There are all sorts of images, memories, and feelings associated with the modern American celebration of Thanksgiving. As a child, my first impressions of the holiday revolved around school craft project turkeys that you made with pinecones and pipe cleaners, serious quantities of turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie, and coloring pictures of grateful Pilgrims and helpful Indians sitting together in friendship at long plank tables to give thanks for a bountiful harvest. It was people like Squanto and Pocahontas, wasn’t it, who extended their friendship to the settlers from Europe, and made it possible for the newcomers to survive their first tenuous years in the New World? If subsequent years proved the friendship itself to be tenuous, still there is something compelling and beautiful about those early ideals of very different peoples coming together in friendship to celebrate the gifts of the Creator.

The last few days have seen another expression of friendship highlighted in the nation’s mind. The friendship has to do with some good folks from Ohio and Michigan. Let me express my congratulations to those of you from Ohio for the Buckeyes win in the big football game yesterday, and let me express my commiserations to those of you from Michigan. Michigan suffered another loss, the day before yesterday, as legendary coach Bo Schembechler died of heart failure. A quick survey of yesterday’s news headlines had two prominent and interesting articles about his passing. One, from the Detroit News, was about the deep friendship shared between Schembechler and Michigan State coach George Perles. Despite the rivalry between the two schools, the two men were close friends. Perles got the news of Schembechler’s death from a stranger while he was eating lunch in a restaurant, and he simply broke down and cried right there in public view. The other article was from the Dayton Daily News, and it celebrated the great friendship between Schembechler and Woody Hayes, himself the legendary coach from Ohio. Hayes, you may remember, was fired in disgrace back in 1978, but it was his friend Bo Schembechler who helped him re-enter public life and even come back into football. The article began this way: “Thankfully, I don’t yet know what it’s like to reach the afterlife, if people keep their old jobs, change jobs or don’t have any jobs at all. But I’d like to think Bo Schembechler is coaching against Woody Hayes today. I’d like to think they start with a friendly handshake at midfield and end the same way.”

We are at the end of our fall series of sermons looking at the real relationships that fill our lives. Most of those relationships have to do with blood lineage or marriage: parents and children, grandparents and spouses. Some of the key relationships of life are not determined by blood or by social and religious commitment, but simply by two people’s choice. The old saying goes that you cannot choose your relatives, but you can choose your friends. Today we’re going to look at the people you choose to have in your life: your friends.

One of the most passionate and poignant scenes in scripture is all about friendship. Thirteen men who have spent three intense years together are having a meal in a borrowed dining room. There is always something special about gatherings of friends. One of my favorite pictures from last May’s wedding of my oldest daughter is the picture of Helen and me with three other couples, all dear friends from our home church in Albuquerque. The only thing strange about that picture is how all of our friends have aged so much! Only one of the men in the scriptural scene truly knows this will be their last supper, but the others at least know that the situation is ripe for something profound. In some of his last words of teaching and counsel to the disciples, Jesus teaches some important lessons about the true meaning and nature of friendship.

How can we define and understand friendship? One encyclopedia says, “Friendship is a term used to denote co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more social entities.” The term “connotes a relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection. Friends will welcome each other’s company and exhibit loyalty towards each other, often to the point of altruism. Their tastes will usually be similar and may converge, and they will share enjoyable activities. They will also engage in mutually helping behavior, such as exchange of advice and the sharing of hardship. A friend is someone who may often demonstrate reciprocating and reflective behaviors.”ⁱ Now, all of that is true, I’m sure, but I like Jesus’ way of putting it better: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” We don’t necessarily think of it this way, but true friendship is about love. So often we think that love is only about romantic love, or the love of family members for each other. But friendship also deserves and demands love, if it is to be friendship worth much of anything. All of those qualities described in the encyclopedia like knowledge, esteem, loyalty, altruism, all have to do with different aspects of love.

Jesus told the disciples to love each other as he had loved them. The next day he would demonstrate his love for them in the most extreme and graphic way. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite fictional families was shown this past Friday night on television. In one of the later Star Trek movies, The Wrath of Khan, the Vulcan Spock saves the entire crew by entering a radiation-poisoned room to repair an engine, knowing full well that he will shortly die. As he sits dying, he talks to Captain Kirk, on the other side of the glass radiation barrier. His last words to his captain and shipmate of decades were these, “Jim, I have been, and shall always be, your friend.” The loving friendship that Jesus wanted his disciples to learn has to do with giving yourself up for them, even the giving up of self-sacrifice.

Jesus demonstrated his friendship for the disciples by sacrificing his spot in heaven and coming to earth to die, all for the purpose of revealing the character and intention and nature of God. “I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” Jesus’ self-sacrifice was not just about saving the lives of the disciples by saving them from their sin, but it was also about helping them to have a quality life in the here and now. And that’s another side of friendship, to seek the highest good of those you love in friendship. Anais Nin said, “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” A true friend is a person who brings out the best in you, who calls you to be better than you have been, whose presence in your life makes you into someone you would never have been had you not known them.

Jesus told the disciples, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” On the surface that statement does not sound very friendly. But I think what Jesus means is that only when we follow his commands, when we learn his principles, when we fashion and structure our lives in the ways that he has shown us, can we truly have loving relationships that indeed are worthy of being called friendships. Being a friend depends on our being the kind of person Jesus calls and leads us to be. Donna Roberts said, “A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.” By revealing the heart of God to us, Jesus taught us the song that should be in our hearts, and he sings it over and over to us, so that we can learn and re-learn it, and thereby become who we are meant to be. Friendship with Jesus means friendship with God, a friendship that transforms us into people who have learned the love that makes for lasting friendships. We are called, therefore, to be that kind of friend to others, the kind whose friendship helps others learn the song of God in their own hearts.

To follow the principles that Jesus teaches and to allow his ways to grow to the place where they characterize and energize everything about our lives is to become the kind of people of whom Jesus said, “I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” The fruit of life in Christ involves many things. Elsewhere in scripture that fruit is described as patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, and such. The fruit is not just about personal qualities, but also the fruit of bringing others into the realm of God’s kingdom through belief in Christ, the fruit of transforming society into a more just and humane place, the fruit of creating a society in which God’s laws are followed. At all levels and in all ways, the surest evidence of the fruit of Christ’s presence is loving relationships, including that between friends. “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

Why is love between friends so important? Because it is only in the context of human relationships that we can experience the fulfillment of our purpose and our existence in life. The South African bishop Desmond Tutu talks about the concept of ubuntu, an African term for “people,” that means “an approach to life that upholds community theology and challenges Western ideals of individualism, materialism, and accumulation.”ⁱⁱ Tutu says that this means, “A person can only be a person through others.”ⁱⁱⁱ Who are the people through whose friendship you have become more of the person you were meant to be? I cannot name them for you, only you can. But I can name some of my own. I can tell you about David Berry, Jack Haberer, Bob Henley, and Ed Hurley, dear friends of mine who also happen to be ministers. Each one of them has taught me through their words but mostly through their example so much about what it means to be a man and a minister that I cannot begin to list all I have learned from them. I can tell you about Chuck Austin, Alan Smit, and Bucky Lovejoy, dear friends of mine who have taught me many things, including how to catch big trout in fast streams or placid lakes. I can tell you about Tom Roof, Dan Klein, and Bob Bukowski, all dear friends and Presbyterian elders who happen to be a good bit older than me, through whose wisdom and love and knowledge have taught me about the business world and church world through the eyes of dedicated laymen. And I could tell you about countless people in this community whose friendship brings amazing joy and depth to my life, but for fear of leaving someone out, I’m not going to name a single one of them!

Jesus said something else to the disciples that to me is perhaps one of the best things about friendship. He said, “You did not choose me but I chose you.” To be chosen to be a friend is a great honor and a great responsibility. To choose a friend is a great joy and a great burden. If you had parents who were worth their salt, they taught you to choose your friends carefully, didn’t they? Who you choose to “run with” in life, who you choose to be your friends, can make all the difference in the world. Several years ago I had a brief experience that illustrated that point. I was chosen to be one of 12 ministers from the United States to join 12 other ministers from Europe in a 10-day theological conference in Geneva. I had met none of the other ministers from the States, and so for the first few hours of our meetings I’m sure we all were sizing each other up. At the end of our first day together, most of the American delegation simply wanted to go to bed, since we had been awake for more than 36 hours! But two other ministers and I—Bob Heppenstall and Christine Chakoian—wanted to go out on the town. We quickly chose each other as friends, and with a German pastor and a Swiss pastor to show us the way, we spent a wonderful evening exploring the old city of Geneva. The other pastors were great folks, too, but had I chosen them, I would not have had the magnificent time during the rest of the trip that I did. The three of us remain friends to this day. And of course, that is only a minor example of the extreme importance of choosing the right friends.

Jesus chose us to be his friends. And in the process, he taught us the fundamental things we need to know about being friends. Friendship is, like all the other relationships about which we’ve talked, a great gift. Walt Whitman said, “I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don’t believe I deserved my friends.” Recent studies have shown that the average American has fewer close friends today than a generation ago. That’s sad. If it’s true, then perhaps we all need to get busy being good friends to others. I hope you are a good friend, and I hope that you have good friends. I know I do. And I know that I can always learn more about how to be a better friend. So can you. Someone once said a friend is, “someone who is here today and here tomorrow.” May you always have good friends in your life, for they are one of God’s gifts, and for them, we can be truly thankful.

Amen.

ⁱWikipedia
ⁱⁱFrom Timothy Smith, Connecting With Your Kids, Bethany House, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2005, p. 165.
ⁱⁱⁱIbid.