Minister’s Forum
Our human story begins in biblical metaphor with people (the man and the woman) together with God and the animals in tranquil and happy bliss. Our relationship to God knit us together in a fabric of love (Genesis 1, 2).
When these people fell out with God, their mutual love grew cold, turning to finger-pointing and accusation. Their exodus from the Garden of Delight brought a shattered life with God, and kinfolk began to ask in anger, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 3, 4).
The scriptural story tells how God keeps trying to remedy that situation by inviting people back to the garden, and to the mutual responsibility of love that they had forsaken (Genesis 6-9, 12+).
“Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus says to those who will listen (John 13). With God’s unconditional love, he brings us the gift that will enable us to live as God intended in the beginning.
Still, Cain’s question keeps haunting us with its challenge. Good parents and relatives say “Yes,” they are responsible for each other because they see a kinship of blood uniting them as family.
But what about those of different ethnic, cultural, linguistic or religious roots, those of background and inheritance different from ours? There we hear the question still raised (even to Jesus, in Luke 10): “Who is my neighbor,” my sister and brother?
“You are responsible,” God says to the prophet Ezekiel.
“To you I give the task of calling the world back to me” (Ezekiel 33).
God holds her followers to lead the wayward human family back to God’s worship in word and deed, and to love every human being.
Paul, the Apostle of Jesus, reminds his disciples that love is the defining term of our relationship to all people, the ingredient that Jesus brings to join us with God as our parent and ALL PEOPLE as our sisters and brothers (Romans 13 and Matthew 5, 6 and 7).
In one of his many teaching moments, Jesus outlines our responsibility to love one another unconditionally, with his patient love that never gives up on another human being. Our example is Jesus, who never gives up on us (Matthew 18, Hebrews 13).
At the Jewish Community Center in St. Louis (Schuetz Road at Lindbergh), there is a museum leading its visitors to reflect on the question “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
A visit challenges us to answer, as we know we must, since we have received God’s love lavishly bestowed. Believing God’s care for everyone, we affirm, “I AM MY BROTHER’S KEEPER, JUST LIKE JESUS!”
Worship God with your sisters and brothers this weekend. Show that you know that we are one with all people in the Spirit, one family in the Lord.