by Rev. Thomas Disrud

A sermon given April 29, 2007

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

Preparing a sermon is a mysterious process. I often have the research that I have done in front of me. I am quick to go over to my bookshelf and pick up a book and see if there might be one more source of inspiration to be found. I sit in front of my computer screen and write and then ponder for a time. Often it is the case that I’m not quite sure where I should be going with a particular thought. I sit there for a while, and then in that moment of not-knowing I know what I need to do. I pick up the phone and I ring my friend Rachel. Hopefully she is home because time is of the essence.

She is home. We talk a bit. We do some catching up. I tell her what I’m preaching about. She asks me a question or two. She may say something about the topic. In the end, it may not always be clear what came out of the conversation, but somehow, most of the time, the conversation will open up some window that needed to be opened up for me in my process.

For years I have thought of Rachel as my sermon muse. Certainly in the early years of ministry I called her often. Not so much anymore. For the last three years, when she has been the stay-at-home parent for twin boys, it can be more difficult to be in touch. And yet even though I don’t call her for inspiration as much as I used to, what might be the most important of all is that I know that I can always pick up the phone. And then that magical thing happens that can happen with old friends. Even when we haven’t spoken for months it seems as if we just saw each other yesterday. We seem to pick up where we left off.

Friendship is important in our lives. The shape of those relationships is different for each one of us. They do last a lifetime or maybe for just a short time. Some people have all kinds of friends. Others have just a few close ones. Hopefully everyone has somebody.

But just what brings two people together can by a mystery. It is not just about shared interests or ages or anything else. It is something more mysterious that connects us. There is some draw to this person that calls us to reach out.

We need friendships in our lives because they are different from other relationships. They help us understand our world and our place in the world. They don’t receive the recognition that family receive, as in blood is thicker than water. Because of this it is important to be intentional about them. If something goes askew it is easier for them to fall by the wayside.

And yet we need them. They are important. Without them we are not what we would be otherwise. There are many ways we might define them. Writer Joseph Epstein describes his best friend: “I’m never disappointed when it is he who calls me on the phone.”[1]

Friendship takes many forms, especially these days with all the ways that we can be in touch with others. I recently read a piece that in the age of the internet and many new ways of communicating that friend is no longer only a noun. It is also a verb. If you join myspace.com or facebook.com, in this context “to friend” a person involves the exchange of mouse clicks, one to request a spot on someone’s list of people granted access to his or her online profile. A click in response is to accept the appeal.

These ways of communicating do change the way we are with others. They can break down barriers that have been there before. In cyberspace we can create identities that we could not create before. We can have relationships with people far away from us or who live in very different circumstances. We can be in touch at almost any moment with the technology that is available.

And yet, with all the new ways that we can be in relationship, I sometimes wonder if it is all that it is cracked up to be. The question is: does the personal part get lost?

A sociological study published last year shows a rapid decline in close relationships. It was a study that was first done in 1985 and then repeated in 2004. People were asked about the number of persons whom they confide personal information and how they are related to those people. Here are some of the results:

• In 1985, the modal response (most often given) was having three people in whom one could confide. In 2004, it was zero.
• The percentage of people who said they had no one with whom they could confide jumped from 10 percent in 1985 to 24.6 percent in 2004. That means that in just 20 years the percentage of people who said they have no one to talk to went from one person in ten to one out of every four.
• Almost half of all Americans now either have no one or only one person with whom they can discuss important matters. The percentage of people who either have no one or only one person has almost doubled in 20 years.
• If a person has only one confidant, chances are that the one confidant is his or her spouse. What this means is that the ties beyond the nuclear family are being cut.[2]

Those are some sobering statistics. They indicate a kind of closing in with fewer and people there with us to confide in.

So in these times what does friendship mean? One analysis would say that in these modern times the levels of relationship have gotten a lot more complex.

While it may be true that we have fewer people we identify as being able to confide in, it may also be that we have more relationships in our lives; they are just taking on more and more forms. As life gets more complex our relationships get more complex.

It might be that in the midst of these times that there is a greater need to discern just what level any given person fits. We might be friendly with someone but does that make them our friends. Or it might mean that we are related in some way but maybe not really close.

Just think back to those days in junior high school. You come to learn where you fit in the hierarchy of things. There is a certain clarity that happens at that stage of life. You know who is your friend and who is not your friend. Sometimes it can be painfully clear just where you stand.

But is it also the case that as there are more and more demands placed upon us that friends are one of the things that sometimes have to go? We get pulled in all kinds of directions in modern culture and we have to sometimes make choices.

And think about the messages we hear these days—messages about not trusting others too much. They just might, after all, be out to get us. It may be in this milieu that we find ourselves creating categories to put people into.

It is fine to categorize people. But it is also important in life to just have people we trust, to just have people we can turn to. There is a danger in categorizing people too much; we might lose the essence of what friendship can be in our lives.

Whatever is happening it is important to have people in our lives who we can be with, who we can accept for who they are and who can accept us for who we are. It is important to make space for friends. Friendship can’t just be something that comes if there is time after all our other responsibilities. It is something much more necessary. 

The writer Thomas Moore says that friendship creates cosmologies in which we live—how the world of our friend intersects our world but also takes us beyond our world. And if we do not have a cultivated world made through the conversations and exchanges of friendship, we will necessarily feel detached, unmoored, and displaced.[3]

Through others we enter worlds that we would not otherwise be in. We are allowed to think of things perhaps in a different way, we are asked to see things from another’s point of view. We see our lives in a different way because with have others to be with.

And we have a witness for what is going on in us. Friendships, Moore would say, bring us in touch with our souls, because we are aware, ultimately, that we are not alone in the world as we are with others.

A story.

Among the pious of Reb Pinhas of Koretz were Ze’ev Wolf and Aaron Samuel, who had been study partners for many years and were the closest of friends. For more than a year, both men had been separated from Reb Pinhas and from each other. Aaron Samuel had traveled to the Holy Land, to Jerusalem, and had just returned to Koretz that day. Ze’ev Wolf, as it happened, returned on that same day from more than a year spent in a Yeshiva where Reb Pinhas had sent him to study.

As each man entered the House of Study, they greeted the rebbe with the traditional blessing recited when seeing a great scholar of Torah. But when the two friends laid eyes on each other after such a long time, they each instinctively cried out the traditional blessing recited when seeing a friend again after more than a year has passed: “Blessed art thou, Oh Lord our God, King of the Universe, who raises the dead.”

The rebbe and his students all rejoiced at this fortunate and coincidental reunion. Then one of the younger students asked the rebbe: “Why is it, Reb Pinhas, that when we see a friend whom we have not seen for a whole year, we are commanded to bless God for reviving the dead? Surely this is a strange commandment, since none of us has died. Whom has God raised from the dead?”

Reb Pinhas replied: “We learn in the Zohar that everyone has a light burning for them in the world above, and everyone’s light is unique. When two friends meet, their lights above are united and out of that union of two lights an angel is born. That angel has the strength to survive for only one year, unless its life is renewed when the friends meet again. But if they are separated for more than a year, the angel begins to languish and eventually wastes away. That is why we bless the dead upon meeting a friend we have not seen for more than a year, to revive the angel.”

Just as the rebbe finished speaking they heard a sound like the rustling of wings, and a sudden wind swirled around the room, brushing against them. Then they knew that the angel had been reborn.[4]

We are born again and again in our lives. As we are with others we are changed, they are changed and the world, too, might change just a bit.

We make choices about the friends in our lives and through those choices we are different people. In those relationships we are drawn out of ourselves and we see the divine—what is of ultimate worth in our lives. It is with the help of others that we make meaning and find our way.

Emerson said: “The end of friendship …is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of life and death. It is a fit for serene days, and graceful gifts, and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and persecution. It keeps company with the sallies of the wit and the trances of religion. We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and unity.”[5]

Our lives are not static but they go round and round and round. In others we might see a glimpse of ourselves from the past or we might see a glimpse of ourselves into the future. We might, through those mirrors, see ways that we are foolish and ways that we are wise.

We are in times when we are being asked to change our story—to change how we are with each other and with the earth. The way we’ve been doing it—with a great focus on the individual—is not sustainable. We are asked on some deeper level to recognize how we are interdependent and not isolated beings.

Words of Rumi:

Stay together, friends.

Don’t scatter and sleep.

Our friendship is made

of being awake.

In changing times our human instinct is to move to what is familiar and comfortable. In these changing times we need to know where we can find solid footing. In the relationships in our lives, we become aware that we are more than the sum of our individual selves. We live with the awareness that we are not isolated beings but something much more. Our job is to be open and to welcome people in. Amen.

Prayer

Spirit of life, call us always to be mindful of our interconnectedness. Call us to be mindful of how one life touches so many other lives. Surround us with friends that our lives might have ever more meaning and depth. Surround us with friends that we might always know we are not alone. Bless us on the journey. Amen.

Benediction

May you witness to the lives of others in all your days. Go in love and go in peace. Amen.

Copyright 2007, Rev. Thomas Disrud. All rights reserved.