Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, February 13, 2022, at 8:00 & 10 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher
Friendship and Living in the Light
“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream” (Jeremiah 17:7-8)
A fellow clergyman and I were talking about the delivery of sermons, and he felt strongly that each meditation should begin on a positive note. I swallowed hard and shaded my eyes because you who know me know I often start with a mini-rant about something in the scripture reading that annoys me. This is indeed perhaps a bad habit. I say “perhaps,” because I am assuming you, too, may be startled or put off by some of the stronger passages about hell or about God’s severe judgment on the wicked. I just do not sit well with a God who promises to be more severe in his punishment of me than my own father would have ever been.
We’re talking about love here, and about light. Because it’s always about the light. The light that shines on us all; the love which bathes us in its glory, minute my minute from birth to death. Even on the cloudiest days, like these gloomy days of mid-winter, the sun, we know, is behind the clouds. “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty; heaven and earth are full of thy glory!” Not one corner of our lives is removed, outside this permeating light and love.
But then we have the opening lines of the Old Testament reading. I know, Jeremiah is one of the major prophets. He is on fire with the justice and judgments of God. But, answer me this, would you like to sit next to him on a long airplane flight? How about being thrown with him as your dance partner at a formal dinner party? Jeremiah starts the passage we read a few minutes ago with these lines:
“Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals…. They shall be like a shrub in the desert…. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.”
Do you see what I mean? This is a man with a very low estimation of human nature. One wonders if he has been hanging with much of any support group. For, according to my lights, I not only have trusted in what he calls “mere mortals,” but I continue to do so…and, what’s more, I want and enjoy doing so. I trust in dozens of people every day. Of course, there are some scoundrels among us, in fact, some plainly evil people. And, of course, all people—family, friends, associates—come and go in my life. Some stay for decades; other for only a season. I can depend on them and I can be disappointed in them. Trust can be broken, sometimes in shocking and consequential ways. I enjoy my dependence on people, but I also know the pitfalls of co-dependence, depending too heavily on people, to the detriment of my own independence and sometimes integrity. I know that people pleasing seldom truly pleases with myself or the person I am pretending to be so kind to.
A friend was recalling in outline that wonderful book by the British author and theologian C.S. Lewis called The Four Loves. In it, Lewis outlines love as eros (romantic love), affection (called storge), philia (friendship), and agape (unconditional love). This friend said that the first three of these loves can lead to our understanding of this last and greatest love, the love of God. Now that’s a fairly straightforward analysis, but I think it misses the point. The point isn’t that love is the crowning love, the love of God, it is that agape (unconditional love) permeates and infuses and is expressed in all of the others as well. The love of God is not something else. It is the love of a mother for her child, the affection of the child for its pet dog, the camaraderie of a group of friends in the local tavern. Love can be divided only through the prism of our lived life circumstances. Some of our worldly loves are warped, twisted, not healthy, but they all come from and are embedded in the one and only love—namely, the love of God.
And to prove this, or at least to illustrate this from my own life. I was reflecting with a couple of clergy I meet with most weekday mornings on Zoom on the value of our friendship. We were wondering how we learn about and come to experience God’s love if not through our earthly, worldly, day-to-day friendships. I know in my life, and I ask you to reflect on your life, just where have you experienced the love of God? I think of my childhood, my school days, my adult career, my social life, and now, my retirement years and I wonder—just where were those special moments that will never escape memory. Maya Angelou said it well with her famous quote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Is there any greater gift than this. One of my favorite lines in from Winnie the Pooh, when Pooh said, “It’s more fun to talk with a friend who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like “What about lunch?”
I, like you, have known many, many people throughout my life. Some we took little or no notice of. Just like many, many people in our lives have taken little or no notice of us. That’s the way life seems to unfold. If we all felt the same way towards everyone else, think what a weird world we would live in. It just wouldn’t work, would it?
But in my reflection on those people I have known, indeed, my memories are surely of things we have had in common, experiences shared, and times enjoyed; but the memories are basically the love that has been communicated. And that love has taught me about God. The best lessons about God have come from other people and the love they have shown me. Sure, no friend is perfect. Ideally, I do not expect them to be, as I do not expect them to think anything like that of me. In fact, under the best circumstances, we can laugh at each other’s foibles and joke about our silly humanity.
Strange, how some of the strongest memories I have of the wisdom I have received come from what might be thought of as unexpected places. I was conducting a confirmation class years ago when I asked the class what it was they liked most about their friends. And one of the pimple-faced young seventh graders said, “A friend is someone who makes you feel good about yourself.”
Simple, right? Beautiful, right? And tell me how this trait of a good friend differs in any way from what we learn about the life and ministry of Jesus. Jesus took the time to just be with everyone he encountered. And he even seemed to spend more time with the least fortunate, those who were the least admired, the outcasts even. Because he knew that they felt very poorly of themselves. His presence boosted them, ennobled them, blessed them…just where they were. The sinner, the leper, the prostitute. No reproach, no condemnation, just presence and love. The friendship of God knows no boundaries, lives with no exceptions.
So I ask each of us to reflect on those friends, sometimes close friends, sometime perhaps only passing acquaintances, who have left you feeling better about things—about yourself, your world, your everything. And I ask you how you could possibly separate that feeling from the love of God that surrounds us, the light which shines on us every moment of our short but dazzling lives?
| What I Can Do for You by Kelly Murphy Moreton |
| I cannot give you possessions. I can promise you passion. I cannot guarantee you security. I can make you smile. I cannot open doors of opportunity for you. I can expand your imagination. I cannot dissolve your concerns. I can strengthen your spirit. I cannot change the world in which we live, But I can encompass you in love. |
Amen.