In a short meditation, Pastor Brooks speaks of the power of friendship in our personal lives and in the life of the church. Listen to the sermon or read it below.
Scripture Reading Proverbs 17:17 and 18:24
A friend is loving at all times, and becomes like family in times of trouble.
Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family.
I want to begin this morning with a question: What is it that makes you indispensable? In reflecting on your life as a whole, what is it that makes you indispensable more than anything else? I suspect there are a number of places to which one’s mind could race. You could be indispensable at work if there is a job you do that no one else can do. Perhaps, you are the only person who can run a particular computer program or perform a particular procedure or a handle a particular client. You could also be indispensable to your family at home. You might have people who literally depend upon you for everything from basic bodily care to financial survival. You might additionally realize that with all modesty you are indispensable member of this church. I often think about how our church could not function or function very well without the countless acts of voluntary service performed by our members. Such acts can seem commonplace in the running of a church but hopefully they are not taken for granted.
In all of the ways I just mentioned, many of us are no doubt indispensable. Yet, there is another, perhaps more profound, way in which I suspect each of us is indispensable. Robert Louis Stevenson once named it well when he said that so long as we are loved by others, so long as we are counted as a friend by others, we are indispensable. Friendship can be unique in its indispensability. While over the course of a relationship friends may do many things for each other, the person truly regarded as a friend does not need to do anything to be so highly valued. As a friend, you are ultimately valued simply because of who you are. It has been said that friendship is not so much about how you treat someone. You likely treat your friends very well, but that’s the product of something deeper. Friendship is ultimately “a way of appreciating” and respecting someone for their intrinsic worth. In this way, friendship enters the realm of unconditional love. It can often be a kind of ordinary, everyday love that we might not see as sparkling or profound in the casual events of life. As Lord Byron once said, “Friendship is Love without his wings.” At the same time, poets have seen the grandness of friendship. Keats declared that love and friendship are the crown that rests upon humanity’s forehead. Proverbs esteems the bonds of friendship as being as cherished as those of a close-knit family. True friends stick with you regardless of life’s storms or famines. A friend is indeed indispensable. We can scarcely survive without our friends. Emerson named it well when he described friendship as a gift from God.
I would say that friendship is not only an indispensable gift from God in our own personal lives. It is also an indispensable gift that God gives to the Church. When new members talk about why they decide to join our church, there are two things that pop up the most. One is that they like what we stand for as an open and affirming church that is committed to social justice in the broader world. The other is the friendliness of our church. There is an authentic spirit of friendship here. I think both of these qualities are essential for our church. When it comes to forming community, humans are often attracted by like-mindedness, but what happens after that initial attraction? You discover not everyone is like-minded on every matter. This is when friendship becomes indispensable. It is the glue of the Holy Spirit that holds us together even when we disagree or have our differences. It is the ordinary, unconditional love that a church needs to not only survive but to thrive.
As our verses from Proverbs suggest, the friendship found in churches is also what becomes invaluable when hard times hit. The friends of a church suddenly become the hands and arms holding you up. The friends of a church suddenly become like family. The power of a good proverb is that it crystallizes and makes visible such truths. A Yoruba proverb declares, “A proverb is like a horse: when the truth is missing, we use a proverb to find it.” As one commentator noted, it is when one is mounted on a horse that one gets a good view of what’s on the ground. This morning I want to invite you to mount yourself up a little higher. Get a perspective on what might otherwise seem ordinary. From this vantage point, I invite you to take a look around this sanctuary. See and appreciate the friends surrounding you. Friends who are like family. Friends who you can count on. Amen.