"No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another."
Friends in Christ, Recently, we heard the news of a Chicago couple who left their two little girls home alone for nine days -- unsupervised and uncared for. And the Chicago couple seemed surprised to be arrested upon their return from a vacation in Mexico. This story was a disturbing version of the hit movie Home Alone. We laughed at the box office hit, but the movie failed to portray the frightening side of it. It's not very fun to be left home alone, or isolated, ignored, or forgotten.1 Now we come to the second sermon in this series of six on the spiritual needs of Americans. Our focus is on George Gallup's discovery of this second need -- the need for a sense of community and deeper relationships. Dick Meyer tells about a woman who shared her story as a childhood polio victim. She said, "When my mother left me in Sunday School, I always asked her if I could wear her locket. She thought I liked it, but that wasn't it at all. I knew I wasn't worth coming back for, but I knew she would come back for her locket."2 Then there is the story of a woman who faked having cancer for two years. This woman cut off all her hair. She lost thirty pounds to make people believe she had cancer. She joined multiple cancer support groups. But she was found out when a health professional checked her story. She was so depressed when her boyfriend broke up with her, and she felt so alone, she decided to get sympathy and attention by pretending she had cancer.3 Mother Teresa once said, "The biggest disease today is not leprosy or cancer. It is the feeling of being uncared for, unwanted -- of being deserted and alone!"4 I believe she was right. The surveys show it and deep within our hearts we know it. Three persons in ten say they have been lonely for a long period of time. A haunting song you still hear is "Eleanor Rigby." "Look at all the lonely people -- where do they all come from?" Eleanor Rigby became the symbol of loneliness in the '60s and '70s, and we still hear it in the '80s and '90s and resonate to it. The Beatles were not singing the blues for themselves. They vocalized loneliness -- the twentieth century's saddest disease -- a condition brought on by the changes and strangeness of modern life. There are concrete reasons for this epidemic of loneliness. 1. In 1940, most family members lived within 100 miles of each other and got together regularly for family times. They enjoyed uncles, aunts, grandparents and grandchildren sharing life together. Today, the average family consists of 1.5 parents and 1.7 children, with no blood relatives within 100 miles. 2. In 1940, the average person lived in the same neighborhood for a lifetime and got to know and care about the other people in the neighborhood like a family. Today, the average person moves every five years and the neighbors are often total strangers. 3. In 1940, the average person stayed with the same job for 25 years. Today, the average person changes jobs every seven years or is moved to another city to keep his present job. 4. In 1940, the neighborhood church was the center of the life of the average member -- from the cradle to the grave.5 Today, it is common to church shop every few years. We've discovered as a people that to prevent the pain of saying good-bye, we no longer say hello. So what George Gallup has discovered as a key spiritual need is this NEED For A Sense Of Community And Deeper Relationships. The Bible teaches us three principles about loneliness and community and deeper relationships. 1. We were created to belong. When God created Adam, God said, "It is not good to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him" (Genesis 2:18). One of the Scripture's first lessons is that by ourselves we are incomplete. We need others to fill the emptiness within us. We are created to be social, not independently self-sufficient. Robert Bellah's diagnosis of an out-of-balance individualism is highly accurate. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 says, "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their work. For if they fail, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help." C.S. Lewis said, "We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them to know anything, even ourselves" (The Four Loves, p. 12). We were created to belong. It is not good to be alone. Jesus modeled such belonging behavior for us. He called the twelve to be with him. The New Testament Greek word is koinonia. It is more than fellowship -- it is "life-sharing." That's why joining a church is one thing, but belonging to a church is another. When we belong we share life, we connect, we are a team, an empowered body. Michael Jordan is considered the greatest basketball player that ever lived. Yet Michael Jordan never won a championship until the Chicago Bulls had the right players to support him. God created us to belong to each other. Together we share our lives, resulting in deeper relationships. 2. Jesus redeemed us for friendship. I like the way Jesus defines "friendship" in our Gospel reading from John 15. He defines friendship as an event. "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" (v. 13). There is also the quality of taking one into one's confidence: "I have called you friend because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father" (v. 15). A friend will come through in a pinch: when you need help; when in crisis; when in trouble; when your car won't start; when your loved one dies; when you lose your job. Your friend comes through. I was driving a borrowed pickup recently and six or seven miles south of Belle Plaine on Highway 169 I ran out of gas. It's a lonely feeling. But a young teenager who happened to be at home gave me some gas. I worried as I approached the farmhouse on foot that she would be afraid of me, so I quickly reassured her that I was a Lutheran pastor and she need not be afraid. She quickly slammed the door -- (no, just kidding) -- she cautiously welcomed me and became my benefactor and friend. We know a friend by what he or she does for us. That makes friendship an event and not a feeling. A friend is also determined by the degree to which one can take people into one's confidence. Is he or she trustworthy? Jesus said, "I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father." Do you have one good friend? If you do, you are a most lucky person. Three times, I remember, I was painfully lonely. The first time was when I was a child. I was literally home alone. I was not abandoned, but my parents just took a little longer to get home from town one night. Fourteen miles out in the country alone with a child's imagination running wild can be quite an experience. The second time was my second year at college. I was in a new state and a new college, with no friends, and loneliness gripped me and tried to smother me until my brother came along and got me reconnected. The third time, which still happens from time to time, is as a parish pastor. This business (ministry) can be awfully lonely, especially if you take public stands on unpopular issues. Can you recall a time when you felt utterly and completely alone? Was it a move, a new job, a new school, or just life in general in these strange, detached times? And how did you feel when someone came to your side and walked with you? Michael Guido writes in his column, "Seeds From The Sower":
My lawnmower had broken down and I had been working on it for hours, but all in vain. Just then a neighbor came along with a tool box. "May I help you?" he asked. "You may," I answered. And he fixed the mower in just a few minutes. "Thousands of thanks!" I exclaimed. "Oh," he answered, "you're welcome." Just as he was about to walk away, I asked, "What do you make with that beautiful set of tools?" "Mostly friends," he replied.6
The Living Bible says, "A true friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need." Jesus said in John 15, "I no longer call you servants, I call you friend." Jesus redeemed us for friendship with him and for one another. 3. Where in the world can we find this sense of community and deeper relationships? Will the schools of higher education in our land provide it? Will the government or civic groups or sports teams or fraternities or sororities or guilds or book clubs or compact disk clubs? What or who has the capacity and power to bring Hattie some comfort? We find a clue in Paul's letter to the Philippians. "I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now" (Philippians 1:3-5). If you and I cannot find health and healing -- find acceptance and a sense of belonging, and affirmation -- in the church of Jesus Christ, we will not find it anywhere. This is the greatest evangelistic time in history for the church of Christ. It is the greatest opportunity to bring people together as family -- the family of God where love reigns, where sins are forgiven, and where we know we belong. A letter came to the editor of a large city paper. It read, "I'm so lonely I could die, my phone never rings ... I'm the only one on earth. How else can I feel? All alone. See no one. Oh, dear God, help me ... will somebody call me?" The letter containing $1 and six stamps for anybody who would call or write was signed, Jean Rosenstein. The Los Angeles Times printed the letter Thanksgiving morning, adding that Mrs. Rosenstein was an 84-year-old widow and retired nurse, living home alone in a tiny apartment on $200 per month. The result was no less than a miracle. Jean Rosenstein received so many calls Thanksgiving Day she finally had to take the phone off the hook. "I hope people will forgive me," she told reporters on Friday, slightly hoarse. "I just couldn't talk anymore. The phone rang all night. I only got two hours of sleep." The next morning, the letter carrier brought an armload of letters. Dozens of people stopped by her apartment. Many brought or sent flowers. Every table was covered with potted plants and the bathtub was full of flowers. "I've got the most beautiful bathtub in the world," said Mrs. Rosenstein. To top it off she had to turn down many invitations and she had four turkeys in her refrigerator.7 You and I were created for others. We, by the grace of God, were created to belong. We were redeemed for friendship. We need to look no further for community. It's right here -- in front of you and around you -- before your very eyes. Amen.
1. Faith at Work, Volume 106, No. 1, Jan/Feb 1993, p. 2.
2. Faith at Work, Volume 106, No. 2, Spring 1993, p. 3.
3. Ibid., FAW, p. 3
4. Ibid., FAW, p. 3.
5. Lyman Coleman, Training Manual for Small Group Leaders, p. 5.
6. Michael Guido, Guido Evangelistic Association, used by permission.
7. Associated Press, 1970.