled cheek.
Phyllis said it was as if I had opened the flood gates. Tears coursed down Kate’s face. Her hands gripped those of Phyllis and she said, “Chris always kissed me good night.” “I know,” said Phyllis. “I miss him so, all those years he kissed me goodnight.” She paused as Phyllis wiped her tears. “I just can’t seem to go to sleep without his kiss”. She looked up at Phyllis her eyes brimming with gratitude: “Oh Thank-you for giving me a kiss.”
A slow smile turned up the corners of Kate’s mouth. “You know,” she said confidentially, “Chris used to sing me a song. “He did? How did it go?” Her voice, small with age but still melodious lifted softly in song: “So kiss me, my sweet, and so let us part. And when I am too old to dream that kiss will live in my heart.”
“David got up from behind the mound and bowed humbly three times. Then they kissed one another…True friendship is a kiss that lives in a heart of integrity.
Thanks be to God!
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