Spiritual Friendships
I Samuel 17:55-18:3
Dr. Larry D. Thorson
This sermon was adapted from
a sermon written and delivered by Dr. M. Craig Barnes at the Shadyside
Presbyterian Church in
55 As Saul watched David going out to meet the Philistine, he
said to Abner, commander of the army, "Abner, whose son is that young
man?"
Abner replied, "As surely as you live,
O king, I don't know."
56 The king said, "Find out whose son this young man
is."
57 As soon as David returned from killing the Philistine,
Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with David still holding the
Philistine's head.
58 "Whose son are you, young man?" Saul asked him.
David said, "I am the son of your
servant Jesse of Bethlehem."
1 After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became
one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. 2
From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return to his
father's house. 3 And Jonathan made a covenant with
David because he loved him as himself.
Ge 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any
of the wild animals the LORD God
had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any
tree in the garden’?”
Ge 3:2 The
woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,
Ge 3:3 but God
did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the
garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”
Ge 3:4 “You
will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman.
Ge 3:5 “For God
knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like
God, knowing good and evil.”
Ge 3:6 When the
woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye,
and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She
also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Ge 3:7 Then the
eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so
they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Ge 3:8 Then the
man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD
God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid
from the LORD God among the
trees of the garden.
Ge 3:9 But the LORD
God called to the man, “Where are you?”
New
International Version copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society
On Valentine’s Day the Associated Press ran a story about a
survey conducted by the
Acquaintances, relationships at work,
and social circles are cheap and quickly fill up our lives. But a close,
devoted, can-know-anything-about-you-and-will-still-love-you friend is a rare
treasure. Even if you already have one or two, you probably have room for
another.
In ancient society, when marriages
were arranged and erotic love was held in suspicion, friendship was believed to
be the happiest and most trustworthy form of love. But in contemporary society,
we know more about the longing for friendships than the experience of it. Some
will tell you that the reason they have a hard time finding deep friendships is
that they got burned once, and it is hard to let someone get close again.
Others will say the problem is that they just don’t know how to find a friend,
or that they aren’t even sure friends exist anywhere except on TV sitcoms, or
that they would love to have friends, but they are just too busy. Still others will
say that the problem is that our society is now too mobile. As John Barth
claims in his novel The Floating Opera, “Our friends float in; we become involved with them — soon
they are a part of our lives; then they float on. We write or rely on hearsay
for a while, but we know that eventually we will lose track of them all
together.”
Well, those are all challenges to
friendships, but not our basic problem. The real reason we don’t have friends
is we don’t know how to receive them.
Having despaired of making ourselves happy with money, sex, or power, we
tell ourselves that all we really need is just to make a good friend or two.
But life is not something you make happen or achieve. It is something you
receive from God. Nowhere is that more obvious than in friendship. We don’t
actually “make friends.” We receive them as a grace from God.
According
to our text today, the friends God would give you are not the kind of friends
you would get for yourself. By all
appearances, Jonathan and David had no business being friends. Most of the
things society has taught us about cultivating friends go out the window on
this one. They have not spent a lot of time together; they haven’t a prayer of
being together in the future; they have nothing in common; and they have
incredibly different backgrounds.
Prince Jonathan, the son of King Saul,
had received the best education and enjoyed all the privileges of growing up in
the royal court. David was educated in the pasture with a bunch of sheep. Apparently they met right after David had
killed Goliath. King Saul had summoned David into his presence. So David came,
carrying with him the head of Goliath! Again, this is only something a guy who
had grown up in the wilderness would do. Everybody in the king’s court had to have
been grossed out by this — everybody except Jonathan. We are told that the soul
of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David.
In the old RSV, the word is “knit” —
“Jonathan’s soul was knit to the soul of David.” The word is passive in the
Hebrew, which means it was something that happened to Jonathan. SO this
friendship wasn’t something he chose. It was something God chose to give him.
What makes this even more powerful is that King Saul had just asked David,
“Whose son are you, young man?” Saul knew David already, and was well aware
that he was the son of Jesse.
David had
been introduced to Saul as Jesse’s son when he came to the royal court to play
the harp for Saul, which was before Saul tried to dress him up in his armor to
fight Goliath. But now that David was being celebrated as the giant-slayer,
Saul felt threatened and knew he had to get a reign on this boy. Perhaps this
question, “Whose son are you” was a question “Will you be my son?” It’s a test
of allegiance. If so, it is a test that David fails by saying again he is the
son of Jesse.
Here’s the point: Saul wanted
desperately to absorb David. That is how many of us approach friendships and
what makes us actually repel them. Like Saul, we don’t really want friends when
we have agendas for them. If you need a friend to take away your loneliness or
be your companion, then you are reducing David to his instrumental value in
your life. Do you see the contrast?
Saul wants to absorb David to meet his
needs while Jonathan wants only to love David. “The soul of Jonathan was knit
to the soul of David, and he loved him as his own soul.” (Some commentaries on
the Scripture claim that this verse alludes to a homosexual relationship
between Jonathan and David. Others disagree claiming that this was typical language
for male relationships in ancient society, and they also often note David’s
notorious love for women. My own opinion
is that this debate is beside the point. The text says nothing of a sexual
relationship between these men. Rather it is describing a deep friendship,
which is available to all people regardless of their orientation, marital
status, gender, or age.)
“The
soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and he loved him as his own
soul.” That assumes a certain amount
of self-love. For some of us to love another as we love ourselves would be no
great blessing. But Jonathan didn’t need David in his life to find love. The
best friends don’t need to have friends — but they choose to. That’s because
the secret to having friends is to first be self-sufficient before God. Only
then are you free to give love to another.
Jonathan takes off his royal robe and
sword and places them on David. It is as if Jonathan is helping David fulfill
his anointed calling to be king. Why would Jonathan befriend David and help
fulfill his anointed calling to rule
Friendship is one of the most
underrated means of exercising spirituality, but it is actually as critical to
our souls as prayer and Bible study. It is almost a sacrament. Like water, or
bread and wine, friendship takes what is common in human experience and turns
it into something holy.
The Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel
has written that the thing that makes a relationship holy in the Scriptures is
the creative space that is formed between two people. It is into this space
that the Holy descends to do all of his creative work in the lives of both
people. Jesus said almost the same thing when he promised that, “When two or
three are gathered in my name, I will be in the midst of them.” In both the Old
and the New Testaments we find the same amazing claim that we cannot fully know
God apart from the sacred space between friends that is filled by God. This is
why it is so devastating when a friendship breaks apart. Not only have you lost
the friend, but also the creative, sacred space.
This is why so many of us long for a
friend like a Jonathan. We are yearning not just for a friend but for a fuller
understanding of the love of God. But what we should be asking is not “How do I
find a friend like Jonathan — someone who will not try to absorb me but simply
love me?” What we should be asking is,
“How can I be a friend like Jonathan? How do I receive the people God is trying
to give me, and how do I know God better in the sacred space that exists
between us?”
Things go from bad to worse between
David and Saul, who goes crazy with jealousy over David’s triumphs over the
Philistines. Jonathan tries to intercede with his father, but to no avail. Eventually, it becomes painfully clear that
David has to flee for his life. In the twentieth chapter of 1 Samuel we are
given a glimpse of the painful day these best of friends have to say good-bye,
knowing that they will never see each other again. David was hiding out in the fields. Jonathan
came to deliver the horrible news that there would be no reconciliation with
Saul. The two men embrace, weeping, with David, we are told, weeping the most.
But Jonathan said to him, “Go in peace, since both of us have sworn in the name
of the Lord saying, ‘The Lord shall be between me and you, and between my
descendants and your descendants forever.’” There it is again — the Lord is
between us.
In every friendship there comes a day
for saying good-bye. It isn’t just because we live in a mobile society. It is
because friendships, like all of God’s gifts, have to be held with open hands.
A day will come for saying good-bye to one you don’t want to give up, even if
that day can be postponed to a funeral, it will still come. How do you survive
saying good-bye to a spiritual friend?
The way Jonathan did — by remembering that it was the Lord who gave you
this friendship and the Lord “shall be between me and you” always.
It was never the circumstances that
created Jonathan and David’s friendship. It was the Lord who was in the
creative space between them. Even if that space is enlarged by great distance,
and even if the distance spans the river of death, the Lord remains between you
always. That means you get to keep the love. It is the only thing we ever get to
keep. Amen.