Rev. Kyle Childress, guest minister*
Myers Park Baptist Church
Charlotte, North Carolina
June 25, 2006

* Rev. Childress is the pastor of Austin Heights Baptist Church, Nachodoches, Texas.

THE COMPANY OF FRIENDS
Mark 2:1-12

My friend, Lillian Daniel, ran across the story of an eleven-year-old girl in England who let a helium balloon go into the air with a note attached to it, asking if whoever received the balloon would become her pen pal. The balloon arrived in the back yard of another eleven-year-old girl who turned out to have the very same first and last name as the girl who sent the note.

Well, as you can imagine, the story captured the media’s attention because of what they labeled a “bizarre coincidence.” However, the two new friends had a different interpretation. Interviewed, while lying in a hammock next to her friend, with their gangly eleven-year-old limbs entangled, the first girl said, “I believe I have been chosen by God to have a pen pal who has my same name.”

The giggling stopped and the other girl nodded pensively. The knew something the rest of the world did not. They were chosen for each other. Their friendship was a gift from God.

In John 15, Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I have commanded you.” (love one another) He continues, “No longer do I call you servants . . . now I call you friends. . . You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15: 12-16).

According to Jesus, friendship is a gift of God. Friends are discovered; not chosen. We do not do the choosing; God does. Now, I know this runs counter to everything we believe in our modern world of consumer capitalism. We put a premium on our ability to make choices. Making choices is what we think freedom is about: Choosing our friends, choosing our clothes, choosing our future, and so on.

Nevertheless, that’s a modern perspective on friendship and one that is, to say the least, pretty thin. Augustine, building upon Jesus, said “church is the friends we did not choose.” I like that. And he went on to call the church as “the company of friends.” This company of friends we did not choose is church. And even though, we might not be comfortable with Augustine’s definition of church as the company of friends we did not choose, those two eleven-year-old girls would be.

Our Scripture Lesson from Mark knows about this company of friends, as well. Jesus has returned to Capernaum and the word has spread that he is back so crowds gather to hear him. He is in someone’s home teaching and the crowd is so thick that no one else can get in or even hear him through the open door or windows. Four friends have a fifth friend they are carrying, in sort of a stretcher made from a pallet, to see Jesus. They can’t get even close because of the crowd so, being determined and single-minded and at the same time, creative and imaginative, they carry their friend up the back stairs outside of the house, up on the roof, and proceed to tear, dig, through the dried mud and thatching until they made a hole over the room where Jesus was teaching. Then they lowered their friend through the hole so he was lying in front of Jesus.

These friends are single-minded on getting to Jesus. The crowd does not stop them; the roof does not deter them. And even the friend who is being carried around and must be getting heavy, does not keep them from the One they are looking for. This company of friends has a purpose beyond themselves, outside of themselves, upon which they are clearly focused upon – Jesus.

This is what the ancients would call the “telos” or purpose or goal of their lives. For friendship to be truly friendship, and not merely an acquaintance, means there has to be something beyond which calls you together. Aristotle said it was the good. Christians came along and said it was the God we know in Jesus.

Christian friendship is not like our modern notion of friendship which, for the most part, is based upon mutual affection. Usually, we think friendship is about liking one another and part of that likeability is that we like what the other brings to us or gives to us.

Think about dating and/or marriage. Affection is the key. How they make us feel is central. I mention dating and marriage because the ancients, both classical and Christian, believed that marriage was a form of friendship. Are you friends with your spouse? Are you friends with the other members of your family?

The Christian view of friendship, including dating and marriage and family, is that it should look outwardly, beyond your self, toward the greater purpose we have in Jesus Christ. Christian friends bring us out of ourselves; they make us more of ourselves. Our common life in Christ is what makes us friends. I’m not saying affection is not a factor; I’m saying that to be Christian, friendship has to be rooted in something more than how a person makes us feel.

Show me a marriage or family in trouble and the last thing they need to do is to get down and focus on “their relationship;” what goes on inside of them. Often what is needed is a recovering of the common purpose they have in the One beyond themselves. Do you have marriage problems? Go volunteer together to do mission work in Ecuador for several weeks. Get your mind and attention off of yourselves. Together start volunteering feeding hungry people one night a week, tutor poor children, etc.. This will not solve everything but it is a very important way to start.

These friends in our story from Mark carried their lame friend to Jesus. Ask yourself, do your friendships move you toward God or away from God? Young people, when you’re with your friends, or perhaps with someone on a date, are you moving closer to God, or away from God?

It makes a difference who your friends are. It makes a difference who your company of friends is. It makes a difference who your church is.

Having a purpose outside of ourselves is not enough. There are some purposes better than others. Some purposes can be wrong, sinful, unhealthy, and downright demonic. In Luke 23, Herod and Pilate become friends over the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, even though they had previously been enemies.

So just any purpose beyond ourselves is not enough. The purpose we discover in Jesus Christ is what we are talking about as the common basis of Christian friendship. The church is the company of friends we did not know we had until we discovered ourselves called together, here, in Christ.

How long had this man been lame? How many years had these four friends carried him places? Don’t you think they got tired of carrying him around? “Heh, when are you going to start giving in this relationship?! All you do is take, take, take.” My heavens, they couldn’t go out to get a hamburger together without all that was involved in hauling him, too. Was he a burden? Did their caregiving of him get in the way of other things they wanted to be doing with their lives?

And what about it from his perspective? Did he say, “I don’t want to be a burden to anyone. I don’t want to be dependent or an imposition.” Of course, some of this we don’t know from this one story. However, we do know that the church, as the company of friends, learned a long time ago to ask different questions about burdens and friendship.

We Christians are trained to have a different kind of friendship. We don’t think in terms of self-interests, where carrying a friend is a burden. We learn, as Christians together in this body, that from time to time we are all burdens. Sometimes we are carried and at other times we do the carrying. For Christians, the opposite of co-dependency is not independence. For Christians the opposite of co-dependence is interdependence. In this body of Christ, we are interdependent. We rely upon one another. For example, have you ever thought that there might be Christian ways of being sick? Being Christian is recognizing that we are members in this one body of Christ and sometimes we are caring for other members of the body and sometimes we are receiving care. A Christian way of being sick is to be a patient. It is to give up control and trust others to care for us. We are interdependent in Jesus Christ.

Now there is more going on in all of this than just being nice to one another. This is serious and ultimate business going on here. Look back at our story. When the lame man is lowered through the hole in the roof, Mark says, “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven” (verse 5). And he goes on to not only forgive the man but heal him, as well. So the man gets up, rolls up his pallet, and walks through the crowd while they part just like the Red Sea. And everyone was amazed, glorified God saying, “We’ve never seen anything like this before!”

Remember that health, disease, and healing in the New Testament is about more than individual biology and chemistry. It is about wholeness and it is social, political, communal, mental and emotional, and it is spiritual and religious. All of these are modern ways we divide up God’s way of salvation and redemption. In this story – to use old Baptist language – this lame fellow is being “saved” but his salvation is much more comprehensive than old Baptists defined it. Salvation, wholeness is about being reconciled with God, with people, with God’s creation. And here, according to Mark, his salvation and forgiveness of sin and healing is based upon his friends faith. Here is a picture of the company of friends, the body of Christ, and how we are interdependent on each other, not just for care, but for salvation and redemption – for wholeness.

If salvation is simply about getting to heaven then this does not make sense. And this story doesn’t matter much if salvation is becoming a well-integrated human being. But if salvation is becoming part of the Way of God we know in Jesus Christ, which frees us from the Systems of Domination which are killing us, so we might embody the wholeness of God which is Life and be reconciled with God, with human beings, with creation – then, according to the Bible, we can’t do this alone. The Christian is not Christian alone and we don’t know God’s wholeness alone. We know it and practice it together.

This is why your good old Marney entitled his last book Priests to Each Other. Marney speaks of priests in much of the way I’m talking about friendship when he said, “How does it work, this priesthood of the believer? You, you, take your priesthood wherever you are, to be whatever priests must be. . . . You, all of you, are the ministry of the Word. This does not mean you are competent to deal with God for yourself. It means rather that you are competent to deal with God and for the neighbor” (p. 12). In other words, we must learn again what it means to be priests to each other and for each other, what it means for church to be fellow believers, priests, friends, who bring us to God and we bring them.

Now, let me push you a little more. If Mark is showing us a picture of the church here in chapter 2 where friends are priests to one another who bring one another to Jesus Christ, and if salvation and wholeness is has to do with this simple company of friends, then perhaps there is some wisdom in fifth century theologian Cyprian’s adage, “Outside the church there is no salvation.” Before any of you start throwing hymnals at me, remember I’m not interested in this if we’re talking about some big religious bureaucracy. I’m talking about church and salvation in Maya Angelou’s words, “Nobody, but nobody can make it all alone.” We need one another. We need one another if we’re going to know something of God’s wholeness and salvation.

His name is Glenn and he is a friend of mine. Before I got to know him, he was a university professor who was married to a good woman. But Glenn was an alcoholic and a workaholic and he drank and worked himself out of the marriage. He isolated himself and was estranged from his parents and his adult children even though, due to his workaholism, he was a successful professor.

Without going through too much detail, over time some of us in our congregation got to know him and started becoming friends. Eventually he started coming to worship on Sunday morning and he started dating a woman in our church who also was a professor. They started coming to church suppers, working on Habitat houses together and with us, and volunteering on other things, as well. Over time, he quit drinking and they got married and due to her and some other friends, he started changing his work habits. With his wife’s help he reconciled with his family, including his former wife. In our church, a small company of friends, he changed, over time. Now, he is still a successful professor and so is his wife and they have moved to another university in another city, but right off they found a small but close-knit church in which they are active; they volunteer in ministry and mission and have adopted a twelve year old girl. Glenn will tell you “I was saved in Austin Heights Baptist Church.” He means that in our small company of friends in Christ, he started becoming a whole person. He was dis-membered and isolated but now, he is re-membered into the body of Christ.

Myers Park Baptist Church, if you are anything, you are the company of friends you have in Christ. I know, I know Myers Park is sometimes an organization with lots of programming and often it is a big institution. But don’t lose sight that at your best, you are a company of friends. Friends you did not choose but discover you have because of your common calling in Jesus Christ. And it is here, being with one another and being with God in Christ, that you discover that you are being saved; you are being redeemed; you are being made whole.

Thanks be to God! Amen and amen.