My Brother
Written and spoken by Joseph Cathcart for his brother John’s (1981-2024) Memorial Service, 3/1/24, to the hearts of a brimming crowd of those who mourn with hope at Last Chance Chapel.
I had a brother. He was eight and half years older than I, but since I was there, and I was a boy, he played with me. It’s great to have an older brother, and there are quite a few perks when you are so much younger than him. For one thing, you can swing and hit and punch as hard as you want, but he has to go a little easy on you, or you’ll cry, since you’re a bit of a crybaby. We had the national forest for a backyard, so our romp was mostly of the woods — slingshots with pinecones for bullets and swords and sticks galore — again, all out force from my part, but restrained strength from his.
An older brother will help you develop an imagination. He’ll pick a tree for a fortress and name the fort “Shining City” and you’ll like that so much that you’ll pick a nearby tree and name your fort “Shining Armor”. He’s kind, so he doesn’t mind that you aren’t that original. The names will stick and every summer you’ll play there, the ongoing saga of the sister cities.
Your older brother is born first, so he has firstborn vigor when it comes to looks, and you have the dregs. Your older brother is strong, stronger than you’ll ever be. But he’s also genuine. He’s early for everything. Really early. Annoyingly early. He leaves early for things, always, and he likes to be the first one to experience things.
You’ll focus on getting ahead by developing street smarts, and maybe a side gig of making fun of people. If you are foolish, for a few years, you might think you’re better or more mature than your brother, since you have street smarts. But if you thought that, you would be wrong. If you have an older brother like mine, you’ll be thirty-four years old and wracking your brain for just one time that he ever made fun of someone else, or belittled them. You won’t be able to think of one, even though you’ve been close to him for more than three decades. Come to think of it, you can’t remember a single time that he ever said something mean to you. Not one thing. Eventually, you’ll realize that your brother excels in the really important things, like love out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned. After you stop being stupid, you’ll be proud to have him as your older brother. He’ll be different, with a different mind, and some people won’t understand him, but you will, because you learned.
Sometimes, you’ll have an older brother who has to work much harder for everything than you do. Your road might be smooth, and things will come easy for you, because that’s what’s given to you. When they do, people will think that you are a success. Your brother might have a hard road, a really hard road, because that’s what’s given to him. Life has its mountain tops and its valleys. But you might notice that your valleys, by comparison, have been a sort of reflective stroll through a calm dale, with sunshine and shade and a little brook running through it. When you get through your little valley, you amble off to your next mountaintop experience. But your brother’s valleys are deep, and they are long. They are dark and cold and thick with thorns. More like ravines than valleys —where the shadows are sharp, and the trees are empty, and the sun is hidden. And it’s scary. His will be a long crawl through the valley, but he will keep going, and you will be proud. If someone were to think he wasn’t a success, they would be wrong.
You’ll look back at all that your brother went through and you’ll see how he persevered in faith through adversity and real hardship. You’ll see how he fought and fought and fought a good fight. You’ll see, too, how he clung to the promises of God, and believed them, whether he experienced them or not. How he fits into the second half of Hebrews 11, that great faith chapter, with those who didn’t receive the promises in this life, but saw them afar off, who obtained a good report through faith — which is believing what God says rather than what you feel. You’ll see how your brother didn’t claim or rely on his own righteousness, but clung in hard, raw belief to the righteousness and sonship placed on him by the sacrifice and blood of Jesus.
If you’re a little poetic, you might realize that the fort, that place of play, that you and your brother called “Shining Armor” described well how he was fitted. That, like the Bible says, to put on the full armor of God, having the girting of truth, breastplate of righteousness, the feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace, and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God… was your brother’s Shining Armor indeed.
And it will occur to you one day, about the fort that he named all those years ago… That picture that he loved of a place golden with the Glory of God, where the Lamb is the Light thereof, and there is no night there, no darkness, no pain in the mind…that Shining City. One day you might find that he went on ahead of you, you might even say he left early, on toward that Shining City. After all, he did like to be the first to experience things.
Hebrews 2:11 For both He that sanctifies and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brothers.
I have an older brother. He has an Older Brother too.
NOTE: Today, I, Steve Bostrom, am loaning this column to Joseph Cathcart. He edited it to fit this space. Joseph and his two sisters spoke at John’s Memorial service. I was among the many who came to support the Cathcart family that day as they grieved the departing of their son and brother, yet rejoiced in the hope of the resurrection. As Joseph alludes, John struggled his entire life with mental illness. As a state, Montana has led or nearly led the nation in suicide since 1937. I wanted us as Montanans to hear this response to a life lost so abruptly.
