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A message by
Rev. T. Franklin Harmon
Associate Pastor
August 3, 2008 Scripture: I Samuel 18:1-4
As we get started this morning , I want to take a quick survey. How many of you have heard of Itunes? Iphone? Ipod? How many of you own or use Itunes or an Ipod? Since Apple introduced “I” into our vocabulary, we cannot escape it. Doing a quick internet search, I found Isafe, an internet safety site, IEarn, Ivillage, and Itools. And I have a friend who works in a church that has Igroups, the name of their Bible studies.
Our second survey question. How many of you have heard of ecards, E*Trade, epals, eHarmony or eBay? You don’t have to go to the store to buy things or greeting cards anymore, or to garage sales to buy other people’s junk or even to talk with a financial advisor in how to invest in stocks. We don’t even have to meet someone, or talk to them personally before we “know we are compatible” to date them.
Whether we like it or not, we live in an “I” and “E” world. It isn’t a bad thing. I use Itunes, Becca and I both have Ipods. I use eBay and I like to receive ecards, but it can become a problem if we are not careful. The problem with Itunes and Ipods is that it is all about “me.” It is my library of music to play on, my portable music device so that I don’t have to listen to your music, or talk to you, or even know that you exist. The same thing goes for the “E” which I will add an” m” in front of. We have [M]ebay, which allows me to get the things I want for the price I want, or sell my junk to someone for a higher price than a garage sale. [M]E*trade is about me controlling what stocks I have and when I sell them, and [M]eHarmony is a site that uses 29 different dimensions of compatibility to find My sole mate.
We are slowly becoming a culture where is more about Me and I and than you and we. I run the yellow light because I am late because I woke up late because I stayed up to watch a movie that I wanted to watch when I had time. I don’t care about you and why you might be in a hurry. Burger King used to run an ad that said, “Your way, right away at Burger King now!” I have to have things my way when I want them, and Burger King can provide that.
What about our church? Maybe this morning we want worship to be more like Burger King and try to make it about us, instead of making it about God. I would like a # 2 and please. Hold the loud song. Or let me change that. Make it a #4 combo but instead of a hymn can I get an extended time of prayer? Living in Placentia maybe I hope that we had a drive through worship service so that I can get home to make cookies after worship, or maybe I just would like that “to go” so I can get out on time so I can go to lunch. Or maybe before we decide which church to we would like to attend, we could fill out a survey of 29 different dimensions of compatibility to find the perfect church that fits my needs. Because Echurch, would have it down pat and once it matched us up, we would never want to leave, because everything would be perfect and done for us. We are becoming a culture that wants our Christians lives to fit what I want, look the way I think it should look, reach me the way that I want to be reached and, if not, I am not happy. We are slowly bringing the secular world into God’s world, which is not leaving much room for God or us.
Us! It isn’t about I, it is about us, God’s people, and this is not an uncommon concept, but it is what I want talk about today. Our scripture lesson today covers a subject that is very common in the Bible. It was one of our Bible studies at our youth conference when we were in Colorado. Ever since we studied it in Colorado, it has continued to intrigue me. Friendship is something that is mentioned a lot in the Bible. We are told in Genesis that it was not good that man be alone so God created Eve. If we continue to read, Lot had friends in Sodom that he tried to save from destruction, Job had friends who did the “good friend thing” when a girlfriend and boyfriend break. They tell him that he doesn’t need them, just curse him and die. Unfortunately for Job, it was not a girlfriend but God, and Job refused. Jesus was friends with Lazarus, although we are not told to what extent or how they met or why they were friends and the list goes on. But there is very little detail telling us about friendship or showing us what it means to be a good friend or in a relationship with someone else. We don’t know why Jesus was friends with Lazarus. We don’t know what Lot had in common with people in a city that God would destroy. But here in I Samuel, despite not knowing why exactly they were drawn to be such good friends, we get the beginning of a life long friendship and we have details of what it meant to David and Jonathan to be friends.
To give you a time line of where we are in David’s life, he has already been anointed by Samuel to be God’s chosen one and he has just killed Goliath. Having been the one to kill Goliath, David is promised to be married to King Saul’s daughter, Michal, making him second in line to Saul’s throne, behind…Jonathan. So, reading that Jonathan “became one in spirit,” “loved him as himself,” and “made of covenant with David” which seems a bit unorthodox for a prince to do with his replacement, yet, that is what we have. We might expect Jonathan to say to his dad, the king, “But what about me? I want to be King, I want to lead armies, and I want to do great things. Dad get rid of this guy for me, so I will not have any competition to your throne when you die.” Jonathan could have easily made it about himself, but he doesn’t. Instead of doing what we might do, get rid of the competition, Jonathan made a friendship covenant with David.
I am going to assume something for a minute. I am going to assume that everyone here has a friend, at least one, is that a safe assumption? How many of you, when you met that friend, drew up a covenant as to the terms of your friendship? That surprises me. Am I the only one that has a 15 page friendship agreement that I have all of my friends sign? A written covenant between friends is a little odd, isn’t it? It isn’t something that we typically do today. The closest things I could come up with was blood brothers or sisters (if girls do that kind of thing) or a prenuptial agreement between people preparing to get married. But even with that, people don’t write out the terms of their friendships do they?
But how nice it would be if we knew exactly what a friend expected of us and what we could expect from them. You will show up on time, you will never date the other’s ex or sibling without permission, you will call at least every other day to touch base and no more than three times in a day unless it is to firm up plans. If traveling together, the passenger will always offer to pay for parking unless, see exclusions below in Appendix E. If you don’t follow these conditions you will be down graded to Friend sub-class B depending on the severity of the infraction. See Friend sub-class B for details. It might be easier to have things written out. We wouldn’t get disappointed as much, we would know when to call the friendship quits, and we could never say I didn’t know you expected that from me. It might make things a little cleaner for us.
A friendship covenant is exactly what David and Jonathan made. As I said earlier, there was something about David and Jonathan that drew them together as friends, we don’t know what exactly it was, but something greater than liking the same music. Our scripture lesson today tells us about the beginning of their friendship, but what we learn about later in scripture are the trials that David and Jonathan went through, yet their friendship remained strong.
In the next chapter (Ch. 19), King Saul turns on David and for the rest of Saul’s life he tries to have David killed. He orders everyone in his army as well as his son Jonathan to kill David. Having David dead would really benefit Jonathan, but what does Jonathan do? He risks his own life to warn David of his father’s plan to kill him. Jonathan stays close to his father so that whatever his father’s plans are to catch and kill David, Jonathan can warn David before Saul has a chance to act.
Later in I Samuel, the way that Jonathan warns David of his father’s plan is by having an archer shoot arrows at him. If the arrows fall short it meant one thing and if they go just over his head it meant another. Now that is a true friendship. How many of you would let a friend shoot arrows at you? Jonathan stood by his father, the King, until he was killed as well as standing true to his friendship with David, battling loyalty to his father, the King, and to his friendship with David. The friend whom he loved as himself, who would end up taking Jonathan’s rightful place, could only become King that God wanted him to be, through his best friend, Jonathan’s, death.
I know I rushed through a lot of the details of the friendship between Jonathan and David, and I encourage you to read the rest of I Samuel which illustrates the depth of friendship, and shows what true friendship entails. But the longer I have thought about this story the more I have thought about what makes a good friend. So what makes a good friend? (Get some responses.) Listens, honesty, loyalty, friendly, funny, etc. How do you develop a friendship? Is it by having a computer tell you who your friends are? Is it by setting up your personal Ifriend library and choosing who will be your friend on a daily basis? Or is it by spending time with them, sharing the joys and sorrows of life with them, or sharing common interests with them? True friendships are like a seedling, it takes the right conditions, the right care, the right amount of love to make it grow and ,most importantly, it takes God.
Despite the story of Jonathan and David’s friendship being written thousands of years ago, I see it paralleling our lives. The friendship that is laid out before us, in my opinion, resembles a relationship with Jesus. Jesus is the Son and God is the Father. We are sinful and because of that Paul tells us that the “wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23).” So, because of our actions, God is going to cause our death, but Jesus, like Jonathan, saves us from our death and does so by making a covenant with us in his blood that whoever believes in him shall not parish but have eternal life (John 3:16). Jesus, like Jonathan, does everything he can to protect us from ourselves and death. The Gospel of John tells us “greater has no love than this, that a person lay down his life for their friends (John. 15:13).” According to the Gospel of John this is what a friend does, this is what Jonathan did for David, and this is what Jesus did for us.
What about us? What about me? So, I will ask, “What kind of friend are you?” Are you the kind of friend who makes commitments and doesn’t keep them, say you will stay in touch and don’t, or promise that you will never let work and the distractions of life come between you, yet you do? Or, do you nurture your friendship the way that it should be, not how it fits into your life? Are you willing to lay down your life?
Like Jonathan, Jesus has made a covenant with those who believe in him and has stripped himself, as Jonathan did for David, for our sake, not of earthly clothes, but of his heavenly glory to become human, all for us. Today we are reminded of the friendship that Jesus wants to have with us and the covenant that he made for us. As we prepare to share in this meal that Jesus has prepared in advanced for us, let us reaffirm our friendship and our faith, by coming together, setting aside the “I’s” and “Me’s” of our lives and be joined together in faith and friendship.
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