Wonderful World of Wisdom - The Strength of a Sticky Love

Preached on Sunday, August, 12, 2018

Scripture readings: Proverbs 18:9-24; John 15:9-17; Philemon 8-16

“There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. (Proverbs 18:24) In these days, we’ve learned to include the word “sister” in this friendship too.

A community of trees in Southern California
June 2018

This proverb is a part of my life because of my cousin Donny; who’s a better Christian than I am and much smarter too. Don is a couple years younger than I am and he became a Christian about the time I was starting seminary. He and I had talked before about what it meant to belong to Jesus, and he was always a good listener. He told me that a lot of people had been talking to him about Jesus. He took a while to decide and I’m not sure that I played much part in it. When he gave himself to Jesus, he grew fast. He was a fast learner.

Don soon found this verse and applied it to the two of us. When we were a lot younger, and outnumbered two to one by our sisters, we talked about being brothers. We lived just a few miles away from each other in those days. Every week, we saw each other and played together, and it meant a lot to me.

 I also always felt that Donny was my friend and my brother, and in Christ we could be the “friends that stick closer than a brother.” That’s exactly what we wanted. Only I am pretty sure that I haven’t lived up to it, which makes me sorry.

If anyone asked me about whether this proverb was really about friends or else more about brothers, my answer would have to be “Yes”. Because that’s what my cousin and I were.

The proverbs all fit together anyway, like the pieces of a puzzle. The proverb has to be about women and sisters just as much as being about brothers, because there is the other proverb in our reading: “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.” (18:22) Surely that’s about finding something even more than a friend and brother together.

Brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, friends are a gift and they are the grace and favor from the Lord. They are a kind of miracle, no matter how much work they take to maintain.

Another piece of the puzzle is the fact that two brothers are like fortress towns that stand close to each other. A fortress town was a safe place. Walls and gates were solid things that you could trust to save you from losing everything, and losing yourself, to be taken away by enemies into exile or slavery.

The problem came when the brothers, sisters, or friends fought. I truly wanted a brother when I was a kid, but as I got older I saw the way brothers fought. That could be nasty.

In the proverbs, it isn’t even about fighting, per se. It was about one brother offending the other. I think you can fight without getting hurt but this was about hurting. We read the proverb that says: “An offended brother is more unyielding than a fortified city, and disputes are like the barred gates of a citadel.” (18:19)

When the two fortresses are friends, and an enemy knocks down your strong, protecting walls, you can make a run for it to your brother fortress. If you make it to the gate, you will be safe. But, if you haven’t taken time apart for your brother-fortress and met your priority to heal each other from the wounds of your fights and offenses, then your brother-fortress might be closed against you. Having a brother-fortress, or a sister-fortress, is a miracle. A brother’s or sister’s shut gate comes when someone has been ungrateful for a miracle. Someone has been ungrateful for the relationship that makes you stronger than just being yourself.

There are friends who are companions. They are connections with whom you eat, and work, and play, and there are friends who are brothers or sisters and these are miracles, because many, many companions can never equal one sisterly friend or one brotherly friend.

“A man or woman of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother or sister.” It’s true there is strength in numbers, but Proverbs would tell us that there is greater strength in trust. There is greater safety in faithfulness.

The God of the Bible teaches us that faith and the faithful object of our faith are stronger than strength. What happens between one human and another, or between just a few faithful humans is a model that points to our relationship with God.

God is the best fortress: “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.” (18:10) Names (even the names of the Lord) are not magic spells that work on their own if you remember to use them right. Names (in the Old Testament) were supposed to reveal what you were made of. The reason that Lord would sometimes change the name of human being whom he was calling (like changing Abram’s name to Abraham) was that the new name would reveal that God was making him into a person who was made of more than he was made of before God took charge of him.

Some people say the name of the Lord is Jehovah, but that was a misunderstanding and a mistranslation of the Hebrew alphabet that began in the Middle ages and continued for a few centuries after that. Which is why Christian hymnbooks and songbooks have the name “Jehovah” in them.

The proper pronunciation is closer to Yahweh. Yahweh is short for “I Am Who I Am” or “I Will Be Who I Will Be”. God’s name is a mystery that carries the message that God is made of bigger and greater stuff than anyone can know.

The message of the name of the Lord is more than a name. The message of the Lord’s name is that the Lord is bigger than you think, so trust him and know that you are safe in his purpose for your life. The reason why the name of the Lord is a strong tower of refuge is that he is always more than you can ever imagine him to be. “I am who I Am” and “I Will Be Who I Will Be.”

Friends, sisters, and brothers are fortresses because we are created to be fortresses for each other. We are created to be fortresses for each other because God has made us in his image, and God is the best fortress of all. God is the ultimate strength and security, and so God has created us to join him in helping, protecting, sheltering, and loving others as he does.

God is our friend. He’s doesn’t get that name in Genesis, although that is where we see God confiding in Abraham, and listening to Abraham, as a friend. Centuries later, during an invasion of the Kingdom of Judah, King Jehoshaphat, asked the Lord for help and described the relationship between the Lord and the descendants of Abraham this way: "Did You not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before Your people Israel and give it to the descendants of Abraham, Your friend forever?” (2 Chronicles 20:7)

There is a long-term plan, still in effect, and still moving forward, in which the Lord wants to insert his model of friendship back into a world that knows almost nothing of such friendship. You and I are a part of this plan to insert and spread the power of God’s friendship on a lost and alienated enemy planet called the earth.

The plan began with Adam and Eve. It took a great step forward with Abraham, Moses, and Israel.

And then God came down in Jesus, so that he and our human race could get hitched together. God hitched his friendship to us by becoming human, and offering himself as a sacrifice, as a sin-offering, and as a peace-offering, and as a Passover offering to take us out of the slavery of a life where we don’t belong. God is the Passover sacrifice that give us what we need to get to the promised land (or the Promised Life) where we can live like a fruitful vine, bearing lots of fruit in every branch; in every single one of us, pruned and prepared.

In Jesus God did this, letting the sins of humanity kill him on the cross, and then by overcoming the death created by sin, by rising from the dead. The Lord did this because he is the one to whom all models of brotherhood, and sisterhood, and friendship point. Our miracle relationships point in agreement to the greatest miracle of all.

This miracle is the Word of God becoming the action of God, made flesh in Jesus, and offering himself for us in sacrifice and power. In Jesus, God himself lay down his life for his friends: for us, and for those to come. Some of those to come will come to this friendship through us, or through other friends of Jesus who are our friends.

We will be the friends who lay down our lives for new friends, and for our oldest and dearest friend, Jesus. I say this to Jesus, every now and then. When I feel alone I speak to the Lord for comfort. I tell the Lord, “You are my oldest and dearest friend.”

Jesus lay down his life for his friends, including us, so that we can learn how to see him as our friend and lay down our lives for him. When a twelve-year-old child, in some wild part of this world, would rather be beheaded or crucified, rather than deny his oldest and dearest friend Jesus, we can see the power of this friendship. Jesus told his friends that he was doing this so that they, and we, could bear fruit, “fruit that will last.” (John 15:16)

The truth is that we know very little of this power. Christians in the western world get angry and loud at the thought of being humbled, or being pushed to the outside of things. We’re afraid of being the victims of injustice or discrimination.

Not that we should be passive in a free and democratic country. The law allows us freedom of speech, and freedom to vote and we have a duty to use those rights. And we should speak and work unafraid, as the friends of Jesus. The friends of Jesus never panic.

Knowing the model for friendship in the Book of Proverbs helps us to know what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel of John, about the costliness of friendship in the work of bearing fruit. It begins with the laying down of the life of God, in Jesus, on the cross. It continues with the laying down of our lives at the foot of his cross: then, perhaps, we will follow the friendship of Jesus through crosses of our own. We will go on to carry a cross for others so that others can bear fruit that will last.

Perhaps we can say it begins by laying down our lives, here and now, in this place. Then we won’t be, any longer, quite our own.

You don’t just lay down your life by suffering. You also lay it down by belonging. You lay yourself down to make yourself into a safe place for others; to defend and protect others.

When Jesus gave himself for his friends, his friendship took on greater and greater power. Our giving ourselves, here and now, and in the future, will do the same.

The fellowship of the Lord’s Table, here, is another model of the Lord’s friendship. It’s a model in which we participate. As we participate, we find that the friendship grows in this place as we come to the same table (the table of Jesus) together. The bread and the cup are his friendship that we take into ourselves. What we eat and drink here becomes the power that gives life to every cell in our bodies.

With Jesus’ offer to choose and receive us, and with our consent to come and receive him, Jesus himself becomes our bread of life and our cup of salvation. It courses through our blood. Jesus courses through our souls, our inner selves.

It’s a meal with friends. It’s a meal for friendship, and refuge, and mission. It’s a sister-and-brother-fortress.

Belief isn’t about ideas. It’s about trust and it’s about action based on that trust. As the unbelieving slave, Onesimus, became a believer and one who trusted Jesus, he also became like a son and a brother and a friend, at the same time, for Paul. Paul became his father and brother and friend at the same time. We become friends as close as brothers and sisters, as we come to this table, trusting Jesus.

It isn’t that easy to even come to church. It was very hard for me at one time. It was embarrassing. I had to trust Jesus more than I trusted my pride and my fears. Even walking our short aisle to the table takes more giving than you may think. You are coming to something more than you can see, or hear, or sense, and you are trusting that this mystery wants to be your friend.

Let’s receive Jesus, our oldest and dearest friend. He lay himself down for us on the cross. Let’s start by laying ourselves down for Jesus, and for each other, here, now.