Scuba – Diving into friendship with God
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Beth Henricks
June 9, 2024
Good morning, Friends and welcome to our online service. Bob continues to be on sabbatical which is why I am giving the message today.
Our scripture reading is John 13:34-35 NRSV.
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Today is the kickoff to our Vacation Bible School program. The theme this year is Scuba – Diving into friendship with God. Be sure to go into fellowship hall and see the wonderful transformation of this room into an undersea world by our Rebecca Lopez and Dan Mitchell. We have 26 kids that will join us this week for the adventure where we play, learn and connect with God and each other. We also have 20 volunteers that will help provide a memorable experience during the week. We are so grateful for the participation of so many members and attenders that give of their time and talent to make this week an amazing time.
As I have been preparing and studying the lesson outlines for this week of VBS, I am thinking about the theme of our VBS program. Friendship with God. I think for some of us this is a hard concept to embrace. God is not a person, God does not have a gender, is transcendent beyond our grasp, creator of all, and we only see the handiwork of God. And yet we give God all kinds of human descriptors. To attempt to gain an understanding and appreciation of God we must try to describe God in some kind of terms that we understand.
Some of the world’s religions do not think in terms of intimacy and friendship with this Being. The Buddhists don’t talk about God in human and personal terms, and I understand this. But one of the characteristics of Christianity is the idea that we can have a personal and intimate relationship with this transcendent being of God. I know all the words we use to describe God are completely inadequate, but I believe that God can be both transcendent and personal. Two things can both be true as many of us have experienced. We certainly see this idea throughout the Bible. Even in the Old Testament, God at times became a personal God. It started with Abraham, the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Abraham developed a personal relationship with Yahweh based on trust, truth and encounters over time. In II Chronicles 20 while Jehoshaphat the leader of Israel was facing battles with the Moabites and Ammonites, he goes into the temple praying to God to drive out these enemies of Israel. In verse 7, he says “Did you not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of your friend Abraham?” Jehoshaphat is describing Abraham as God’s friend. In James 2:23 the reminder of a friendship with God and Abraham is highlighted “ Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, and he was called the friend of God.”
Another example of this in the Old Testament was Moses who had a friendship with this unknowable being. Moses talks with God, has a personal encounter with God at the burning bush and communicates with God as his friend. Exodus 33:11 says, "Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” These are pretty amazing statements given at the time the Old Testament was written where there was so much less knowledge and understanding about science, laws of nature and medicine.
The embodiment of God as a friend in the Bible is Jesus. Jesus gave us a glimpse into the humanity of this transcendent God. As humans, we need tangible and tactile examples to experience God. Jesus is the embodiment of God. Jesus has to talk about God in parables or stories for us to understand. That is why I love the theological idea of theopoetics. This idea of reimagining God in the way of story and poetry. God cannot be described and yet the Bible is full of descriptions that begin to attempt to name God in a way of theopoetics.
I can understand God better when I think of Jesus. Jesus for me represents many of the characteristics of God. Jesus is the focused character of the New Testament that solidifies the idea of friendship with God. Jesus also embraced an inner circle of friends in his disciples that were flawed and broken and yet Jesus knew how important this circle of friendship would be to him. These disciples left their homes to travel with Jesus and be his companions through so many experiences. Jesus knew he could not have this ministry without this group of friends. They followed him into difficult situations and while they often never understood the mission of Jesus to show a different way of love and sacrifice, they believed in him and were present and were authentic even in their disbelief at times.
Jesus summarizes his whole ministry in John 15: 12-15. “This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I’ve heard from my father.”
I think we sometimes look for friends that are similar to us. But Jesus did not do that, and his friends were women, fishermen, those of lower status in class, tax collectors, prostitutes, all the groups that those who were in power regarded as less than them. Yet, these are the people that Jesus chooses as friends. It challenges me to expand my inclinations to have friends that are like me.
The idea of friendship is unique to our faith community of Quakers. Quakers official name is the Religious Society of Friends. The movement called itself “The Religious Society of Friends from its beginnings in the mid 1600’s to avoid using the word “church” in their name so as not to imply that they were exclusively the church of Jesus Christ. (Some Christian groups did that at the time.) They called themselves “Friends” because of the words of Jesus recorded in John 15:14 “You are my friends, if you do what I command you.” The early Friends were Christians who believed they could live like Jesus because Jesus lived in them. These early believers considered that they were friends of Jesus.
As we think about a friendship and an intimate relationship with God, its helpful to examine what makes a good friend in our lives and what makes for a positive and healthy intimate relationship. The friendships we experience are the only direct examples that we have of friendship. A good friend is many things, but I think a good friend is someone that communicates, has companionship and compassion for one another. We spend time with friends, are present with friends and have a desire to really get to know someone. Friends are trustworthy and comfortable being vulnerable and being our true authentic selves. We can share our highs and lows with friends. A good friendship is a two-way relationship – both folks talking and listening, giving and receiving, loving and feeling loved. Good friends endure each other’s pain and share in each other’s joys. A good and healthy, intimate friendship does not usually happen quickly but must be developed and nurtured over time. My dearest friends have developed over years. Folks that get married quickly after meeting each other, must be careful in considering the long-term nature of their relationship. How can you discern a selection for a lifelong partner that you will share all aspects of your life in a span of several months? Friends need seasoning and partners need seasoning. It’s the same way I view an instant conversion to Jesus as savior at the altar or in the presence of someone. I don’t think a friendship can be developed in a moment. Our relationship and friendship with God is developed and nurtured as we experience God and God’s expansive love. The deeper friendship with God occurs over time and can change over time. That is the way friendships develop.
My roommate from college for my junior and senior year lives in Phoenix Arizona. We fell apart for a number of years but reconnected in the last 15 years and always plan a yearly trip to be together for 3-4 days . This dear friend Kim has been a rock for me during my darkest hours and days with my husband and son. She accepted me, prayed with me, did not offer any judgement but would give me her advice in a gentle and non-threatening way. In the last 3 years, our roles have changed as it’s been 8 years since Jerry passed away, I’ve met someone important in my life and Greg has been sober for over 4 years. Kim’s daughter has struggled with addiction and in her darkest days, Kim would call me almost every day. She knew I had walked this journey and understood, would not judge and offered support, prayers and advice when it felt appropriate. Her daughter is living in a sober house and been clean for 6 months. Our calls have lessened but we know we are always there for each other and will offer unwavering support. And this is a person that believes very differently than I do both politically and theologically. But that has not diminished our friendship.
Each day at VBS this week we will look at aspects of friendship with God. Today we look at God as a friendship that is real. We will focus with the kids that we don’t physically see God with our eyes but the evidence that God is real is all around us. Tomorrow, we look at how God is a friend that loves. God’s unconditional love for us is beyond our comprehension. God loves us fiercely and embraces us with all of our faults and failures. Tuesday we will consider that God is a friend we can trust. God is not a God that is a genie that grants us our wishes, but God is a being of truth and Justice, and we can trust in this friendship with God. Wednesday we will look at the idea that God is a friend forever. God will never reject us and leave us alone. Ever. God will always be our friend if we seek out a friendship with God. On our last day, we will consider that God is a friend for everyone. This might be the hardest idea of friendship with God. God loves everyone - believers, non-believers, those that are Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist, Jewish and every religion that is embraced by various populations in the world. God is not looking to be friends with only those that embrace the God of Christianity. God is a God that loves everyone and brings all into this huge tent of God. We often think that God is the God of believers, but this is so far from the truth. Jesus was a great example of the expansiveness of God’s love as he connected with the lowest level of Jewish society with little standing in his time, that includes prostitutes, the infirmed, those that did not faithfully follow Jewish law , tax collectors, women. And also, with those outside of the Jewish faith.
I believe we can develop an intimate friendship with God. And I believe this from what I read in the Bible, the experience of God in my life and what I have experienced with my circle of friends. I don’t exactly understand why we connect with certain folks, how does this deep connection grow, and how does pray work in my relationship with God but I know its real and I know it requires attention and time on my part to develop. I pray today that we all consider how we invest ourselves into the friendships we have with others and with God.
As we enter a time of waiting worship I offer the following queries:
What kind of friend am I?
Do I seek an intimacy with God?
How could I broaden my circle of friends?