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SLIDE Today is the first Sunday of a three week sermon series called, Being friends in a Facebook world. The aim of this series is to help all of us understand, develop, and grow in friendship. Jesus was a master of developing friendships. He took a group of 12 peoplepeople who he didnt knowand developed such a strong community of friends that this group started a movement that became the church. Today Im going to look at how our culture affects being friends. Next week Im going to look at the friendship between Jesus and Peter and see what it teaches us about friendship. On the last Sunday Im going to look at the relationship between Ruth and Naomi in the book of Ruth to see what it teaches us about healthy friendship. We are giving you all sorts of resources today about friendship. One resource is this brochure that is in the bulletin. Id like you to get this out. I encourage you to take sermon notes. Keep it out as Im going to ask you to do something with the sermon notes section at the end of the sermon. Youll find a place for prayer requests, and a devotion. This week Im included stories from the Scriptures about friendship. I encourage you to use it every day as I believe you will be blessed if you use it. Friendship is a topic about which many people have written. Ive included some of their quotes in this brochure. Look at some of these quotes about friendship and see if you resonate with them. SLIDE Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies. Aristotle SLIDE

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Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down. Oprah Winfrey SLIDE When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean sthe most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. SLIDE The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. Henri Nouwen SLIDE A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world. Leo Buscaglia Friends can literally give us life. A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with few friends. Harvard researchers reported in 2008 that strong social ties can promote brain health as we age. A six-year study of middle-age Swedish men reported that the second highest risk factor for having a heart attack was the lack of friends. In this study only smoking was a higher risk factor for having a heart attack study than having friends. Having friends is a significant part of being a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ. In our new church we exist for friendship. We start off our purpose statement by saying we are called to be an authentic, Christian community where strangers become friends. Today is the start of our ministry year at Chain of Lakes Church and this year we are focusing on being friends. Later today Dave Nyberg is going to share an initiative weve started for building friendships. Friendship is hard. A pastor friend sent me this story this week. Its about Pepper Rogers, legendary college football coach. He had been a very successful football coach at Kansas. Then he was hired at UCLA. Things didn't start well for him at UCLA. The team lost a

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number of games, the fans started to boo him, the press was on him, even his wife started to give him the silent treatment. He said, "It got so bad my dog was my only friend. He told his wife, 'C'mon, you have to be my frienda man has to have more than one friend.' ... So his wife bought him another dog." Cultivating and developing friends is different depending on a persons generation. How many people here are 60 or over? Your experience of developing friends is different than people who are younger. This idea became clear to me last month when I celebrated my parents 50th wedding anniversary. My sister and I had planned their event for about eight months. We held it at our home churchthe Presbyterian church in Worthington, Minnesota. When the day came I was touched by the large number of my parents friends who attended. It brought back so many memories. I had this running dialogue in my head. The Todds are hereremember the Todds; here are the Barbers, and the Aasers, and the Hudsons and the Dykes. 175 friends and family packed into our home church to celebrate their anniversary. Seeing their friends reminded me of how my parents developed and cultivated friendships. Im guessing that everyone here who is over 60 can appreciate this story. My parents cultivated friendships by going over to another familys house and spending an evening. They would get my sister and me in a car and the four of us would go to that familys house. Or a family would come over to our house. We would spend a couple hoursan eveningwith them. The family usually had kids so my sister and I had no choice but to play with the kids of that family. The only agenda was spending time together. We did that all the time. How many of you who are over 60 remember going to another friends house and spending an evening? Im guessing a lot.

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I was sharing this story with Kellie Burriss. She shared that her experience of developing and cultivating friendship is much different. Its a generational difference. I wanted to contrast her experience with my parents experience. I thought about sharing her story, but I thought why not just have Kellie share it. Its just different. Kelliecome share your experience of developing friends. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Kellie talk ___________________________________________________________________________ One experience is not better than another. Its just we have different experiences based on our generation. Our culture has made a big impact on our ability to develop and grow in friendships. The title of this sermon series is being friends in a Facebok world. I want to spend a little time looking at the question, what is a Facebook world.? Even if you dont like Facebook or use Facebook, stay with me here. Youve heard me say this over and over. For any congregation to flourish in the 21st century we have to understand our culture. There is no doubt that this is a Facebook world. SLIDE 750 million people use Facebook every day. Over 40 percent of the United States population has a Facebook account. Facebook is the most visited web site in the world. Its a Facebook world. I realize that some of us come to worship and want to get away from a Facebook world. One of our Core Values at Chain of Lakes Church is relevance. We understand this to mean Jesus successfully communicated his message by using examples and symbols of first century culture. We will be open to using examples and symbols of our culture Look at this:

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to communicate Jesus message. Were open to looking at Facebook as an example of our culture so that we can communicate our message SLIDE What is Facebook? Facebook is a web site and social networking site. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, his college roommates and some computer science students at Harvard in 2003. SLIDE On Facebook people have their own web page. Its called a wall. This is a picture of my Facebook wall. On their wall people can post what is called a status update. People share what they are doing, or they share their comments about something. Other people have their own page or wall. Yesterday I watched the Carleton/Bethel football game on-line. I posted the scores for the ten people across the world who were interested in the game. SLIDE If you want to access my wall you have to be my frienda Facebook friend. When you are my Facebook friend you can read what I post, and make comments about the posting and hit the like button. We can have conversation via instant messaging. One of the first things my daughter does when she gets home is start instant messaging her friend, Lexi, who she just got off the bus with. I still havent figure that out. Hannah uses Amys Facebook page. Slide of pictures People can upload pictures that friends can see and make comments on.

When my family went to New York City last month I uploaded all of my pictures onto Facebook and deleted them from my camera. Slide of a facebook group People can form groups on Facebook. These are people who have

a common interest. When my sister and I organized my parents 50th wedding anniversary I

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created a Facebook group. I had my parents share special events from each of their 50 years together, and then each day I shared what happened on that page. Last year I organized an effort to put up a plaque memorializing my friend, Jeff Gravon. I announced the event through a Facebook group that I created. I put status updates on it every day and asked people to share the word via Facebook. After I attended the New Church Development conference last month in Florida I wanted to find a way to keep the organizing pastors of different Presbyterian churches in contact with each other. I created a Facebook page. Its a Facebook world. Some of us might not like this world, but this is our reality. Its a world where people connect based on like interests. Its a world where we can interact with people who live halfway across the world. Its a world where its not uncommon for people to interact with each other in the same roomby using Facebook. Its a world where we can choose our friends based on what they think, look like, and act. Its a world where our interactions are much more public. If you checked out of the sermon because I spent some time talking about Facebook, come on back. What is a friend. Let me share a working definition. A friend is: SLIDE 1. A person known well to another and regarded with liking, affection, and loyalty; an intimate. 2. An acquaintance or associate 3. An ally in a fight or cause; supporter Jesus wants us to have friends. He shared many stories of being friends. The story that Ama read is a beautiful story where Jesus shared a vision of friendship. We can find this story in Luke and Mark and Matthew. Today were looking at Lukes description. Let me spend some time setting up this story. The story was early in Jesus ministry. Jesus was attracting the attention of people. He was attracting people because of the healings he

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was doing. Jesus healed a man with an unclean spirit on the Sabbath; he healed Peters motherin-law of a fever; Jesus healed a man of leprosy. Word got out about Jesus. This certainly makes sense. We can about imagine the response in our day to someone who could miraculously heal people. I believe in doctors, but if a man could suddenly perform miracles via healing, I might consider taking my Dad there. He has to have his sixth hip surgery next month. Certainly there will always be skeptics to healings. But I hope were not skeptical about Jesus healing of people. Jesus was not only attracting a crowd. He was attracting the attention of the religious establishment. We heard at the start of the story that Pharisees from many of the villages in Galilee and Judea and even from Jerusalem were near Jesus. The Pharisees were a movement within Judaism. When Jesus lived there were Pharisees and Sadducees, and Essenes and Zealots. The Pharisees were keepers and interpreters of the religious law. Ever since God had given Moses the ten commandments and other laws that we can read about in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy the Pharisees interpreted the law for people. Later in Jesus ministry the Pharisees were hostile to Jesus. At the start of this story I dont think they were. I think they were interested in him; I think they wanted to learn more about him; I think they wanted to discover who was this man who was healing people. They most likely were in the town of Capernaum. This town was the home base for Jesus when he was an adult. It was a small fishing village on the the sea of Galilee. Jesus was in a house. It wasnt like a house When we think of a house we might think of some of the houses in our neighborhood. The average sized home in the United States is a little more than 2,000 square feet.

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Archeological digs in Capernaum have revealed that the houses there were about five meters wide. Many of the houses had a stairway on the outside that went to the roof. The roof was made of branches with baked mud. All of a sudden four men approached the house with a paralyzed man who was on a stretcher. Luke didnt tell us in his story that there were four men, Mark did. These four men were obviously friends of the man who was paralyzed. They wanted to take him to Jesus. We dont know much about the paralyzed man. We dont know if he had been born paralyzed, or perhaps he had an accident later in his life. Certainly the mans paralysis limited his life. There were no wheel chairs in his day. The man most likely spent most of his time in bed. Not only did he have this physical injury, he probably had to suffer from the judgment of others. In Jesus day many people believed that an illness or deformity was a sign of Gods punishment. People believed that if a person had suffered from an illness or deformity that person had done something morally wrong. It wouldnt be surprising if this man was depressed, for how could a person not be depressed when his entire life was spent in bed. All of these forces were compressed onto this man who was paralyzed. He was a long ways from being the person God wanted him to be. But the man had somethingwhat he had was more powerful than the limitation of a physical deformity; it was more powerful than the judgment from his community; it was more powerful than his mental pain and anguish. The man had friends. I just love this story. This story brings a tear to my eye. These friends convinced the man who was paralyzed to go meet Jesus. They put him on a stretcher and took him to the

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house. They werent able to get in the front door of the house because so many people were there. But these friends were not going to be deterred. This is where the story gets interesting. They climbed up the staircase on the side of the house to get to the roof. They dug a hole through the roof. Luke said they dug a hole through the tile. Whats interesting to me is what would motivate four men to dig a hole through another persons roof in order to help a friend. This is where the story gets magical. There was a force that existed in this story. The force came from these friends. These friendswho were going to do whatever it took to bring this man who was paralyzed to Jesus. It didnt matter the obstacle. They were going to overcome the obstacle. Jesus taught his followers to love their neighbors as they love themselves. digging a hole through a roof. Thats love. Whats also interesting to me is what did the people who were in the house think as they watched a hole being dug in the roof. What are those people doing? Why are they digging a hole in the roof? Do they have no respect for my property. Ordoes my insurance cover this? The men lowered their paralyzed friend through the hole they created. Jesus and the Pharisees got into a conversation about what it means to be healed and how that relates to a persons sinfulness. The point I want to emphasize for today is Jesus healed the man. Jesus healed him. The man was able to use his legs he hadnt used before. He was healed. He was able to walk and run and leap and dance. The man was no longer paralyzed. Certainly Jesus was the one who healed him, but none of it could have happened without his friends. You know what I would have thought if I had been the house and watched this whole story happen. I would have thought. I want those guys to be my friends. This story gives us a vision for being friends in a Facebook world.

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I want to close with an exercise. Would you all get out the brochure. On the brochure I want you to write down three close friends in the sermon notes. I want to challenge you to do two things for these friends this week. 1. Would you pray for them every day; 2. Would you communicate with your friends this week how much you care for them and love them. It doesnt matter if you communicate with your friends via text, or letter, or E-mail, or Facebook messaging. Or maybe you go to the persons house for an evening. Tell your friend how much you care for them and love them. And then I want you to write the number four on the sheet. This is a person from our congregation with whom you want to be a friend. Write a person from our community. I want to challenge you to 1. Pray for that person every day; 2. Communicate with the person how much you care for the person and love them. This story gives us a vision for being friends in a Facebook world. Im praying that the love in this story is the love that we can share and experience from others.