In a rather obscure movie, “Only When I Laugh”, there is a scene with three extremely close friends who are deep in conversation about what their friendship means.  One of them says, “The whole world can go to hell if the three of us can have lunch together.”  This sermon is about friendship but not of such an exclusionary variety.

 

Friendship is a value that we all hold dear.  It is a prize worth winning because it means you are not in it alone.  It means that there is someone there to listen, to understand, and to support. Do you remember your first friend?  For me it was John Cahill.  He lived a couple of blocks away from my house.  I don’t remember how we first met.  We were in the same grade in school, so that probably had something to do with it.  We used to walk to school together.  I would play over at his house and he at mine.

 

Then one day I remember there being a rush of insight which blew over me like a warm wind.  John Cahill was my friend.  In fact he was my very best friend.  We seemed to understand each other.  We could spend long periods of time apart and yet when we came back together, it was as if no time intervened.  There was a great deal of security in having a friend like John Cahill because I knew I could always count on him.

 

It is a prize worth more than a thousand diamonds to have a friend you can count on regardless of the circumstances.  Jesus raised the ante on friendship higher then it had ever been raised before when he said, “Greater love has no one than this, than one lay down his life for a friend.”  Most of us do not begin friendships with such a sacrificial commitment.

 

For us friendship is the welcome smile in the midst of a hard day; it is the listening ear in our time of trouble.  It is the ability to speak with absolute freedom whatever comes to our minds, knowing that the other person will be interested and not judgmental.  It is the remembering of special times, and the sharing of common experiences.  It is sitting at the bedside holding the hand of someone who desperately needs a human touch while surrounded with the tubes of modern medical paraphernalia.

 

The root of the Greek word for friend, “fileo”, can also be translated “love”.  Maybe that is why our culture has so much trouble with friendship.  We have made a distinction between love and friendship.  If anyone starts talking about loving a friend, the eyebrows are quickly arched.

 

There are two stories I want to share with you about friendship -- one is Biblical and the other is more contemporary.  There is not a more beautiful story about the meaning of friendship than the story of Jonathan and David.  It could have been so different; it could have been the story of the rivalry between the son of a king (and heir to the throne) and the one who usurped his prerogatives.

 

You remember that King Saul was the first king of Israel.  He was a warrior king who came to the throne because the 12 tribes of Israel felt a need for leadership to unite them in a common strategy of defense.  Jonathan was the son of Saul and David was the shepherd boy who first made headlines in the Jerusalem Times when he successfully defeated the Philistine giant Goliath in personal combat.

 

The odds against Jonathan and David becoming good friends would have made even the folks in Atlantic City cringe.  It was a long shot -- the son of a king and a young sheep herder.  But they found common ground because friendship begins by seeing value in the other person.  The writers of the social register would have emphasized their differences, but in the midst of the turbulence all about them and the forces which seemed to be pushing them apart, they were able to find as one person described, “the magic ability to pinch the slim waist of the hour glass of history and cause time to stand still”. 

 

And that is part of the meaning of friendship isn’t it?  The years pass, the circumstances change, but when you are reunited with a friend, it is as if no time has passed between you.

 

David and Jonathan were friends.  At first (when David was the young hero on the fast track, having defeated the Philistine giant Goliath) King Saul encouraged the friendship between David and Jonathan.  He thought to himself, “It will be good for Jonathan to have a friend like David.  Perhaps some of his courage and charisma will rub off.”  King Saul hoped that one day his son Jonathan would succeed him, but he also knew that he was ill-equipped because he did not have a warrior’s temperament. 

 

The compact of friendship between Jonathan and David was made when they were young; when they had no reason to be caught up in the intrigue of the court; when life was simple and they were not involved in competition for external rewards.  The Bible does not tell us a great deal about what went on as this friendship developed and flowered.  It only reminds us again-and-again that Jonathan and David were friends.

 

We begin to see what that friendship meant when King Saul’s jealously caused him to seek David’s death.  By this time David’s fast track lead him to astonishing success as a military commander.  You can imagine how someone with Saul’s insecurities and fragile ego reacted when he would hear the crowds chant as David returned from battle, “Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands.”

 

Saul’s jealously was obsessive and it deranged him.  Jonathan tried to act as a mediator for his friend, pleading his case in the King’s court, but he received only his father’s anger in return.

 

Over a period of time, these mood swings became increasingly violent causing Saul at one point to throw a spear at Jonathan when he tried to defend David.

 

Saul’s behavior went too far and it was time for David to go into hiding.  As the two friends parted they once again reaffirmed their friendship with an embrace.

 

They met once again while David was an outlaw.  But death intervened when Jonathan died with his father and brothers in a battle against the Philistines on Mt. Gilboa.

 

The biblical descriptions of this friendship are the stuff of poetry:  “The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David.  Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”  The words of David spoke when he learned of Jonathan’s death, “Your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.”

 

Friendship can be a frightening thing.  Certainly descriptions of the deep and intimate friendship shared by Jonathan and David have given rise to suspicions that there may have been more to it than friendship.  It is sad when some cannot accept such a wonderful example of friendship at face value.  What is important about it was the affection, respect, and faithfulness that kept it alive through thick-and-thin until finally Jonathan was killed in battle and David tore his clothes and wept over him.

 

We can define friendship in many ways but when it comes right down to it, a friend is someone you can count on, one who is always there.  A friend is not someone who judges you in your sin but rather one who accepts you in your weakness.  By such a definition, true friends are hard to come by.

 

There is another story of friendship.  This one is more contemporary.  It is played out in the movie “Beaches” between Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey.  It is on a beach in Atlantic City 40 years ago that two 10-year-old girls meet.  They appear to be as different as they could be.  One is a redhead; the other a brunette.  One is from a Brooklyn working-class home; the other is rooted in San Francisco society.  One is prim, proper, and nice; the other is coarse, direct, and worldly-wise.  They become friends, these two young girls who seem worlds apart. 

 

Over the next ten years their letters regularly cross the continent.  They keep-in-touch but they really don’t understand the values and aspirations of the other -- how one begins singing in a bar with the goal of becoming a great entertainer; the other parlays her Stanford education into a law degree.  But friendship does not have to be based upon understanding, does it?

 

On into adulthood the story goes.  There’s the reunion in New York and the period of living together as roommates -- celebrating the joy of their friendship in young adulthood and pursuing their separate dreams with each other’s encouragement.  There is the period of separation and estrangement as they question how they could ever have been friends in the first place.

 

And then there is the emotional ending to the story.  It was on a beach in Atlantic City where they had first met and it was to be on another beach (3,000 miles away) that they would renew the final vows of friendship under the dark cloud of death as one was dying of cancer.

 

I don’t often make a movie recommendation, but this one is worth the price of a DVD because it upholds the simple value of friendship and it shows us once again that a good friend is to be valued far above gold and silver.

 

Here are two stories of friendship.  They remind us of what friendship looks like (if we need reminding).  Some of us do need reminding because in the course of trying to survive in this world, too many of us try to go it alone because that is the way we were taught.  But there is another way.  It is the way which Jesus taught -- the way of friendship.  “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down her life for a friend.”

 

This is a new way because Jesus is teaching us that we can be friends with God.  It is Jesus himself who has opened the way for this new kind of relationship when he adopts the vocabulary of friends and servants.  His love has broken down the wall which separates the master from the slave, the rich from the poor, and the one who comes first from the one who comes last.

 

The powerful message of the Christian gospel is that Jesus is calling us to be his friend.  The contrast is made here between friends and servants.

 

A “doulos” which in the Greek means “servant” (and is the word which is used here) was not a title of shame but a title of the highest honor.  Moses was described as a “doulos” as was Joshua, and David, and Paul.  Some of the greatest people of the Bible were proud to be called the servants of God.

 

Jesus is saying I have something greater for you than this.  You are no longer servants; you are friends.  You see what is being offered here is an intimacy with God which was impossible before the coming of Jesus.

 

William Barclay reminds us of the meaning of friendship as it was understood in Jesus’ day.  In the courts of the Roman emperors (as well as those of other Eastern potentates) there was a very select group of persons who were called the friends of the king or the friends of the emperor.  At all times they had access to the king.  They even had the right to go into his bedchamber at the beginning of the day.  He talked to them before he talked to his generals.  The friends of the king were those who had the closest and the most intimate connection with him and who had the right to come to him at any time.

 

The word “friend” is a powerful word.  As used by Jesus, it implies immediate access.  Where once deity was seen as distant (awe inspiring and the object of fear), Jesus has put us on new terms with this transcendent deity so that new we can be known as friends of God.

 

For some of us this represents a big jump; friendship does not come easy on any terms.  We would prefer to keep our distance rather than to take on the obligations and responsibilities and, yes, even the privileges of friendship.

 

Jesus did an amazing thing.  He came to offer us friendship with God.  It is a precious thing to be called the friends of God and that is who we are if we are Christians.

 

Amen.