1 Corinthians 12:14-26 A Sermon Preached by Dan Johnson on 1/21/07 We continue our Epiphany worship series inspired by a report from GfK Custom Research about a 2005 study of various values that Americans hold dear. The report was intended to inform marketing strategies for businesses, but the list of values are intriguing expressions of what Christian living can create and cultivate. So, in worship during the season of Epiphany we’re looking closer at these values in ascending order of rank: Stable Relationships, Justice, Friendship (today), Health and Fitness, Freedom, Family and Honesty. If these are the top seven values Americans are seeking these days, it seems important to reflect on how our faith and our church can help develop these values in our daily lives. I appreciate the input many of you are providing about these topics. Keep the comments coming! Even before this series began, a number of you have lamented in different ways how difficult it can be to invest the time and energy it takes to maintain meaningful friendships. Friends are often a casualty of the lifestyle we battle to maintain: kids, grandkids, household maintenance, athletic, arts, civic and volunteer commitments, school, bill paying, laundry, shopping, travel and Oh yeah, at least a full-time career. There doesn’t seem to be room for anything else. Something’s got to give. Friends seem expendable and are often the first to go. No big deal, right? Or ... maybe it is. A Google search of the word friend yields 1 billion 130 million results. (I didn’t take time to visit them all.) Among these listings is MySpace a place for friends. This website has grown from its inception in 2003 to one of the top five websites in the world with a reported 230,000 new registrations per day. On his own MySpace page founder Tom Anderson claims to have 149,634,254 friends as of yesterday afternoon. Just ask any teen and the quest for friends is a driving force in popular culture. When you throw in the results of various medical and sociological studies, friends reduce stress, expand your business, improve your marriage, decrease health problems, speed recovery and even lengthen your life! When you take seriously the words from our scripture passage for today, the interconnectedness of friendship is as necessary for our spiritual and emotional survival as the interconnectedness of our body parts is necessary for our physical survival. In 1 Corinthians 12, the Apostle Paul applies the metaphor of the human body to the Christian community. In verses 14-24, Paul observes that all parts of the body, the feet, the hands, the ears, the eyes, the nose, are all important and interdependent – these parts of the body can’t function individually, but only in relationship with each other. And then Paul asserts that such relationships are also vital within the figurative body of Christ. We need relationships and friendships within the family of God that “the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together…if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (Vv25-26) One member of our church echoed this idea with the comment, “Good friends are like stars; you don’t always see them, but you know they are there.” And another with a quotation from a poem by Edgar Guest entitled “A Friend’s Greeting”. The first stanza reads, “I’d like to be the sort of friend that you have been to me; I’d like to be the help that you’ve been always glad to be; I’d like to mean as much to you each minute of the day -- As you have meant, old friend of mine, to me along the way.” At age 53, Eugene O’Kelly was at the top of his game: spinning multiple plates, in excellent health, traveling and working long hours as chairman and chief executive of KPMG, a giant accounting firm. At one point in his skyrocketing career, he was so determined to impress a potential client that he tracked down the man’s travel schedule and booked the seat next to him on a flight to Australia. He chatted with the guy halfway around the world, landed the account, and then immediately hopped on a flight back to Manhattan. But then on May 24, 2005, a visit to his doctor revealed that he had glioblastoma multiforme, a late stage aggressive brain cancer that would kill him in about 100 days. The news turned his priorities upside down. The following week he resigned from his position with KPMG and devoted himself to reclaiming relationships with family and long-lost friends. In his book, Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life, O’Kelly journals the “perfect moments” he committed to create with friends as he lingered over fine meals, enjoyed long and deep conversations, strolled through parks and sat beside beautiful rivers. In the opening pages of that book he writes, “I was blessed. I was told I had three months to live. You think that to put those two sentences back to back, I must be joking. Or crazy. Perhaps that I lived a miserable, unfulfilled life, and the sooner it was done, the better. Hardly. I loved my life. Adored my family. Enjoyed my friends, the career I had, the big hearted organizations I was part of, the golf I played. And I’m quite sane. And also quite serious: The verdict I received the last week of May 2005 – that it was unlikely I’d make it to my daughter Gina’s first day of eighth grade, the opening week of September – turned out to be a gift. Honestly. Because I was forced to think seriously about my own death. Which meant I was forced to think more deeply about my life than I’d ever done….In short, I asked myself to answer two questions: Must the end of life be the worst part? And, can it be made a constructive experience – even the best part of life?” (pp 1-2) In the course of his journey that ended predictably with his death on September 10, 2005, O’Kelly discovered the answers were “No” and “Yes”. No, the end of life doesn’t need to be the worst and yes, it can even be the best when friends are allowed to become companions on the journey! In the end, isn’t it all about friendships? Our friendships with ourselves, others and God? While on a business trip to Italy in 1983, Howard Schultz discovered that Italians were living remarkably balanced lives. He was impressed by the passion they brought to their work, their rest and their relationships, and he noticed that a great deal of enjoyment was being found in the friendships and camaraderie of Italy’s 200,000 coffee bars. Because there was nothing similar in the United States, Schultz began to dream of establishing Italian-influenced places where friends could congregate. He understood that in America, as well as in Italy, it’s not about coffee, it’s about connection. That became the Starbucks Principle. And for many, it seems to be working with coffee shops throughout the United States, Canada and Japan. We don’t need to hide behind exaggerated or fabricated identities on the internet to meet friends. We don’t need to wait till the end of our life to make intentional time for friends. We don’t even need to go to coffee shops to connect with friends. If our church is a place with open doors that welcomes new friends; if our church is a place of vitality that nurtures current friends; if our church is a place of comfort that unites old friends; then our church is taking significant steps toward becoming more fully the body of Christ on earth!