Sermonette 6/1

By Will B. Noddy, Pastor, His Glory Non Denominational Community Church

(This is a transcript from the sermon of Sunday, June 1, 2008. Thanks to Donna Lumbchum, 15, for doing the transcription and sending the disk to A.B..)

Happy Sunday, brothers and sisters, The Lord is with you, Be Not Afraid!

Today I’m going to talk about brotherly love. I know these days you have to be very careful when talking about brotherly love or some might think you support gay marriage. That deprived, sinful, disgusting yet still fascinating form of mutual abuse is not what I’m talking about here. Instead, I’m talking about the kind of love that true brothers have, the kind of love that Cain had for Able.

Well, maybe not the best example, but yet that is the place in the Bible from which we take our lesson today.

You’ll recall that God was in the Garden of Eden looking for Able, I forget why just now, but instead he found Cain, who was building a new hut, I believe. God said, "Cain, where is your brother, Able?" Cain is reported to have replied, "How should I know, am I my brother’s keeper?" Am I brother’s keeper? That’s what Cain dared ask the Lord.

But God, using his supernatural powers, could see Able laying dead beneath a banana bush, and beside him, with Cain’s finger prints all over it, the jaw bone of an a.. donkey.

God cursed Cain, saying that even the very earth beneath his feet would reject him for his evil. For you see, God had a plan for Cain and Able to populate the earth with humans, and now that plan was spoiled.

Well, clearly, God in His Majesty found a work-around; not surprising because with just the two boys we’re heading into that wrong-headed man-love thing again. I suppose there had to be sisters, too, or else, how would they have populated the… Oh, My God!

Well, it is not for us to wonder what kind of trailer park goings on there were in the Adam and Eve household. The point here, though it isn’t easy for the uninitiated to cipher it out, is that we ARE our brother’s keeper, and we shouldn’t kill him, or we will by cursed, and by God. He will curse the land we walk on.

Who, then, is our brother? I can tell you that in this day and age when we say "brother" we mean "sister", too. Our sisters are also our brothers.

Who else? Well, look around you, the other people in the congregation are also our brothers. Turn to your brother and sister and greet them in the Name of the Lord.

Who else? Other Americans, clearly. Not all Americans, perhaps. We all know a few Americans who are Americans only because they happened to be born here, not because they are real Americans like you and me. You’ll have to go through those on a case by case basis.

Well, then, we may ask, who is not our brother? Are the Jews our brother, though they killed Christ? Well, that was quite awhile ago, and God did that entire holocaust thing to them, so I think we can put that behind us. Right now, with the state of Israel watchdogging our oil reserves in the Middle East, I would say, yes, the Jew is our brother.

What about Arabs? I don’t want to paint all Arabs with the same brush just because they worship a different God. However, those Arabs who hate us for our freedom, who want to drop 747s on our places of business, and churches, and schools, they are not our brothers, my brothers. Them, we may smite with the jawbone of an a… donkey without fear of the Curse of the Lord upon our soil.

I hope today’s sermon has helped you get straight in your mind what we do, and don’t, mean by "brotherly love", and who is, and who is not, our brother.