Spiritual Friendship: Friendship, Creation & Kingdom Come

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

At Newsung Church, we want to see Jesus lifted high in Port Perry, Ontario, as we worship, grow, and serve.

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The second lesson is from Revelation 21, verses 1 to 5.

Revelation 21:1–5

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them, and they will be his people.

And God Himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

And he who has seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new.

Also he said, Write this down, for the words are trustworthy and true.

The word of the Lord.

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them, and they will be his people.

Let's pray.

It's like an abundance and an overflow of blessing.

So as we turn our attention now to this subject of friendship, I pray that it wouldn't be just for us, I don't know, some neat facts or trivia, that you by your Holy Spirit would work to knit us together in unity.

So that we can know what it is for you to dwell with us.

And we can know that in and through one another.

And I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So today I want to talk about um the beginning of time, the end of time as we know it, the beginning of eternity to come, and then everything that brings those two things together, so everything in between.

I guess I just want to make you really nervous about your lunch reservation right now.

But what I want us to catch in our study this morning through these readings that I've selected for us is that friendship is not something that is uh accidental.

It's not something that is tangential or you know, an optional extra for those who are interested, but it belongs to how God has constituted us as human beings.

So I want to begin by telling you about um maybe my favorite Super Bowl commercial.

There's some great Super Bowl commercials, but there's still one that takes the cake in my books.

And it's it's it's getting a little bit old now, but uh but this was a spoof on the movie Castaway.

If you've seen that movie, you know what I'm talking about.

So that's probably over 20 years old now, which is kind of a strange thought.

But um, but Castaway was um, for those who might not be familiar with it, Tom Hanks played a FedEx employee whose delivery plane uh crashed on a deserted island, and now he was marooned, I think somewhere out in the Pacific, right?

For something like five years on his own.

And it's it's a story of the triumph of and resiliency of the human spirit.

And he, you know, finally escapes this island after much overcoming much adversity.

And the whole time being a FedEx employee, he's had packages that he's opened, and you know, anyway, but there's this one package he decides for one reason or another not to open.

And this is a package that he's determined to deliver.

We're left wondering what's inside this package, but he brings this package with him when he makes his his big escape.

And the final scene of the movie is him delivering this package.

It's kind of a closure, right?

It's, I mean, this is this is a silent triumph for this character that's been through so much.

So this Super Bowl commercial picks up right there, and it imagines the scene playing out a little bit differently.

So, you know, here is uh a big burly bearded, kind of long matted hair castaway character marching his way, you know, to the house with this package under his arm, and he knocks on the door and the door opens and he says, he says, I was marooned on a desert island for five years with this package, but I swore that I would deliver it to you because I'm a FedEx employee.

This is a FedEx commercial, of course.

And you know, the recipient of this package is overwhelmed.

I'm just, this is incredible.

And so she takes this package and thanks him.

And you know, as she turns to go back into the house and he turns away, curiosity gets the better of him.

He turns back and he says, By the way, what was in this package?

Package is left open the whole movie, unopened the whole movie, right?

And she goes, Oh, well, nothing really.

Just a GPS locator, a satellite phone, a fishing rod, a water purifier, you know, a couple of seats, just silly stuff like that.

And the sheer look of dismay is just enough to crack me up.

I mean, everything he needed was right there in the box, wasn't it?

Now, Castaway, as as, you know, we never really know what's in the box, but it would be a very different movie if, let's say, you know, 15 minutes into his, you know, into his exile, he cracked open this box and discovered everything he needs, not just for his survival, but for his escape.

It would be a very different movie.

But that's not what he finds.

He doesn't open up this box, he doesn't find these items.

Instead, he opens up another box which contains a volleyball.

Do you remember this?

It's hard to forget when you've seen this movie, right?

What's that volleyball's name?

Thank you.

It's called Wilson.

Which is a clever name, of course.

Wilson becomes, like, takes on a character of itself, doesn't it?

You know, uh, I think Tom Hanks draws a face on it at one point or another, becomes something of his confidant, becomes something of his companion through his, you know, time and exile.

And I guess this is just a strange thing to me.

I mean, it's strange, but it it resonates with our humanity in a real way.

I think, I mean, I guess you could take a really cynical approach and you could say, well, here's here's Tom Hanks' sheer descent into madness.

Like he's willing to make friends with a volleyball.

This character is going insane.

I think that, I mean, maybe there's something to that, but I think I don't think we should settle ourselves there.

I think I think the the I mean, I think this is a very human thing to do.

I mean, I think it invites us to imagine what we would do in such a situation.

I suspect we'd be the ones making friends with a volleyball with no other alternatives.

I mean, Rachel is away for ten days at a conference, and by day two, I was not only talking to the dog, but I was responding to what I had to say to the dog in what I imagined to be the dog's voice.

You know, and he's kind of sweet, but he's really dopey, so it takes on some of that character.

If ever there's proof that it's not good for man to be alone, there you have it.

Um but there's something really human, right?

So I guess so.

All this, you know, the Super Bowl commercial castway, all this considered, here's what really strikes me in thinking about all this.

We can survive a desert island experience without seeds and a water purifier and fishing rod and everything else, but we can't survive without companionship.

We can't survive without something that resembles friendship.

And this is what's in display in this movie.

It's such a human story.

And we're so genuinely moved, aren't we, when Wilson gets lost at sea?

Sorry to spoil things.

It's been out for a little while now, but it's genuinely moving because we know what it is.

Anyway, I guess the question becomes like, what's that about?

Why is it that we can survive without so many things, but we cannot survive without friendship?

And here's the best answer I think the Bible has to offer.

Human beings, we can't survive without friendship because human beings are created and purposed and redeemed for friendship.

We're created and purposed and redeemed for friendship.

So this companionship, this friendship that we see on display in this movie, but that we experience in real life as we live it, is not something that's accidental to the Christian life, like an optional extra.

Like, you know, it's nice to go to church, I guess, and have some friends, but if I don't really feel like it, like I can kind of opt out of that.

I can kind of have my own private little thing.

The vision of God's word is that this belongs to the very fabric of our humanity.

Like to strip away friendship from what it means to be human is to be left something less than human.

And the fullness of what God intends for our humanity belongs together with the fullness of friendship.

That's been true since the beginning.

It's going to be true in eternity to come, and it's presently true now in Christ.

So here's where I'd like to introduce us to a new friend who has just kind of been getting me thinking through this theme, and as I've been praying about this moment of ours in the parish and where it is that we're kind of journeying as we move forward.

It's been this guy, um Aylred, Aylred of Rivault, what a name, eh?

Aylred.

A-E-L-R-E-D.

Such a cool name.

Aylred lived maybe a thousand years ago, almost a thousand years ago in England, and he was the abbot of a growing, thriving monastery.

You know, so we can relate to him in all those ways, right?

Um But the thing about Aylred is he he didn't just think about community in the abstract, like he lived it.

Like he was his role was embedded in this experience of real, vital Christian community and seeing that thrive and seeing friendships formed and trust formed.

This was, you know, he was he was not just thinking, he's putting this into practice in his own life.

And there's some things that just seem to speak through the centuries, right?

It just resonates.

Almost like in the moment and time we occupy, we might learn some new and interesting stuff that's true, but we also forget stuff along the way, don't we?

Like we know that's true in our own personal life.

That's I wonder if that's true in history too.

I think it is.

And so it's almost as though this book was almost a cannonball for me because it was, I just wasn't ready for the wallop.

But here's something I wonder if we've forgotten along the way.

This practice of what it means, this practice of friendship, of real, engaged, purposeful Christian friendship, not just as kind of this nice idea, but something that fulfills the purpose of our humanity, as God's intended for us.

Okay.

Um, so here's how here's what Aylred has to say about friendship.

Aylred says that friendship is that virtue by which spirits are bound together by ties of love and sweetness, and out of many are made one.

Friendship is that virtue by which spirits are bound together by ties of love and sweetness, and out of many are made one.

I included that quote in my rector's report.

So there's so much to that, and I could probably spend the whole time talking about this quote, but we do want to get to scripture here.

Um friendship is a virtue, it's something that's practiced.

It doesn't just happen spontaneously.

True friendship, and we know this to be true, is something we we work at.

We develop over time, and it develops with practice and with trust.

And the thing about friendship is it has this way of taking, you know, two very separate persons and knitting their life together, tying them together as those two spirits are becoming one.

It's like my best interest is also your best interest, is also my best interest, and that's just multiplied and multiplied, right?

This is what we're talking about.

We talk about French.

Aristotle, I think, says that friendship is consciously uh willing the good of one another.

It's like I want your very best, and I know your very best is wanting my very best.

And so we're tied together in this bond of friendship.

And false friendships can be dissolved.

Like at any point of time, we can just be like, well, your utility is over, I'm no longer enjoying this benefit that I thought we had, so you know, see you later.

True friendships are those that last through adversity, don't they?

And conflict, and difficulty, and isolation, and pain, and betrayal, and all of these things, true friendship sticks it out.

Okay.

Here's what one scholar says uh about about Aylred.

This is um someone named Marsha Dutton.

Aylred writes, she's describing the argument in this book, Aylred writes of the sacramental essence of friendship, the way in which men and women may, by loving one another, embrace Christ in this life and enjoy eternal friendship with God in time to come.

You know, so so true friendship, certainly for us Christians, goes beyond just a temporal good, like right now, this is this is a good thing between us.

It's like this resonates with the very constitution of our creation, what we were made to be, and it resonates forward into eternity to come, where we're meant to be friends with Christ and one another forever.

It's like sometimes I think we can actually grasp that in the experience of our friendships.

Not always, you know, because friendships are hard.

But sometimes it's like, gosh, this moment is bigger than just this moment.

This relationship, this trust, it resonates more deeply than maybe we have words for.

And maybe scripture can give us some categories to understand how deep this resonance goes.

Okay, so with our time, I want us to look at where is it that we're coming from?

You know, we're created for friendship.

Where is it that we're going?

We're purposed for an eternal friendship, a friendship that's gonna last forever.

And then how do we get there in this present moment, this present experience of friendship?

Okay, so we're gonna do some 30,000 feet kind of touring here.

Genesis chapter 2, if you have your bulletin, pull it out with me.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Let's let's just highlight a couple of things and let's carry them forward into the weeks to come.

Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

I think we see that human beings are created for friendship.

Genesis chapter 2 is one of two creation accounts.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

It's a complementary creation account with Genesis chapter 1, right?

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

We remember how it goes evening and morning for six days, and God says it is good.

It is Tove.

This is exactly what I've intended for my creation.

It gives me glory.

But here in Genesis chapter 2, we encounter something that's not good.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

It's something that stands in stark contrast to what's come before.

And did you notice what's not good in this creation?

It's that man should be alone.

God's formed a man out of the material of creation, he's placed him in this garden that he's planted.

But God looks at the situation and says it's not the fullest of what it could be.

This man is alone.

There's no counterpart, there's no partner for him.

And so God marches every animal and you know, before Adam, the man, there's, I mean, the point is there's just nothing else in creation that truly corresponds to his personhood until God puts him in a deep sleep and takes from him his rib or you know, piece of his side, and forms woman who is both separate from him but corresponds to him.

They're partners together.

And this is where Adam, of course, has his very first words beholding the woman, which is very significant.

Can't be friends if we're not talking to each other, right?

This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman, because seriously, whoa, man.

Sorry, no, that's my paraphrase.

Because she was taken out of a man.

It's like we're purposed to correspond to one another.

Now there's more going on here than just friendship.

That's true.

What's going on here is the marriage covenant as God has instituted it in creation.

We see that in verse 24.

Part of, you know, this is not good is that, you know, this man alone has no partner with whom he can be fruitful and multiply, and that's God's intention for creation as well.

But um, but we I there is more than friendship going on.

That's true.

But we shouldn't miss the fact that there's not less than friendship going on here, too.

That God's created social creatures purposed for relationship with one another.

And here again, I think Aylred is very helpful as well, because when Erlard looks at this story, he sees the prototype, the very first friendship.

Aylred writes, in a beautiful way, from the side of the first human, a second was produced, so that nature, like the way we're constituted, the way we're created, nature might teach us that all are equal, and that among human beings, and this is the property of friendship, there exists neither superior nor inferior.

So from the very beginning, nature impressed on human minds this attachment of charity and friendship.

What's Elred saying here?

He's saying that, one, we can observe an equality between the man and the woman.

She wasn't taken from his head as though she should, you know, be in some way ontologically superior to him, nor taken from his feet as though she's below him.

It's like there's an equality in our partnership.

She's meant to be an azer, a helper, which is to say she's she's a co-laboring partner with him.

And azer is a word that's used, I think, 21 times in the Old Testament, 15 of which relate God's relationship.

God is the aiser of his people, Israel.

Like that's really significant.

They're meant to be partners in a greater work than either of them could do together.

And that, it's true, intersects with the covenant of marriage, but I think resonates very most deeply, perhaps, with friendship.

This is what they were intended to share with one another.

They were created to be equal partners and therefore friends.

That's what Aylred wants us to catch.

And I think that's that's very, very true.

So we're social creatures.

You know, friendship is not something that's accidental, it's not like an optional extra for those humans who are interested.

It's like without friendship, we're not human.

Not fully, not completely.

There's something about friendship that God's designed for us to discover our very selves, our humanity in.

That's true in the horizontal between us.

That's also, I think, true in the vertical, because Adam and Eve are not just purposed with friendship and partnership with each other, but they're purposed with friendship and partnership with God Himself.

And I wonder if we catch this in the chapter that follows this one, Genesis 3, verse 8, which takes place in the narrative of the fall, where our first parents are disobedient and rebel against God's command, and now they've they reap the consequences, right?

Genesis 3:8

They're in alienation and isolation and decay and death and everything that goes with that.

But in the midst of these consequences, we have this phrase kind of dropped into the text so casually that it suggests to me this is not the only time this has happened.

It says that, you know, after Adam and Eve have sort of they're hiding themselves, because that's what we do, right?

When we betray friends, we go, we hide, we hide ourselves, we hide our shame.

So that's what they're doing.

And God goes walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

It's like he goes looking for his friends.

And I think this is not the first time God's gone looking for his friends to take a walk at that time that he thinks this is a suitable time for us to spend time together.

So, like, let's think about that for a second.

Like, God created human beings and placed them in creation as he intended it to be once for all time.

And then he wants to spend time with them.

He wants to walk with them.

He wants them to know him, and he wants himself to be known by them in this perfect community.

And friendship together.

God is delighted to live with his friends.

Like that's that's part and parcel of what it means to be created human.

Perhaps what it means to be created in the image of God.

In other words, God is delighted to live with his friends.

He is delighted to dwell with his people.

And isn't that exactly what we see in Revelation 21?

It's like at the beginning of the story, God's created us for friendship.

At the very end of the story, God has purposed us to live out friendship forever with him and with one another.

And there's so many parallels between Revelation 21 and Genesis 2.

It's crazy.

It's like Genesis 2 is a creation story.

Well, Revelation 21 is a renewed creation story.

There's a marriage that is founded upon the principle of friendship in Genesis 2.

There is a marriage founded upon the principle of friendship in Revelation 21.

There's a bride prepared for her husband, we read, right?

It's like this is the story of God restoring what was lost.

Like that's the big story of the Bible, right?

It's like we were created to be friends with God and friends with one another, and that got lost.

But the surprising fact of the Bible is the restoration of our friendship with God is not something that belongs to human effort.

It's something that belongs to God's initiative.

That's wild.

And that brings us to John 14.

Let's land here.

So the Gospel of John introduces us to Jesus by describing him as the word made flesh.

Like this word that God spoke and brought creation into being is this word that takes on flesh and dwells among us, in the way that God is saying he's going to dwell with his people in Revelation 21.

He takes on flesh, he dwells, he tabernacles among us.

This word made flesh takes upon himself the condition of our alienation, of our sinfulness, of our brokenness, of our deterioration and death.

He takes that upon himself so that he can put it to death through his death on the cross and by his resurrection raise us who share with him in his nature by grace through faith.

He can raise us to God's own heavenly life.

It's like the cross puts our death to death, and his life raises us to new life and draws us up into the very life of God.

It's like Jesus is the one who is restoring what was lost through the fall.

It's like he's the pivot point between humanity as it was created to be in perfect friendship with God and one another and where we're going, purposed for all eternity.

It's like Jesus is right in the middle of all that, saying, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

And Jesus says, I'm going ahead of you to prepare a place for you.

Like, why am I going to the cross?

And what's the resurrection and ascension and this promise to come again all about?

It's like, I'm going ahead of you and preparing for you a room to stay with me.

And it's very unfortunate that this has kind of been focusly translated as like, I'm going to prepare a mansion for you, which, you know, there's that hymn, right?

Like a mansion in glory or something.

Jesus is gone to prepare.

Anyway, if that's your favorite hymn, I'm sorry.

Like, have you heard a mighty fortress?

Um, but it's very unfortunate that this idea is kind of, because I wonder if it speaks to sort of our North American materialist vision of the ideal.

It's like, I live a really good life, and then at the end of it, no matter how hard it is, I get like a 16-bedroom house in a pretty good location with like an eight-car garage and an indoor pool, right?

It's like I can hang in for that.

It's like, no, that's not what this narrative is about.

That's not what Jesus is promising here.

I'm going ahead of you to prepare a place for you, a room for you, which is a phrase that you would use with a friend who's coming to visit you from out of town.

We use it right now.

So much more would they use it in first century Palestine, where hospitality was just one of the most important cultural values.

It's like, I want you to stay with me.

You're my friends, and you're going to come and live with me.

In fact, this is the same discourse which Jesus says, I don't call you servants.

You're not coming to my house to serve me.

You're coming to my house to be my friends.

I call you friends because I'm making known my will and the Father's will to you.

It's like friendship is right there in the constitution of creation.

It resonates into eternity itself.

We're purposed for eternal friendship with God and one another.

And here's Jesus in the middle of that saying, Come to me.

I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

What a friend we have in Jesus.

Okay.

So what does all this mean for practicing friendship?

That's all that all sounds nice, but like, okay.

I guess I just want to make a suggestion that maybe we can carry forward and we can just be unpacking this more and more as we go.

Again, I want to suggest that friendship is not something that's optional for humanity, but it's something that's not optional for Christians.

How easy is it for us to sort of privatize our faith in a way that it's like, yeah, I'll kind of, I mean, I'll kind of be a Christian, but like I don't really need to open myself to other Christians.

Like I that gets messy.

By the way, it risks like stuff like betrayal and pain and all these things that we want to avoid, right?

It's like, maybe I'll just shrink back.

How easy that's been, too, when it's like we've had to isolate because you know there's a pandemic.

And it's just so easy to operate from that place of like social distance might not be a thing anymore, but like spiritual distance, isn't that still a place we operate from?

Isn't that so easy?

The vision, the biblical vision for friendship, of like the whole story and arc of creation is something that's starts to undo that.

It's like if we think we can live a Christian life out of community and friendship from one another, like removed from that, it's like we're both denying something about our constitution as God's created it, and we're denying something about eternity as God has purposed for us, and we're denying this present experience of Christ's friendship animating us in the present.

It's like we're being less than human when we withdraw.

And in fact, I think God intends for us to be this dwelling place of His presence as His people, the church.

So when we lean into that, we're leaning into very purpose what it means to be human.

And embracing Christ means saying yes to friendship.

I'll conclude with one last quote.

And we can go from there.

Again, this is Marcia Dutton commenting on Aylred.

God instituted human friendship in creation and grounded it in God in Christ's presence.

It therefore leads in this life directly to the experience of Christ and in the next to eternal friendship with God.

So maybe where we just kind of want to pause is to ask, where's my heart at?

Like, do I withdraw from others?

Is there am I is there something I'm trying to protect?

Or is there shame I'm trying to hide, like Adam and Eve hiding in the garden?

Do I desire that that friendship with Jesus that draws me into truth and life and life lived together?

So, friends, I really hope that over our time together we can catch a vision for friendship and live it out in such a way that when people come visit us here at Newsong, they're like, things are a little bit more on earth like they are in heaven here, because of how these folks are practicing friendship.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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