“Best Friends”
By Rev. Tom Martinez
August 29, 2010
1 Samuel 18: 1-8
[ Audio
(mp3, 6.5Mb) ]
want to begin by thanking Chuck and Julie and all of you for the invitation to come back and preach. Some of you know that my new church in Brooklyn is a house church with about thirty people and, while I do have a pulpit and I love my little flock out there, it sure is nice being back in this sacred space!
It's funny to think back to when I
used to preach about once a month or once every two months. What really stands out is how much time I had
to prepare. I think Chuck tried to tell
me it was different when you had to do it every week but I don't think I really
understood that until I got to Brooklyn.
So I also want to begin with an
apology if this particular sermon isn't quite on par with some of the carefully
crafted sermons I gave in the past.
There's a folk singer who used to sing
in Central Park I like who every now and then tells his story. He had some trouble with drugs and alcohol
and ended up singing in the Park near a lonely little hill to save his soul and
earn some money. At first he was all by
himself. Then a few people started to
gather. Then he started to develop a
pretty sizeable following. He titled his
first album, “The People on the Hill.”
I mention him because when crowd was
small, maybe because of the weather, he'd say today “it's just us.” And even though he was outside in Central
Park it would feel as if you were in his living room and he was singing just
for you.
I figure on a Sunday in late August
when lots of churches are simply closed and Chuck's away on a well-deserved
break, “it's just us!” But that's
okay. I like summer Sundays when it's
just us church folk.
It's in that spirit that I thought I'd
talk about friendship today.
In 1 Samuel we have the wonderful
story of David's friendship with Jonathan. In case anybody is a little
rusty on the larger narrative, this all takes place in the immediate aftermath
of David slaying Goliath. David is of course catapulted to fame and
fortune, finding himself speaking with King, Saul. This would be like the subway hero who risked
his life a few years back to rescue someone off the tracks who is suddenly
being honored by the Mayor. Or more
recently like the cabbie who was attacked because he
was Muslim. When extraordinary things
happen people find themselves whisked up into the company of the leading elite.
Now at first Saul was impressed with
David's killing of Goliath. If you remember Goliath was strutting around
for a few days calling the Israelites cowards and challenging anyone to fight
to the death. So it's probably safe to
say that Saul was personally relieved by David's heroics.
But his admiration
quickly give way to jealousy when they return from the battlefield to
the city. The text says the women came out singing, “Saul has killed his
thousands, David his ten thousands.” Saul suddenly sees David as a threat to
his hold on power. This flash of jealousy and its sense of
foreboding provides the dramatic backdrop to David and
Jonathan's blossoming friendship.
One thing I like about this twist of
the story is that it's a little surprising, since you'd think it would be
Jonathan who got jealous. Imagine, you're the
oldest boy in the royal family, next in line to be king, when out of nowhere
this shepherd boy waltzes in, slays the national enemy and wins your dad's
favor right in front of your eyes. If anybody was liable to become
jealous you'd think it would be Jonathan. But Jonathan is fine with
David's rise to fame.
It turns out it's
Saul who's insanely jealous. I think what the text is giving us here is
two basic models of relating. The King Saul model is oriented around
notions of power. We see very clearly that he'll do anything--even kill
people--in order to hold onto his power. For him other people are means
to an end, fodder for his own self-aggrandizement. We see this sort of
style of relating all the time, especially in politics but in virtually any
social organization.
Jonathan, on the other hand,
represents a healthy love of self and other that's marked by his capacity to
celebrate David's accomplishments. The
text tells us he loved David as himself.
These are pretty simple categories,
but the implications are far-reaching and profound. On the one hand you have King Saul and
exploitative relationships. We all know
what those look like as they are the norm.
Then we have Jonathan's style of
genuine friendship, where differences are forgotten, power is something to be
shared, it is the genuine meeting of two souls. This is a mysterious and sacred dimension of existence and I have a
hunch it has something to with what we're doing here, in Church.
You see it is so easy to go through
the world like King Saul. Sizing people
up and instantly deciding where they are in relation to you in the hierarchy of
the world's pecking order. In religious
terminology this is the way of the world and it's so deeply ingrained in us we
hardly even notice when we're doing it. This is the model of relating or competing that's plastered on
billboards and the sides of busses and that's seeped into virtually every
aspect of the virtual world.
But there is another way of being, one
in which each person is viewed as a sacred mystery, a work of art evolved from
stardust, the product of a billion years of evolutionary shaping. American Indians got this and said simply,
“we are the stars that sing.”
People question the relevance of
religion for the modern world. Well
maybe this is where it becomes relevant, in its power to help us descend into
the sacred mystery of being as experienced in relationship.
I'd like to tell you about a sacred
friendship with a Muslim friend of mine named Naji. I first Naji seven
years during the lead-up to the first Children of Abraham Peace Walk, an event
that brings Muslims, Jews and Christians together in a spirit of peace. Naji's wife Debbie Almontasser who was slandered by the Post and vindicated in
a front-page article in the New York Times had teemed
up with Rabbi Ellen Lippmann to organize the Peace Walk. This was just as I was moving to Brooklyn
and as luck would have it they needed a Christian to have all three Abrahamic
events represented. That first year's
peace walk was a wonderful event, as were the next five, though we didn't have
much press coverage.
That changed this past year when we
decided to end the walk at a proposed new mosque in Sheepshead
Bay in Brooklyn. Suddenly we had all the
press coverage we wanted and then some.
People who opposed the
construction of the mosque held signs across the street, while on “our” side of
the street Jewish, Christian and Muslim children were running wild with little
American flags. People spoke. The ideal of religious freedom was lifted up.
Afterwards, as the
crowd began to disperse I was talking to Naji. It was in that shell-shocked aftermath of an
emotionally overwhelming event. He asked
me how I was holding up and I mentioned that I had left the death-bed of one of
my best friends for the walk and would be returning momentarily to the Poconos
to resume my vigil. He reached into his
pocket, pulled a key off a key-ring and said, “This is to my house in the
Poconos. Call me from the road and I'll
tell you how to get there. My house is
your house, my brother.”
Several years back there was some ground-breaking
research that showed that a session with a doctoral level psychotherapist was
about as effective as talking to a friend. That was widely used to critique the effectiveness of therapy; but it
seems to me if anything it's a validation of the healing power of friends.
The late great Existential writer and
psychoanalyst Rollo May suggests that what enlivens therapy and makes it deeply
curative is the power we have to relate to each other “from existence to
existence” (The Discovery of Being, p. 157). It is “the power,” he writes, “to liberate
a person from …blind isolation, from a mere vegetating in his body, … his
private wishes, his conceit and his presumptions, and to ready him for a life
of koinonia, of genuine community” (The Discovery
of Being, pp. 157-158).
So what might this look like, a life
of genuine community, of koinonia? Well of course you all know exactly what that
looks like because it's going on right here in so many ways.
Just think about the friends you've
made here, whether you're new to the church or been here for quite some
time. Sometimes the beauty of community
emerges like a single snapshot, a moment in time when a portion of the mystery
is revealed. Other times it unfolds over
time like a great symphony.
When I first came to Christ Church as
the youth minister roughly ten years ago Steve Fellows was working across the
hall from me. He was a big joker and
liked to call me Rabbi and various other nicknames. As I got to know him he told me about his
son, Rob, who had just been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's
Disease or ALS.
You all know that Rob Fellows passed
away back in June. Rob was one of my
best friends—I've been blessed with about four best friends, including Coleman
Smith who I met back in the 7th grade.
Dan Rufolo
played the music for Rob's funeral and worked up a beautiful rendition of “Let
It Be.” That meant so much to me since I
had Dan in the youth group and so he was part of the field trip we took up to
Rob's house to do a little landscaping in the Poconos.
At Dan's recent CD release concert
here at the Church all those memories were bubbling up for me. I was thinking about Rob's dad, Steve, who
was the Treasurer when I started so he was across the hall from me over above
Chuck's office. And of course I thought
of Jeanne and her crazy antics and her beautiful bell choir.
As the concert ended there was a standing
ovation and you could tell everybody wanted more. So Dan played one last song. It was that special rendition of “Let It
Be.” He spoke with the language of music
which is of course the tongue of angels and he spoke from existence to
existence, celebrating the mystery of the gift of life and paying homage to men
like John Lennon and Rob Fellows who had so much love to give.
In the days and years ahead, it brings
me great
comfort to know that places like this exist, places were friendships are born
and nurtured, where life is lived with great energy and passion, where justice
flows on like a mighty stream.
That's the way it is with friendship.
When you take the time to really get to know someone and to let yourself
be fully known, royal robes are exchanged. Giants are slain. And
the stories go into sacred books or music and song.
May it be.
“Let it be.” Amen.
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