Holger’s weblog

Friendship

May 28th, 2006

The following text is the translation of the outline for a message that I preached in the “Service on Sunday” at my church last night (yeah, it was a Saturday, I know… we had to change the date). I just felt that maybe a few people out there might want to read this, feel free to comment!

I was going to continue my series on the attributes of God today, but I won’t. Sometimes God puts more important things on our hearts, it’s almost like in real life . A few months ago I wouldn’t have thought that I would be speaking about tonight’s topic so soon, it was an area of my life that I felt was in some kind of disorder and caused me a few headaches and general unhappines. But in the last few months a lot has changed, I have gained a new perspective and changed priorities and although I cannot say I’m quite there yet, at least it seems that the direction is right. God has really been at work in this and I think that for some people here tonight it will be helpful to hear what I have learned in this process.

Maybe I should stop speaking like an enigma and tell you what tonight’s topic actually is. This evening is about friendship. It’s actually a topic that’s easy to misunderstand, let’s just have a quick look at the text for tonight, we find it in 1 Samuel 18, verses 1 to 3. Just quickly the background of this story. David has been anointed by Samuel to be the future king of Israel because of Saul’s sin. Saul doesn’t know about this yet, but David comes to his court after the defeat of Goliath, where he became a national hero. It’s at this court that David meets Jonathan, Saul’s son. Here’s what the Bible tells us about this: “And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And Saul took him that day, and would let him go no more home to his father’s house. Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul”. Interesting… does anyone think there was something weird going on between David and Jonathan? If you think it’s ridiculous to think of them as homosexuals or something like that, then I’m happy for you because I think so, too – but I’ve heard people say that about them. And even though I think that’s totally off the mark, I can understand where they are coming from. I mean, if you look at those words, they describe an intimacy between the two that is rather unusual. In the context of our society, where same sex relationships are nothing unusual, our minds can be influenced by the world and we may be tempted to interpret a relationship like theirs in a sexual way. Let me tell you that in the context of Old Testament society, that was not an issue. Besides, David is not exactly suspect of not being interested in women… so there has to be something else behind this.

Two things in this short text really speak to me. The first thing is this unusual intimacy between the two friends, the other is how they get to know each other. Let’s start with the second one. That’s really interesting – there’s nothing about David and Jonathan becoming friends. David’s part in this is a rather passive one. Jonathan is the one who starts to love David and whose soul is knit with the sould of David. David doesn’t actually do anything at first. If you read on for a few chapters (and reading the Bible is never wrong, so I’m not going to give you any pointers, just start where I started and read as long as you like), you’ll see that David never really loses that passive role in their relationship. Jonathan is the one who risks his life for David, who turns against his father and tells David about his plans to kill him and so on. David is the one who wins a friend (that’s actually the title of this paragraph in my translation: David wins Jonathan as a friend) – but Jonathan plays the active part. When I heard this in a sermon some months ago, I started to think about how that works in my friendships. And I realised that I’m more of a Jonathan type of guy. Most of my really important friendships (and I’ll go into a bit more detail later) started because I began to love someone – more often than not for no obvious reason. It wasn’t like they were the obvious choices. But when I started to love them, with that came a desire and a commitment to be there for them. And sometimes they didn’t even want that… or at least they saw no necessity. That confused me for a moment, but it didn’t stop me. I knew, and that’s why I’m sure that God’s hand was clearly in this, that my feelings weren’t wrong. So far I can claim a 100% success rate.

What’s important to me, and that’s why I’m talking about this today, is that for Jonathan, this wasn’t at all about himself. When we think about friendships today, one of the questions we often ask is “what’s in it for me?”. I can’t deny that I have asked that question far too often and far too often I have failed when I made this the foundation of my actions – I told you in the beginning that this is an area of my life where I’ve been unhappy for a long time. We often pick our friends because they are popular, part of the “in crowd”, have the right amount of money, wear the right kind of clothes. I think that when we look for friendship, we have a better chance of success if we don’t ask that question and instead ask ourselves “who could need me as a friend?”. For Jonathan, there wasn’t much that he could get out of it – David was the one who needed him and in the end even took his throne that he would otherwise have inherited. Only one thing was there for him to find: true friendship. Maybe we’d be better off if we would look less for other things in a friendship and were more willing to offer our friendship unconditionally, the way Jonathan did.

The second thing from the text: the intimacy of the friendship. In the beginning we only read about Jonathan’s feelings, but if we look further, we will see that David felt the same about him, for example when in 2 Samuel 1 we read about his mourning (and I hope I didn’t spoil your reading fun by giving away the fact that Jonathan dies). There’s a mutual feeling of a very intimate connection between them. Sometimes I think that it’s a very strange thing for many people today that two men (or women, but the story talks about men) have such an intimacy in their friendship, even a bit suspicious – I already mentioned what stupid things you sometimes hear about the subject. Our society is all about shallow relationships, partnerships that only last for some time, about fun and just having a good time – and when times change, when interests change and the circumstances change, it’s time for new friends. As Christians, we are not immune to that development in society. Just look at your group of friends in your mind and ask yourself two questions. First, how many of them are the kind of friends that you feel you could come to with every problem, even your deepest secrets and know they will be a friend who doesn’t let you down, doesn’t betray your confidence, will have a listening and understanding ear? And secondly, for how many of them would you be willing to do the same? When I was at the point of asking those questions a while back, I must admit that I was quite shocked to find out about my answers to these questions – especially the second one. And I realised that I had to make a choice. I’m not saying that you need to do the same, your situation may be different, but I want you to know and it may at least be worth thinking about. For me it became very clear that I had to rethink my friendships. Because I want deep, meaningful friendships that endure the storms that life may bring. I want friendships that are worth investing in. And that’s only possible with very few people. I’m not saying that means not hanging out with a larger group anymore and having a good time. But that’s not the kind of friendships that I’m really looking for. That’s not the kind of friendship that helps me grow and it’s not the kind of friendship that helps my friends grow. And I have seen how God really confirms that decision again and again – old friendships that seemed to almost be going nowhere have received a new quality. Others have only just turned into a real friendship. And all that has happened without me doing anything…. suddenly it just all started falling into place. Jonathan loved David’s soul like his own – that for me describes a connection that is far beyond our human understanding. And I am very thankful that the Bible gives us such an example of true friendship. I wish that we learn to follow their example and, with God’s help, to build true, meaningful friendships like theirs.

Technorati : friendship, David, Jonathan, bible, christian, relationships, sermon

Entry Filed under: Christian Living,Sermons