First Baptist Church of Asheville Podcast
Sermon: Holy Friendships
So first the art of belonging takes practice. God strengthens and grows our faith through practices like prayer and generosity and communion. Second the art of belonging begins with benedictions. Baptism ordains us to bless, to convey God's favor on others and especially to confer God's blessings on the marginalized and brokenhearted and those who don't yet know they belong and those who've been told they don't belong. Today in the third and final sermon series on James I wish to say that the ultimate aim of all of this art of belonging is holy friendship. Holy friendship. James doesn't use the phrase holy friendship. Rather he warns us about friendship with the world so I want to speak to this because it can be confusing especially if you're a student of scripture because elsewhere God well scripture begins as I said last week with God creating the world and calling it good and then concluding as it's all complete that it is very good and then probably the most well-known scripture familiar to people inside and outside of the church John 3 16 what does John write that God so loves the world that God was willing to give up his only son but it's about context here for James friendship with the world is it takes on a different meaning yes God loves the world yes we with God may love the world and engage the world where we really all have the the church and world running straight through our own hearts when we really think about it but that's not really what James is talking about so much he's he's talking about friendship with what we might otherwise call worldliness where our desires are disordered and to be a friend of the world for James is really to be more or less selfish a busy body a consumer merely covetous desiring of the wrong things and with his pastoral vision he sees how our disordered desires lead to violence I'm reminded of scholar Stanley Howarwas is really devastating comment about war he says of course nobody wants war but what we desire makes war inevitable and just for fun I also believe James would have agreed with Kurt Vonnegut the author and his concept of grandfaloons he made that word up grandfaloons in his novel cats cradle what on earth is a grandfaloon Vonnegut defiled a grandfaloon as a proud and meaningless collection of human beings and he gave examples such as quote the communist party the daughters of the American Revolution he said you know the the general electric company and any nation anywhere anytime as a native of Indiana he also said Hoosiers is a grandfaloon and just so I don't get any emails from people listening from Indiana he would have probably also said Tar Heels is one - especially today look we're all probably part of some grandfaloon okay but we should be careful we don't get to the end of our lives though and find out that that's where we really spend it all get to the end of our lives and and there we are lying in our hospice bed and and the thought comes to us is that all I was up to is that all that was we don't really find a whole lot of holy friendships in these ultimately meaningless associations and so while James doesn't speak of holy friendship he does say draw near to God and God will draw near to you so James invites us to to befriend God to desire God and and and our neighbor and that's where I've taken my cue to lift up this phrase holy friendship there is in my wish to say holy friendship something of that beautiful call and response in the Westminster shorter catechism which begins by asking a question what's the chief end of humanity what's the whole point of all of this in other words humanity's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy God forever similarly the chief end of belonging is to befriend God and neighbor what does Jesus mean by friend I invite you each one of you to think of a best friend perhaps you have have one now or one from childhood in mind you can have several in mind if you want to maybe have more than one if you're married it could be your partner if you're old enough to have adult children it it could be your children whoever comes to mind I imagine if you were to think of why they were your best friend it would probably have a lot to do with knowing everything about them being able to trust them with the details of your life and they're being able to trust you with the details of their life your affection for them is born of considerable time spent together and when you're with them you are at peace and when you meet again even after perhaps even years apart it's as though no time passed at all how might it change your imagination about God to consider that our relationship with God could be made of the same substance as the deep affection we have for our best friend it may well be that in order to reorder our desires we have to reimagine who God is and what God is like so I invite all of us to imagine for one that God is not after us in a punitive sense God is not waiting to stand over us as judge jury an executioner God is not a panopticon and all seeing eye looking for you and waiting for you to do something wrong and then pounce on you what if instead we all imagine God like a best friend who waits expectantly for us enjoys our company laughs with us and weeps with us misses us longs to be with us tears up just thinking about us in the good times wants to stand by our side and support us help us up when we fall listen to us without trying to fix us or solve our problems forgives us when we mess up loves us always in life and in death what if we already know something of what it means to be friends with God because we already know what it means to have a best friend maybe the best friends we have are not merely imminent relationships for this earthly life but transcendent signs of God's love for us Jesus says I don't even call you servants any longer you've been with me now long enough you've heard of my sermons and my parables and my speeches and you've overheard my prayers and you've walked with me through the countryside between all the towns and villages and cities we have lived our lives together for these three years so I don't call you servants any longer now I call you friends now you're walking beside me I've told you everything I know about God now you have it so now we're friends here's what I think holy friends do holy friends mean many things to each other but I want to name three because this is a sermon and you're not allowed to go past three it's a rule one one of the most important things that holy friends do and maybe all maybe I'll all to say a caveat here you you can have a wonderful set of friends and friends in different places for different reasons and all of that's good I just believe and I want to offer to you this gift of thinking about some friends as holy so here's here's what that's made of holy friends confess their sins to one another without fear of judgment and I learned this from Dietrich Bonhoeffer the great German scholar theologian pastor he said the pious community doesn't let anybody be a sinner everybody hides their their sins from each other really not allowed to be sinners you come to church you're supposed to be nice and have your life together and be you know wear a jacket and tie like the preacher and behave and we're not gonna we're not gonna puncture through that layer to get to the real stuff of life we're just gonna be nice Christians pious say our prayers go home and feel good about Sunday morning Bonhoeffer says no great the grace of the gospel which is so hard for the pious to comprehend confronts us with the truth it says to us you're a sinner and a great unholy sinner at that now calm as the sinner that you are to your God who loves you have you ever confessed your sins to a friend and they said to you yeah yeah that was pretty bad guess what I still love you I'm not going anywhere that's a holy friend a second thing that holy friends do for one another is help each other wonder about God one one of the words that I have tried to introduce into our congregational lexicon I guess now along with grandfaloon is imaginary them which is kind of a made-up word over the years I've tried to invite us to see this space in the sanctuary and this physical church plant as a unique and sacred place in the world where we are safe to come and wonder about God to come together and turn on our imaginations and ask questions hard questions and ask and seek and knock without any fear of being picked on or teased or thought shallow or or too deep or too into this theology stuff no one of the greatest gifts that some of you as Bible study shepherds can give to your Bible study classes your small groups whenever you meet mostly on Sunday morning is to prepare a space an imaginary them for friends to come together and to wonder about God you may not leave with any answers but how wonderful it is to come to a place and to be with a particular kind of people that welcomes all the lobes of your brain to light up with wonder it would be perfectly it'd be a perfectly beautiful sentiment to have when you wake up on Sunday morning for the first thought in your mind to be I would really like to go to church if for no other reason today then to daydream about God we confess our sins we wonder about God together and number three holy friends identify and encourage one another's gifts recently my family and I had a family movie night we watched stand by me a bracing touching film based on Stephen King's novel the body a bunch of kids here that an older kid a teenager has been killed by a train and his body lies out there some mysterious place and they overhear their older brothers talking about it and they go on this mission to find the body despite its somber plot the story offers one of the the best depictions I know of childhood friendships of holy friendships of care confession pastoral care in fact the last time I saw this movie I was sitting with some friends at seminary and during one of the conversations between two of the kids one of my peers said wow that was really good pastoral care so these children care for each other they argue with each other they listen deeply to one another they point out one another's gifts and one scene Chris and Gordy are talking in the middle of the night and Chris had been blamed for stealing lunch money at his school and he came from a family that said to the teachers and all the school staff it was definitely Chris Chris definitely did this and Gordy asked Chris well did you do it and Chris's yeah I did it and Gordy comforts him it's okay but then Chris encourages Gordy he loves Gordy's stories he thinks he's a wonderfully gifted friend and he says to him at one point you know what you're gonna be a great writer someday Gordy you might even write about us guys and you can see Gordy's whole spirit lift up and then the movie ends with Gordy as the narrator as an adult saying you know I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 really does anybody after all congregations have been through in these recent years after all the warnings from authorities about isolation and and loneliness and the surgeon general even last year saying loneliness is an epidemic it's akin to smoking several packs of cigarettes a day for your health but our communities have become threadbare we're we're losing our third spaces many Americans say in polls they have no friends so how wonderful what wonderful good news that here in this Imaginarium and in our fellowship together we can encourage holy friendships if you've been here a long time I bet you already have one or two they're probably in this room if this is your first time here today I invite you to wonder is there a holy friendship waiting here for me