October 27, 2024

Job 42:1-6, 10-17; Mark 10:46-52

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.

These are the final words of Job, spoken after the encounter with the whirlwind. The whirlwind that represented God’s response to Job’s cries amidst his great suffering.

There is a portion of this passage that was skipped over, jumping right into the restoration of Job’s fortunes. God spoke to Eliphaz, one of Job’s friends, telling him that Job had been right all along and that Eliphaz and his other companions had been incorrect in their assessment of Job’s plight. For Job had not sinned in the eyes of God, just as Job had described. Therefore, Job’s friends had to make a sacrifice to God and to seek forgiveness for their words and actions.

These men – Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar – had basically harassed Job to repent his sins. They felt that he must have sinned because he was suffering so much, and such suffering was a sign that someone had sinned before God. Regardless of Job’s complaints to the contrary, the three men repeatedly, and rather annoyingly, kept telling him to repent his sins. Because what are friends for?

Is it to point out everything that we do incorrectly? To annoy us until we relent from our incorrect behavior and follow what they think is the right way forward? To make us follow along just like them toward the same goals, the same ways of living?

Because what are friends for?

This week we are considering another movie, this time a musical: West Side Story. The movie is based upon Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. In that play, two star-crossed lovers try to pursue their relationship despite the long-standing feud between their two families.

It is a tragedy, as I mentioned, which means that it does not end happily. The two fell in love and secretly married. Juliet is to be married to another, so she feigns her death to trick her family into leaving her alone. Romeo believes her to be dead and dies by his own hand, after killing her intended fiancé, only for Juliet to wake up and to join him in death. The families are reconciled after these terrible events, which does very little for Romeo or Juliet.

In West Side Story, the families are represented by rival street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. The Jets are a motley crew of immigrant teenagers living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a now well-appointed neighborhood that was far less so in the 1950s. The Sharks are a gang of Puerto Rican teenagers, a group considered to be outsiders at that time. This is ironic because Puerto Ricans are American citizens by birth while many of the Jets and their families had more recently emigrated to the United States, living in this lower income section of the city in closely packed tenement apartments.

These are streets gangs, groups of teenage boys gathering together for protection. Protection from what? Protection from other teenage boys. The movie begins with an extended scene of chance encounters between groups of the Jets and the Sharks, with numbers determining who wins the moment, but shifting every few moments as those numbers change. It is a precarious environment with their sense of safety coming and going with their assembled gang members.

 

What should we make of these gangs? These ones are unusual in that they frequently break out into song with sudden dance numbers and musical interludes. I would guess that most street gangs sing and dance slightly less than this, but who knows.

There is one pair of men who we learn more about, the lead character Tony, who is our Romeo stand-in, and his friend who is like a brother, Riff. Riff lives with Tony and his family, his own home life being less than positive with parents struggling with various problems and addictions. Riff tries to drag Tony back into gang life because the Sharks are encroaching upon Jet territory. Tony has a job and wants nothing to do with the gang as he wistfully waits for some pending change to sweep into his life.

That change is Maria, the Juliet figure in the musical. She also happens to be the sister of the Sharks gang leader Bernardo. Bernado becomes upset when Maria is seen with Tony at a school dance. Maria is from Puerto Rico and Tony’s family is from Poland. Oddly, the actor playing Tony, Richard Beymer, looks more Italian than Polish. And Natalie Wood who played Maria was a Russian immigrant, so it was a complicated set of casting choices.

Anyway, the Jets and the Sharks plan to fight each other to determine who controls territory. It was supposed to be a simple head-to-head fight between two men, Bernardo and a Jet nicknamed Ice. But havoc ensues at the appointed time as Tony tries unsuccessfully to stop the fight at the urging of Maria.

Riff ends up fighting Bernardo. They use knives rather than fists as was the plan and Bernardo ends up killing Riff only to then be killed by Tony. A tragic end to what was meant to be a fair fight between two men.

Now you may be thinking that this is all exaggerated storytelling, an urban re-envisioning of Shakespeare that bears no resemblance to reality. And yet, I must confess, that when I was in high school a surprisingly similar interaction occurred between two rival parochial schools, mine and one in a neighboring town. There were no gangs exactly but there were rival football teams.

One of my friends was dating a girl at the other school and this was considered to be inappropriate by the teenage boys at the other school. This could have ended badly, but one of us, meaning me, negotiated a fair fight between the two most aggrieved parties from the schools. In our case, it did end up in a fair fight between two teenage boys with no one too worse for wear. And, it is worth noting, that the fight happened in a public park with members of the local police department watching. Not stopping, mind you, but watching.

I am still in contact with some of those old high school teammates, now in their late 50s. You might say that we are old friends. Which brings me to my question for this morning: what does it mean to be friends?

In the Book of Job, Job’s three friends were not exactly friendly. They told Job over and over that he was in the wrong. There was no evidence of this wrongdoing other than Job was suffering continuous misfortune. And bad luck and suffering were a sign that God was displeased with you or your behavior.

Now we as the reader know this is not true and God presses the three friends to make a sacrifice to ask for forgiveness. But Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar appear to be friends of Job. Is this what a friend would do? Harass you until you agreed that you did something wrong?

We see something similar between Tony and Riff. Riff wants Tony to come to the war council with the Sharks to discuss the upcoming rumble. Tony wants nothing to do with it and says he was to work. Riff keeps asking, drawing upon their years of friendship and Tony’s past involvement in the gang. Tony relents and goes to the meeting which just so happened to be at the school dance, where he meets Maria. A fateful moment of friendship.

I wanted to talk about friendship this morning and particularly friendships between men. Not that friendships between women are unimportant. But, in my estimation, women are generally better at maintaining friendships than men. They are more likely to stay in contact with friends, to follow up to chat or to meet for coffee. These are generalities of course, with some men being great at maintaining such contacts and some women being socially awkward or disinterested.

But generally speaking, American culture does not encourage deep friendships between men. And by that I mean a relationship in which people can speak about important topics or issues of concern. In the movie, Maria spoke about her relationship with Tony to her friend Anita, who was not wild about the idea but was willing to listen.

There was no similar bonding moment between Riff and Tony. There was no relationship between Tony and the other Jets beyond wandering around for mutual protection and the sudden need to snap their fingers and dance across the rooftops.

And I am not simply supposing that men are less able to maintain friendships. It is a major cultural problem in our country as men become more socially isolated. Statistically, men have fewer friends. In a recent survey last year, 1 in 7 men were shown to have no close friendships. Thirty years ago, 55% of men reported having at least six close friends. Today, that number has been cut in half.[1]

Why is there a larger problem for men? Because men are socialized to act, and not to act, in various ways that do not encourage friendship. According to the male stereotype, you are supposed to be strong and capable, you are supposed to value achievement and competition over building close contacts with others. In fact, you sacrifice those contacts as you grow older. Younger boys, meaning not teenagers, are more likely to have closer friends, those who they can talk to about whatever is going on in their pre-teen lives.

A change begins around middle school, around the onset of puberty. And this is probably the worst time in your life to stop talking about how you are feeling, but here comes American cultural stereotypes blundering into a sensitive area of personal development.

But let’s be clear, these stereotypes are reinforced by us. Not all of us or all the time, but more often than not we expect boys to act one way and girls in another. It is neither fair nor healthy to do so.

Boys and later men are expected to process their emotions and their personal troubles alone. Maybe with a female friend or relative, but perhaps not. Maybe with a therapist or social worker, but more often not. And men rely upon significant others far more for emotional support – often because that is the only person in their life they have to talk to about feelings. Or sadly, perhaps not.

In the culture of street gangs, it is not surprising that these are not groups with strong emotional bonding or open discussion of feelings. These are groups about protection, about feeling safer if not always feeling safe. This is not unusual behavior given the long arc of human existence – having a safer environment meant living longer. But that behavioral framework is not so great in a modern culture where safety is less of a concern. Not that low-income urban areas are free from such problems, but neither are they always preferred places for overall human development and flourishing.

In more economically stable situations, like say a certain leafy green suburb, we still have these tendencies to socialize boys and men to stand apart and on their own. You can talk about sports or work. Feelings? Not so much.

In the case of Job, his friends were more than willing to criticize him, to tell him that he needed to shape up in the eyes of God. And we know they were entirely wrong about that assessment. They refused to listen to Job as he repeatedly proclaimed his innocence from sin. There was no trust within their various relationships. They did not believe Job because they placed their trust in Job’s misfortune as a sign of his bad behavior.

We see this in our Gospel reading. The blind beggar is trying to get Jesus’ attention, but people are yelling at him to be quiet. It is not clear that these are Jesus’ disciples, but there are so many examples of their doing just that, so I am willing to throw them under the bus. They are thinking they understand what Jesus would do, or in this case not do, but Jesus calls the man forward and tells him your faith has made you well.

Your faith has made you well.

In a sense, friendship is an example of faith. I have faith in these people I call friends and that faith is rooted in the feelings I have for them. I love my friends and along with that love is confidence that if I need their help they will help. If I need someone to talk to, they will be there to listen. Those are not the exactly the same expectations, being willing to help and being willing to listen. And the distance between those two aspects of faith is what this problem of friendship is fundamentally about.

We have friends that we might count on for certain things. When I was first married, I asked my friends to help us move into our apartment. It was house built into a hillside and you had to climb three flights of stairs just to reach the front door. That was the last time any of my friends was willing to help me move.

There are different ways of approaching this problem, and I do not mean moving furniture. In our personal lives, we need to actively maintain friendships. And that is more than a text or email on someone’s birthday. It is a conversation. It is a plan to meet and to chat over everything and nothing. It does not mean a therapy session every time you speak, but for it to be a close friendship there should be the possibility of a meaningful conversation. Of knowing when something is troubling your friend and being willing to ask what is going on.

Another way of approaching this problem is to notice what is happening with younger people. Maybe children or grandchildren, nephews and nieces. I do not want to exclude the girls mind you because loneliness can affect everyone. But as boys grow older, we should in particular watch out for any sliding into seclusion or breaking away from pastimes and friendships.

The famous passage from the Bible about putting away childish things is, for me, a terrible piece of advice, one that should be placed aside along with much of what Paul had to say. Personally, I am not a big fan of Paul, but I’ll save that for another sermon.

The habits and attitudes of children are actually worth remembering and encouraging. For example, the habit of going out to play. Not to play competitive soccer. Not to join the travel team. Why? Because that is not friendship, that is not play – that is competition. And I hate to say it but the tendency of suburban parents to worry more about getting their kids into good colleges than into happy lives is a fundamental problem.

Would you rather have a child who is successful or who is happy?

Who is a high achiever or who has found contentment in life?

Now you might say that happiness and contentment are fleeting, but I would counter that success and achievement are no less fleeting. And they are no more likely to bring about happiness or contentment because they often require tradeoffs in life that are hard to undo.

I have a confession to make. This past week, I was at a poker game. Unlike some ministers, I do not think playing cards is a sin. This is a gathering of Boston professionals: lawyers, professors, financial types, and one stray minister. We get together and we play cards. And we chat. Of course, this is inherently a competitive game, but along with the competition there is the opportunity for more.

An old friend of mine invited me into the game and we have reconnected after years of being apart. We talk about his children who I knew as they grew up. We talk about his recent divorce from another old friend of mine. We talk. And talking is often the foundation upon which friendships are built. The cards are simply an excuse to talk.

Friendships take work. They require you to follow up and follow through. I have other friends who gather from time to time, and I am the one who invariably sets up the gathering. And that is uneven. You might even think of it as unfair. But like playing cards, the gathering is an excuse. It allows an invitation to talk to remain open. It allows the occasion to talk when things are difficult and the occasion to discover that something is going on.

You might never need someone to move your couch. And you both may be a few years beyond moving one another’s furniture up three flights of stairs. But the doorway into friendship is the thought that if I needed something, I could call that person. I could call them and they could call me. It helps when the friendship is mutual even if we take turns needing each other over the years.

Job’s three friends, honestly, were not very good friends. The Jets and the Sharks, honestly, were not even close to being real friends. Tony and Riff, maybe. Next time, try not to let your friends talk you into gang fights. It does not end well.

Friendship is about having and maintaining a relationship with someone. A relationship of mutual love and support, of availability and attention. Some friendships endure for decades. Some fade away for lack of interest, lack of concern, or lack of effort.

To be honest with you, I think teaching a child how to maintain a good friendship is far more important than getting them into Princeton. And all the attention we give toward better ways of competing with each other would be better spent on simply being with and maintaining those friendships that we have.

Jesus famously asked us to love one another. He never said to compete with one another. He never said to succeed in any way. So, if I were to prioritize building friendships over building a career, I would be more in line with the teachings of Jesus than the tenets of American success culture.

And so, if I may offer a prayer for you all this morning, it would be to find that dear friend you might need this day. And to become the dear friend that someone might be needing this day. May we go forth and be a blessing to one another. Amen

[1] https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/newsletter/2023-10-10/more-than-1-in-7-men-have-no-close-friends-the-way-we-socialize-boys-is-to-blame-group-therapy