Balcony Friends (Samuel 18-20) Sep.30, 2007
“Balcony Friends” September 30, 2007
Text: 1 Samuel 18-20 (selected texts)
WORK ON CONCLUSION… DANIEL’s question how, I’ve been hurt…
Before coming here to Tenth Avenue Church, I was in a transition time settling back into the area after having lived in Southern California.
In the transition window, I was doing some training to run the Vancouver marathon. I was doing a little writing and some traveling and speaking--and not training as hard as I should have been. I wasn’t running anything close to 42 kilometers required in the race.
But, I figured I’d be ok because I knew there would be a lot of fellow runners and people on the sidelines cheering me and the other runners on. Sure enough I was energized by the cheering of people on the roadside and (though my time was nothing to brag about) I completed the race with more vigor than I had anticipated…
In real life we need people cheering us on…
Or to use an image from horse-racing… we need a “balcony friend.”
Gregory of Nyssa was one of the early church fathers in the 4th century, who spent a surprising amount of time at the horse track--for an early church father.
Gregory of Nyssa says:
At horse races, the spectators shout to their favorites in the contest. From the balcony, they incite the rider to keener effort, urging the horses on while leaning forward and flailing the air with their outstretched hand instead of a whip.
I seem to be doing the same thing myself, most valued friend and brother. While you are competing admirably divine race-- I exhort, urge and encourage you vigorously.
Apparently there’s been a phrase for a long time and is used to describe this sort of thing. It talks about someone being a “balcony person.” Gregory says, I’m up in the stands. I’m watching my friend run the race, and I’m cheering him on. This is your life--your one race in life. God is with you so don’t stop.
Some people are “balcony people.” When you’re with them, they fill you with energy, inspiration, and hope--they’re you’re balcony people.
Then you have some other people in your life. They are what Bay Area Pastor John Ortberg calls them basement people--because they bring you down: they drain you energy… they stick a hose in your gas tank and siphon energy from you.
Ortberg tells the story of man who has a man who has a barber who—who tells everything about his life…. he tells him about his life, his work, his family. The barber’s one of these guys who is never impressed, never excited about anything. The day comes when the man is getting ready to go to Italy, where he’s going to have an audience with the Pope. His barber is Catholic, so he’s sure that the barber will be excited about this. He tells him, but the barber says, “Big deal. You won’t be able to see him. He’ll be way far away.” The guy goes to Italy, and he comes back and goes to get his haircut. He says to the barber, You’ll never believe this, but I got to meet the Pope.
The barber says, You did not. Yes, I did. I was in a receiving line and got to come right past his chair. I got to shake his hand. I knelt down in front of him. I took his hand. I kissed his ring. I bowed my head before him. And the Pope spoke to me.
The barber is impressed in spite of himself. He asks, What did the Pope say?
He said, Where did you get that lousy haircut?
There are balcony people and there are basement people.
And each needs a balcony friend or two.
David as we see in the Scriptures had a balcony friend in Jonathan.
David’s had come under great attack from an unexpected source…
David with a sling and stone had killed the archenemy of his people: the giant Goliath…. And you would think that King Saul would be deeply grateful, but instead he is now insanely jealous, afraid the people would want David, instead of himself, to be their King.
Saul tries to kill David at least 8 times. Saul hurls spears at David, trying to pin him to a wall. He tries to get David to be killed in war. Saul with 3000 of his soldiers goes on a search on a search and destroy David mission.
While our experience may not be quite as dramatic, like David we too at some point in our journey will experience some kind of adversity… it may that like a David we are attacked by some person. Or we may feel threatened by some other kind of circumstance… we have difficulty in our work, or stress in a relationship, we receive a discouraging medical report…
When David was losing energy because he was being hunted down by Saul, God provided David with a wonderful gift—he provided David with a balcony friend, Jonathan. ..
Last Sunday, David Bentall spoke on covenant friendship. David talked about the various benefits of covenant friendship (get the cd or download the message from our website if you weren’t here). This morning, because this topic is so important and because we did not look at certain texts that relate to David’s friendship with Jonathan, we are going to go a little further on that theme today to look specifically at how a balcony friend can lift us when we are facing adversity (and looking from another angle we’re can look at how we can be a balcony friend to someone else)… how a balcony friend lets us in, and does not letting us down.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to 1 Samuel 18:1:
1 After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself…
Robert Alter the Hebrew literary scholar, translates the phrase in Hebrew that Jonathan’s very self became bound up in David.
Jonathan and David became one in Spirit—their lives became bound up with each other. The gift of balcony friendship is that it enables us to receive the life energy of another person. When we are facing adversity, one of the things that can sustain us is receiving the spirit and the energy of another person.
We know that even something as simple as smile from someone we don’t even know can pick up our energy…
Even the wag of dog’s tail can pick us up…
A friend can have a profound impact on us. Neuro-scientists are finding that friends change the way we think on the deepest level. Kevin Pelphery, assistant professor of psychological and brain science at Duke, says there is a kind melding among individuals in a tight network and you become more …and more… and more alike. We know that close friends can anticipate what each other are going to say and can finish the other person’s sentences… close friends begin to imitate each other’s mannerisms on a subconscious level.
We are affected by the spirit and the actions of our friends.
Last week Brett Farve the quarterback of the Green Packers threw his 420th career touch down pass… Afterward, in an interview he said the personal record would have meant nothing to me if we lost the game… (which they won). When Brett Farve steps into the huddle with a 1 minute and the team is down by 6 points, players in huddle say when Brett steps in huddle, we know we can win, not just because his athlete ability, but because he plays with all his heart until the end of the game and he plays for the good of team team, not for himself.
Football is a just a game, but in REAL life we need people who’s spirit gives us energy, inspiration and hope.
Balcony friends lift you up.
And a balcony friend lets you in.
As we saw earlier, King Saul became insanely jealous of David’s success.
David is absolutely convinced that Saul, Jonathan’s father, is intent on killing David.
Jonathan, on the other hand does not believe his dad Saul now really wants to kill David…. David says (in 1 Sam 20) your father knows I’ve found favor in your eyes and your father has thought Jonathan must not know I want to kill him or he’ll be grieved.
It says in 1 Samuel 20: 4: 4 Jonathan said to David, "Whatever you want me to do, I'll do for you."
David in verse… 5 says "Look, tomorrow is the New Moon feast, and I am supposed to dine with the king; but let me go and hide in the field… 6 If your father misses me at all, tell him, 'David earnestly asked my permission to hurry to Bethlehem, his hometown, because an annual sacrifice is being made there for his whole clan.' 7 If he says, 'Very well,' then your servant is safe. But if he loses his temper, you can be sure that he is determined to harm me.
Jonathan tells David to hide in a certain place and tells him on the day after tomorrow, I will come to this place… I will shoot three arrows as though I were shooting at a target. 21 Then I will send a boy and say, 'Go, find the arrows.' If I say to him, 'Look, the arrows are on this side of you; bring them here,' then come, because, as surely as the LORD lives, you are safe; there is no danger. 22 But if I say to the boy, 'Look, the arrows are beyond you,' then you must go, because the LORD has sent you away.
When David does not show up for the festival meal, Saul asked, “Where’s David?” Jonathan explained that David had some family obligations to attend in Bethlehem. Saul flies off the handle and screams, “You son of a whore! Don’t you know that as long as David lives, you won’t be king? Bring him here so that I can kill him!” And Jonathan asks his father, “Why should he be put to death? What wrong has he done?” Saul grabbed a spear and hurled it at Jonathan, trying to kill him, and Jonathan ran out to the field to warn his friend David he really was in danger.
35 In the morning Jonathan went out to the field for his meeting with David. He had a small boy with him, 36 and he said to the boy, "Run and find the arrows I shoot." As the boy ran, he shot an arrow beyond him. 37 When the boy came to the place where Jonathan's arrow had fallen, Jonathan called out after him, "Isn't the arrow beyond you?" 38 Then he shouted, "Hurry! Go quickly! Don't stop!" The boy picked up the arrow and returned to his master. 39 (The boy knew nothing about all this; only Jonathan and David knew.) 40 Then Jonathan gave his weapons to the boy and said, "Go, carry them back to town."
41 After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with his face to the ground… these warriors weep and embrace as friends.
In the story, we see that David shares freely with Jonathan’s his anxieties about Jonathan’s father’s intention to kill David… and we see Jonathan sharing very freely the sad news that his dad indeed does want to kill David…
Part of what a balcony friends does is that he/she let’s you into their heart.
According to Allan Deutschman, the author of Change or Die, the psychology profession has put an enormous amount of energy, money and time studying the effectiveness over 400 different schools of psychotherapy. The conclusion was that every kind of psychotherapy was helpful to patients, but no particular kind was significantly more helpful than the others. The key factor was the quality of the relationship formed by the patient and therapist… —not the specific theories or techniques that differentiated the particular school of therapy…
Do you remember when psychologist Dr. Larry Crabb spoke here last year?
I asked Larry, “I’ve heard different people cite studies that say if a person has a the same problem with one goes to a psychologist for a year and the other person instead connects regularly with a friend with whom they can share their heart, the person who regularly sees their friend is just as well off if not better off than the person who see the professional… Is that true?”
Dr. Larry Crabb said there are certain issues that a person is facing which is of such a nature they should see a professional, but 1000s of studies have been done on that question… and everyone says that if you can talk to friend with good character and wisdom, a friend is typically just as helpful long term as a “professional” if not more so… Larry leaned over and said… but the friend has to be trustworthy in character and wise…
Sharing transparently is typically more difficult for a man than a woman. I know for me it’s something I’ve had to work on. In some ways, it’s not that different from learning how to hit a tennis ball or golf ball, it’s takes practices and exercising neural networks.
When a man and wife divorce—typically a woman doesn’t fare as well as the man economically after the divorce, but does better emotionally because she typically has friends she can talk to, often the husband does not.
A balcony friend as we see David and Jonathan’s relationship gives us an opportunity to share our heart.
A balcony friend lifts us up by letting us in.
We see in David and Jonathan’s friendship that a balcony friend will not let you down. In 1 Samuel 18:3 we see them creating a covenant. In 1 Samuel 20: 16-17 and 1 Sam 23:18 wee see David and Jonathan reaffirming their covenant with each other.
As I alluded to last Sunday, the vast majority of relationships today are based on cost-benefit analysis. People enter into relationship with the assumption, “If I benefit from this relationship, I’m in… if I don’t out of here.
Sam Wells, dean of the Chapel at Duke, says, “If I were to coin a phrase that would sum up many students’ approach to friendship, it would be ‘might catch you later.’ Most cell phone conversations end with those words. That is, I am not committing my evening to you. I might get a better offer, but if I don’t get an offer, I may be in touch because you may be part of my evening’s entertainment.
A real friend is present for another person, even when it costs them something. Jonathan stayed true to David, even when staying true to David meant that Jonathan would forfeit his right to be king… as I said last week, when Jonathan gives David his robe and his sword, as a symbolic way of saying… you’ll be king, you’ll be my ruler… Jonathan was true to David, even when it meant that his father would try to kill him because of his friendship with David….
When David was out in the wilderness, running as a fugitive from Saul, Jonathan risked his life by searching David out (1 Samuel 23:16), and helped his friend find strength in God. A covenant friend present for you, even when it doesn’t benefit them.
Not that long ago, I was going through a discouraging circumstance, with no clear way out. My friend Chris, a politician and a poet, said… as he does from time to time, “I’m in our corner.” Later I told my wife and she wasn’t familiar with that expression, and I said when you’re a boxer… in the between rounds you sit on a bench in a corner and your team gives you water, and attend to your cuts, and they tell you can win the fight, not to drop you gloves so you don’t get hit unnecessarily. In the battle of life, we need someone in our corner. We need a balcony friend. So a balcony friend lifts us, lets us in, and doesn’t let us down.
The recently published Canadian census suggested that fewer and fewer relationships are based on any kind of promise….
I recently read that it’s not just young people, but senior citizens who are getting “friends with benefits”. Seniors are getting friends that they want to just have sex with and no other commitment. If the sex ceases to satisfy, the “friend” gets dropped.
In our culture to have a balcony friend or be a balcony friend seems rather counter-cultural, but so needed…
How do we receive this kind of friend…?
The irony is that if we try too hard, just to get a friend, you likely won’t have a balcony friend… It’s like that kid in junior high school--very desperate have friends (with the wide eyes of a puppy)--was the student who found it most difficult to actually make friends. But the best way to receive this kind of friends, of course, is to become a friend like this...
How do we become people who have the capacity to become a friend like Jonathan… who lifts people up, let’s them in and doesn’t let them down? It’s a very high standard he sets.
It is by embracing the friendship of the one who has offered this to us—the one to whom Jonathan ultimately points. Jonathan gave up his future Kingship in order to serve his friend David. And Jesus Christ gave up the throne in heaven to come to earth as human being to serve us.
When Jesus Christ was on the Cross, dying as a sacrifice for our sins, it wasn’t as though he were looking at us in his mind’s eye and wondering, “What am I going get out of this relationship?” Or, he wasn’t saying, “I’ll offer myself to you, because your personality clicks with mine or because you have a certain body type.” No, he was freely offering giving himself to us as a sacrifice for our sins—so our sins could be forgiven and so we could be united with God…
When we enter into a friendship with Jesus Christ, we have a friend with whom we can share our heart’s deepest desires and needs. And we have a friend who serves us, and out of that friendship, we can become a balcony friend to others.
When experience deeply the constancy, the courage and the care of Jesus Christ, we’ll be better able to offer that to others… we can become and receive balcony friends--who lift us up, let us in and don’t let us down.
Pray…
C.S. Lewis says
“For a Christian, there are no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you for one another.”
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)Ba
Text: 1 Samuel 18-20 (selected texts)
WORK ON CONCLUSION… DANIEL’s question how, I’ve been hurt…
Before coming here to Tenth Avenue Church, I was in a transition time settling back into the area after having lived in Southern California.
In the transition window, I was doing some training to run the Vancouver marathon. I was doing a little writing and some traveling and speaking--and not training as hard as I should have been. I wasn’t running anything close to 42 kilometers required in the race.
But, I figured I’d be ok because I knew there would be a lot of fellow runners and people on the sidelines cheering me and the other runners on. Sure enough I was energized by the cheering of people on the roadside and (though my time was nothing to brag about) I completed the race with more vigor than I had anticipated…
In real life we need people cheering us on…
Or to use an image from horse-racing… we need a “balcony friend.”
Gregory of Nyssa was one of the early church fathers in the 4th century, who spent a surprising amount of time at the horse track--for an early church father.
Gregory of Nyssa says:
At horse races, the spectators shout to their favorites in the contest. From the balcony, they incite the rider to keener effort, urging the horses on while leaning forward and flailing the air with their outstretched hand instead of a whip.
I seem to be doing the same thing myself, most valued friend and brother. While you are competing admirably divine race-- I exhort, urge and encourage you vigorously.
Apparently there’s been a phrase for a long time and is used to describe this sort of thing. It talks about someone being a “balcony person.” Gregory says, I’m up in the stands. I’m watching my friend run the race, and I’m cheering him on. This is your life--your one race in life. God is with you so don’t stop.
Some people are “balcony people.” When you’re with them, they fill you with energy, inspiration, and hope--they’re you’re balcony people.
Then you have some other people in your life. They are what Bay Area Pastor John Ortberg calls them basement people--because they bring you down: they drain you energy… they stick a hose in your gas tank and siphon energy from you.
Ortberg tells the story of man who has a man who has a barber who—who tells everything about his life…. he tells him about his life, his work, his family. The barber’s one of these guys who is never impressed, never excited about anything. The day comes when the man is getting ready to go to Italy, where he’s going to have an audience with the Pope. His barber is Catholic, so he’s sure that the barber will be excited about this. He tells him, but the barber says, “Big deal. You won’t be able to see him. He’ll be way far away.” The guy goes to Italy, and he comes back and goes to get his haircut. He says to the barber, You’ll never believe this, but I got to meet the Pope.
The barber says, You did not. Yes, I did. I was in a receiving line and got to come right past his chair. I got to shake his hand. I knelt down in front of him. I took his hand. I kissed his ring. I bowed my head before him. And the Pope spoke to me.
The barber is impressed in spite of himself. He asks, What did the Pope say?
He said, Where did you get that lousy haircut?
There are balcony people and there are basement people.
And each needs a balcony friend or two.
David as we see in the Scriptures had a balcony friend in Jonathan.
David’s had come under great attack from an unexpected source…
David with a sling and stone had killed the archenemy of his people: the giant Goliath…. And you would think that King Saul would be deeply grateful, but instead he is now insanely jealous, afraid the people would want David, instead of himself, to be their King.
Saul tries to kill David at least 8 times. Saul hurls spears at David, trying to pin him to a wall. He tries to get David to be killed in war. Saul with 3000 of his soldiers goes on a search on a search and destroy David mission.
While our experience may not be quite as dramatic, like David we too at some point in our journey will experience some kind of adversity… it may that like a David we are attacked by some person. Or we may feel threatened by some other kind of circumstance… we have difficulty in our work, or stress in a relationship, we receive a discouraging medical report…
When David was losing energy because he was being hunted down by Saul, God provided David with a wonderful gift—he provided David with a balcony friend, Jonathan. ..
Last Sunday, David Bentall spoke on covenant friendship. David talked about the various benefits of covenant friendship (get the cd or download the message from our website if you weren’t here). This morning, because this topic is so important and because we did not look at certain texts that relate to David’s friendship with Jonathan, we are going to go a little further on that theme today to look specifically at how a balcony friend can lift us when we are facing adversity (and looking from another angle we’re can look at how we can be a balcony friend to someone else)… how a balcony friend lets us in, and does not letting us down.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to 1 Samuel 18:1:
1 After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself…
Robert Alter the Hebrew literary scholar, translates the phrase in Hebrew that Jonathan’s very self became bound up in David.
Jonathan and David became one in Spirit—their lives became bound up with each other. The gift of balcony friendship is that it enables us to receive the life energy of another person. When we are facing adversity, one of the things that can sustain us is receiving the spirit and the energy of another person.
We know that even something as simple as smile from someone we don’t even know can pick up our energy…
Even the wag of dog’s tail can pick us up…
A friend can have a profound impact on us. Neuro-scientists are finding that friends change the way we think on the deepest level. Kevin Pelphery, assistant professor of psychological and brain science at Duke, says there is a kind melding among individuals in a tight network and you become more …and more… and more alike. We know that close friends can anticipate what each other are going to say and can finish the other person’s sentences… close friends begin to imitate each other’s mannerisms on a subconscious level.
We are affected by the spirit and the actions of our friends.
Last week Brett Farve the quarterback of the Green Packers threw his 420th career touch down pass… Afterward, in an interview he said the personal record would have meant nothing to me if we lost the game… (which they won). When Brett Farve steps into the huddle with a 1 minute and the team is down by 6 points, players in huddle say when Brett steps in huddle, we know we can win, not just because his athlete ability, but because he plays with all his heart until the end of the game and he plays for the good of team team, not for himself.
Football is a just a game, but in REAL life we need people who’s spirit gives us energy, inspiration and hope.
Balcony friends lift you up.
And a balcony friend lets you in.
As we saw earlier, King Saul became insanely jealous of David’s success.
David is absolutely convinced that Saul, Jonathan’s father, is intent on killing David.
Jonathan, on the other hand does not believe his dad Saul now really wants to kill David…. David says (in 1 Sam 20) your father knows I’ve found favor in your eyes and your father has thought Jonathan must not know I want to kill him or he’ll be grieved.
It says in 1 Samuel 20: 4: 4 Jonathan said to David, "Whatever you want me to do, I'll do for you."
David in verse… 5 says "Look, tomorrow is the New Moon feast, and I am supposed to dine with the king; but let me go and hide in the field… 6 If your father misses me at all, tell him, 'David earnestly asked my permission to hurry to Bethlehem, his hometown, because an annual sacrifice is being made there for his whole clan.' 7 If he says, 'Very well,' then your servant is safe. But if he loses his temper, you can be sure that he is determined to harm me.
Jonathan tells David to hide in a certain place and tells him on the day after tomorrow, I will come to this place… I will shoot three arrows as though I were shooting at a target. 21 Then I will send a boy and say, 'Go, find the arrows.' If I say to him, 'Look, the arrows are on this side of you; bring them here,' then come, because, as surely as the LORD lives, you are safe; there is no danger. 22 But if I say to the boy, 'Look, the arrows are beyond you,' then you must go, because the LORD has sent you away.
When David does not show up for the festival meal, Saul asked, “Where’s David?” Jonathan explained that David had some family obligations to attend in Bethlehem. Saul flies off the handle and screams, “You son of a whore! Don’t you know that as long as David lives, you won’t be king? Bring him here so that I can kill him!” And Jonathan asks his father, “Why should he be put to death? What wrong has he done?” Saul grabbed a spear and hurled it at Jonathan, trying to kill him, and Jonathan ran out to the field to warn his friend David he really was in danger.
35 In the morning Jonathan went out to the field for his meeting with David. He had a small boy with him, 36 and he said to the boy, "Run and find the arrows I shoot." As the boy ran, he shot an arrow beyond him. 37 When the boy came to the place where Jonathan's arrow had fallen, Jonathan called out after him, "Isn't the arrow beyond you?" 38 Then he shouted, "Hurry! Go quickly! Don't stop!" The boy picked up the arrow and returned to his master. 39 (The boy knew nothing about all this; only Jonathan and David knew.) 40 Then Jonathan gave his weapons to the boy and said, "Go, carry them back to town."
41 After the boy had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with his face to the ground… these warriors weep and embrace as friends.
In the story, we see that David shares freely with Jonathan’s his anxieties about Jonathan’s father’s intention to kill David… and we see Jonathan sharing very freely the sad news that his dad indeed does want to kill David…
Part of what a balcony friends does is that he/she let’s you into their heart.
According to Allan Deutschman, the author of Change or Die, the psychology profession has put an enormous amount of energy, money and time studying the effectiveness over 400 different schools of psychotherapy. The conclusion was that every kind of psychotherapy was helpful to patients, but no particular kind was significantly more helpful than the others. The key factor was the quality of the relationship formed by the patient and therapist… —not the specific theories or techniques that differentiated the particular school of therapy…
Do you remember when psychologist Dr. Larry Crabb spoke here last year?
I asked Larry, “I’ve heard different people cite studies that say if a person has a the same problem with one goes to a psychologist for a year and the other person instead connects regularly with a friend with whom they can share their heart, the person who regularly sees their friend is just as well off if not better off than the person who see the professional… Is that true?”
Dr. Larry Crabb said there are certain issues that a person is facing which is of such a nature they should see a professional, but 1000s of studies have been done on that question… and everyone says that if you can talk to friend with good character and wisdom, a friend is typically just as helpful long term as a “professional” if not more so… Larry leaned over and said… but the friend has to be trustworthy in character and wise…
Sharing transparently is typically more difficult for a man than a woman. I know for me it’s something I’ve had to work on. In some ways, it’s not that different from learning how to hit a tennis ball or golf ball, it’s takes practices and exercising neural networks.
When a man and wife divorce—typically a woman doesn’t fare as well as the man economically after the divorce, but does better emotionally because she typically has friends she can talk to, often the husband does not.
A balcony friend as we see David and Jonathan’s relationship gives us an opportunity to share our heart.
A balcony friend lifts us up by letting us in.
We see in David and Jonathan’s friendship that a balcony friend will not let you down. In 1 Samuel 18:3 we see them creating a covenant. In 1 Samuel 20: 16-17 and 1 Sam 23:18 wee see David and Jonathan reaffirming their covenant with each other.
As I alluded to last Sunday, the vast majority of relationships today are based on cost-benefit analysis. People enter into relationship with the assumption, “If I benefit from this relationship, I’m in… if I don’t out of here.
Sam Wells, dean of the Chapel at Duke, says, “If I were to coin a phrase that would sum up many students’ approach to friendship, it would be ‘might catch you later.’ Most cell phone conversations end with those words. That is, I am not committing my evening to you. I might get a better offer, but if I don’t get an offer, I may be in touch because you may be part of my evening’s entertainment.
A real friend is present for another person, even when it costs them something. Jonathan stayed true to David, even when staying true to David meant that Jonathan would forfeit his right to be king… as I said last week, when Jonathan gives David his robe and his sword, as a symbolic way of saying… you’ll be king, you’ll be my ruler… Jonathan was true to David, even when it meant that his father would try to kill him because of his friendship with David….
When David was out in the wilderness, running as a fugitive from Saul, Jonathan risked his life by searching David out (1 Samuel 23:16), and helped his friend find strength in God. A covenant friend present for you, even when it doesn’t benefit them.
Not that long ago, I was going through a discouraging circumstance, with no clear way out. My friend Chris, a politician and a poet, said… as he does from time to time, “I’m in our corner.” Later I told my wife and she wasn’t familiar with that expression, and I said when you’re a boxer… in the between rounds you sit on a bench in a corner and your team gives you water, and attend to your cuts, and they tell you can win the fight, not to drop you gloves so you don’t get hit unnecessarily. In the battle of life, we need someone in our corner. We need a balcony friend. So a balcony friend lifts us, lets us in, and doesn’t let us down.
The recently published Canadian census suggested that fewer and fewer relationships are based on any kind of promise….
I recently read that it’s not just young people, but senior citizens who are getting “friends with benefits”. Seniors are getting friends that they want to just have sex with and no other commitment. If the sex ceases to satisfy, the “friend” gets dropped.
In our culture to have a balcony friend or be a balcony friend seems rather counter-cultural, but so needed…
How do we receive this kind of friend…?
The irony is that if we try too hard, just to get a friend, you likely won’t have a balcony friend… It’s like that kid in junior high school--very desperate have friends (with the wide eyes of a puppy)--was the student who found it most difficult to actually make friends. But the best way to receive this kind of friends, of course, is to become a friend like this...
How do we become people who have the capacity to become a friend like Jonathan… who lifts people up, let’s them in and doesn’t let them down? It’s a very high standard he sets.
It is by embracing the friendship of the one who has offered this to us—the one to whom Jonathan ultimately points. Jonathan gave up his future Kingship in order to serve his friend David. And Jesus Christ gave up the throne in heaven to come to earth as human being to serve us.
When Jesus Christ was on the Cross, dying as a sacrifice for our sins, it wasn’t as though he were looking at us in his mind’s eye and wondering, “What am I going get out of this relationship?” Or, he wasn’t saying, “I’ll offer myself to you, because your personality clicks with mine or because you have a certain body type.” No, he was freely offering giving himself to us as a sacrifice for our sins—so our sins could be forgiven and so we could be united with God…
When we enter into a friendship with Jesus Christ, we have a friend with whom we can share our heart’s deepest desires and needs. And we have a friend who serves us, and out of that friendship, we can become a balcony friend to others.
When experience deeply the constancy, the courage and the care of Jesus Christ, we’ll be better able to offer that to others… we can become and receive balcony friends--who lift us up, let us in and don’t let us down.
Pray…
C.S. Lewis says
“For a Christian, there are no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you for one another.”
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)Ba
posted by Shigematsu at 11:52 AM
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