The Grace of Friendship

Proverbs 17:17, 27:6 and 27:9-10

To have a friend is to receive a gift from God. Such is the witness of the ages.

• An anonymous author once wrote, "Friendship is love without his wings."

• Henry Home said, "The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.”

• Jeremy Taylor wrote, "By friendship you mean the greatest love, the greatest usefulness, the most open communication, the noblest sufferings, the severest truth, the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds of which brave men and women are capable."

• Of course, lest we be too serious, I would note the words of Mark Twain: "The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole life-time, unless of course it is asked to lend money."

 

To have a friend is to receive a gift from God. Such is the witness of our own lives. Consider your own life and the different paths your friendships have taken and the different places they have gone. I remember meeting my first "best friend." We met in first grade and the day seemed to fly by because all we did was talk. The only thing that prevented our continual revelry was our teacher rudely interrupting us from time to time! We were soul mates...and then we were separated by our teacher: me at this desk, Todd at that desk. On the other hand, my best friend in the ministry right now is a guy with whom I disagree on probably every major, controversial issue before our denomination. We simply don't see eye-to-eye on anything. Yet, it is a delight to hear his voice on the other end of the phone.

 

It is interesting to ponder the many forms friendship takes. We have friends we truly love and friends we can hardly stand, and yet both kinds of people are somehow friends. Sometimes we befriend others; sometimes we are the one befriended. Sometimes we become friends with people with whom we seem to share very little in common; and sometimes we become friends with people who seem almost to be our clones. We can even become friends with people who by all external measures look like they should be our enemies, yet there they are, friends. If there is one thing that seems essential to all friendships, it is a willingness to accept our friends more or less as they are. A favorite definition of friendship says, "A friend is a person whose face lights up when they see you, and who has no plans for your improvement." Friendship, in other words, is its own gift. In friendship we lay down the weapons of judgment and pretense. We all know our friends aren't perfect, so, if they let us down from time to time, well, we can accept that.

 

 

 

To have a friend is to receive a gift from God. Such is the witness of the ages and the witness of our own lives, but it is also the witness of Scripture. Proverbs talks quite a bit about friendship. It tells us that "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity" (17:17). And again, "Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses" (27:6). But do we notice here that Proverbs is in disagreement with what we have said about friendship so far? Proverbs suggests that the notion of "A friend has no plans for your improvement." doesn't take friendship far enough. Far from accepting all that we are, true friendship is willing to wound. But wounds from a friend can be trusted, for they are a friend's way of loving us so much that they love us into our own good.

 

The David story that relates to friendship is the story of David and Jonathon, the son of King Saul. Jonathon's friendship with David is lived out in the midst of Saul's repeated attempts to kill David. The front bracket to the story begins with these words: "The soul of Jonathon was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathon loved him as his own soul" (1 Samuel 18:1). Then, the bulk of 1 Samuel chapters 18-20 are filled with Saul's six attempts to murder David: three times Saul tried to kill him with his javelin; twice he lured David into almost certain death with the Philistines by offering his daughters' hand in marriage; and once he sent in a death squad. These six failed attempts at David's life precipitate David’s exile. As Jonathon enables David's escape from his father, there is the end bracket: "Jonathon said to David, 'Go in peace, for we have both sworn in the name of the Lord, saying, The Lord shall be between me and you and between my descendants and your descendants forever" (1 Samuel 20:42).

 

Friendship is a much underestimated aspect of spirituality. But it's every bit as significant as prayer and fasting. Like the sacramental use of water and bread and wine, friendship takes what is common in the human experience and turns it into something holy. Friendship with David complicated Jonathon's life enormously. He risked losing his father's favor. He willingly sacrificed his own royal future. But neither the risk nor the loss stopped him; he became and stayed David's friend. He saw David as David: gifted musician, faithful shepherd, but most of all chosen and anointed of God. Jonathon saw God in David, and he refused to allow David not to see it or, having seen it, to forget. And so Jonathon's friendship was essential to David's life. It is highly unlikely that David could have persisted in serving Saul without the friendship of Jonathon. And even in exile, David no doubt remembered the covenant between them. When alone in the wilderness, David knew he had a friend in Jonathon.

 

Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, visited Haverford College, a Quaker school. The faculty of the school was pleased to meet with him, and even more pleased to engage with him in discussions about what is the greatest thing that one can do for another person in this life. They offered a variety of opinions about what constituted the greatest thing one can do, then Buber stood. Buber said that everything suggested was indeed great, but the greatest thing one can do for another person is to confirm the deepest thing in him or in her-to take the time and have the wisdom to see what is most deeply there, most fully that person, and then confirm it by recognizing and encouraging it.

 

Each of us has contact with hundreds of people who never look beyond the surface appearance of our lives. We have dealings with hundreds of people who the moment they set eyes on us begin calculating what use we can be to them, what they can make of us. We meet people who make snap judgments, and then slot us into a category so that they won't have to deal with us as persons. And then someone enters our life who isn't looking for someone to use; someone who is leisurely enough to find out what's really going on in us; someone who is secure enough not to exploit our weaknesses or attack our strengths; someone who recognizes our inner life and understands the difficulty of living out our inner convictions; someone who confirms what is deepest and purest and truest within us. We meet a friend. A Jonathon.

 

Our tradition tends to emphasize certain aspects of our relationship with the Lord over others; namely, that Jesus is our Savior and Lord. These are important to be sure. Unless Jesus saves us from our sins, we still live in the presence of death. Unless Jesus is the Lord of our lives, we live without direction and, truly, we do not know him. But as important as it is to say that Jesus is our Savior and Lord, we must also say he is a friend. The Gospels recount the many friendships Jesus had. There was his inner circle of Peter, James and John who were taken along at the most critical moments in his ministry. There was the tender friendship we see between Jesus and the three siblings Martha, Mary and Lazarus. "Jesus wept" is the shortest verse in Scripture and perhaps the most poignant, as Jesus was responding as a friend toward the deceased Lazarus. Of course, Jesus later showed that he was Savior and Lord by raising Lazarus from the dead, but before this act of power was the act of friendship. Before he is our Savior or Lord, Jesus is our friend. A Jonathon.

 

It seems so simple, yet it is so important. Jesus is a friend, someone who enters our life not looking to use us but to love us. Jesus is a friend, someone who knows both our weakness and our strengths and who accepts us anyway. Jesus is a friend, someone who knows our inner life and our inner convictions, someone who understands when others don't both the purity of our hearts and their lack. Most of all, Jesus is a friend who will confirm what is deepest and purest and truest within us. who comes to us with no expectation for us other than that we would be wholly and completely a child of our Father in heaven. Which is to say that Jesus' friendship is such that it "loves at all times, and...Wounds from [Jesus] can be trusted."

 

As an act of spiritual learning, take a few moments this week to consider the significance of Jesus' friendship for you. Ask yourself: What does friendship mean to you? Who have been your best friends? What makes them special in your life? Then ask yourself: What does all this say to me about the fact that Jesus is my friend? And what does all this say about how I can be a friend, a Jonathon, to others?

 

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