This week's sermon

 

June 9, 2024

        From time to time, I have heard people criticize Jesus’ actions in the Gospel you heard this morning.

        Some of the time they say he is disrespecting his family by not recognizing their presence.

        Other times they say “no one can be a brother or sister without sharing DNA.”

         

          Let me tell you a little about myself.

        I am an only child. My father was 40 and my mother was 37. I might have had bothers or sisters had my father not served in World War II until 18 months before I was born.

        Another thing—I was born into the Pilgrim Holiness Church. We left when I was 5 and became Methodists. Let me assure you that “mountain Methodists” in Southern West Virginia made Methodists in New England seem like high church Anglicans!

        Everyone in both those churches were called ‘bother’ or ‘sister’. I was ‘brother Jimmy’ until I went to college and found the Episcopal Church. My introduction was in a ‘house church’—no building to call it’s own.

        In fact, the ‘house church’ was the attic above our apartment in Morgantown after Bern and I were married after I received a Master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School. We moved back there so Bern could finish her degree and I could be a social worker in child protection.

        The first time I was in a brick and mortar church was to be received into the Episcopal Church.

 

        But I assure you of this—the other members of that ‘house church’ WERE my brothers and sisters. It was them that convinced me to go back to seminary and be ordained. And lots of them attended my ordination.

        So, I fully understand what Jesus meant when he called the people in the room were his brothers and sisters and mother.

        The only member of the house church who was over 30 was a woman in her 80’s who was the first to tell me “go back to seminary, Jim. I mean it!”

        The people in all the churches I have served have been my brothers and sisters.

        And now it’s your turn.

        Thank you from the bottom of heart, my brothers and sisters in Christ.

        For an only child, I’ve had a lot of siblings….

        Thank you and Shalom.