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Subversive Living: The Discipline of Spiritual Friendship Spencer C. Lawrence, Church of the Cross, Hoffman Estates, IL, March 18, 2007 David Goetz writes in his book Death by Suburb : Boys [I suspect girls, too] learn early . . . that many relationships are more or less like a deal. You get what you get in the deal. Later, after you complete your law degree or MBA, you learn it’s good business when the deal is win-win, instead of win-lose. . . . [These] transactional relationships get you the good jobs, the next deal, the inside track to senior management. No one ever made it to the top ranks on performance and hard work alone. You give to get. When you get, you give back. Spiritual friendship is subversive in an environment of transaction and efficiency. . . . Friendship subverts the system of power, how things get done in the ‘burbs and the class system organized around symbols of immortality. . Jonathan was a young man who possessed all sorts of immortality symbols. He was the son of King Saul. Some day the throne would be his. Besides that, he had all the trappings of royalty: clothes, jewelry, horses, armor, weapons, a palace, fine food, and the pick of any young woman in the land. He had it all. Then came the war with the Philistines. The challenge from the giant Goliath. And a shepherd boy named David who killed Goliath with a slingshot. When King Saul heard of this, he asked who David was. Jonathan told him, and King Saul invited David to the royal palace. Jonathan was so taken with him that he gave David his own clothes and his own set of armor. It was as if David had become part of the family. Jonathan who had much to lose by David’s success didn’t seem to care. Over the years Jonathan and David grew closer as friends. Saul, more attentive to the immortality symbols of the throne than Jonathan, came to distrust David. He could see that he was becoming popular with the people – in some ways even more popular than Saul himself. He worried about his future. He worried, too, for Jonathan. He became anxious and threatened to kill David. Jonathan assured his dad that David had no designs on the throne and worked hard to calm him down. Jonathan, in the spirit of deep friendship, even told David about it. He told him not to worry either. Much later Jonathan discovered that Saul had made up his mind to get rid of David. He met with David, told him the truth and sent him on his way so he would be safe. Jonathan and David knew about friendship. Their friendship involved personal sacrifice and honesty and openness. Their friendship was one in which the immortality symbols of their day meant nothing. It was not a relationship rooted in a deal. They simply cared about each other. It’s often hard to have real friends. I know it’s hard for men. It may be equally hard for women, too. It’s easy to have companions. We all have people we do things with every once in a while. But when push comes to shove, we can’t really count on them, and we certainly wouldn’t tell them anything very intimate about our lives. There is a difference between a friend and a companion. C.S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves says this about the distinction between companionship and friendship: This Companionship is . . . often called Friendship, and many people when they speak of their “friends” mean only their companions . . . . Friendship arises out of Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one”. . . . It is when two such persons discover one another, when with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision – it is then that Friendship is born. . . . My best friend was my brother. Scott was three years younger than I, and like typical brothers we fought a lot. Our growing-up years were marked by much competition. When I was about 17 years of age, my brother committed his life to Christ. Not long after that, I did the same. Some interesting things began to happen. Our parents were initially not pleased with our newfound religious fervor. They thought we had gone overboard. But my brother and I discovered we had a bond we had not before experienced. Not only were we brothers in the flesh, we were now brothers in the Spirit. In the years following, while we never saw eye to eye about everything, we never lost the sense of our Brotherhood in Christ. Over the years we began to talk about family life – what it was like to grow up in our family, and how that affected us today. When Scott was working on a Ph.D. dissertation in New Testament I sent him sermons he could use on Sunday mornings. In return he would do his best to keep me posted on the latest trends in New Testament studies. When he was diagnosed with leukemia in September of 1994, he asked me if I would be tested to be a bone marrow donor. I said I would. Fortunately, I turned out to be a perfect match. Unfortunately, the transplant didn’t work as quickly as the doctors had hoped and Scott died in 1995. Scott and I didn’t share everything about our lives, but we talked about many of our hopes and dreams, failures and successes. And we prayed for each other. We were more than mere companions, more than brothers in the flesh. We were friends. What does it take to be and have real friends? What is required for a spiritual friendship that undercuts the pretence associated with immortality symbols? As Lewis notes, it includes a common interest that strikes at the core of a person’s being. David and Jonathan could have been just companions. Instead, with the “amazing and elliptical speed” of which Lewis writes, they sensed they were kindred spirits. For my brother and me it was a recognition that our brotherhood went beyond flesh and blood; it involved the Spirit as well. That discovery wiped out years of jealousy. For us here today, it includes, at the very least, our common humanity. Underneath the immortality symbols – our clothes, our cars, our homes, our jobs, our children – we discover that we’re all cut from the same cloth. We have similar hopes and fears. We experience guilt and shame in much the same way. We all carry around baggage from our growing up years. More than that, we have a common commitment to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. We recognize that in the end we are accountable to him. And also, when we need help we can come to Christ who gives both mercy and wisdom generously. This common understanding and commitment to Christ is a good first step toward spiritual friendship. Do you have a friend like that? Do you have a friend with whom you can talk about what it means to live out your faith in Christ? A second thing that’s important for spiritual friendship is honesty David and Jonathan talked about serious matters that affected both of them. The intentions of Saul. David’s safety. Jonathan’s future. For my brother and me it involved talking about what it was like to be a kid in our family, I the first-born and he the second-born. We often talked about how we saw ourselves in relation to our mom and dad. Spiritual friendships call for honesty about what’s going on in our lives. Being honest together in God’s presence is a key to spiritual growth. Jesus said that where two or three are gathered in his name he is there, too. Recognizing that Christ is present in our relationships with other Christians makes those relationships channels of God’s grace. That’s why James told his readers to confess their sins to one another and God would forgive them and heal them. Being honest with someone in the presence of God leads to healing. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in Life Together: Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. A brother breaks the circle of deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. This is true for women as well as for men. We discover the healing presence of God when we are honest with one another. Do you have a friend like that – someone with whom you can begin to be honest about your struggles, about your failings? Spiritual friendship involves praying for each other. While I don’t see it in the story of Jonathan and David, I bet they did pray for each other. I know Scott and I did. When Karen was ill. When he became sick. And any number of times before and in between. For some reason or other we modern Presbyterians have a hard time saying we will pray for each other. It’s easy to say to someone who’s having a hard time, “I’ll be thinking of you.” That must be a euphemism for “I’ll be praying for you”, but I am not sure. To tell you the truth, I don’t want people just to think about me. Do you know what thinking is? It’s talking to yourself. What good does that do? I talk to myself quite a lot and I haven’t found it makes a dime’s worth of difference. I need people to talk to God for me, just like you need people to talk to God for you. If you’re going to actually pray for someone why not tell them, “I will pray for you”? And who better to pray for than someone we call our friends? Do you have a friend you pray for and one whom you know prays for you? David Goetz sums up his experience of spiritual friendship in this way: Not long ago I said to a Friend that I really needed to sense God’s presence, that I felt thirsty for something real. I had been through another rough patch with family and business and all the activities that constitute the so-called good life. We had lunch one day, and several weeks later he wrote me an e-mail in which he agreed that yes, indeed, life is hard some days: “Yes it is, especially when we begin to experience the loneliness of the human condition and the emptiness within. We naturally reach out to anyone or anything to fill the void. Even God. And when nothing works and God is silent . . . well, then it’s time to be quiet and reach out to a friend who needs us.” In Friendship I can say that I have felt the grace of God, where I have experienced what it means to be accepted not for the value I add but for the value I am. | |||||
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