Thursday, August 11, 2016

Friendship

11th Sunday after Pentecost
July 31, 2016
Friendship Sunday
Cowenton UMC
Job 2:11-13; Ecclesiastes 4:9-12; John 15:12-17

            In case you’re wondering if Friendship Sunday is one of those made-up Hallmark holidays, like Secretaries’ Day or Grandparents’ Day, well, it is, at least its early history in the United States. In 1930, Joyce Hall, the founder of Hallmark, wanted August 2 to be a day when people celebrated their friendships by sending cards.[1] However, in the 1930’s, people recognized this as a marketing and commercial gimmick and refused to participate in it, so that it largely died out by the 1940s. Yet other countries in Asia and South America had independently thought of the idea as well. And once I translated the day into Spanish, Día de la Amistad, I realized I was familiar with the holiday, because it’s celebrated in Central America. The year I lived in Nicaragua, on July 30, I was wished “Feliz Día de la Amistad” and I was even given a few cards, which reminded me the most of the Valentine cards that children exchange here in the U.S. A few years ago, the United Nations declared July 30 to be International Friendship Day. Many places celebrate it on July 30, like I did in Nicaragua; others move it to the first Sunday of August. A member of our church worship team noticed Friendship Sunday on their calendar, and we talked about celebrating it here in church, which is how we got to where we are today.
As you heard in our Scripture readings, friendship is a common theme in the bible, and there are many more passages I could have picked. I like the story of Job’s friends, because while most of the book of Job is speeches by these three friends, by Job, and by God, before his friends opened their big, fat mouths and said lots of unhelpful stuff, they sat with him. In silence. For seven days and seven nights. On the ground. And didn’t say a single word, “for they saw that his suffering was very great.”[2] These friends didn’t start by consoling him. They didn’t start by saying how unfair life is. They didn’t say a single word, but sat with Job in silence, and let him grieve. What a mark of friendship!  They know that “to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven,” to quote the refrain we sang earlier from The Byrds, who are actually quoting from Ecclesiastes 3. That litany includes “a time to keep silence and a time to speak,”[3] and that’s a mark of a good friend. To know when to speak, and when to keep silent takes a lot of discernment. And if you were to keep reading in Job, you’d see that the friends let Job break the silence first. Job speaks first, before any of his friends, and his friends just listen. They let him speak first, before they offer their own words of comfort and advice. They just sit with him. This one action they did better than any of their words, because once they speak, they encourage Job to curse God and they say he must have done something wrong to suffer so greatly. The problem is that Job knows that he did not deserve this ordeal, and he knows that cursing God is wrong. Job curses other things, to be sure, including the day of his birth, but he does not curse God, like his friends suggest. These friends’ words aren’t good, but this first action, sitting for a week on the ground in silence, speaks volumes.
In our Gospel this morning, we have another action taken by friends. Jesus is speaking here to his disciples, and he says, “The greatest love you can have for your friends is to give your life for them. And you are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because servants do not know what their master is doing. Instead, I call you friends, because I have told you everything I heard from my Father.”[4] “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”[5] Are the friends you invited to church this morning ones for whom you would lay down your life? Would you give your life for your friends here at church? For your family? For your neighbors? Would you spend a week in silence with them, letting them grieve, if that’s what they needed from you? That’s the first action Jesus describes, giving our life for our friends.
The second one he says is that we are his friends if we do what he tells us. Jesus is explaining the relationship here, and it’s not king and servants, it’s not teacher and disciples, although those are all true, but Jesus and his disciples have become friends. Isn’t it nice when a hierarchical relationship levels out? Teacher and student becomes friends. Boss and employee become friends. Pastor and parishioner become friends. It doesn’t always happen, and we still serve King Jesus, yet the king calls us his friends. We are his friends if we do what he tells us. It doesn’t quite sound like true friendship with that condition on there, does it? And yet some friendships are conditional, or only for a season. Think of the school friend you lost touch with when the schoolyear ended. Or a friend from church you never heard from again when you moved away. Some friendships are only for a season, and it’s sad when the friendship dies, yet it’s also natural. There are some friends who are only in our lives for a season.  If everything has a season, like we read in Ecclesiastes, then that includes friendships, too. Most friendships end when “people no longer have the opportunity to be together in the same [place],” like at church or school or work.[6]   A study was done in the Netherlands that found that after seven years, 70% of a person’s friends had changed.[7]  Most of our friendships are only for a season.
However, some friendships do stand the test of time and last the rest of our lives, and that’s the kind of friendship Jesus is hoping we will have with him. How does our friendship with Jesus last? If we do what he commands us. And if you remember from a couple weeks ago, what does Jesus command us? He says that the two greatest commandments are to love God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. That’s how we are Jesus’ friends, by loving God, loving ourselves, and loving our neighbors. Now there are some people who are only seasonal friends of Jesus. They pray only when they’re in trouble. They come to church only when they don’t have something better to do on Sunday.  Or only when they like the pastor.  Or perhaps they’re “Chreaster’s”; they only come on Christmas and Easter.  Jesus is looking for friends, though, who are there through good times and bad, there on holidays and on ordinary days. Apparently 70% of your friendships are seasonal; your friendship with Jesus, however, should be in the other 30%.
It was Ms. Edie’s idea to use the refrain from The Byrds’ “Turn, Turn, Turn” for the musical response to our responsive reading this morning. We read from chapter 4 of Ecclesiastes; that song from the 1960s is based on chapter 3, yet is still applicable to talking about friendship.  “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.” Then in chapter 4 we read this beautiful description of friendship. “Two are better than one because they have a good return for their hard work. If either should fall, one can pick up the other. But how miserable are those who fall and don’t have a companion to help them up!  Also, if two lie down together, they can stay warm. But how can anyone stay warm alone?  Also, one can be overpowered, but two together can put up resistance. A rope made of three cords is hard to break.” A lot of that is common sense, and yet on our own, we don’t put it all together and apply it to friendship. Yes, the thicker a rope is, the harder it is to break it. When my husband’s out of town, I add more blankets to the bed to keep warm. Yet I also remember a spring break mission trip in college when we spent one night just across the U.S. border in Ciudad Juarez. We each only had one thin blanket and it got really cold that night. I stayed warm by curling up in a ball and tucking my blanket in on all sides, but partway through the night another girl crawled into my bunk so that we could share warmth and have a double layer of blankets on top of us. There are times when you fall and you need help getting up, whether from a chair next to you or another person. And working with someone on a project to share the workload always makes it more bearable as you share the responsibility and then get to share in the enjoyment of a job well done, like Ms. Shirley and Ms. Edie with yesterday’s picnic. The two of them did the vast majority of the work to make it happen, because neither one wanted to let the other one do it alone. And it was a great success! We had more people come than we did on a couple weeks ago at church! The kids ran around and had fun before going home for naps. The adults got to sit and eat and chat and enjoy each other’s company. And it took teamwork to make it happen.
            The implication that was stated in that article about making lasting friendships was that “if a friendship is meaningful, it needs to be nurtured.”[8] If you want your friendship to stand the test of time, then you have to invest time in it. In order to have a friend who will come sit with you while you grieve, you have to develop and nurture that friendship. As I mentioned last week, simply having a relationship with Jesus is not enough; you have to nurture that relationship. Do things together. Talk together. And listen. Enjoy each other’s company. It’s part of the importance of date night for married couples, to make sure you continue to invest in and care for your relationship. No one will do it for you. Most of our friendships are seasonal, so make sure you put time and effort into the ones that you want to last. I trust that your friendship with God is one of them, so as we get closer to the fall, be on the lookout for new ways we’ll offer that opportunity here.



[2] Job 2:13
[3] Ecclesiastes 3:7b
[4] John 15:13-15, GNB
[5] John 15:13, NRSV
[7] Ibid., I couldn’t find the original study; just lots of articles citing the same study by Gerald Mollenhorst
[8] Ibid.

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