In 1958, the great golfer Bobby Jones visited St. Andrews, Scotland, the birthplace of golf. Jones was more than 25 years past his last great tournament victories, and he was now beset with a terrible debilitating and crippling disease. But he had come to accept an award naming him a Freeman of St. Andrews. The small town, scene of some of his most memorable achievements, and a town which had adopted this quiet American as one of its own, was in effect granting him genuine citizenship, the first and only time they had extended that honor to an American since 1759. The only previous recipient had been Benjamin Franklin.
Mark Frost describes the scene in his book, The Grand Slam: Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf.
Nearly two thousand crowded into the Great Hall at St. Andrews University. After the award was presented, Bobby Jones stood and walked to the podium. It was the first time he had walked unaided in a number of years. He spoke of his previous visits to St. Andrews, and the tournaments played at the Old Course. In each instance, he said, it had been the respect and affection he felt from the people of the town that meant so much more to him than trophies or medals or championships.
“And now I have this,” he said. “I could take out of my life everything but my experiences at St. Andrews and I’d still have a rich full life.”
He spoke of friendship and expressed with a full heart and his precise lawyer’s language exactly how much that overused expression — “friend” — meant to him. The spiritual clarity of his emotions rose to meet the eloquence of his words, and in his steady gaze and warm, measured baritone Bobby reflected back to his audience the love he felt from them.
“When I say that I am your friend, I have pledged to you the ultimate in loyalty and devotion. In some respects friendship may even transcend love, for in true friendship there is no place for jealousy. When I say that you are my friends, it is possible that I may be imposing upon you a greater burden than you are willing to assume. But when you have made me aware on many occasions that you have a kindly feeling toward me, and when you have honored me by every means at your command, then when I call you my friend, I am at once affirming my high regard and affection for you and declaring my complete faith in you and trust in the sincerity of your expressions. And so, my fellow citizens of St. Andrews, it is with this appreciation of the full sense of this word that I salute you as my friends.”
The speech was greeted by thunderous applause. As Bobby Jones left the hall, riding a golf cart up the center aisle to the exit, someone with a high tenor voice broke spontaneously into the lilting old Scottish folk song:
“Will ye no’ come back again?…
Greater lov’d ye canno’ be.
Will ye no’ come back again?”
Within a moment virtually every other voice in the hall had joined in.
Frost writes, “They reached out to touch Bobby and his family as he passed. This was a true valedictory, the sort of tribute seldom given or received while the person being honored still lives, made possible only if that person has moved past longing and pride and illusions of the self into the rarest wisdom… After [Bobby] and his family had left the hall, ten full minutes passed before any of the audience were even able to speak.”
Put aside the setting. Put aside even the man himself, along with his particular accomplishments, extraordinary as they were. But consider the thoughts of love and the expression — and exposition — of friendship that he shared with the people gathered in that place. Can there be a better exposition of the words of Jesus himself, when he said to his disciples: “I have called you friends” (John 15:15)?
Can we understand, and express, the full sense of this word “friend”? Jesus did: “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Do our actions, as well as our words, truly reflect our “friendship” for Jesus? Let us say to him, in the words of the old Scottish song,
“Will ye no’ come back again?…
Greater lov’d ye canno’ be.
Will you no’ come back again?”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One