Text: John 15:9-17
Title: Find a Friend … Find a Home
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In the first quarter of 2009, five million people joined Facebook … Every week. What is it that would account for that kind of exponential growth?
Let me tell you about a bridge that cost $20 Million to design and build. It was a pedestrian bridge that spanned the River Thames in London. (Show first picture.) The design was inspired by the comic book hero Flash Gordon. 
When Flash needed to get from one place to another, he extended his hand and something like a blade of light would flash. He would travel on that blade of light. (Second photo.) The bridge is a suspension bridge, but the cables are not holding the bridge from aloft, but from the sides. Over three football fields long, and some twelve feet wide, the bridge is a thing of beauty. (Third photo.)
The bridge opened with great fanfare on June 10, 2000. And on that first day, thousands of people were on hand to step out onto this “blade of light” extended over the River Thames. Let’s watch what happened …
The bridge had been carefully designed to take into account the downward force of people walking. What had not been anticipated was the extent to which lateral force would affect the stability of the bridge. When we walk, we don’t just step down; we walk with one foot along side the other – there is both downward force and lateral force. Very quickly, the bridge began to respond to the lateral force of the hundreds of people walking on it. As the bridge swayed, people’s lateral motion increased in an effort to maintain their balance. Soon hundreds of people were walking in lock step with each other like a parade of soldier ducks.
You only had two alternatives if you were on the bridge that day. You either walked in synchronicity with everyone else, or you stood still and held on to the hand rail for dear life.[1]
Mathematician Steven Strogatz speaks of Spontaneous Synchronicity. This is what is in play when flocks of birds or schools of fish all seem to move in perfect harmony and synchronicity with each other, twisting and turning on a dime. Certain realities in the physical environment can cause this kind of synchronicity. Author Jesse Rice believes this impulse is what is at play at a psychological and spiritual level with regard to Social Media.
Today we begin a four week series on the message of Jesus and the medium of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and Blogging. This is not going to be a series of messages designed to teach you how to use Social Media. Rather, these messages and these worship services are conceived and constructed for the twofold purpose of:
- Explaining why it is not only important – it is essential – that our church be fluent in the languages of Social Media. You as an individual don’t need to use Facebook or Twitter or any of the other current media; but we – as a church – must.
- Our second purpose is to demonstrate how the media of popular culture can be used to engage people with the good news of Jesus.
Today, we begin with Facebook.
Social Media Consultant and author Meredith Gould says Social Media is “the global living room”.[2] I like to think of Social Media as the “Global City”, and if that is the case, Facebook is Main Street. It’s “downtown” where ev
eryone goes. It’s where old friends are keeping up with each other, and families are posting photos of the newest baby in the clan. It’s where teenagers declare themselves to be “single” or “in a relationship”. Businesses have Facebook pages, as do celebrities. Michael Jackson’s Facebook page currently has 61,942,454 “likes” – and he is dead. Shakira, the Latin American singer, songwriter, dancer – her Facebook page has 67, 763,149 “likes” – and her song “Hips Don’t Lie” has over 123 Million hits on YouTube.
What about Mumford & Sons? Their Facebook page has a scant 4,447,404 “likes”.
But back to the question: Why did Facebook experience such exponential growth? And why does it continue to be the one Social Media site used across the generations?
Author Jesse Rice says it’s because people long for connections. Connections – meaningful relationships with family and friends – this is the factor that weighs most heavily when social scientists research the cause of contentment. Human beings with rooted connections to family and meaningful relationships with a fairly broad swath of friends – these folk are better equipped to weather life’s storms and ride joyfully the high tide of life’s accomplishments and successes.
Psychologist Janet Surrey writes that “Authentic connection is described as the core of psychological wellbeing and is the essential quality of growth-fostering and healing relationships.[3]
That’s why people flocked to Facebook. There, they were able to connect – and re-connect – making new friends and maintaining relationships with old friends.
That’s what Facebook invites you to do – to become friends. When Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard buddies put Facebook together, their first hunch had to do with the popular pastime that college men, laced with testosterone, regularly engaged in – leering at women. But Zuckerberg and the crew quickly realized that what they had developed could reach a wider audience. In the final analysis, even hyper-hormoned males want something more than what sexy curves and seductive thighs can offer.
At the root of human existence, writes Jesse Rice, is our great need for connection with one another, with our own hearts and minds, and with a loving God who intended intimate connection with us from the beginning.[4]
Zuckerberg grew up in a Jewish home, and now claims to be an atheist. On July 21, 2010, Facebook announced that it had reached the 500 Million mark. But in 2012, Facebook boasted one billion users world wide. Facebook maintained a 5 Million per week growth rater during that two-year period. One seventh of the planet’s total population cruises its status updates, views it pictures, muses over its links, and keeps in touch with family and friends near and far on Facebook.
If you go to Facebook’s home page, you will find their mission statement. Here is what it says: Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.[5]
Come, says Facebook to the world. Come, and find a friend. That invitation, expressed superficially or with the deepest longing – that invitation resonates with the world. [As I was putting language to this message yesterday afternoon, I got a Facebook comment’’ from friends in Lake Placid, telling me they would be in Burlington today and looked forward to attending church. They could just as easily have called on the phone, you might say. True. But they didn’t. They posted a comment on Facebook.]
I know longer call you servants … I have called you ‘friends’. That’s what Jesus tells his disciples. That’s what Jesus tells us. The Life and energy that makes all of life possible – however we name that reality – Jesus’ message is this: Friendship is the divine goal.
There is a passage in the Gospel of John in which the Pharisees express concern and frustration because Jesus is becoming so popular. Look how the whole world has gone after him, they say, grudgingly to each other. Rather than walk with the crowd that saw in Jesus a friend, a healer, a teacher, a savior, they determined they would hold on to the hand rail of their tradition. Religious people are notorious for their unwillingness or inability to recognize spiritually induced spontaneous synchronicity.
Facebook has captured a significant corner of the human imagination. It now occupies some large piece of every Main Street store front. But as Eli Pariser tells us, the algorithmic gatekeeper that now filters what we see online cannot always be trusted to give us what we need in the form that is best for us.[6] Jesus keeps our connections honest. His presence keeps us searching – whether online virtually or in time relationally – in a way that leads to deeper truth and more authentic joy.
Facebook invites us to do two things basic to human longing: It invites us to make friends – to be friends – with the world. It also, in a subtly implicit way, promises a safe place – a home if you will. The reason our church must engage the world on Facebook is because that is the platform one seventh of the world’s people are using in their search for connection. I share that yearning. We experience that same longing.
[1] I read about the Millennium Bridge in Jesse Rice’s The Church of Facebook – How the Hyperconnected are
Redefining Community, Kindle edition, Kindle location 40 ff. Published by David C. Cook, 4050 Lee Vance View, Colorado Springs, CO 80914. © 2009.
[2] Meredith Gould, The Social (Media) Gospel: Sharing the Good News in New Ways. Published by The Liturgical Press, Saint John’s Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, Minesota 56321. © 2013. Kindle Location 249.
[3] Jesse Rice, The Church of Facebook. Kindle Location 141-146.
[4] Ibid.
[5] https://www.facebook.com/facebook. Facebook has 93,968,544 “Likes” with 333,179 talking about them
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