Hitting The Hate Button Series

Good morning. I have a very easy opening question for you. How many of you out there like to be liked? Good response. I think we all like to be liked. I am someone who really likes to be liked and that is one more reason that I like Facebook. That is one of the reasons I am on Facebook because Facebook has all these opportunities to be liked. To be able to put quotes down or pictures and have people like you. It is really a neat thing. Rather than me try to explain it to you, I thought what I would do is have my own daughter, Kristin, and somewhat of a Facebook expert come up and explain some of this to us. Please give her a warm welcome. So, Kristin, weren’t you one of the first people to introduce me to Facebook. “Yes, I got you on Facebook.” I resisted it a while. You have been on it for a number of years. “A little over four years.” I would say she is an expert at this. Tell me about this ‘Like’ button. What is this ‘Like’ button all about? “To sum it up, the ‘Like’ button is a clickable link on Facebook that says the word ‘Like’.” Simple enough. Does everybody get that? There is a button you click called ‘Like’. Now why would I use such a button? Can you give me an example of how I might use it? “If someone posts a picture from a recent vacation and you like this picture because it is fun, neat, or nice but you don’t want to write a whole comment about it, you would just go and click the ‘Like’ button and it would say Chuck Gohn Likes this with a little thumbs up next to it.” That is nice. Give me some other way that you might use it besides pictures. “If someone writes a comment or maybe a status update and you also like that you would click the ‘Like’ button. For example, when Brad and I got engaged, we announced it on Facebook and people were ‘Like, Like, Like’. You liked it didn’t you?” I initially didn’t like it but once I got used to the idea, I kind of liked it. But then again no man is good enough for either of my daughters. What if for some reason I didn’t like it? Is there is a dislike button? “No. There is no dislike button. It is a ‘Like’ button. There is only one button and it says ‘Like’. You can only like things on Facebook.” I don’t like to have to click it. What if I don’t click it? What happens? “Nothing happens. You don’t like it. There is one button that says ‘Like’. If you don’t click it, then people either assume that you didn’t see what they put or maybe you didn’t like it.” Then they might get a little angry and think I don’t like them. “No. It is a ‘Like’ button. They just think maybe you didn’t see it. There is one button that says ‘Like’. You either push it or you don’t push it.” Let’s say that I really didn’t like it. I actually hated the comment. Can I click on a ‘Hate’ button? “Hate? No. There is not a ‘Dislike’ button so there is not going to be a ‘Hate’ button. There is no ‘Hate’ button on Facebook. There is a ‘Like’ button.” You have been on Facebook for four years, so I think she is probably one of the early Facebook people. She probably has some connections with Mark Zuckerberg. Would you please make sure I get my ‘Hate’ button? “No one wants you to have a ‘Hate’ button. You go on Facebook so that people will like you and so that you can like things, and if you start hating everything people won’t like you very much, kind of like I don’t like you very much right now.” Aw, Kristin. I guess what you are saying is I should quit while I am ahead. “Yes. Kristin E ‘Likes’ this.” Ok. Thank you.

Although there is not a ‘Hate’ button, I suspect that if Jesus were on Facebook today, he would need a ‘Hate’ button because as we find out in today’s reading, more people hated Jesus than actually liked Jesus. If you have your Bibles today, please open up to John 7:1. We have been looking at the book of John. Most recently, we went through chapter 6. You may recall in chapter 6 we had the story of the feeding of the 5,000. We had the story of Jesus walking on water. We had the story of the Bread of Life discourse. We are proceeding on past chapter 6 and going into chapter 7 where Jesus is beginning to encounter a lot of conflict. As we see in the opening part, we see that Jesus decided to travel a little bit more around the area of Galilee between the Sea of Galilee before going up to Judea. It is not that he was afraid. It is just that he knew there were Jews there that wanted to take his life. There were people there that tactually wanted to kill him. He knew that the time was not right. Yet he had some biological brothers who tried to encourage Jesus to go up into Jerusalem because there was a big feast coming. It was called the Feast of the Tabernacle. It was also known as the Feast of the Tents or Feast of the Booths. It is actually a period of time for seven or eight days where the Jews would set up tents and booths within Jerusalem and sleep and eat there for seven to eight days. Actually, this was one of the three required festivals of the Jews for Jewish men to attend. Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tents. They were encouraging Jesus to go up there because it is a great opportunity to make yourself known to the people and to the public because there were people traveling from all over the world. Jesus, in his own gentle way, lets them know that he doesn’t necessarily agree with that idea. We are going to be reading from John 7:1. (Scripture read here.)