A Sermon by Rev. Henley, July 20, 2008
All of us live and love our own story. Yet, our lives are not solitary; we live and love our lives in relationship, with family and friends and God. If we vision God as the ocean and we as creatures in that ocean, then we can see how our lives are interconnected and interdependent one with another. Some of us live our lives like a school of Raccoon Butterfly Fish, with a lot of family and friends around us, some of us are like the Lined Butterfly Fish who live in pairs, and some of us are lead solitary lives like Rainbow Parrotfish. Probably, we all live our life’s story like all of these at one time or other.
Something that is evident, not only to scholarly sociologists, but also to us, is that life is better for us human beings when we have family and friends who love us. And, when I say love us, I mean they behave as though they love us.
Today, we explore friendship. Many of us are here today because we need the relationships of friendship that are possible in a group whose mission is to create a loving community in the spirit of Jesus. We may or may not have friends outside this community; hopefully we do. What we want and need as human beings are friends, not just acquaintances, but friends who can be our “best friends.”
I had a friend who used to say, “You can put your real friends in a telephone booth, and the rest of the people you know, well you may love some of them, but they’re not the kind of people you tell your secrets.”
Henry Brook Adams, a nineteenth writer century, said a “real” friend is one we can “bare” our soul to. A real friend is one who will not judge us, who will not think less of us for a mistake, and who will look past our flaws.
Our reading today from Luke contains some of the most remembered lessons of Jesus. One doesn’t always think of Jesus as a “Dear Abby,” or “Dr. Phil.” But Jesus was very wise. His ministry was about relationships really, about a personal relationship with God and better relationships with each other.
He was convinced that people were more important than the traditional laws of his people.
Time and time again, his actions demonstrated these beliefs. He and his disciples in Matthew 12 plucked grain to eat on the Sabbath, because they were all hungry. And he healed a man’s withered hand in Mark [Mark 3:1-6] on the Sabbath. And Luke 14:1-6 tells us that Jesus healed someone’s swollen arms and legs on the Sabbath. Each time the Pharisees complained and each time Jesus told them that healing pain and suffering was more important than their Law.
If anyone can tell us how to be a good friend, it is Jesus.
Here in Luke his words tell us:
Do not judge your friends. He is saying give unconditional love to our friends.
Be a giver, not a taker, and then your gift will return in full. He is saying there is reciprocity in friendships.
And don’t look at your friend’s flaws, and think I need to tell my friend what’s wrong with her or him. Jesus said there’s just as much wrong with us as there is with our friend.
My daddy used to say, and I am not being disrespectful of Jesus, and neither was my daddy, but my daddy used to say, “There’s only been one perfect human being, and look what they did to him.”
So, while many of us may think that we’re perfect and we can tell our friends what’s wrong with them, think again. Jesus called that hypocritical.
And you know, Jesus didn’t leave it at that, he told his followers and us what to do, he said,
“First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.”
He is said part of being in a relationship is helping each other with the specks in our eyes.
But let’s get back to our friends in the telephone booth. M. Scott Peck said in his classic self-help book THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED that relationships take time and energy and a sharing of our selves. As human beings, we have to determine how much or how little we are going to invest in our relationships.
We can’t be “telephone-booth” friends with everyone we know. Anyone who has been betrayed by a friend can tell you that. “Be careful to whom you bear your soul.”
Who do you want in your telephone booth?
A friend who pays attention to the friendship, just as we pay attention to it. Reciprocity, Jesus said. It doesn’t work if only one person talks, or emails, or telephones or visits.
A friend who will “put up with our challenges” like we will put up with their challenges. In our reading this morning from Harris, he talks about acceptance. “…this is exactly what good friends are for—to put up with us. Friendship of the true sort, means accepting another person, not for his good points, but in spite of his bad points.
I had a “telephone booth” friend once. She was a pretty selfish person in some ways, but she always came through when I needed her. Now, me, I wasn’t as selfish as she was, but sometimes when she needed me, I wasn’t always there for her. So in spite of these things, we were “bare our soul” friends.
Who do you want in your telephone booth?
A friend who makes things right when everything seems messed up.
I’ve watched a lot of “tween” and teen shows on Disney and family cable networks, and one of the dominant themes in these shows is how friends help each other in “dire” circumstances.
There’s an old story; I don’t even remember where I read it, but I’ve never forgotten it.
There was a little girl Agnes, twelve years old, in a boarding school run by nuns. She wrote home telling her mother about her friends. She asked her mother if she could go on to her friend Lydia’s house on the next spring break. Her mother wrote back saying that she could not go and was not to make special friends with Lydia Milton. Maria knew why her mother wrote this, it was because Mrs. Milton was divorced—see, I told you it was an old story. Maria made a decision; she would never tell her friend Lydia what her mother had written.
Then one day, she found Lydia crying, refusing to go to lunch. It seems the Mother Superior who read all the mail, incoming and outgoing, had taken it upon herself to warn Lydia what Maria’s mother had written. Maria said without batting an eye, “Mother Superior is lying, my mother never wrote that, don’t you believe her.”
Agnes was a loyal friend; yes, she changed the story. She changed the story to make things right for her friend?
Who do you want in your telephone booth?
It almost goes without saying, but it must be said, a friend we can trust
Trust to be honest in a loving way
Trust to accept our short-comings.
Trust to help us grow as individuals
Didn’t Jesus say, get rid of our short-comings so we can then help our friend get rid of theirs.
What kind of friend do we want in our telephone booth?
A friend who puts our feelings before theirs, who knows when to be honest and when to keep her or his mouth shut.
Take for instance friends Lola and Lavern from the rolling hills of Mississippi. It is a story from Legacies titled “Best Friends.” Legacies is a wonderful book with quite moving stories, and I highly recommend you read it.
"My best friend was Laverne. Our parent’s farms were close and from the time we could play together we were best friends. We married neighborhood boys and lived fifteen miles apart. With rugged dirt roads and no cars of our own, we didn’t see each other often, but we kept in touch by letter and with an occasional long-distance telephone call.
When her mother died, Laverne phoned me and I went to her immediately. Her mother had to be laid out for burial, and she had asked me to do it.
Soon after arriving at Lavern’s home, I was taken to a bedroom where her mother’s body lay. A neighbor woman came in with the hot water, towels, and soap. It was hard for me because Lavern’s mother was like a mother to me.
We bathed and dressed her and laid her out on the bed. I saw her false teeth on the mantel in a cup of water. After washing them, I tried to put them in her mouth, but I simply couldn’t get it open. I slipped off my shoes and got on the bed with the body. I pulled on her mouth as hard as I could, finally prying it open enough to get the top plate in. Now to push it into place. It just didn’t go in right. I tried the bottom plate and it was the same. Her mouth looked too full and would not close. I opened it wide and pushed the teeth farther back. That helped. For more than an hour I labored to get the teeth in. I finally ended up tying a white cloth under her chin and pinning it on top of her head to keep her mouth closed. I was completely exhausted and so nervous I could hardly stand up.
Just as I finished and was about to leave the room, there was a light knock on the door. I opened it slightly, and Laverne looked up at me with a tear-stained face. She held out her hand and said, “Lola, here are Mother’s teeth. I almost forgot. I’ve washed them.”
I thought I would faint, but I took the teeth and assured her that I would put them in. But, I couldn’t go through all that again—I just couldn’t. So, I wrapped up her teeth, and when the casket arrived, I slipped them into the casket under the body. I kept my promise; I put them in.
A few days after the funeral I called Laverne to see how they were getting along.
“Oh, we’re making it fine, except for Papa. He lost his false teeth and hasn’t eaten any solid food. I can’t imagine where they are—we’ve looked all over the place. He hasn’t seen them since Mama died.
Lavern was my best friend, and I had always told her all my secrets, but I never could tell her where Papa’s teeth were!"
A friend who puts our feelings before theirs, who knows when to be honest and when to keep her or his mouth shut. These are the kind of friends to put in our telephone booth.
Now throughout our lives, some friends may come and go in our telephone booth, depending on how our lives and our stories connect. And, if we are real lucky, we will have one or two friends that will always be in our telephone booth.
Friendships, the telephone-booth kind, unfortunately, don’t happen for everyone. Sometimes we move to often, or we aren’t intentional enough, or we don’t know how to be a friend easily. Sometimes we put other things before friendships.
Whatever the reason, if we think we are standing alone in the telephone booth, we must never forget, that we do have one friend, who is always with us—Jesus.
For all of us, there is Jesus.
When I was a little girl, in Sunday School, I learned to love Jesus. He was and IS my ultimate friend. He has been with me through all my doubts about God, when I was mad at God because the world was such an awful place, and when I felt deserted by God because my life was in shambles. Jesus is the one who showed us how to give, and to be loyal, and to trust. The one who made everything right for me. The one who said, relationships are more important than the law, or more important than money, more important than power.
Jesus can be your ultimate friend, too. He is the one who can make everything right for you.
In Jesus’ example and Jesus’ ministry we can find a way to live our lives so that we can have “telephone booth” friends.
Always remember, “You can put your real friends in a telephone booth, and the rest of the people you know, well you may love some of them, but they’re not the kind of people you tell your secrets.”
Amen and blessed be.
Reading I
Luke 6:37-42
Reading II
“Friends Are to Be ‘Put Up’ With” from The Best Stories of Sydney J. Harris. Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) was an American journalist for the Chicago Daily News and later the Chicago Sun-Times. His column, “Strictly Personal,” was syndicated in many newspapers throughout the United States and Canada.
A couple I know slightly stopped seeing another couple who was … [their] friends. It seems that the second couple turned up two hours late to an important dinner the first couple were giving.
“You simple don’t treat good friends that way,” said the hostess, who was filled with wrongeous [sic] indignation. “I won’t put up with that sort of thing.”
But this is exactly what good friends are for—to put up with. Friendship, of the true sort, means accepting another person, not for his good points, but in spite of his bad points.
And that is the beautiful thing about friendship: we can take liberties, we can show our frailer side …
This does not mean, of course, that friendship will stand any amount of abuse.
It must be based on genuine respect of the other personality; but once this exchange of respects has been firmly rooted, a true friendship is meant to stand a great deal of tension.
You can treat a good friend almost any way—short of basic disloyalty—because [she or] he understands the spring of your motivation, and knows that beneath your temporary bad behavior you are a decent sort with generous instincts and a desire to do well by your fellow [human being]...
When a person won’t “put up” with the rude or capricious antics of a friend, I suspect that such a person has never begun to have a real friendship.
After all, it is easy to like someone who is always polite and considerate and gay; the virtue in friendship consists of liking someone whose finest qualities may be hidden beneath a craggy exterior.
There are an appalling number of friendless people in the world. I have seen many among the most influential and famous of our time, and they all have one thing in common—a desperate need to be treated well at all times.
When they are disappointed in this, they break off a “friendship,” never knowing that friends were made to endure mutual disappointments.