A Theology of Friendship Sermon July 31, 2011

Rev. Roger Butts

A Theology of Friendship

July 31, 2011

High Plains Church, Colorado Springs

hpcuu.org

READING NUMBER 1

From the gospel of John. John 15: 12-17

READING NUMBER 2

In April of 1996 the international press carried the news of the death, at age seventy-five, of Christopher Robin Milne, immortalized in a book by his father, A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, as Christopher Robin.

I share it with you. Below that I share some of my own thoughts.

*****

Christopher Robin

by Czeslaw Milosz

I must think suddenly of matters too difficult for a bear of little brain. I have never asked myself what lies beyond the place where we live, I and Rabbit, Piglet and Eeyore, with our friend Christopher Robin. That is, we continued to live here, and nothing changed, and I just ate my little something. Only Christopher Robin left for a moment.

Owl says that immediately beyond our garden Time begins, and that it is an awfully deep well. If you fall in it, you go down and down, very quickly, and no one knows what happens to you next. I was a bit worried about Christopher Robin falling in, but he came back and then I asked him about the well. “Old bear,” he answered. “I was in it and I was falling and I wore trousers down to the ground, I had a grey beard, and then I died. It was probably just a dream, it was quite unreal. The only real thing was you, old bear, and our shared fun. Now I won’t go anywhere, even if I’m called in for an afternoon snack.”

SERMON

So today’s sermon

is inspired by Amanda Udis Kessler’s reflection

a few weeks ago for pride sunday

in which she asserted that the

kingdom of god is queer.

A wonderful image.

Her sermon brought to mind

the great queer theologian Mary Hunt

and her insistence that friendship

is the model of what the

life of the spirit is all about.

Hunt says that "friendship is available to everyone."

And that friendship "by its nature,

assumes that persons live in relationships

and that relationships are good." (7)

Friendship has the potential to alleviate social ills,

because it can link persons who are "structural enemies,"

people in different racial and ethnic groups.

And it then motivates friends to work

"to change the social structures

because of their commitments to one another." (92)

When a friendship works, she says,

people know.

"It generates something new for both the persons

and for the larger community of which they are a part.

Generativity is the hallmark of friendship."

True friendship is creative.

So that is where we start off today. That is our launching pad.

And I want to add to this idea

by reflecting on

three qualities of friendship

that I believe mirror the life of the spirit.

If the question is: How is friendship like the life of the spirit?

I want to answer that it involves abandonment, pure, joyful abandonment.

I want to answer that it involves accompaniment.

And that it involves awakening.

ABANDONMENT

I want you to remember a time,

just for a moment,

when you

were in the presence

of a dear friend and you

laughed,

giddily, like a school girl,

with abandonment and pure joy

Abandonment--not friends are leaving me,

but abandonment as in I am just laughing my head off

and abandoning any sense of control, any sense of decorum.

Pure ecstasy. Wild abandon.

I want you to remember what that felt like,

deep down in your bones.

Because this morning I am going to say that the feeling you just recalled--

that abandonment, that pure joy,

that feeling of being completely and utterly your self,

in other words that feeling of being free--

captures the essence of my topic this morning.

How is friendship like the life of the spirit?

It involves abandonment.

How is the kingdom of God like deep friendship?

It is full of people who are able to engage in abandonment.

---

Abandonment:

Consider these words

from an eastern tradition...

without profound

commitment, discipline, intelligence, courage,

and a sense of wild,

foolhardy, fearless abandon.

Why is that? And why foolhardy abandon?

Foolhardy because the path is for gamblers.

There is a beautiful

Rumi poem which speaks to this

from the Sufi tradition.

"Love is reckless; not reason.

Reason seeks a profit. Love comes on

strong, consuming herself unabashed.

Yet in the midst of suffering

love proceeds like a millstone, hard

surfaced and straight forward.

Having died to self interest,

she risks everything and asks for

nothing.

Love gambles away every gift God bestows.

Without cause God gave us Being;

without cause give it back again.

Gambling yourself away is beyond any religion.

Religion seeks grace and favor,

but those who gamble these away are

Gods favorites,

for they neither put God to the test

nor knock at the

door of gain and loss"

The life of the spirit takes the jump

into crazy wisdom

by eliminating even God

from the equation,

leaving only the mystery

with no ultimate attempt

to define it.

This is a path for those whose hearts

are so wild that they are ready

to throw it all away on a hunch,

for an intuition.

ACCOMPANIMENT

I want you to remember now

a moment

when you were comforted by a friend.

When you were able to cry in the presence of a friend.

I want you to remember now

a time

when you were able to say

I am not in control right now.

I am vulnerable.

I am lost.

I am confused.

And the friend

rather than judging you

rather than fixing you

rather than correcting you

simply sat there and

let you be.

Let you be just who you are.

Can you remember such a moment?

I want you to remember that moment

because that feeling

of being held

embraced

in the midst of your sadness

and brokenness

and still accepted

that is what we’re

talking about when

we talk about the theology

of friendship.

So this accompaniment is at the heart

of the story we heard

this morning from the gospel of john

--------

I want to turn

for a moment to that reading

we enjoyed a bit earlier

from the gospel of John.

In this part of the story,

Jesus is preparing

his disciples for his death.

Jesus knows he is not long for this world.

And what does he tell

his beloved disciples?
He says: you were once students,

you were once disciples,

now you are friends.

---

I worked for a professor

for a time

whose whole work

was to take this passage

and to show how Jesus in this passage

embodies the feminine image of the divine,

Wisdom,

and to show how jesus as this feminine wisdom

was asking the disciples

to consider themselves appointed

to a life of spreading the kindness,

the friendship,

the compassion

that Jesus introduced

and lived out

as part of this community.

That their whole work

was to befriend others

as Jesus had befriended them

in love and kindness.

For my professor, Sharon Ringe,

who wrote this book Wisdom’s Friends,

she sees in Jesus the embodiment

the enfleshment

of holy wisdom

about whom it is said:

while remaining in herself,

she renews all things,

in every generation

she passes into holy souls

and makes them friends

of God and of prophets.

Jesus embodies holy wisdom

not by any kind of supernatural feats

but by accompaniment

by literally encamping

among the disciples,

by befriending them

without regard to status

or standing,

eating with them,

praying with them,

laughing and talking with them,

being present with the sick

and the marginalized,

standing up to the ridiculous

moral guardians of the status quo.

But mostly by eating together,

walking together,

talking together,

abiding with one another.

And when the time comes

for Jesus to say his goodbyes

he says to them

I have taught you everything I know,

it is up to you now.

They must have been close to demoralized.

They must have been terribly distraught.

And in that moment, Jesus turns his talk

not to triumph

but rather the simple

and enduring symbol

of friendship.

Friendship...

I want you to remember that moment

because that feeling

of being held

embraced

in the midst of your sadness

and brokenness

and still accepted

that is what we’re

talking about when

we talk about the theology

of friendship.

----

So we’ve thought about friends

with whom we’ve laughed,

with whom we can be

so authentically ourselves,

that we truly know

what abandonment is

A theology of friendship

involves that kind of abandonment.

is like that kind of wild abandonment.

Jesus was asked often

what is the kingdom of god like?

And there are all kinds of answers.

But for me when I see Jesus

talking about friendship at the moment

of his imminent departure,

I see him talking about

the kingdom of god being as with friends

the abandonment of the self,

the authentic laughter

and joy and silliness

that looks like a giving up

of control, of rationality

and being so free that

we can laugh with one another

in total abandonment.

This is how I understand

that passage.

pause pause pause

And we’ve thought about our friends

who sat with us in our tears,

just letting us cry.

And they didn’t go anywhere,

they just sat with us.

A theology of friendship

involves that kind of accompaniment.

Jesus taught his disciples

about friendship

in their moment of despair

and sadness

as the reality of their situation

hit home.

“Farewell, I’m bound to leave you,”

Jesus says.

But in my departing,

friendship endures.

The kingdom of God

is like that accompaniment,

it is friends making dinner for each other

and walking down the path together.

Now let us turn our attention to the last piece AWAKENING

AWAKENING

And so now i want you

to remember a time

when a good friend,

a true friend,

called you out,

challenged you to be

better than you could imagine.

Maybe you were being stubborn,

or blinded by bias,

or foolishness,

or maybe you just had a blindside.

And a friend,

said, Look I just want to sit down and talk about this.

You can do better than this.

A good friend, sometimes,

one writer says,

is a good harasser.

Someone who birddogs you

until you see the truth of the matter,

on your own, and in your own way and on your own schedule.

But someone who accepts you

and loves you

just as you are

AND at the same time

loves you enough to say

have you considered this other alternative,

this other way of looking at this situation?

Who is courageous enough to hold up a mirror to you

and say look, this is what i’m seeing.

---

I am thinking of my friend Tricia now.

I don’t know who you are thinking of

but I’ve known my friend Tric

for 30 years

and her husband Jon

even longer.

I was there when she got married

she was there when I got married

we’ve done that thing

that you do in your early-20s

when you get a beach house

and the whole weekend

you can’t touch the lineoleum flooring

in the kitchen

so all weekend if you want to get a beer

you have to crawl on the counters.

We’ve laughed and walked and been stupid together.

Abandonment.

When she got cancer I accompanied her.

Thick and thin. Ups and downs.

If I get off course,

she’s not going to just let it go.

She has permission to call me out.

To remind me of my best self

and to challenge me to return,

return, return, return.

And if I try to shortcut it,

if i try to justify

or explain it away,

she can look at me

and say:

I knew you

when you were a smelly

adolescent

don’t try that with me.

I’ve known you

at your best

and at your worst.

I know you.

You are better than this.

Awakening in me the slumbering

part that is my best self.

President Kennedy

used to tell this story.

It involved a group of kids

in Ireland, best friends,

and they’d run around

all day and set out on a course

for the day

and if they’d come across

a wall in the Irish countryside

that seemed too tall

too daunting

they’d all throw their hats over the wall

and that way they’d have to get over the wall

and they’d have to do it together.

Awakening in each other the possibilities.

A theology of friendship is about calling

each other to our best selves.

It is about being known and knowing

another in such a way that we call

forth the best in one another,

climbing over walls that we might

never try otherwise.

Awakening.

Implications for the church.

1. Let us provide multiple opportunities for spiritual practices which allow all of us to experience the transcendent reality in ways that encourages us to pursue wild abandonment.

2. Let us never forget the obligation to become better and better care-givers and care-receivers.

3. Let us always be aware of the crucial power of the church to call out each one of us to our deepest calling, our deepest aspirations.