Sermon Tone Analysis

Pentecost 4, Frienship Sunday

Matthew 9:35 – 10:8

June 12, 2005

*“Friendship”* \\ after M. Molldrem

            Church was over and a mother and her son were heading for the exit.

In the narthex, outside of the church, the boy saw a large wooden plaque bearing the names of the war dead from the congregation.

“What is that?” asked the boy.

The mother replied: “Those are the names of the church members who died in the service.”

The boy replied, “Was it the early service or the late service?”

Now I don’t want anybody dying in the service today.

But it is no surprise that many Christian churches are dying or at least shrinking.

There are many reasons for this.

One of the biggest reasons is that the special treasure that the church of Christ alone has, can be taken for granted.

It is not that the treasure is lost.

It is still there.

It is just that in the course of ordinary life it is not given the attention it should have.

It is forgotten for the special thing that it is.

Like I said, this is normal for human beings.

As a boy, I remember a special Christmas.

I really wanted this special race track.

All the gifts were opened till finally there were no gifts left.

I appreciated what I was given, but was sad that I hadn’t gotten the one thing I really wanted.

Then, my dad looked at my mom, and my mom looked at my dad.

Finally my dad said, “Isn’t there something missing?”

He left the room and came back with a big box, my race track.

I jumped up and down and yelled out for joy.

Before I opened the box I ran to the phone and called my best friend to share with him my joy and to invite him to play.

Many months later, that gift which had given me great joy sat in a box gathering dust.

Yes I still played with it.

But the joy and excitement of that first night faded with time.

That is the way we humans are, whether it is a new car, a bike or anything new.

At first we tell all our friends wanting them to share in our joy.

As that special thing becomes part of our ordinary lives we begin to take it for granted and forget the joy and excitement.

Unfortunately, this happens to us here in church too.

We all understand that we have been given a tremendous gift, a treasure beyond compare.

We have a Savior Jesus Christ that has given us God’s love through the forgiveness of sins.

Because of this we now know that we not only have life in this moment, we have life that goes on beyond death.

Sometimes the joy and excitement of that knowledge and gift gets lost in our ordinary lives.

That is why for the last several weeks we have been taking part of our churches special mission called Ablaze.

Through this focus we are trying to rekindle the excitement and joy, remember the treasure that we have and share it with our friends.

That is why you have been invited here to day.

You are our friends.

We wanted to celebrate with you what God has done.

We want to share with you our best friend, Jesus Christ.

A boy was asked about his family, when he enrolled for church school.

The boy revealed that he had no brothers or sisters.

But then he piped up, "But I've got friends!"

It is so good to have friends.

But, what is a friend?

The Arabians describe friendship this way.

As "one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take it and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away."

Friendship is essentially founded upon what someone else does for you.

It is not that you did something nice for that person which qualifies that one as your friend.

The same is true with love.

In his pastoral letter, John expresses this so well.

"God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins."

In the Gospel of John, Jesus talks about love and friendship in the same breath.

When Jesus discusses friendship with his disciples, he speaks about it in terms of laying down his life, offering up his life.

The sign of a true friend is the willingness to give up one's life for the sake of the one befriended.

Against the Old Testament background of "sacrifice for sin," Jesus is willing to accept the responsibility to become the sacrifice for sin for all, so that God's love can be extended to all.

Jesus becomes our friend by paying the price for our sin through the shedding of His blood.

Our friend, Jesus, intervenes and sacrifices himself on our behalf.

The following is a true story that occurred as Christian missionaries were in a Japanese prison camp in the Philippines during World War II.

It was the rule of the camp that anyone caught trying to escape would be put to death.

One day a little-noticed, "unimportant" prisoner broke out of the compound for freedom, but was caught.

He was a small unknown person, whose life seemed to have no great significance to the Japanese or to the imprisoned Americans.

The guards placed the man in the middle of the yard and assembled all the other prisoners to watch his execution.

It was also a rule of the camp that any prisoner breaking rank during assembly would be executed at once.

The unknown man was staked to the ground.

The guards began to whip him, the intention being to whip him to death.

Suddenly, the doctor broke rank.

The doctor was the one camp prisoner who was indispensable.

It was his knowledge and care that helped keep the other prisoners alive in the face of malnutrition, dysentery, malaria, and fatigue.

But, the doctor broke rank, aware of the consequences, and threw himself over the body of that man, staked out for death.

He put his own precious body between the whip and the doomed man.

The guards were so impressed with such an act of self-sacrificing bravery that they let both men live.

The doctor proved to be friend to the man.

Friendship is made manifest when the friend acts in some special way for you.

Love is made real in the same way.

"No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends."

Jesus said this; Jesus did this!

What a friend we have in Jesus!

Jesus chose us to befriend.

He calls us His friends.

We did not choose him to be our friend.

As he himself said, "You did not choose me but I chose you."

The nature of friendship is that it chooses who shall benefit from the relationship.

Friendship can be given as well as taken away.

Unfortunately, in this life, friendship can be broken.

It has happened to all of us.

People that we once trusted betray our trust.

They treat us with disrespect; they abandon us and hurt us.

Friendship with God can be broken too.

Only it is not God that breaks His friendship with us.

We have broken it with God.

This is what we call sin.

We abandon God.

We take Him for granted.

Though He shows His love for us, we neglect to give him the thanks, honor and praise that He is due.