Library
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Where is your Brother? Am I my Brother’s keeper?
3rd in a series on Questions from the Bible
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Scripture: Genesis 4:1-9 – New Revised Standard Version
1 Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, "I have produced a man with the help of the Lord." 2 Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it."
8 Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let us go out to the field." And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" He said, "I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?"
The first eleven chapters of Genesis are unusual in the Bible. Most scholars do not see these stories as history but as prehistory. We cannot date them. The people who told them and wrote them probably did not see them with the same factual perspective that we might. As we saw last week, there are two different stories of creation in Genesis, chapters one and two, and they do not agree with each other chronologically. It is hard to turn them into history.
The man and the woman have two sons after they are evicted from the Garden of Eden; their names are Cain and Abel. But if these are the only human beings around, how is it that the son named Cain comes to take a wife - if there are no other human beings around? That is not a question that the first tellers of these stories would ask because they wanted to tell a deeper truth than historical truth.
I believe the stories are true on a deeper level than looking at whether they actually happened this way.
The story from Genesis chapter four is like that. The man and woman had two sons. Cain, the first, was a tiller of the ground and Abel, the second son, was a keeper of sheep. Both the sons brought their offerings to God. Cain brought an offering of grain and Able brought an offering of the choicest of the first born animals.
God liked the offering of the choice animals better. The story does not tell us why and scholars have only speculated. It could be that the animal offering seemed to be more sacrificial, more costly. We do not know. What we do know is that very early in our Bible, jealousy and hatred are introduced into the creation. And then murder is introduced out of that envy and jealousy and hatred. Those feelings have always been with us.
There is a half page account in last week’s New York Times about an interview with a leader in the Hamas terrorist movement in Gaza. The reporter asked the Palestinian leader about Hezbollah, the terrorist organization to the north of Israel and headquartered in Lebanon. The Gaza leader became visibly angry and—yes, jealous. He was jealous of his rival who, also, was trying to damage Israel and was against the existence of Israel. They are on the same side, they are like brothers in their goal, but he is jealous and envious and angry. Jealousy is poisonous.
Cain lures his brother out into the field and Cain kills his brother. So, in God’s good creation, jealousy and envy are introduced, and now murder. The Lord God is very disturbed by this and asks the question of our sermon, Where is your brother? Cain gives an answer we may have heard before if we are parents, I don’t know. I dunno. Am I supposed to keep up with my brother? Am I supposed to look out for my brother all the time? Am I my brother’s keeper?
God’s answer is implied and clear. Yes. If we are together in God’s good creation, we are to care not only for the creation, but for each other. We are to respect and look out for each other and not just be absorbed in ourselves. God asks us to do that. God, even at the start of the creation, asks us to look out for, and care for and respect, each other, no matter our feelings of anger and envy and hostility. We may not like or want to be friends with another but we can will their well being. That is what it means to love our neighbor and that sort of attitude, willing the best for someone, is what love in the Bible is about.
Where is your brother? I dunno. Am I supposed to take care of my brother, and my sister, as well as myself? Yes.
Am I called to not be controlled by my prejudices and my envy and my selfishness but instead to treat others the way I want to be treated and see each person as an individual, of worth, regardless of their religion, race, disability, sexual identity, IQ, country of origin? The answer is the same answer that is unspoken from God when Cain asks if he is to be his brother’s keeper. Yes.
I am halfway through a new novel that is set in Mississippi during the effort to register all people to vote during the summer of 1964. The novel, Freshwater Road, is on the reading list that Dr. Margaret Whitt has given the group of 20 people who will be traveling in March to the places in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Arkansas where some of the important events of the freedom movement occurred. This trip will be valuable so that we can remember that freedom is not free and that people in power, who use their power unjustly, rarely give up their power easily. Judy Martz will be going on that pilgrimage and after she finished her copy of the book last week, I picked it up and am halfway through.
It is beautifully written and it is very painful to read. It has chronicled a painful time in American history. We have obviously come a long way with the election of a new president and we still have some ways to go in treating every person with respect and dignity and in providing equality under the law as our constitution says.
The novel reminds us of what it has taken to get to where we are, and it reminds us of the power of non-violent witness and non-violent resistance that was at the heart of Dr. King’s freedom movement. The book is painful to read because, while the non-violent resistance worked, it was very difficult and costly. Some of us here lived through those times and we remember, while others have just read about those events.
If we know much about the freedom movement and about Dr. King, we can see how deeply Dr. King’s movement was grounded in Scripture and the Christian faith. Dr. King talked about and wrote about hatred, jealousy, and rage. He urged people not to hate and not to be ruled by anger and rage. He said he had seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs to be ruled by hate himself. He urged people forty years ago, and that applies to us now, to rise above feelings of rage and to stand for respect and dignity and justice and upright living.
He quoted the words from the Prophet Amos that are in your call to worship today: Speaking for God, the prophet says, I am not interested in your hymns and your ritual if they are empty and disconnected from your life. What I am interested in is justice and righteousness, upright lives. Those words from Amos are engraved on the civil rights memorial sculpture in Montgomery Alabama; the sculpture created by Maya Lin who also created the Viet Nam memorial, one of the most visited memorial sites in our country.
Justice and righteousness are some of the most important themes and values in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. We cannot read much of any prophetic book in the Bible without seeing those demands for justice, those high expectations, that we treat each person with dignity, fairness and respect.
Those concerns are at the heart of our country’s identity and they were at the heart of the freedom movement we look with regard to this weekend. We all know this is easier to talk about than to do, and part of my reaction to reading the novel this week is to be very upset with the accounts of prejudice and injustice. I think being upset at injustice and lack of respect is a response that God wants from us.
I think that people of faith should have a deeper sensitivity to seeing the wrongs. Righting the wrongs should be on the forefront of movements that include and welcome instead of going along with the efforts to exclude.
Where in our time are people being overlooked, forgotten, pushed aside? It was not only a question about race and ethnicity for Martin Luther King, Jr., he was also concerned about the same marginalized persons Jesus was concerned about, the poor and those who were seen to be different.
The concern for the least and the last is present throughout the Bible and Jesus’ willingness to welcome the outcast and the leper and the other got him into deep trouble. It got him killed. Jesus welcomed everybody. Episcopal Bishop, Gene Robinson, who will give the invocation at an event today for President elect Obama, said this week, Nobody has a bigger tent than Jesus does. Nobody is as welcoming to marginalized and overlooked people as Jesus was.
Where are people today still being excluded because they are seen as “different” or inferior? We are still not at the place where we relate only by the content of our character and not by the color of our skin. We have come a long, long way, thanks be to God, but we still have some ways to go. We are making progress in getting past seeing people, only according to the labels and categories and stereotypes, and seeing each other as persons. We still have work to do.
We have tended to forget people who are poor. One political leader said it blatantly a few years ago in a radio interview: political leaders don’t pay much attention to poor people because they don’t vote. If we live by our Book, we cannot do that.
Some of us in the disability community believe that we have ways to go until people of all abilities have equal opportunity. Gay and lesbian persons are misunderstood and misrepresented by persons who tell them to just change their identity instead of taking seriously the scientists and psychologists who overwhelmingly find that sexual orientation and sexual identity are not something we choose, but is instead given, inborn in most of us.
I am leading a book discussion on two Monday nights in late January and early February, on a book edited by Professor Walter Wink. It is a compilation of stories from families, from parents, from gay and lesbian persons, from scholars of scripture. It provides a base of information instead of stereotypes and rumors. The book is Homosexuality and the Christian Faith. We had a discussion group with this book four years ago that attracted sixty five people, one of the largest Monday night book groups we have ever had. I invite you to join me and to listen to the stories and attend to the facts so we can stop the misinformation and the fear and the falsehoods.
Where is your brother? Where is your sister? God is asking that question because we are to be our brother and sister’s keeper and care giver. We are to treat each person with respect and dignity and we are to work for justice because each person is a child of God. Each person, regardless of country, skin color, religion, level of ability, sexual identity, ethnic origin, all those differences aside, is loved by God.
Do you remember what happens to Cain at the end of the story after his jealousy overcomes him and he kills his brother? He is banished by God to wander the earth, and God puts a mark on Cain to protect him from harm; to protect him from harm, because even when we fail, God is merciful and compassionate.
Christy Boyle, our children’s director, shared a personal story from her childhood last week that I thought was important. I want to tell a similar story. A five year old girl was playing in the living room where, just as in Christy’s story there was an old family heirloom, a vase that had been in the family for three generations. It was a treasure that was very important in her family. She knew how precious this heirloom was to her mother and the heritage it represented. But as she got up to go to her room from the foyer, she accidentally nudged the table the vase was on and it crashed to the hard floor with a loud noise and broke into pieces.
She cried out loudly and her mother came running into the room. The child was paralyzed with fear and shame. She knew she was about to be punished, but her mother rushed to her, gathered her in her arms to comfort her and said, I was so worried. I was afraid you had been hurt.
The child, later as an adult, looked back on that time as a five year old and told a friend,
I learned that day that I was the family treasure.
That is the good news that a compassionate God has for us: You, not the things or the material object, you are the family treasure, treasured by God. AND, here is the rest of it, so is your brother, so is your sister.