Mark 9:30-37 / 1 Thessalonians 2:17-3:13
A sermon for Bramley St Peter, 22 September 2024
This is the third in a series of six sessions looking at the first of St Paul’s letters to the churches that he had planted. The overall theme is ‘Holiness and Hope in a Hostile World’. Two weeks ago, Alan gave us the context of the letter. He went on to speak of doing works of faith and labours of love, and being steadfast in hope.
Last week Julia spoke about Christian Imitation. She encouraged us to be Courageous, Wholehearted and Steadfast in our faith so that others can imitate us, as we imitate others. She spoke of how it’s inevitable that without realising it, we do imitate the people around us – family, friends, leaders in church and society, and nowadays ‘influencers’ in the media.
You can hear recordings of these previous sermons on the parish website
That leads us on nicely to the third chapter of 1 Thessalonians, which is about friendship. Unless you’re a hermit, which obviously you are not because you’re here in church today, you will have had the opportunities to make friends of one kind or another throughout your life. I say opportunities, because sadly not everyone does take the opportunity. I’ve spoken before about the issues of desocialisation and loneliness, which Rachel Reeves describes as “toxic to health and devastating to communities”. To have friends at all is far better than to have none.
But not all friendships are equal. Possibly the longest passage in the Christian scriptures about friendship is actually not found in most Bibles. It comes from the book of Ecclesiasticus, which is regarded as a book of wise sayings by a rabbi, rather than the actual Word of God. But it’s worth quoting :
5 Pleasant speech multiplies friends,
and a gracious tongue multiplies courtesies.
6 Let those who are friendly with you be many,
but let your advisers be one in a thousand.
7 When you gain friends, gain them through testing,
and do not trust them hastily.
8 For there are friends who are such when it suits them,
but they will not stand by you in time of trouble.
9 And there are friends who change into enemies,
and tell of the quarrel to your disgrace.
10 And there are friends who sit at your table,
but they will not stand by you in time of trouble.
Ecclesiasticus 6:5-10 (New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition)
We have probably all lost friends over the years because we have fallen out over some matter or other – the ‘friends who change into enemies’ or at best cease to be friends. One friend didn’t speak to me for several years because she didn’t get a party invitation; another ended our friendship completely due to misunderstanding the motivation behind a Christmas present. There was another friend who was a terrible gossip, and eventually I chose to walk away from the friendship, rather than the other way round, because her untrue allegations about good people in our group were becoming toxic to all of us. This is all part of the ’hostile world’.
If the writer of Ecclesiasticus had the concept of online ‘friends’ that we have today, I’m sure he would have something to say about them, too. It’s now becoming clear that young people in particular are being harmed by commercial interests and peer pressure on social media making them conform to models of lifestyle that can be deeply harmful to self-worth or health.
But looking at the more postive aspect, what makes a good and lasting friendship? And what is specifically Christian about these? The same passage in Ecclesiaticus goes on to say this:
14 Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter:
whoever finds one has found a treasure.
15 Faithful friends are beyond price;
no amount can balance their worth.
16 Faithful friends are life-saving medicine;
and those who fear the Lord will find them.
Ecclesiasticus 6:14-16 (as above)
These faithful friendships – often those made early in our adult life, or sometimes even sooner, and which last for decades – are founded on mutual respect (which includes respecting each other’s differences as well as shared interests), empathy and a willingness to get involved when our friend is in trouble. The Biblical writer describes these as “one in a thousand” which sounds about right – we probably get to know a thousand people reasonably well in the course of a lifetime, but may only have a couple of really good friends. Treasure them.
There are of course other references in the Bible to friendship, both between God and people, and between people. And just as we believe Jesus to be both fully God and fully human, so he models for us what it is to be a perfect friend, and it’s this that we see in both the Gospel reading today, and this third chapter of 1 Thessalonians. These are our guide to what makes a true Christian friendship.
Firstly, Christian friends are Committed to each other, right from the start. Because we are more than friends, we are brothers and sisters in one family. Jesus was committed to his disciples, especially the twelve apostles who stayed close to him for three years. And they were equally committed to him. As Simon Peter said on one occasion, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life!” (John 6:68) Paul was equally committed to all the congregations he had planted, and to each member that he knew by name – just look at the long list of dedications at the end of each of his letters! Time and again he says that he prays regularly for each of his friends.
As an example from my own life, I take Ian. As an eighteen year old, new to life at university and quite shy, I would have found it hard to make friends in my first term. At that time I wan’t a committed Christian although I come from a Christian family. But Ian, a member of the Christian Union, made friends with me. He helped me settle in to university life, shared meals with me, and prayed for me. It was at his invitation that I went to an evangelistic meeting at which I made a commitment to accept Jesus for myself. Ian then encouraged me in those first few months when people can easily slip away from faith after making an initial commitment, continued to pray with me, and made sure I became a regular member of a church, even though it wasn’t the same church he attended. We still pray for each other, and though we live at opposite ends of England, we try to meet up when we can.
Secondly, Christian friends are Caring. Jesus called his disciples to be ‘least of all and servants of each other’. He proved constantly that this was his own model of friendship, whether it was washing their feet, forgiving them when they made mistakes, and finally putting into practice what he had preached: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13. This was exemplified by Maximilian Kolbe, the Christian priest who gave his life as a substitute for a Jewish man in a Nazi concentration camp.There is no place in God’s kingdom for regarding one person as greater than another. Of course we need leaders, but Christian leaders shouldn’t think of themselves as greater than those they lead, quite the opposite.
Paul also demonstrated this immense care for all his own disciples, at whatever cost to himself. Sometimes he lays it on a bit thick, listing all his problems from shipwrecks to floggings. But all of it, he says, was for the benefit of those whom God had called to follow him. What Paul’s quality of life was like – or that of Jesus – didn’t matter to them, as long as they were serving the people God had called them to be friends with. It’s that radical sense of putting ourselves down to allow the other person’s faith to flourish, that really marks Christian friendship.
This caring friendship can show itself in other ways. The letter to Thessalonians refers to Timothy’s visit. He was a colleague in Paul’s mission, and was willing to travel hundreds of miles each way to visit the Thessalonians, encourage them in Paul’s name, and come back with a report. This ‘go-between’ role enabled Paul to continue in prayer and in nurturing his disciples by way of his writings.
Among my own friends here I would mention Sue and Ian (a different Ian this time!) They are an examplary Christian couple and have been my friends for forty years. When I was single they often invited me and other single people to dinner, prayed regularly with and for me. When I was given short notice to leave rented accommodation they offered to put me up in their house – in the end I didn’t need to take the offer up but it was there. When a relationship suddenly ended and I was in shock, it was Sue who comforted me. In later years they have let us stay in their holday home more than once. When another church member was sent to prison, they remained friends with him when others fell away. This model of costly servanthood – putting our homes, money, time and emotions into strengthening other people’s faith and giving help when it’s most needed – is what marks Christian friendship out from the sort of fair-weather friend described in Ecclesiasticus.
Thirdly, Christian friends are Constructive. By which I mean, constructively critical. This can be the hardest part and pehaps the most distinctively Christian: friendships that are open, honest and vulnerable.. Sometimes it can be tempting always to go along with what people want, to encourage them to keep doing what they like to do, and ignoring what we think may be wrong, for the sake of ‘not rocking the boat’. But if we are committed to our friends, and care for them, then we will be willing to criticise them, in a way that seeks their own welfare. And the other way round, too: willing to be subject to this sort of constructive criticism, knowing that our friend has our best interests at heart.
Jesus wasn’t afraid of rocking the boat, sometimes literally! In the reading today, he takes his disciples to task for arguing about which of them was greatest. They had totally misunderstood the sort of friendships that Jesus wanted his followers to have among themselves, and he was quick to point that out. He once told his followers “Be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect”. He knew they would never be perfect in this life, but corrected them to help them move towards that perfection.
Paul also, in his letters, often criticises certain people in his churches, sometimes by name, sometimes anonymously. But alongside that, his evident love and compassion for them is such that he clearly doesn’t relish doing this.
This is why there’s a long tradition in some Christian circles of having a ‘confessor’ or ‘spiritual director’. An experienced Christian, usually outside one’s own congregation, who will develop a deep friendship of this sort. One in which you can be open about the mistakes and problems in your life, in confidence, knowing that they will not be shared as gossip. The spiritual director can then encourage their friend in everything good in the Christian life, but also be willing to ask probing questions, to point out weaknesses, to suggest ways in which their relationships with God and other people could be better. Ian, whom I mentioned just now, fulfilled that role for me for quite a long time; but he lives a long disctance away now, so I have a spiritual director more locally in Leeds.
So to draw these thoughts together: We are looking for what friendships of holiness and hope may look like in a world where friendships can be fleeting, self-serving and even harmful. We find an alternative model of deep friendship in the way that Jesus made disciples and formed a close-knit group of friends who would go on to lead his mission after his resurrection, when he had laid his life down for them and all who would come after.
Another example from which we can learn is Paul’s love and concern for his own disciples scattered around Greece and Asia Minor, whatever the cost to himself, and his commitment to praying for them. We have looked at the sort of long-term friendships in our own lives, the people who have been there for us through all of life’s ups and downs. And the role of the spiritual director in being both encouraging and constructively critical.
Holy and hopeful friendships, it seems, depend on these three factors: commitment to each other as the Body of Christ, care for those in trouble as Christ cares for us, and being a constructively critical friend, helping each other towards perfection in Christ. May you find such friends as these, and be a faithful friend to others. Amen.