{"id":129,"date":"2010-06-07T06:07:06","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T11:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/?p=129"},"modified":"2010-06-07T06:07:06","modified_gmt":"2010-06-07T11:07:06","slug":"sermon-reflections-of-divinity-june-6-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/2010\/06\/07\/sermon-reflections-of-divinity-june-6-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Sermon: Reflections of Divinity June 6, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texts:\u00a0 Proverbs 17:17; Ecclesiastes 4:9-12; John 15:12-17; I John 4:7-8, 11-12<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the season of graduation ceremonies, of commencement exercises in which young people, in particular, but sometimes an older person or two as well, will take leave of a time and place in their lives and begin to move onward. \u00a0\u00a0It is a time, too, for weddings, and anniversaries in which we celebrate the marvelous ways in which people join their lives together. \u00a0Summertime may also be the season for reunions of various\u00a0sorts.\u00a0 \u00a0As you know, this past weekend was the 50th<\/sup> anniversary and reunion of our Lafayette High School class of 1960.\u00a0\u00a0 All of these traditional June events got me thinking about friendship, and the critical spiritual role that friends play in our lives.<\/p>\n

The truth is, that one can\u2019t become fully actualized as a human being alone.\u00a0 \u201cThe glory of God,\u201d the old church patriarch Irenaeus once said, \u201cis a human being fully alive.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0None of us, it turns out, can do it \u201cour way\u201d as Frank Sinatra sang, ALL BY OURSELVES.\u00a0 None of us\u00a0 is Horatio Alger, self-made.\u00a0 One of the wonderful things about reunions\u2014be they family occasions meant to be just for fun, or the more serious moments when families and friends gather around at a time of a death to a dear one, or to celebrate a marriage\u2014is how much they remind us that we are not who we are because of our singular efforts on our own behalf.\u00a0 Hundreds of people\u2014teachers, parents, relatives, neighbors, business associates, friends\u2014contribute in an on-going fashion to making us who we are at any given moment.<\/p>\n

Socrates taught that the \u201cunexamined life is not worth living\u201d, and the point this morning is that we need our friends to expand our understandings of our lives and how we fit into the world, not to mention their help in understanding this ambiguous and complex world that is ours in which to live.<\/p>\n

According to a study documented in the June 2006 issue of the journal American Sociological Review<\/em><\/a>, Americans are thought to be suffering a loss in the quality and quantity of close friendships since at least 1985. The study states 25% of Americans have no close confidants, and the average total number of confidants per citizen has dropped from four to two.\u00a0 According to the study:<\/p>\n

Americans’ dependence on family as a safety net went up from 57% to 80%;<\/p>\n

Research has found a link between fewer friendships (especially in quality) and psychological and physiological regression.\u00a0 Researchers have also discovered that friends work as a kind of \u201cbehavioral vaccine\u201d that protects physical and emotional health.<\/p>\n

Personally, I suspect that a number of us can also testify how friendships that turn poisonous, for some reason or other\u2014usually caused by envy, jealousy, insecurities\u2014can become agents causing not only unhappiness, but physical and emotional illnesses as well.<\/p>\n

Do you remember the great African-American poet James Weldon Johnson\u2019s poem, \u201cThe Creation\u201d? <\/em><\/p>\n

And God stepped out on space,<\/em><\/p>\n

And he looked around and said:<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m lonely–<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ll make me a world.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

And far as the eye of God could see<\/em><\/p>\n

Darkness covered everything,<\/em><\/p>\n

Blacker than a hundred midnights<\/em><\/p>\n

Down in a cypress swamp.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Then God smiled,<\/em><\/p>\n

And the light broke,<\/em><\/p>\n

And the darkness rolled up on one side,<\/em><\/p>\n

And the light stood shining on the other,<\/em><\/p>\n

And God said: That’s good!<\/em><\/p>\n

The poem goes on to describe the various acts of creation, until we get to these verses:<\/em><\/p>\n

Then God walked around,<\/em><\/p>\n

And God looked around<\/em><\/p>\n

On all that he had made.<\/em><\/p>\n

He looked at his sun, <\/em><\/p>\n

And he looked at his moon,<\/em><\/p>\n

And he looked at his little stars;<\/em><\/p>\n

He looked on his world<\/em><\/p>\n

With all its living things,<\/em><\/p>\n

And God said: I’m lonely still.<\/em><\/p>\n

[James Weldon Johnson, God\u2019s Trombones, \u201cThe Creation\u201d]<\/em><\/p>\n

It occurred to me as I was thinking this week about friendship and friends that loneliness<\/strong> might just be the creative spark that motivates and generates what was no-thing, into matter, into material reality.\u00a0 That\u2019s why James Weldon Johnson\u2019s great poem came to mind.\u00a0\u00a0 Even if we are never self-made, we are, I think, as human beings, like our creator in that we are intrinsically lonely creatures.\u00a0 No one can get inside the frame of our being to see events and people and experiences quite the same way that we do, and we often do not have the words to even express what we feel.\u00a0 But with friends, companions, (a word, by the way, that means those with whom we break bread), our sense of isolation is diminished, and our world is expanded.<\/p>\n

The Bible knows of three kinds of love:\u00a0 there is EROS, erotic love in which the wonderful coupling of bodies gives a sense of complete union between persons.\u00a0 There is PHILIA:\u00a0 which is the love that we share as friends; hence the name of the Quaker city of Pennsylvania, is Philadelphia:\u00a0 the city of brotherly love.\u00a0 Philia is characterized by empathy, caring, affection, and appreciation or respect for the uniqueness of another person. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And finally, there is AGAPE\u2014that love that the hymnist said was immortal, forever full, forever flowing free.\u00a0 It is Agape love that\u00a0 is willing to lay down its life for the beloved:\u00a0 Agape is pure, without self-interest, but always with the interest of the beloved as its primary purpose.\u00a0 Agape love is the kind of love that Jesus taught\u00a0 that God has for all persons.<\/p>\n

In the passages from John and First John we learn something about the characteristics of Philia and Agape friendship:\u00a0 first, it rejoices in the very existence<\/span> of the other, desiring that the beloved be, rather than not be; it is the longing for the presence of the beloved when she is absent; it is happiness in the thought of him; it is profound satisfaction over everything that makes the beloved, the friend, great and good.<\/p>\n

Second, it is marked by the trait of gratitude<\/span>\u2014a kind of thankfulness for the existence of the other and a \u201chappy acceptance of everything that he or she gives without the jealous feeling that the self ought to be able to do as much.\u00a0 Richard Niebuhr says of this characteristic that \u201cit is a gratitude that does not seek equality; it is wonder over the other\u2019s gift of themselves in companionship.\u201d<\/em> [Niebuhr, H. Richard. \u00a0The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry. <\/em>New York:\u00a0 Harper & Brothers, 1956, p.35]<\/p>\n

Third, friendship in these forms of love is marked also by reverence<\/span> that does not seek to absorb the other, or to dominate, or to subsume into the life of the other, making the friend into a replica of the self.\u00a0 It keeps its distance and gives thanks for the otherness of the friend.<\/p>\n

Finally, such friendship is characterized by loyalty<\/span> and persistence in the relationship despite time, distance, and other obstacles that may arise.\u00a0 [Marks of love taken from the writing of H. Richard Niebuhr, Op. Cit., pp. 34-35]<\/p>\n

All of us would like such friendships.\u00a0 We hunger for them, which may be the most compelling evidence there is that we were made for such holy relationships and for the transcendent relationship with the lonely God.\u00a0\u00a0 Another preacher once wrote, in a wedding homily, that couples reflect the divine image, and I would add that friends, reflect the divine image created in us more fully than we can as separate creatures.\u00a0\u00a0 If we can sum up the Christian story in a few words, I think we might call it the story of God\u2019s self-giving efforts, God\u2019s agape love to make friends with each of us and all of us.<\/p>\n

Some of our friends will continue from childhood until the day we die. We will feel closer intimacy with people we know, who we might call acquaintances, in varying degrees over time.\u00a0 At our reunion last night, we all felt very close.\u00a0 But today people will go back home, to their routines, and that intimacy and its opportunities will diminish. \u00a0We will be more acquaintances who shared a common experience, than true friends.\u00a0\u00a0 No doubt, however, some real friendships will have blossomed again after such an event.\u00a0\u00a0 For example, I have realized for some time what I did not understand as a high school student, that our one lone African-American classmate was a person of enormous courage.\u00a0 She integrated our school, our class, all by herself.\u00a0 We talked a bit more intensely at the reunion, and because she lives here in town, I now want to do more to deepen this relationship.\u00a0 I want to be friends with someone like that.<\/p>\n

Sometimes friends turn on us, and we feel a need to create a new web of friends.\u00a0 My young great nephew graduated from Henry Clay on Friday.\u00a0 I encouraged him in the words I wrote in the front of Bill Coffin\u2019s book, Credo<\/em>, \u00a0that as he now begins \u00a0this new chapter in his life, to try to get acquainted with someone new, every day, as the way to live a gifted and rich life, and that it would be especially beneficial to try to make friends with persons whose life trajectory ordinarily would be different from his own, who would be very different from him.\u00a0 Some of our best and most lasting friends are those whom we met in a moment of chance coupled with a little initiative to reach out with warmth and openness to receive their gifts to us.<\/p>\n

Marianne Williamson has written a truth for us in this season of Pentecost, of the Holy Spirit:\u00a0 She says \u201cRelationships are the Holy Spirit\u2019s laboratories in which the Spirit brings together people who have the maximal opportunity for mutual growth.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 We can\u2019t grow without friends, and friends who are just like us won\u2019t provoke much growth.<\/p>\n

It seems there was once a teacher who was revered by the people as a person of God.\u00a0 Not a day went by when a crowd of people wasn\u2019t asking for advice, or healing, or a blessing.\u00a0 There was, however, a disagreeable fellow in the community who never missed a chance to contradict the teacher, observing weaknesses, and poking fun.\u00a0 One day the contrary fellow fell ill and died.\u00a0 Everyone heaved a sigh of relief, except the teacher who was plunged into deep grief.\u00a0 When asked about his grief, he replied:\u00a0 \u201cI was grieving for myself.\u00a0 That man was the only friend I had.\u00a0 Here I am surrounded by people who revere me.\u00a0 He was the only one who challenged me.\u00a0 I fear that with him gone, I shall stop growing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And one last story about friends:\u00a0 There once was a woman who longed to find out what heaven is like.\u00a0 She prayed constantly, \u201cO God, grant me in this life a vision of paradise.\u201d\u00a0 This went on for years until one night she had a dream.\u00a0 An angel came to her and led her to heaven, and as they walked down a street in paradise, they came to an ordinary looking house.\u00a0 The angel told her:\u00a0 \u201cGo inside, and look.\u201d\u00a0 So the woman walked in the house and found a person preparing supper, another reading the newspaper; another ironing the clothes, and children doing their homework and playing with toys.\u00a0 She was disappointed and returned to the angel on the street:\u00a0 \u201cIs this all there is to heaven?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

The angel replied, \u201cThose people you saw in that house are not in paradise, paradise is in them.\u201d \u00a0 The glory of God is a human being fully alive! \u00a0So may we each discover this truth for our own lives.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

\"Share<\/a>Share on Facebook<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texts:\u00a0 Proverbs 17:17; Ecclesiastes 4:9-12; John 15:12-17; I John 4:7-8, 11-12 This is the season of graduation ceremonies, of commencement exercises in which young people, in particular, but sometimes an older person or two as well, will take leave of<\/p>\n

\"Share<\/a>Share on Facebook<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}