My first beg lesson on the meaning and power of brotherhood happened when I was ten years old or so

We Are Family

A Sermon by Aaron McEmrys, April 27, 2008

My first big lesson on the meaning and power of brotherhood happened when I was ten years old or so. My two little sisters and I were standing at the bus stop waiting to go to school. Laura was about eight and Andrea, the baby, was six. It was a cold, rainy fall morning. We had just moved into the neighborhood and this was our first time at this bus stop.

We were all nervous, which goes without saying, but also important to this story is the fact that we couldn’t stand one another! Our house was kind of like a three bedroom de-militarized zone, and I thought being trapped in the same family with them was about the cruelest fate anyone could have.

In fact, I walked my sisters to the bus stop under duress, after being sternly ordered to look after them by my mom. So I walked as far ahead of them as I could; pretending we weren’t related.

I was lounging against a streetlamp, trying to look cooler and more confident than I felt when a group of older boys, you know the ones, every schoolyard has them – surrounded my sisters.

I did nothing. For one thing, I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the bullies right off the bat – that could make for a very long year. And more importantly – I couldn’t stand my sisters! But as I stood there motionless, in a crowd of other spectators, a heavy, sick feeling started to grow in my belly. One of the bullies knocked Andrea’s books and school supplies out of her arms and onto the ground, and when she bent over to pick them up, he kicked them so they scattered all over. She was starting to cry, and it was as if I could feel her shame, her fear, her impotent rage in my own body.

Before I knew it I was there, between her and the bullies. “Get away from my sister,” I said, my voice not nearly as brave or as threatening as I would have liked. The bullies sized me up and I could see that my worst fears were about to be realized. Then, out of the blue, my other sister, Laura, stepped up and said, “You leave my brother alone!”

We were saved by the timely arrival of the school bus, which may account for my presence here among you today with all my limbs more or less intact. We got on the bus, and never spoke of it again, at least not until we were all adults. We went back to our accustomed squabbling without blinking, but deep down I think we all knew something important had happened. They were my sisters and I was their brother. Period.

This is one of the foundational stories of my life, although I did not realize just how much it had shaped me until many years later. At the time, it just felt good, safe somehow, to know that there were people in the world who were there for me, who would always be there for me no matter what. You see, even at the young age of ten I had already learned that the world can be a tough place, full of bullies and struggle and uncertainty, but it wasn’t until that morning at the bus stop that I realized, in a very real way, that I wasn’t alone. I had my mom, my grandma and my two sisters, Laura and Andrea.

Years and years passed, and I grew up – more or less.

I grew up poor, in a part of Wisconsin where college was not the given that it is for many young people today. But I was always an insatiable reader and I always dreamed that someday, some way I would be able to go to school. In the meantime I just worked and worked and worked. I did eventually start going to school, but when my first wife and I got divorced I had to drop out. With two households to support I needed to take a second job and school was no longer a luxury I could afford.

I did finally make it to college though, supported by the public employees union I worked for. I represented workers at a wide variety of cities, counties and state agencies, but my primary area of specialty was working with low wage, immigrant, healthcare and non-profit employees. And so I ended up at the National Labor College.

The Labor College is an amazing place – a joint project of Antioch College, the University of Baltimore and the George Meany Center for Labor studies. It is part think-tank, part undergraduate college and part graduate school. On any given day you will find sheet metal workers, nurses, attorneys, economists, coal miners, pilots, policy wonks, teachers, firefighters, actors and scientists from across the United States and around the world studying side by side in the crowded and always noisy library.

One thing proved hard to get used to from the very beginning: from the moment I got there everywhere I went people called me, “Brother.” As in, “Hey Brother McEmrys, can I borrow your physics notes?” or “Hey, Theresa, let me introduce you to my brother Aaron here.” And the crazy thing, the thing I had the hardest time getting used to – was that they meant it. Whether they knew me or not, no matter where we were from or how different we were, when we called one another Sister and Brother we were affirming a relationship, a special kind of interdependence, a promise to be there for one another and to support one another come what may. Supported by our shared values, we were all brothers and sisters, we were all related.

I had a hard time adjusting to this. When I heard the phrase “Brothers and Sisters” my head would immediately fill with images of televangelist preachers or dusty Catholic Priests full of hollow words and empty symbols and it set my teeth on edge. But I quickly came to realize the huge difference between words spoken by rote and those same words spoken with sincerity and commitment. When the phrase, “Sisters and Brothers” becomes embodied in action, anything is possible.

The educational model at NLC is unlike anything I had seen before. All students are welcome, regardless of educational history. The basic assumption is that all people have gifts, wisdom and insight to share simply because we are all alive, and rich with our own unique experience. Furthermore, students and professors alike are expected to learn from and with one another, and every student is responsible for the success of every other student. So in any given class I might find myself studying labor law or physics or play writing or administration with a 55 year old West Virginia coal miner on one side of me, a nurse from Chicago behind me and an atomic scientist from Los Alamos on the other side of me.

It was this rich diversity, this very intentional model of interdependence that has given me one of my most treasured stories – one that truly embodies the kind of community that becomes possible when we begin to see one another as family.

One of my fellow students, Mark, is an expert at what is called “Industrial Hygiene.” Basically this means that Mark knows everything there is to know about workplace safety, hazardous materials and how to prevent accidents and injuries. This is a ridiculously complex field – and Mark is an undisputed master. Mark had worked at the big rubber plant outside of his small Indiana town since the seventh grade, when he dropped out of school to take care of his family after his father died.

But not unlike me, Mark always regretted having to leave school at such a young age, and finally, when he was in his late forties, he enrolled as a student at the Labor College. This took incredible courage on his part. You see, Mark was more or less illiterate. He could only read with slow and painstaking effort, his lips moving with his eyes across the page, and his writing was equally labored. Yet here he was – in college and confronted with a mountain of books and papers.

At first I sat with him almost every night. We would discuss the readings and then he would dictate his papers to me as I typed as fast as I could. Very soon though, we were all working with him – not just white collar people like me, but everyone, even sheet metal workers who were shocked to find themselves tutoring another student!

And Mark learned. It was incredible. He worked harder than anyone I have ever met. He did struggle, but he never gave up – and with the encouragement and support of the whole community he made leaps and bounds that were truly staggering to witness.

At graduation, we chose Mark as our valedictorian. I will never forget the tears streaming down his face as he walked up to accept his diploma and make his speech. I will never forget the pride radiating off of his wife and two daughters, both of whom were well on their way to their own college graduations, supported all along by the love of their hard working father who always taught them that anything is possible. As Mark spoke many of us had tears in our eyes, and I have never been so proud of another person in my life. His success was a victory for all of us.

And looking around, at all those faces, all those families, I realized more deeply than ever that my family was much bigger than I thought. All of these people were part of my family too, truly my brothers and sisters. And not because we were born that way – but because we chose to treat one another as such. We claimed that relationship, we built that kind of community and our lives were all enriched beyond measure because of it.

This idea is called the imago dei in theological parlance. It is the notion that life is sacred and that all of us are made of the same sacred stuff, that we all bear the light of holiness simply because we are part of the vast and beautiful web of life. This is the source of our inherent worth and dignity. To see the imago dei in someone else is to recognize their sacred relationship to you and to the rest of creation. We rise and fall together.

But while it is not particularly difficult for us to conceptually acknowledge our interconnection and the inherent worth of all people, it is much more challenging to actually act upon these principles. After all, the ramifications are staggering and we are immediately swarmed with difficult questions: if we truly are all interconnected, if an injury to one really is an injury to all – how then shall I live? I think when we are faced with questions like these we tend to shift into our rational, abstract, philosophical gear-set, in which things like interconnectedness become ideas, concepts – rather than as living principles that are directly related to the complicated and risky business of life, where it is not ideas that are interconnected – but living, breathing human beings, many of whom we will never meet but who are related to us nonetheless.

This is why I often use the phrase sisters and brothers when I want to talk about interconnectedness – there is an intimacy, a power in these words that helps keep me from slipping into abstraction. “How should I treat this person who is my sister, my brother?”

The business of acting out of our values, really living them, is incredibly difficult, as we all know. Every single one of us screws up, falls short, every day. And that’s fine – it just means we are human. In the heat and haze of our busy lives it is all too easy to forget the great truth that fills Miranda to bursting in Shakespeare’s play, “The Tempest” as she exclaims:

  O, wonder!
  How many goodly creatures are there here!
  How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
  That has such people in't![1]

Look around you – every single person you see is as beautiful and unique as the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays and as marvelous as a brave orange flower I once saw, Indian paintbrush I think it was, that was growing all by itself out of solid rock in a snow field high in the Colorado Rockies. Everyone here is all of this, and much, much more.

But we forget, don’t we? We slip into habit and work and stress and busyness and all too often we start taking for granted the things that matter most. I think this is one of the reasons we come here on Sunday mornings – to be reminded, to be called back to ourselves, to come back together to the common path we share and to the common values we wish to nurture in our lives. I think it is beautiful that the word “religion” comes from the Latin, “religere”, which means to “bind back together.” That’s what we’re here to do.

A couple weeks ago I had a great “religere” experience. I was in Oregon for my best friend’s wedding. We grew up in Wisconsin together and have been friends since eighth grade or so, really for the majority of our conscious lives now.

The rehearsal dinner was a traditional Wisconsin fish fry. One thing you have to understand about Wisconsinites is that we have some very strange and important traditions that cannot be challenged, fish frys, dancing the polka and a fierce and unwavering loyalty to the Green Bay Packers. Hardly the place I expected to be hit over the head with a moment of profound insight! But that is exactly what happened.

I was sitting next to my wife, Eliza, enjoying my fish and chips. There was a lull in the conversation and I found myself just sort of looking around, my gaze traveling slowly and pleasurably over all of those faces, some new, many old and familiar. I saw family friends and friends of friends from Wisconsin that I hadn’t seen in almost twenty years, I saw friends of mine from high school, friends I had half forgotten and drifted away from, people I had grown up with, now with kids of their own – and all of us were there together just as if we had never been apart. All of us ready to accept and embrace everyone else, all of us ready with a hug or handshake or to help out in a pinch, no questions asked. All of these faces, some much older than I remembered, now wrinkled and lined with life and others new faces, unlined and just bursting into the future – but all together, an extended family, a community brought back together, brought back into relationship by the wedding of Steve and Sarah.

We all need times like these: weddings and memorial services; family reunions and Sundays mornings. Times set aside to draw us back together again. Times to reflect on what matters most in life.

I was sitting there thinking to myself, “How lucky I am. These people are so wonderful, and yet I have done nothing to deserve them. I didn’t earn them and yet I am one of them. I don’t have to be anything or do anything special – I just have to be me and I will always have a place here. This, I thought, must be what Grace feels like.

I noticed that Mr. Schroeder, Steve’s father, had sat down next to me. He has been trying to get me to call him “Dan” for years now, but old habits die hard, and he will probably always be Mr. Schroeder to me. We chatted a bit and I told him about how great it was to be back with all these people again, especially to see all these kids sprouting up all over the place, even though it did make me feel older. He looked at me and said this: “You know, as I get older and especially at a time like this, watching my son getting married it puts things in perspective. When I was a young man someone told me what really makes life worth living is ‘to be loved by the people you love and to be respected by the people you respect.’ I don’t think I really understood what he meant at the time, but I do now, and he was right. We have to earn respect, which is great and keeps us reaching higher, but the love always seems to be free. Nothing else really matters in the end. This is what makes for a good life.”

I want to be like Mr. Schroeder when I grow up.

My sermon this morning has been mostly made up of stories, and between them, these stories illustrate the very bedrock of my ministry. It is important to me that you not only understand my theological perspective and ministerial vision, but also who I am and where my vision comes from. These are some of my stories, and I look forward to hearing some of yours during our week together. Stories matter.

My ministry is rooted in what one of my colleagues refers to as my “sisters and brothers” theology. This means that I believe that all life is sacred and that we are all deeply and profoundly related to one another. It is only through relationship that we can reach our fullest potential. Because of this my vision of ministry is always concerned with expanding our answer to the questions, “Who are my people?” and “How then shall I live?” – always strengthening and nurturing these relationships, these sometimes hard to see interconnections that can be so difficult to maintain in a society like ours where so many people live lives of quiet alienation, disconnection and loneliness. We all yearn for a sense of belonging, of genuine community, for a place where someone might say to us, “we are all enriched because you are here.”

And this, the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara, is one of the places people come with their yearning. Let us be such a place of welcome. Let us be a place where, week after week and year after year people can come together to share their stories and share their lives as together we learn and grow and mourn and celebrate. Let us be a place where all of us can be supported as we struggle to be the people we are capable of becoming, a place where all of us can come as we are with all our flaws and failings and still be valued members of this community. Let us be a place where we can be respected by the people we respect and loved by the people we love, a place we may enter a thousand times – and always leave changed.

[1] William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 5, Scene 1.