“My Brother – My Sister is My Life”
Matthew 5: 13-20
February 7. 1993
Last week John started his 11:15 sermon with a Christmas illustration. I scratched my head, but now feel he started a trend. So I’d like to begin this morning’s sermon with a Christmas story, and the rest of you can scratch your heads. This story has become one of my favorite Christmas vignettes.
A friend of mine was a guest preacher around the Christmas season. After the service, he was invited to a parishioner’s house for dinner. It’s a familiar pattern. The visiting preacher was introduced to five-year-old Kyle, who was obviously a source of great pride to his parents. They were especially proud of the fact that their son had learned the entire Christmas story by heart. He had committed it to memory. And his parents and young Kyle delighted in reciting it. The parents informed my friend that the boy’s favorite part was where the angel proclaimed. “Glory to God in the highest. on earth, peace to all people. ” My friend acted suitably impressed and sensed that a performance was about to take place. He wasn’t surprised when young Kyle started in with his parents beaming on the couch. Kyle began strong, moving nicely in the Christmas narrative until he came to his favorite part of the story. Smiling confidently, as only a child prodigy can, he began “Glory to God in the highest.” But at that moment, his little mind went blank. He couldn’t remember what came next. His embarrassed parents started to coach him. “Come on, Kyle, you can remember Glory to God in the highest, come on, Kyle. ” Well, after a long, awkward silence, Kyle’s eyes got big. It looked as if a bell went off in his head, and he began again, “Glory to God in the highest and, and – I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.
That’s become a favorite story, perhaps because it reminds me of all of us. All of us in the religious community. As Christians. we think we know the story so well. We’ve learned segments by heart. We’ve committed a lot of words to memory. But at the critical moment, we forget the most important parts.
The Gospel story found in Scriptures is your story. Jesus’ words are directed at each of us. It is your life that is being questioned and challenged. called out. Somehow, we tend to forget this. The basic problem for American Christianity is that we’re very much like Kyle. We’ve memorized a lot of the Bible, but we’ve forgotten what the story is about. And hence we confuse the Gospel with a Fairy Tale.
Scripture is a story about you and me. It’s a story that tells us who we are and what we are made for. what we are all about. It’s really not concerned with rules and regulations and all the petty things we tend to attribute to Scripture writers. It’s about the big picture.
What is a human being for? What are we made for? We know what knives and forks and washing machines and houses are made for. But what is a tree. a dog. a mountain. a human being made for? What is a human being all about?
Jesus tells us in Scripture that we are made for each other. “You are the light of the world.” You are the salt of the earth. Don’t hide your light, don’t let the salt lose its flavor.” if salt stays in its shaker, it will lose its saltiness. If a light is hidden or left unplugged, it may look nice. But it’s not being used for what it’s made for.
And some of us are like unplugged lights, we’re unused salt. Good people. scripture tells us time and time again that we are linked together in a fearful intimacy. The great challenge in life is to remain plugged into each other, to be lights to each other.
So what do we do? If you’re like me, you have temporary amnesia. You’re like Kyle. you forget the story and then you spend a lot of your life developing strategies for avoiding relationships. The older I get, the more I’ve become an expert on limiting my horizons. I pride myself on being selective. After all, I say to myself quite reasonably, I can’t reach out to everyone. There are too many people, too many unmet needs, and I’ve got limitations. Or so I tell myself.
I sometimes wonder if that’s not part of the difficulty with winter residents or visitors. We don’t want to invest or they don’t want to be involved in making new friends. It will only be temporary. we say to ourselves, and that’s life.
But it isn’t really–that’s death. God calls us to be interactive with one another. You give me sight, you bind my wounds, you call me forth, you make me what I am. There’s a marvelous inscription written on the doors of a monastery in Greece. “My brother-my sister is my life.” it reminds us that life is relationships. That we were made for connection, that living is being joined to others .
The Rabbi tell a wonderful story about a teacher who asks his students,” When can you tell that the dawn has broken and the light has come to us?” One student suggests that it’s when you look down the road and you see an animal, and you can discern whether it’s a coyote or a dog. And the Rabbi says. “No, that’s not it.” Another student trying to answer says, “Well, it’s when you’re looking into a grove of trees and you can tell the difference between what is yours and what is your neighbor’s.” And the Rabbi says. “Not The old Rabbi pauses and says, “When you can look at a man or woman and know that he or she is your brother or your sister. Until you can do that, no matter what time of day it is, it is always night.
I need you to call me out of the night into the daylight, I need these relationships for me to be truly me. I need to remember my brother, my sister is my life. I am light to them as they are to me. Amen .