Reformation Sunday
October 27, 2024

The Good Work of Friendship

Part of the sermon series "Do the Good That Is Yours to Do"

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Nehemiah 8:1–8
Genesis 2

This series “Do the Good That Is Yours to Do” is exploring the long-range plan for Fourth Church — a vision to reflect the light of Christ to the city and beyond. Last Sunday we explored the important work of faith formation. This plan also calls us to be a place of connection and belonging. The plan urges us to prioritize our relationships. To say it simply, friendship is a spiritual practice. 

We remember this from Nehemiah 8, in which God’s children began to understand themselves not defined by temple or land or nation state but by the story. The people find their life in the story of God. 

When this passage appears in the lectionary — a collection of readings that are assigned for each Sunday — the lectors make an interesting choice. They omit verses 4 and 7. They delete the list of names from the story. That seems reasonable, because we really have no idea who these people are. And they aren’t the easiest names to pronounce. I could have had Holly or Justin read them this morning instead of the Genesis reading, but that seemed to me an unkindness. Other than providing you a bit of amusement listening to me attempt to pronounce them, maybe we should just leave out the names. The lectionary does. But the first tellers of this story felt the story could not be told without these names. It’s curious, because we don’t know them, but still, the story is deemed incomplete unless we know that on this day, when Ezra read from the law, standing with him were Mattithiah, Shema, and some guy named Hash-baddanah. Why do you suppose we need to know those people were there? 

Perhaps the insistence on including the names is a reminder that in this faith it is never lived alone. Faith shows up not just in me or in you but among us. Which is why friendship is a spiritual practice. 

In the passage from Genesis, God looked down and saw that there was an incompleteness in creation. There was no garden, but before that could be addressed there was a need for a gardener. So God kneels down in the dirt and forms the human creature and breathes into the human creature the breath of life. 

We know this as the creation of Adam, but you may have noticed that the name “Adam” does not appear in the text. Why? Because adam is the Hebrew word that means man or, better, humankind. To say this is the story of Adam is not the same as saying it’s a story about a guy named Adam or Frank or Percival. No, this is a story about adam — humankind. 

And it is clear that at this moment adam remains incomplete. Why? Because he is alone. God says it is not good that the human is alone. After God speaks into being stars and starfish and sequoias and even people and all of them deemed good and good and very good, for the first time God says, “Oh, that is not good. It is not good to be alone.”

So God fashions a partner. 

And when the human sees the partner, there is incredible joy. At last bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. To see one to whom you are connected, one to whom you belong, is the source of great joy. It heals that which is not good.

Verse 24 reads “Therefore a man leaves his mother and father and clings to his wife.” This verse sounds like the point of the passage — that the cure to loneliness is marriage. Well, for some, but if I understand the text, marriage is not the point but simply an illustration of a deeper truth. This is not about marriage; it is about relationship. 

We are not who we were created to be when we are alone. To be human is to love. And to love is to know joy. At last, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. 

We have talked before that last year the surgeon general declared that loneliness is a health crisis. Loneliness is killing us. 

Surgeon General Murthy said, “We now know that loneliness is … like hunger or thirst … a feeling the body sends us when something we need for survival is missing” (Dr. Vivak Murthy, “Loneliness Poses Health Risks as Deadly as Smoking,” Associated Press, 2 May 2023). Dr. Murthy stated the risks are comparable to the risks of smoking a dozen cigarettes every day. Our faith has taught us that it is not good to be alone. Modern science indicates that it can be deadly.

Two brief takeaways from this ancient wisdom.

The first, we need to pay attention to our relationships. No one walks through this life in a joyful fashion without friendships. This is so basic you would almost think we wouldn’t have to say it, but we do, because relationships are difficult, complicated, and they are easy to take for granted. 

In the class I taught last month, I shared that on March 4, 1801, power passed from President John Adams to the new President Thomas Jefferson. The campaign had been so bitter that these former friends ceased speaking to one another. 

After a decade of silence, at the urging of Dr. Benjamin Rush, Adams broke the silence. He rose above his pain and wrote a letter to Jefferson. Jefferson, grateful to receive the letter, responded. This renewed a relationship, and over the next fourteen years they wrote 158 letters to one another. The friendship was so important that Adams’ deathbed thoughts were of his friend. His last words were, “Jefferson survives.” Adams could not have known that five hours earlier Jefferson too had died. They both died July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after signing the Declaration of Independence (David McCullough, John Adams). 

Friendships require intentionality. 

Every month I create a list of things I want to accomplish. The list falls into different categories. It includes a lot of work activities, but not just that. I track my fledgling attempts to exercise. I track the books I read. I track letters I write. I track finances — what we save and what we give away. It helps me be intentional. I had been doing this for several years before I realized that there was something missing in my planning. I wasn’t paying attention to time invested in my relationships. I was astonished. I should have done that first. At the end of the day and at the end of our days, our lives are defined by whom we love and how we love them. So I added a category for relationships — being intentional about investing in my friendships. 

Here at Fourth Church we are committed to being intentional about friendship. I think it is a good thing. I know it is joyful. 

But there is a second, deeper, more mysterious takeaway from this lesson. When we meet another human, we meet bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. When we meet another person, we meet one created in the image of God, one fashioned for love and relationship. 

I read about Ceasar Chacon, seventeen, and his fourteen-year-old friend. They were among nine Chicagoans killed last weekend, which included a stabbing on a bus, a beating, and as always many shootings. Ceasar had four younger siblings for whom his mother, Marianne, said he was an excellent role model. He also loved basketball. Marianne said her family were among the first families seeking asylum who were bused here from Texas in 2022. Just before 9:00 last Sunday evening, two men stepped from the shadows with a rifle and a handgun and shot Ceasar to death. He was seventeen. Marianne said she wants to know why. Why would they shoot her son? (Emmanual Camarillo and Mary Norkol, “Migrant Parents Seek Answers after 17-year-old Boy Killed and Girl, 14, Wounded,” Chicago Sun-Times, 22 October 2024, p.11). I don’t know. Maybe this was another occurrence of racism or another expression of hatred for non-citizens that is so publicly embraced these days. Maybe it was just random. I don’t know. But I do know what didn’t happen is they didn’t look at this teenager and see bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. They didn’t see a child of God who is just like me. And they may not know it, but they are alone in the garden, because that is what they have chosen … and God is screaming, “This is not good.” 

When we meet another human, we meet bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. When we meet another person, we meet one created in the image of God, one fashioned for love and relationship. Our culture is dying for lack of relationship. But you can be a healing force as a place that practices friendship. It is the good that is ours to do. 

One stewardship season in the church I served in Florida, we had the officers visit every family in the church. Peter, a young man on our Session, drew Rebecca’s name. Rebecca was a member but never came. Peter knocked on her door. Her yard was in disarray. The shrubbery had overgrown, blocking her front windows. Rebecca opened the door but left the chain on. Peter said, “Good morning. I’m Peter. I’m from the church.” She said, “I don’t go to that church.” Peter said, “I know, but you are still part of our church family, and I just wanted to come by.” “I don’t go there.” Peter noticed she had a coat on. It was cold, even in Florida, but she was wearing a coat inside. She closed the door.

That went well. Peter went to work. He had a space heater by his desk. As that heater cycled on and off, he thought about Rebecca and her coat. At lunch he went back to her house. He knocked again. “It’s Peter, from the church.” “You know you’ve already been here, right? You got that alltimers or something?” “No ma’am. I just wondered if you might be able to use this space heater?” She was silent for a long time. “Could you show me how to turn it on?” she asked. “Sure.”

Rebecca was a hermit. Our guess is no one had crossed her threshold in years. She lived in a four-room house that was cluttered with the stuff of her life. She had no heat and little food. She had been a professional dancer at one time, but her legs were long gone, and alcohol had taken much of the rest of her. Peter plugged the heater in and showed her how to control the temperature. 

A few days later, Peter was at the store. He hadn’t planned this, but he said he found himself back at her house. “Hi. It’s Peter from the church.” “You want the heater back?” “No, I have these extra oranges. I wondered if you like oranges?” 

He told me he didn’t plan to keep returning. He said, “Tom, I would be on the way to Lowe’s or to the grocery store and before I knew it I was on her street. I would find myself clearing the dishes from the table and wondering if she had eaten. I would be repairing the sink in the kid’s bathroom and wondering if she needed something fixed. So I stopped by. I trimmed the shrubbery in the spring. I did little things. I can’t even tell you why.”

Three years later we had a memorial service for Rebecca. It was Peter, me, and a woman who had danced with Rebecca decades ago. A few weeks later someone from the bank brought us a letter. Rebecca left her savings account to the church, $3,211. Her note said, “I want the church to have this, because when everyone else had, that man from the church refused to leave me alone.” 

I think that is what happens when we look at one another and realize that what we are seeing is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. When we see another and fail to see bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, that is the first thing God says is not good, and we don’t need the surgeon general to tell us this is killing us. 

Salvation comes in relationships, in friendships, in the important spiritual work of really seeing one another as bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. That is the good that is ours to do. 

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church