A Beautiful Day for A Neighbor:
The ‘Vocation’ of Friend
Growing up Mr Roger’s taught generations of children and adults, “It’s a beautiful day for e neighbor,” and asked, “Would you be mine?” Childish though it may seem, his earnest desire for a neighbor, for a good friend, is a Christian virtue. For we are taught to pray, Our Father who art in heaven, give us this day our daily bread. What is meant by daily bread? “Daily bread includes everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like” (SC III). The fact that good friends and faithful neighbors are listed last is not an indication of their importance. That they are listed at all is an indication of their value. Consider what Holy Scripture has to say about friends:
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity (Proverbs 17:17).
A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24; cf. Proverbs 27:6-10)
Of course we have the beautiful example of true friendship in that between David and Jonathan (see 1 Samuel 18-23; and 2 Samuel 1) . Unfortunately many modern Bible critics have distorted this relationship to be of a sexual nature. This is partly because our culture has devalued the word “love.” We love our wives, our husbands. We love the Colts, we love a good hamburger, we love a nice bottle of wine. But we like our friends. This devolution of the meaning of love is unfortunate. Perhaps it is even sinful! For we too easily and too readily equate the word “love’ with sex.
But there is a love that is deeper and broader than sexual activity; a true love that exists not in selfish gain, arrogance, and envy. Consider again the Proverb: There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother (18:24). And read these words of our Lord Jesus Christ on the night when He was betrayed: This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you (John 15:12-15). Indeed Christ is our Brother in the flesh who came down from heaven, suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried. He was raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father. Our Brother in the flesh is the Son of God. This truth is of supreme comfort!
And more, He is also our dearest and truest Friend. Jesus says that the greatest love is that a man lay down his life for his friends. And this is precisely what He did for us! In fact, While we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son (Romans 5:10). By His death and resurrection for sin, He has made us His friends. Jesus is called a “friend of sinners” (Matthew 11:19) and He rejoices in this title!
So too are you able to rejoice in the good friends our Lord has given you. They are given to you and you to them in a love that unites you in Christ. I am not convinced that the relationship of friend is a “vocation” in the Lutheran understanding of the word. We are too quick to call everything a vocation. And when everything is a vocation, nothing is.
But there is certainly a theological significance to friendship, as noted in the verse above. Even if we don’t use the word, we do love our friends, even those of the same sex. We love them not with a romantic or erotic love (eros), but with a brotherly affection (philios) and self-sacrificing love (agape). We are commanded to love our enemies and to pray for them (Matthew 5:44). We have no such command regarding our friends. I believe, then, that friendship belongs to the station of the Gospel. We are free to love our friends, sometime for a time and a place, at other times for an entire lifetime. Christian love flows not from compulsion, but freedom. Friendship embodies the law of Christian love, but it also embodies the freedom of a mutual relationship, as our Lord created us to live in faith and love toward Him, not as slaves, but as friends (cf. John 15; see also 2 Chronicles 20:7; James 4:4; Exodus 33:11).
In his work on life together in the Christian community of faith, Dietrich Bonhoeffer comments on the great value and earning for Christian companionship. He speaks of the Church, but his remarks are fitting for Christian friends as well:
The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer . . . The believer need not feel any shame when yearning for the physical presence of other Christians, as if one were still living too much in the flesh. They [Christian friends] receive each other’s blessings as the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if there is so much happiness and joy even in a single encounter of one Christian with another, what inexhaustible riches must be invariably open for those who by God’s will are privileged to live in daily community life with other Christians! . . . It is easily forgotten that the community of Christians is a free gift of grace from the kingdom of God, a gift that can be taken away from us any day . . . Christian community [read, “friendship”] means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. There is no Christian community that is more than this, and none less than this. (Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p28-31).
Rejoice, dear friends in Christ, that our Lord Jesus is pleased to call you “friend,” and we are privileged to call Him so. Rejoice in His gift of good friends to you, living in faith toward Him and in fervent love toward one another, having the Gospel freedom to be a good friend to another. Such is the beautiful day in the neighborhood [read, ‘Church’] on account of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Friend.
Your unworthy servant,
Pastor Mierow
Feast of St Simon and St Jude, Apostles
The ‘Vocation’ of Friend
Growing up Mr Roger’s taught generations of children and adults, “It’s a beautiful day for e neighbor,” and asked, “Would you be mine?” Childish though it may seem, his earnest desire for a neighbor, for a good friend, is a Christian virtue. For we are taught to pray, Our Father who art in heaven, give us this day our daily bread. What is meant by daily bread? “Daily bread includes everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like” (SC III). The fact that good friends and faithful neighbors are listed last is not an indication of their importance. That they are listed at all is an indication of their value. Consider what Holy Scripture has to say about friends:
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity (Proverbs 17:17).
A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24; cf. Proverbs 27:6-10)
Of course we have the beautiful example of true friendship in that between David and Jonathan (see 1 Samuel 18-23; and 2 Samuel 1) . Unfortunately many modern Bible critics have distorted this relationship to be of a sexual nature. This is partly because our culture has devalued the word “love.” We love our wives, our husbands. We love the Colts, we love a good hamburger, we love a nice bottle of wine. But we like our friends. This devolution of the meaning of love is unfortunate. Perhaps it is even sinful! For we too easily and too readily equate the word “love’ with sex.
But there is a love that is deeper and broader than sexual activity; a true love that exists not in selfish gain, arrogance, and envy. Consider again the Proverb: There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother (18:24). And read these words of our Lord Jesus Christ on the night when He was betrayed: This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you (John 15:12-15). Indeed Christ is our Brother in the flesh who came down from heaven, suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried. He was raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father. Our Brother in the flesh is the Son of God. This truth is of supreme comfort!
And more, He is also our dearest and truest Friend. Jesus says that the greatest love is that a man lay down his life for his friends. And this is precisely what He did for us! In fact, While we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son (Romans 5:10). By His death and resurrection for sin, He has made us His friends. Jesus is called a “friend of sinners” (Matthew 11:19) and He rejoices in this title!
So too are you able to rejoice in the good friends our Lord has given you. They are given to you and you to them in a love that unites you in Christ. I am not convinced that the relationship of friend is a “vocation” in the Lutheran understanding of the word. We are too quick to call everything a vocation. And when everything is a vocation, nothing is.
But there is certainly a theological significance to friendship, as noted in the verse above. Even if we don’t use the word, we do love our friends, even those of the same sex. We love them not with a romantic or erotic love (eros), but with a brotherly affection (philios) and self-sacrificing love (agape). We are commanded to love our enemies and to pray for them (Matthew 5:44). We have no such command regarding our friends. I believe, then, that friendship belongs to the station of the Gospel. We are free to love our friends, sometime for a time and a place, at other times for an entire lifetime. Christian love flows not from compulsion, but freedom. Friendship embodies the law of Christian love, but it also embodies the freedom of a mutual relationship, as our Lord created us to live in faith and love toward Him, not as slaves, but as friends (cf. John 15; see also 2 Chronicles 20:7; James 4:4; Exodus 33:11).
In his work on life together in the Christian community of faith, Dietrich Bonhoeffer comments on the great value and earning for Christian companionship. He speaks of the Church, but his remarks are fitting for Christian friends as well:
The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer . . . The believer need not feel any shame when yearning for the physical presence of other Christians, as if one were still living too much in the flesh. They [Christian friends] receive each other’s blessings as the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if there is so much happiness and joy even in a single encounter of one Christian with another, what inexhaustible riches must be invariably open for those who by God’s will are privileged to live in daily community life with other Christians! . . . It is easily forgotten that the community of Christians is a free gift of grace from the kingdom of God, a gift that can be taken away from us any day . . . Christian community [read, “friendship”] means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. There is no Christian community that is more than this, and none less than this. (Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p28-31).
Rejoice, dear friends in Christ, that our Lord Jesus is pleased to call you “friend,” and we are privileged to call Him so. Rejoice in His gift of good friends to you, living in faith toward Him and in fervent love toward one another, having the Gospel freedom to be a good friend to another. Such is the beautiful day in the neighborhood [read, ‘Church’] on account of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Friend.
Your unworthy servant,
Pastor Mierow
Feast of St Simon and St Jude, Apostles
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