Materials
The David Series: Our Lives Before God
That's What Friends Are For
I Samuel 17:55 - I Samuel 18:3
by R. Todd Bouldin
The
friendship between Jonathan and David is one of the Bible’s classic depictions of what God wants to give us to enjoy. The only problem is that good friends seem to be hard to find – at least as long as you are looking for them to give you something only God can provide.
Prayer - Today, O God, we ask that You protect us from being a person who absorbs people but set us free by Your divine love to create holy space in our relationships so that we can love a friend and seek the fulfillment of their holy calling, whatever the cost. In Your Son's Name, amen.
The popular television show “Friends” just won’t go away. Season after season, it continues to be among the most highly ranked of television shows. Perhaps it is for more base reasons, but I think one of the reasons the show is so successful is because it exemplifies the type of relationships that we all long for with our friends – that is, if we have some true friends. While the characters certainly have moral flaws, the friends on “Friends” rarely ask much of each other, they generally are not sexually involved with each other, they are truthful, genuinely caring, funny, and consistent. Season after season, despite all of the drama between them, there they are – still together – still making millions of bucks (funny how that helps things) – still having a good time -- and we wish we had friends just like them – friends that won’t go away. But friends like that seem hard to find.
If you ask people why they struggle with friendships, they will tell you all kinds of reasons they can’t seem to find good friends. Some got burned once, and they do not want to let someone close to them again. Others will say they do not know how to make friends, or they just can’t seem to find anyone who has something in common with them. Others think they are too busy for friends. Men particularly have trouble making true friends. It is rare to find men who engage in personal sharing and who confide in their friends – their friendship revolves around business or shared activities like sports, not communication. A high percentage of men report that they have no best friend outside the relationship with their spouse. Our mobile society makes friendship difficult too because the friend you make today in Camarillo may live in New York City next year. But there is a more basic problem in finding friends: We do not know how to receive them. We want to “make” friends, but true friends are not the ones you “make” but the ones you receive.
By all outward appearances, David and Jonathan had no business being friends. Society tells us that we should spend a lot of time with a friend, that we should share a lot in common, and that there has to be a future to make it worthwhile. But Jonathan and David have nothing in common, and they come from incredibly different backgrounds. Prince Jonathan, the son of King Saul, had enjoyed all the privileges of growing up in a royal court. David was educated in the wilderness with a bunch of sheep. Only God could have created this friendship.
Apparently these two met right after David killed Goliath. King Saul had summoned David into his presence in Jerusalem. So David came into the royal court carrying the head of Goliath, and Jonathan was drawn to David that day. We are told that the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David from that day. The old Revised Standard Version says that “Jonathan’s soul was knit to the soul of David.” The word is passive in Hebrew, meaning it was something that happened to Jonathan. It was not a friendship he “made” but one that was given to him by God.
You will recall that David was being celebrated as the giant-slayer for killing Goliath. As we have been studying the past two weeks, Saul felt threatened and knew he would have to reign in the shepherd boy. His initial plan was not to kill David but to make him part of his house. We are told that Saul wouldn’t let David leave. Some biblical scholars say that the question Saul asks David, “Whose son are you?” can be translated “Will you be my son?” It is a test of allegiance, and David refuses to say that he is anyone’s son but his father Jesse’s.
Saul wanted, perhaps largely for political reasons, to absorb David. He needed something from David, so he brings him within his reach and will not let David go. That is how many of us approach friendships. Friends exist to meet our needs, we think, so we make friends and cling to them until they meet our need. When a friend no longer takes away our loneliness, or no longer serves as a companion, or no longer has hip and hot friends to make us think we are cool, then we bolt. When you need a friend, you reduce David to just an instrumental value in your life. Friendships based on need are not friendship but addictions, and they will not satisfy you any more than money, sex or power. God didn’t design friendship to meet all your needs. That is why Henri Nouwen says in his diary, Road to Daybreak, that successful friendships begin by forgiving each other for not being Christ to each other.
Saul wanted to absorb David to meet his needs. Jonathan just wanted to love David. We are told, “The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and he loved him as his own soul.” That assumes a certain amount of personal security and self-love. Jonathan did not need David in his life to find love or security. I believe that is why David in his lament over Jonathan’s death says, “You have been very pleasant to me; your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women.” I do not believe there was anything kinky going on here. The love between these friends surpassed any romantic love in David’s life because romantic love is based on needs, attraction, and desire. David and Jonathan shared a love that had nothing to do with desire or attraction or needs. Their needs were already met in God. This friendship was about choices and covenants, not fuzzy feelings or raging desires.
That is the first secret to receiving friends. You have to be self-sufficient, anchored in the unconditional divine love of God for you, before you are free to give love to another without absorbing them. When you approach friendships with a hole in your heart still unfilled, you will end making an addiction rather than receiving a friend. You can never enjoy a true friendship that you just have to have.
Once his soul is knit to David’s, Jonathan then takes off his royal robe and sword and places them on David. When you realize that perhaps Jonathan the prince expected to be the next great king of Israel, then you understand this selfless act of Jonathan. Jonathan is helping David fulfill his calling to be king. In his vow to protect David in chapter 20, Jonathan says to him in one of the great moments of any account of a friendship, “Whatever you want me to do, I will do for you.” (I Samuel 20:4). True friendship is never just about you – a friend is one who is knit to your soul by God for the purpose of helping you fulfill your calling.
C.S. Lewis has written that the posture of friends is to stand side by side looking ahead, as opposed to lovers who look at each other face to face. “Friendship must be about something.” Lewis observes. “That is why those who simply want friends can never have any. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow travelers.” Good friendships are not just about you – neither are they just about the friendships themselves. Friendships thrive when they exist for a greater purpose.
Our culture tells us that the relationship is the sole agenda. According to the Bible, the sole agenda of life is to respond to the call of God, and like the rest of life, your friends have to keep you focused on that singular call.
This means that friendships are not even all about mutuality. What does Jonathan get out of his friendship with David? Nothing really, other than some heartache, and struggle with his father who wants to preserve his dynasty. So why would Jonathan help David, even rescuing him from his own father and giving up his own rightful claim to the throne? Because God knit his soul to David’s soul. Jonathan knew his calling, and it was not to be king. His calling was to be David’s soul-friend.
Friendship is one of the most underrated means of exercising spirituality. True friendship can lead us to our life’s greatest callings because a true friend is able to love you without sexual needs, romantic demands, or any sense of obligation. A person chooses to be your friend – it is voluntary – and it is this freedom that provides the context where love can flourish and callings can be discovered. Friendship is never just about the friendship -- friendship always is about a larger purpose in which God is bonding us with another to discover His Holy Presence in each other’s lives.
The Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel has written that the thing that makes a relationship holy in Scripture is the creative space that is formed between the two people. It is into this space that the Holy descends. Jesus essentially said this when He promised, “When two or three are gathered in My Name, I will be in the midst of them.” Without a soul friend, there is no creative space, no recognition of the Savior among us, and no understanding of our calling. It is never enough to just worship on Sundays, or to find yourself a mate. You need to be knit to the soul of a friend.
But you respond, “But how do I find a such a friend? I do not seem to find good friends like Jonathan.” Let me suggest that you might begin with a different question. What you should be asking is not how to find a friend like Jonathan, but how to be a friend like Jonathan. To whom is God knitting your soul? Whose sacred calling are you helping to fulfill, no matter the cost to you?
As we have seen the past two weeks, things went from bad to worse between David and Saul when David triumphed again and again over the Philistines. Jonathan tried to intercede with his father, but to no avail. After Saul’s sixth attempt at killing David, it became painfully clear to David that he would have to flee for his life.
In the twentieth chapter of I Samuel, we are given a glimpse of the heart-wrenching day these best friends have to say goodbye, knowing they would never see each other again. David was hiding out in the fields. Jonathan came to deliver the horrible news that there would be no reconciliation with Saul. The two fell on each other’s necks, weeping, and David was weeping the most. Jonathan said to him, “Go in peace, since both of us have sworn in the name of the Lord saying, ‘The Lord shall be between me and you, and between my descendants and your descendants forever.”
Did you hear what Jonathan said? True friendship is sustained forever wherever God occupies the holy center of the relationship. “The Lord shall be between me and you.” Henri Nouwen, in his book Reaching Out, tells a story of a student he grew to love who came back to visit him. The student said, “I have no problems this time, no questions to ask you. I do not need counsel or advice, but I simply want to celebrate some time with you.” The two sat on the ground and talked about life, about their work, about common friends, about the restlessness of their hearts.
Then they became silent. Nouwen writes, “The silence which grew between us was warm, gentle and vibrant. . . . It seemed that while the silence grew deeper around us we became more and more aware of a presence embracing both of us. Then he said, ‘It is good to be here’ and I said, ‘Yes, it is good to be together again,” and after that we were silent for a long period. And as a deep peace filled the empty space between us he said hesitantly, ‘When I look at you it is as if I am in the presence of Christ.’ I could only say, ‘It is the Christ in you, who recognizes the Christ in me.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘He is indeed in our midst,’ then he spoke the words which entered into my soul as the most healing words I had heard in many years, ‘From now on, wherever you go, or wherever I go, all the ground between us will be holy ground.’ And when he left I knew that he had revealed to me what community really means.” The space between is where friendship flourishes.
Every friendship has to come to an end. Someone will move. The relationship will change. One friend will die. A day will come when you have to say good bye to a friend that you do not want to lose. How do you say good bye to a friend who you love more than you love yourself? You have to remember that you didn’t “make” this friend. God gave you this friend, and The Lord “shall be between me and you . . . forever.”
It was never the circumstances or commonalities that created Jonathan and David’s friendship. It was The Lord who was in the creative space between them. Even where the space is enlarged by a great distance in your friendships, The Lord remains between you forever. And the distance between is holy ground.
That is what friends are for -- this day when you both stand in the presence of The God who has stood between you until you both are everything you prayed each other to be. This is why friendship matters. Marriages will end. Addictive acquaintances, political connections and the quid pro quo relationships will cease. But like the television show, friends won’t go away. Friends are forever. That is not just a nice Hallmark card thought. That is a promise from The One who now is your Savior, The One who now stands in the holy space between you, The One who has promised you that His love for you is based not on need but choice. That is why you are no longer called His servant. You are now called His friend. (John 15:15).
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