2/19/67

Scripture: John 15: 12-17.

The title of this sermon is a few words from one of the sayings of Jesus, when he said: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” In his next statement, he continues: “-- I have called you friends.” So I suggest that we think together a bit this morning about friendship.

I was interested, while reading what William Hudnut had written on the theme, in his reference to an article which appeared in the magazine “Nation’s Business” as few years ago. The article expressed a viewpoint with which Hudnut disagreed. The writer of the article had urged business executives to keep a sharp watch over any emerging patterns of friendship in their offices. It was argued that excessive friendship would impair business efficiency. The author seemed to argue that any up-and-coming manager should avoid much in the way of personal commitments or loyalties or friendships, lest these should become an embarrassment to one’s efficiency. How much this means to a successful business career I do not know. But, from the standpoint of a minister who is much more concerned in people themselves than in the manipulation of people, I join Hudnut in taking issue with the apparent viewpoint of that article. And I hope that there are business people here today who regard loyal friendships as important and as significant to living as any commercial advantage. I hope it is not true that “Friendship Can Ruin Your Business.”

Indeed, I have difficulty in understanding how the conduct of business or manufacturing, the practice of a profession such as law or medicine, the exercise of the ministry or of classroom teaching, or the conduct of public office, can be accomplished without friends. How can one be a person if starved for friendship?

It seems to me, from a Christian viewpoint, that a religious interpretation of life is tremendously concerned with the development of interpersonal relationships having their roots in the love of God. This kind of meaning is basic to living. And friendship, one of the graces given by the love of God, is an indispensable ingredient to any abundant life. Without friendship, life is seriously incomplete.

A student of a few years ago, about to be graduated from college, remarked to his brother that he thought it possible that the most durable prize of his four years in that school was a few good friends whom he had found, and who had found him. A true friend is one of the rarest and most priceless treasures with which anyone’s life can be endowed. And the loss of a true friend is one of the severest tragedies which can afflict the life of a person.

Without friendship, life can hardly be enjoyed, strong Christian character cannot be developed, effective religious witness can not be practiced, meaningful personal relationships can not be established. It takes friendship to build a healthy church; it takes friendship to know God. It took friendship to fulfill Jesus’ mission, and it takes friendship to bring about any discipleship in his name.

But what is friendship? We understand what it is not. Surely it is not casual acquaintanceship. Nor is it simply getting acquainted with a lot of people. Ralph Waldo Emerson knew that the purpose of friendship is to “aid and comfort through all the relationships and passages of life and death.”

(1) Real friendship is something spiritual. We learned in our reading of the Old Testament, about David and Jonathan --- that they were good friends because the soul of one was knit with the soul of the other. Each loved the other as himself. Friendship is the knitting together of two such lives. Two friends enjoy a kinship of spirit that undergirds the surface differences which could divide them.

(2) Friendship is loyalty. One of the sayings of the Proverbs is that “a friend loveth at all times.” [Proverbs 17: 17]. And, “There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” [Proverbs 18: 24]. A true friend does not abandon you when you get transferred or move away or develop some differences of opinion. He knows you well enough to recognize some of your mistakes and shortcomings --- and likes you anyway!

(3) Friendship is sincerity, the ability to “speak the truth in love,” as the Bible says, with all hypocrisy abandoned, and all pretense dropped. Emerson was right again when he wrote: “A friend is a person with whom I can be sincere.” Mutual respect and confidence, even through some disagreements, is the seedbed out of which sincerity can grow.

(4) Friendship is also tenderness --- not just “softness,” but the tendering of one’s self to another, sharing his joys and sorrows, carrying his burdens with him, bearing with him patiently, getting concerned with the life of another. It is unselfishness rather than self-seeking.

The relation between a loving husband and wife, when at its best, is a “friendly” one in this sense --- not so much “what can I get out of this nice, convenient arrangement” but “what can I share with my beloved.” When a man says, “my wife is my best friend” the climate of that home is likely a good one. When you see a really happy marriage, it is most likely that you see two good friends. It makes a good marriage. Without it, a home heads for trouble. Friendship makes human relationships enjoyable and durable.

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This kind of relationship characterized Jesus and his disciples. On the last night of his mortal life, Jesus characterized the group at supper with him in an upper room as “friends.” “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing,” he said, “but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” He must have been saying that there is a barrier to complete understanding between slave, or servant, and master preventing them from really knowing or sharing with each other. But between friends there is openness, full confidence. “I have called you friends.”

Jesus Christ calls us his friends. His same spirit speaks that word to us this morning. It may be both a compliment and a rebuke. We know that there are times when we do not act or speak or even think as though we were really friends of Christ. But that is what he calls us, and what he expects of us. His spirit offers a friendly relationship with God the Father -- one of trust, honesty, loyalty and intimate, confident experience. And that is the root of all friendship.

Do you dare to think of God as your friend? True, we had better think of God as judge in terrible truth. The Jewish theologian, Martin Buber, has said that, before we can know God as our friend, we must know him as our enemy, feeling His judgment upon our sin. Nevertheless, the forgiveness of a judgmental God is a route toward His friendship. If more people considered God as their friend they could know Him as the Father of Jesus’ experience.

God would have more opportunity to transform us into disciples, channeling His power into life, and changing the world for Him, if we considered Him our friend. To cultivate a more personal relationship with Him through meditation and prayer, to talk things over with Him with a receptive, “listening” attitude, to take problems and needs to God as the most understanding friend --- this could be the most highly fulfilled kind of living.

Life can be more “live” if we seek the spirit of Christ as friend, if we habitually ask his spirit: “What will you have me do this day?” and conscientiously try to move and speak by his standards. This way, loneliness, anxiety and despair can be overcome. And if we understand, and receive Christ as friend, we might hear him say “be friends also among yourselves.” For as surely as he expected this among his first disciples, he expects it among his followers of today.

Friendship should characterize our community. It must characterize this church -- any church. In his book, The Art of Living Today, Douglas Horton has written, “The church --- is built upon friendship. It believes that God is the friend of all men. It is a powerhouse of friendship; it will extend the hand of friendship to you and give you a chance to extend yours to others.”

And any community of believers that tries to be friendly is a church that is making some effort to conform itself to the will of Christ. In a truly genuine Christian church, there is love of the members for one another; there is eagerness to meet strangers and overcome strangeness as if those who have not yet become acquainted are friends not heretofore met! Can we be more interested in building people up than in tearing them down? Can our criticisms be positive and appreciative? Can we lift each other’s aching hearts, and rejoice in each other’s joys? Shall we plead for tolerance and kindness? -- for tenderness and good will?

Let the word of Christ be written over the doors of our being: “You are my friends if you do what I have commanded you --- this I command you, to love one another.” It has been observed that the Greek word for “love” as used in John’s gospel can be translated by variations on the word “friend.” The Christian person’s obligation to love one’s neighbor is really an obligation to befriend the neighbor for the sake of Christ’s spirit.

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Now, making friends is a year-round concern. But the concern has a particular point this week in that the coming week is known, all over the nation, as Brotherhood Week. We have marked it well in this community for many years; and we shall do so again this year. On Tuesday evening, there will be a South Wood County Brotherhood Dinner at the Elks Club, open to all of us for the price of a dinner plate. Following the 6:30 dinner, there will be a program at 7:30 at which Bishop Wilde is to speak. And the whole affair is a reminder of the way in which our democracy should work in friendly fellowship between those of differing religious traditions, or other forms of difference. And so we may appropriately extend our thoughts on friendship to our friendship as people of differing approach to the Fatherhood of God and the fellowship of people.

Brotherhood Week is, as you may know, sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews. There is never-ending need for friendly understanding between Protestants, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox folk, Jews, and those of still other religious faith. As a people, we have made some progress in the matter of tolerance between our several religious preferences. But much more than tolerance is needed. What we must have is more friendly understanding. We need this understanding, not because we don’t care any longer about our differences, but because we do care.

Judaism needs to understand Christianity not only in terms of bitterness over shameful persecution in history, but in terms of Christian goodwill as well. During the horror of Nazi genocide during World War II there was not only a bitterly regretted neglect of some parts of the church to get anything done to prevent the tragedy, but there was also the record of Dutch Remonstrant churches and French Protestant groups who risked life, and everything, to help Jewish folk escape the holocaust. Certainly, Christianity needs to understand, not merely tolerate, Judaism. This means more than better performance in the treatment of Jews. It means an active acquaintance with a lot of Christianity’s own heritage! For whenever the Christian faith loses touch with Judaism, it loses touch with part of itself.

We Protestants like to think of our faith as Bible-centered, and we tend to think of the Bible as a Christian book, or library of books. We ought not, so easily, to forget that the Old Testament, which is the more voluminous part of the Bible, is the record of the Hebrew faith and people. The Old Testament teachings and prophecies and laws were thoroughly familiar parts of Jesus’ life and experience and teachings. He was born into a Palestinian home, raised in the Jewish environment, schooled in the Hebrew scripture. He was familiar with the synagogue; was a seeker in the temple at Jerusalem. He became critical of the moral and spiritual gaps between precept and performance in the church of his day, and finally convinced some of his Jewish friends, who became his disciples, that he was the Messiah so long expected by the scholars. His teaching was for Jewish listeners, but also for those who had no special background in the Jewish faith, and for us gentiles as well.

Whenever, in Christian history, Christians have neglected their ties with the ancient people of God, they have been impoverished in both their faith and in their understanding of Christianity itself. Protestant Christianity needs to be more profound than a shallow notion, glibly expressed, about “the dear Lord.” It needs to include the profound thought of the Hebrew scriptures, and the Jewish tradition, that Jehovah is God both of justice and of mercy, and that these are the meaning of His love. It is clear, or ought to be clear, that our Christianity is no “private religion,” but that the man of God must belong to the people of God. Not the individual in isolation, but man with his fellowmen, is the object of God’s justice and mercy. When Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, stops hearing and understanding this message from Judaism, it becomes unfaithful to itself. To be Christian, says Dr. Jeroslav Pelikan, Christianity must pay deep attention to the Hebrew Scriptures and to the community of people in which those Scriptures are enshrined. We Christians must make a determined, continuing effort, not only to tolerate, but to understand Jewish folk as people, and the religion which has shaped them and us.

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To be Christian and Protestant, our kind of Christianity must also pay some deeper attention to the Roman Catholic community. For we can not fully understand ourselves without understanding Roman Catholicism. Since the Vatican Council, the possibility of objective conversation, as friends, has opened wider than for previous centuries. This does not mean that we suddenly find ourselves the same, though we do find some areas of agreement -- perhaps more than both Catholics and Protestants had suspected. It does mean the opportunity for far better understanding of each other; for correcting some of the foolish notions that have prejudiced our dealing with one another; and for finding friendships that may be formed in full recognition of differences as well as agreements.

Tolerance is necessary in our time. But it is not enough. There must be a determined effort to advance beyond tolerance to an understanding that clarifies both our similarities and our differences. A mere indifference to religious differences is a loss rather than a gain among friends. Those who blithely assume that all religions are basically the same are too simple to build strong character or a strong society.

We need some “map-making” that will accurately locate the various points in our religious terrain and that of others. We do well not to allow our right of personal choice to be foreclosed, but to make that choice intelligently possible.

To get beyond minimal tolerance we must (1) acquire information about religions other than our own. We must become well enough informed about our own to impart information to others. So much of what we have thought we knew about other traditions than our own simply is not so. Let us be willing to find out what is so.

(2) And then let information be illumined by insight. Probably no outsider can comprehend the full scope of any religious movement. Who of us Protestants can fully comprehend Catholic experience, or vice versa? Which Christian fully comprehends what it means to be a real Jew, or vice versa? But we can try; and we can covet the reward of better understanding.

(3) We can even practice the art of candid, honest criticism, for our friendship demands that kind of honest searching.

(4) And all of this, to become a benefit to our common life, must be done in the spirit of goodwill derived not from indifference but in the faith that God is the final Friend in whom we find our friendship and the ways of living together with all of His children.

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Brotherhood can be advanced from passing and temporary or occasional sentimentality to a steady continuing reality by better, more understanding friendship.

“You are my friends,” said the Prince of understanding --- “this I command you, to love one another.” So be it then. Who has ears to hear, and a mind to understand, and a spirit to act, let him hear and know and be a friend.

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, February 19, 1967.

Also at Waioli Hui’ia Church, March 10, 1974.

Also at Moravian Church, Wisconsin Rapids, August 25, 1974

And at Moravian Church, Rudolph, August 25, 1974.