Friends and Friendship
Three stories about friendship
today. First is from a film.
Scene where Shrek keeps rejecting
donkey’s offer of friendship when they first meet.
Shrek doesn’t want any friends because he
basically thinks people won’t like him anyway so it’s safer to avoid them. And I think sometimes when people are
unfriendly to us it’s not so much because we are unappealing, but more because
they have a low opinion of themselves.
Most of us worry about what other people think of us and this makes it
difficult to make friends. In an
internet magazine, I read that only a fifth of women or girls feel satisfied
with the way they look, while a quarter of those polled said that their
self-esteem varied to do with the day or time of month. ‘The results horrified
me,' confided one iVillager. ‘I can’t believe over half the women who answered
have a problem with the way they look. What happened to beauty is on the
inside?’
My second story about friendship is about a soldier who was finally coming home after
having fought in Vietnam. He called his parents from San Francisco.
"Mum and Dad, I'm coming home, but I've got a favor to ask. I have a
friend I'd like to bring with me."
"Sure," they replied, "we'd love to meet
him." "There's something you should
know," the son continued. "He was hurt pretty badly in the fighting.
He stepped on a land mine and lost an arm and a leg. He has nowhere else to go,
and I want him to come live with us." "I'm
sorry to hear that, son. Maybe we can help him find somewhere to
live." "No, Mom and Dad, I want him to live
with us."
"Son," said the father, "you don't know
what you're asking. Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden on
us. We have our own lives to live, and we can't let something like this
interfere with our lives. I think you should just come home and forget about
this guy. He'll find a way to live on his own."
At that point, the son hung up the phone.
The parents heard nothing more from him. A few days
later, however, they received a call from the San Francisco police. Their son
had died after falling from a building, they were told. The police believed it
was suicide. The grief-stricken parents flew to San Francisco and were taken to
the city morgue to identify the body of their son. They recognized him, but to
their horror they also discovered something they didn't know, their son had
only one arm and one leg.
The parents in this story are like a lot of us. We find it
easy to be friends with those who are good-looking or fun to have around, but
we don't like people who inconvenience us or make us feel uncomfortable. We
would rather stay away from people who aren't as healthy, beautiful, or smart
as we are.
And my last story is about a short man who had no
friends. Everyone in his town avoided
him. Why? Well, not only was he short – and people who judge by appearances
seem to have a problem with that, but he was also a cheat, and stingy with
it. Anyway, one day there was a bit of
a commotion outside and he heard someone important was coming to town. He wanted to see this person very much, but
he couldn’t see over people, and they kept elbowing him out of the way
anyway. So he ran ahead and climbed a
tree. The crowd got nearer and nearer
and as they got under they stopped.
Looked at him. Invited him. Wanted to be his friend. Zacchaeus changed forever.
All of us need friends.
And probably a lot of us feel a bit like Shrek sometimes – like people
wouldn’t really want to be a friend.
For me as a Christian I’ve always found it encouraging that Jesus had
this to say: “I don’t call you
servants….I call you friends.”
Christians believe that if you want to know what God is like then you
just look at Jesus. Jesus made friends
with people, and that’s what God wants to do.
In fact, he’s especially interested in lonely people, people who aren’t
necessarily beautiful on the outside, and people who feel they want to hide
from others – whether they are up trees or not. And the great thing about this friendship is that while our
friends come and go, and some days we might feel popular, and other days we
might feel unpopular, Christians believe God’s friendship goes on forever.
Quiet. Think about
who your real friends are. Think about
people you know who don’t have friends, and whether you can do anything about
it.
Dear God, thank you for your friendship. Amen.