“DEFRIENDING”
Mark 14:10-11 10 Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. 11 They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.
How many of you use FACEBOOK?
Say a little about this….
• social networking service
• February 2004,
• Facebook has more than 845 million active users.[5] Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile
How many of you have heard of the word “Defriend”?
I didn’t say Un-friend… I said De-friend…
Unfriending is kind of like not speaking with someone… eventually… the friendship goes away… it is what you might call… passive, no effort really involved. I’m sure we have all “UN-friended” friends… maybe not on purpose but it just happens.
But defriending is something else….someone actually takes an effort… to cut them off… you make a decision that they are NO MORE considered a friend.
Another way to think about this is like touch football on Saturday afternoons…that is active… while playing virtual football on your computer is passive… active versus passive… to actively defriend…versus … passively unfriend.
I first began thinking about this word “defriend” when my daughter Amy, mentioned one night that two persons she considered good friends… had defriended her.
She said she was hurt … I felt hurt for her …like someone had slammed a door in her face. Her two friends had actively without words said you are no longer my friend… end of conversation… no talk …just action.
******************************
Jesus taught us that relationship is everything… to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself… although I’ve seen it in both cases… I would hope you would always love God and never defriend God and you would always love your neighbor as yourself and never defriend a friend or yourself from yourself…does that makes sense?
Defriend yourself from yourself?????
When it comes to meeting someone new… it is said that within the first five minutes of meeting someone face to face… now remember face to face…
like it or not… you make a judgment…
I like this person… I don’t like this person…
she’s pretty… he’s handsome…or not…
I would like to talk more with this person… or not… All these things happen early upon meeting.
It’s the same for a church… someone visits and they see things someone who has attended for years … doesn’t see.
Maybe the walls need painting … the carpet is dirty… the lights aren’t bright enough … the sound is fuzzy… and almost immediately decisions are made… people are very friendly or people aren’t friendly at all… and so it goes… I love this church or they say to themselves… “I probably won’t come back again”….
Did you know less than 5% return a third time.
My point is that relationships are so important… they start with a firm handshake; eye to eye contact; a sincere interest…
Someone told me that your new pastor had heard that their husband was recuperating from surgery… before he left the other night... Tony stopped to ask how he was doing.”
That’s interpersonal … that’s face to face caring.
Church community cares… when we talk… there is sincere interest… eye contact… listening skills… how are you doing… really? … How ARE you doing? …………
I want you to know I’m here for you… no matter what.
Dr. Jan Yager wrote a book called “FriendShifts”… she argues that it is rare for a person to have a friend for a lifetime. Instead we tend to shift our friends as our own needs and circumstances themselves shift.
Friends… I wonder if we even need them?
Think about our modern society… school, work, that special valentine in your life, mortgage, kids, travel, .. BUT where’s the time for friends… and SOOOO… friends are often the first to go.
The author goes on to say… the word “Friend” is likely to stay around… many organizations begin with the word Friend… Friends of the Jack Russell Terrier; Friends of Libraries; Friends of the Sandstone Community; Friends of Freedom… and on it goes. Friends of parks, gardens, countries, cities, states…. And there is even a group called Friends of Tobacco and located where else? North Carolina.
Of the medical community will comment on the obvious… fewer friends lead to higher stress and a shorter life.
Friends help you reduce stress, improve the quality of your life, cause you to live longer, get a better job and find more joy in life.
SO THERE YOU HAVE IT ... there is value to having friends over the long term. Pretty obvious!
But the reality is that friends will unfriend us… friends will do worse… they will defriend us…
we will lose friends… but we will pick up new ones along the way.
With our upcoming move to THE GROVE and the excitement of growing a larger ‘church community’, it would be well to stop and look at ourselves… as a church.
Now someone is going to say… “Hey, we’ve got the friendliest church in the world, but them someone new will come to church and we ignore them.”
“We walk right past regular members… whose names we don’t know.”
We love one another, but then once we reach the parking lot or the grocery store … watch out… the gloves come off!
The Book of James addresses this…James 2: 1-10…from The Message….
James is arguing that it is not enough to say you love someone and enjoy friendship. There must be sign of friendship or else friendship and faith are dead.
Sitting the rich person in the front and sitting them first is showing partiality.. this not a sign of friendship. Refusing to feed and clothe the hungry and homeless is not a sign.
James makes it clear that we can’t be an enemy to our friends and still be a friend of God. To be a FaithFriend of God, we’ve got to keep faith with our friends.
YOU BETTER BE CAREFUL BEFORE YOU PUSH THAT DEFRIEND BOTTON.
And therein lies the lesson.
We must keep faith with our friends.
If we don't, we have neither faith nor friends.
James is firm about this. There must be signs.
Friendship - whether with our neighbor or with God - requires faithship which requires workship and results in worship.
So who is our friend? Our friend is our neighbor.
Who is our neighbor? See the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
What does it mean to keep faith with our neighbor?
Consider the following story:
Shifra Penzias, a rabbinic student, tells of her great-aunt, Sussie, who rode a bus home on a snowy evening in Munich of Nazi Germany.
Suddenly, SS storm troopers stopped the coach and began examining the identification papers of the passengers.
Most were annoyed but a few were terrified.
Jews were being told to leave the bus and get into the truck around the corner.
Sussie watched from her seat in the rear as the soldiers systematically worked their way down the aisle. She began to tremble, tears streaming down her face.
When the man next to her noticed that she was crying, he politely asked her why.
"I don't have the papers you have. I am a Jew. They're going to take me."
The man exploded with disgust.
He began to curse and scream at her.
"You stupid (expletive deleted)," he roared. "I can't stand being near you!"
The SS men asked what all the yelling was about.
"Damn her," the man shouted angrily.
"My wife has forgotten her papers again!
I'm so fed up. She always does this!"
The soldiers laughed and moved on.
Sussie never saw the man again.
She never even knew his name.
If we must keep faith with our friends, we must also keep faith with God. This is one friendship that need not shift.
If it does, it is not God who is doing the shifting.
God will never DE Friend You!
