Meditation for October 25
From Peter Munson
Ecclesiasticus 6:5-17 (From the Daily Office Lectionary for October 24)
Note: Ecclesiasticus, or Sirach, is one of the books assigned to the Aprocrypha by Protestants and to the deuterocanonical writings by Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Not all Bibles have the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books, but many of them do. These books were written roughly in the timeframe between the end of the last books in the Old Testament (around 400 B.C.E.) and the books of the New Testament (the earliest being some of the letters of Paul written in the 50's, about 30 years after Jesus died). On occasion, we have readings from Ecclesiasticus, and other books in the Apocrypha, appear in our Daily Office Lectionary and in the Sunday Lectionary. The author of Ecclesiasticus, Ben Sira, a teacher in Jerusalem, wrote sometime between 200 and 180 B.C.E.
Friendship
"And there are friends who sit at your table, but they will not stand by you in time of trouble...Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter: whoever finds one has found a treasure. Faithful friends are beyond price; no amount can balance their worth. Faithful friends are life-saving medicine; and those who fear the Lord will find them." (Ecclesiasticus 6:10, 14-16)
One of the core values in my rule of life is balance. What am I trying to balance? Among other things, there are the four vocations I feel called to by God - husband, father, priest, and friend, and I try to balance all of them. It is not always easy, but I consider each of these vocations important, so I try to do my best at keeping them in some kind of balance. I do pretty well with the first three. I must admit that I struggle more with putting in the same kind of time in being a friend.
I have - thanks be to God - one or two friends who I have known since the late 1970's. (Some of you have friends who go back much further than that, I realize!) They live in another state, but we write, email, sometimes talk on the phone, and every one in a while, we still get together. My friend, Don, comes to mind. Don and I met when we were both working at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, in the summers when we were in our college years. Don and I ended up being "hikemasters" together, and over the years we have climbed many 14ers together, gone to Rockies games, and been there to support each other through the ups and downs of our lives. One of the things I really appreciate about Don is he is a letter-writer, and has consistently taken the time to keep in touch with me by writing letters. He is on my email sermon list, and I stay in touch with him partly through the little updates that I send along with the weekly sermon. My friendship with Don is something that I am deeply thankful for. As the writer from Ecclesiaticus says, in Don I have found a faithful friend - and a treasure.
I am also aware that in recent years I have struggled to make the time to develop friendships with other people. My excuse has been that between being a husband, a father, and a priest, there is not much time left over for being alone, much less for attending to my friendships. But that is really just an excuse. I see this issue as generally being more common for men. We tend to spend a lot more time in our jobs and seek to get almost all our emotional and relational needs met in our families, and don't always do the friendship part of life very well. I see Julia and other women really putting in the time it takes to be a friend, and consequently, she - and the other women that I know - tend to have deeper and more established friendships.
It's healthy and good for the soul to have friends. It's not a fair expectation to think that we can get all our emotional needs met by our partner, or from one person. A good, faithful friend offers something different, something important. They can speak to us and listen to us on another plane, and see different things, for they are not right smack in the middle of our family dynamic. And then there is that part where you climb a mountain together (or go have lunch - whatever it might be), and make fun of each other, and laugh, and have fun! Again, as it says in Ecclesiasticus, "faithful friends are life-saving medicine." That's true!
This past Sunday night Julia and I were invited to be in a prayer circle for one of our friends who has recently been diagnosed with cancer. Patti is 47, a Presbyterian minister, and married to another Presbyterian minister, John. We came together to offer small, visible symbols to Patti and John, to pray for Patti's healing, for John, and for their three daughters, and to offer them our love, prayer, and support. There were eleven of us there, altogether. One of the couples, newer friends of John and Patti's, we met for the first time on Sunday night. But we were all one in Christ - friends in Christ - and we were all there to say, in one way another, "We want to be your faithful friends during this extremely difficult time."
As I struggle to balance friendship with the other calls upon my life - the other relationships in my life - I was reminded on Sunday night, once again, of how wonderful friendship can be, and what a blessing a faithful friend is. I was also reminded of how much Jesus wants us to know him - as a friend.
May you and I have good friends in our lives. May we do what is needed to cultivate and nurture those friendships. And may we treasure the people who are our friends, remembering to give thanks to God - often and always - for them.
Maybe today is a day when you can call or email a friend, and thank them for their friendship. May the Lord bless you and keep you.