Sermons

I Corinthians 1:10-13; Genesis 4:1-11 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn
 Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – August 17, 2014

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might lament the brokenness of your family and make our lives signs of hope, for the sake of your world. We pray it in the name of Jesus, Amen.

My parents got divorced when I was sixteen. It was one of those things that was rather shocking at the time, but made a lot more sense in retrospect. I had some angry years at first, but we pretty much adjusted eventually. I grew up in a time when divorce was still seen as an exception, rather than an expectation. People still talked about what it could do to a child to be a “product of a broken home.” I feel like we don’t really use those terms any more – “broken home,” “broken family” – and that’s fine. I don’t really feel like the product of a broken home, perhaps because I only had another two years at home after my parents split.

A few years after it happened, I was having lunch with a friend. Somehow the subject of my parents’ divorce came up. His parents were still together, and he said something that has stuck with me all this time. “I would just die if my parents got divorced.” He was a smart guy. He really should have known better. And yet, “I would just die.” And I sat there thinking, “No. No, you wouldn’t. You might think you would want to, but you wouldn’t. It doesn’t work that way. It’s just really crappy, and you just keep going and get through it.” I suppose things look really different from the outside than they do on the inside.

The truth is that there are hundreds of different ways for families to be broken. One of the Bible’s favorites is sibling rivalry. There’s the story of Cain & Abel that we heard today. There’s Jacob & Esau, and a generation later, Joseph and his brothers. Often, these very early stories seem to be metaphors aimed at explaining ancient tribal differences. But they feel very human too. When people are picking sides in a divorce, we sometimes say, “Blood is thicker than water.” But the stories of blood brothers from the Bible may cause us to think twice about that. Then again, maybe it’s the thickness of the blood that magnifies the tragedy when sibling raises hand against sibling.

Back when I put this series together, this was a different sermon. I planned to talk about the brokenness in our families and perhaps the brokenness within the church. Despite the open communion table we celebrate here, the fact is that Christians around the world are not in agreement that we can all gather at one table. This is not that different from the family tables we know of, where there is often someone missing, and sometimes as much as half the family, because of grudges and feuds and jealousy and the inability to forgive. That was a sermon I know how to give. I am, after all, the product of a broken home!

But in the meantime, between the planning of this series and this morning, the brokenness of the world got bigger and bigger. It’s always out there, but this week it’s been really hard to ignore. If, at some level, we believe that all people are part of God’s family – and I think that we do – and if, at some level, we believe that as Christians we are called to promote that unity, within our own communities, but also within the world – and I think that we do – then we must wrestle with how our faith guides us to respond to the brokenness that has erupted in our world lately.

One of the first things our faith encourages us to do with the problems of the world is to re-frame them. “If we have no peace,” Mother Teresa said, “it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” So often we dismiss the conflicts around the world with a sense of cynical inevitability: “The so-and-sos and the whose-its have never gotten along. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.” What if, instead, we saw every global conflagration as a Cain & Abel story? What if we insisted on reminding everyone that these people, all of them, all of us, are brothers and sisters? What if we opened our hearts deep enough to lament these tragedies through that lens?

What if the Ukrainian nationalists and the pro-Russian separatists could remember that they are brothers and sisters? Would aid flow more smoothly? Would planes never have crashed to the ground? What if Christian villagers and Boko Haram extremists in Nigeria could see that they are brothers and sisters? Would marketplaces still be intact, and daughters safely at home, continuing their education? What if Israelis and Palestinians could believe that they are brothers and sisters? Would Gaza have power and running water and hospitals and schools? Would Jewish families have a sense of security living in their homes? What if Islamic State fighters and Iraqi Christians and Yazidis and Kurds could remember that they are brothers and sisters? Would there be fewer refugees? Fewer loved ones who had to be buried on the run? Fewer children dying of thirst on mountaintops? What if black Americans and white Americans, community members and teenagers and cops, could believe that they are brothers and sisters? Would we understand each other better? Listen to one another better? Seek justice together better? Have fewer sons dying and less need for outside intervention?

Perhaps it seems simplistic to insist that we remember we belong to one another. Our own scriptures show us that brothers and sisters have conflict as fatal as any set of warring tribes. But these stories are descriptive, not prescriptive. They reflect how things are, not how they ought to be or how they could be, and certainly not how God desires things to be. The reminder that we are connected, that we are all part of one family is there to serve as motivation toward reconciliation. It is there to remind us to care, even when the conflicts seem far away. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” asked Cain. And though God doesn’t directly answer the question, we know that the answer is Yes. We have a responsibility to one another, as sisters and brothers, as family. Yes, we are broken, but we are not helpless; we are not hopeless. We all have experiences of brokenness in our lives. If we can negotiate that delicate territory with God’s help, we can often learn things that will prove helpful next time. That first experience of what happened when we truly stopped to listen to someone. Maybe it was someone we thought we already knew through and through, someone who’d been trying to show us how they’d changed for years now, but we wouldn’t see. Maybe it was someone who’d never been truly heard before, for whom being listened to was empowering and transformative.

Perhaps we’ve learned about the power of a sincere apology. Admitting we are wrong makes us incredibly vulnerable, but often that is what makes us most lovable. Opening our minds to seeing a situation from someone else’s perspective can change everything. Laying out all the ways we’ve been hurt and then letting go of them provides a freedom like nothing else.

All of these lessons of working through brokenness are hard-won. They are hard work. We don’t do this stuff unless we really care. And we really care because we’re family. Your father, your mother, your sister, your brother – no matter what sort of seemingly unforgiveable stuff has passed between you, those relationships aren’t going away. They will always be who they are, and you will always be who you are, and you will always be related. Even an ex is always an ex. We’re stuck with each other.

What does this look like on a global level? Well, first it highlights the tragic foolishness of extremist movements like ISIS or Boko Haram who have deluded themselves into thinking they can remove everyone that doesn’t fit their mold of how people should be. It simply doesn’t work that way. But more importantly for us, it means that we can’t give up. We can’t stop caring. We can’t stop listening and praying. As Christians, followers of Jesus, we are called to a discipline of hope. We are called to repeat over and over, as many times as it takes, that we are all beloved children of God, even the ones who are committing horrific atrocities. We are called to be peacemakers, restorers of the breach, ambassadors of reconciliation. From our own experiences of brokenness, we can cull the tools we will need to re-build the family of God: An understanding of the endlessness of the work, a disciplined approach to listening to one another, a beginner’s eagerness to ask for God’s help, a continued insistence that we are brothers and sisters.

It is Christ who calls us to this work. It is Christ whose Spirit gives us the power to offer forgiveness and promote reconciliation. It is Christ who strengthens us and keeps the light of hope alive, even when the world seems full of violence and hatred. We can gather together to lament the brokenness of God’s family, but we must not stay in that posture of despair. We are called to carry good news to the world, urgent news, that we are all connected and we must try harder to see that. As we invite God’s healing presence into the brokenness in our own families, we can begin to share that experience and the lessons we learn with the rest of the world. As in our families, sometimes we take a break, just because we’re tired of fighting. There may be moments when that is the most we can hope for. But let us always believe that God’s spirit of peace can use even the tiniest of openings to begin a work of transformation. May peace prevail on earth! Alleluia and Amen!