Genesis 4

When I stare into the mirror that the story of Cain and Abel holds up to my life this morning, I am reminded that no group puts the fun in dysfunction quite like your family.  Church committees can sometimes come close.  But family members know that special combination of buttons to push that can send your blood pressure soaring and the tiny vein in your forehead pulsating.  While culture shows us families with lovable curmudgeons, perfectly timed commercial breaks, and everything being resolved in neat and tidy ways within a half hour.  I soon realized that one, family tensions we have can sometimes fester for years with the unspoken rule that we don’t talk about it... whatever “it” is.  While the hymn is right, "Blessed be the ties that bind," sometimes those ties can also make us feel bound and gagged with guilt or brokenness or pain.  As you read Genesis 4, it is like looking into the mirror of Cain and Abel, you may only want to glance, not gaze too long.  The witness of Scripture on sibling relationships is not exactly an uplifting one.  Brothers, Jacob and Esau wrestle in the womb, only to have Jacob fool his father and steal the birthright blessing. Sisters, Leah and Rachel both vie for the affection of Jacob. The dreamer Joseph annoys his brothers with talk of them bowing down to him, so they sell him off, only later to have him play a prank on his brothers who come groveling to Egypt to get food, just to have a reunion with his father.  And it is not only in the Hebrew Bible, Jesus most famous parable is about the Prodigal Son, whose relationship with his family is like watching an episode of Dr. Phil and leaves you saying, “Gee I thought my family was dysfunctional.” 

So, Cain and Abel might be a difficult story, my prayer is that as we dwell with these words, we might find traces of grace and realize the truth that pain in our lives that is not process is passed along.  We start with Cain, the older brother, whose name means, "Spear."  He is part of the noblest profession, farmer...said the person from Iowa!  Later comes along, the younger brother, the apple of Adam and Eve’s eyes, the one who gets the car and the easier punishments and the better parenting, can I get an Amen from the older siblings reading the blog?  Abel means breath and he becomes a shepherd.  Pause with me, because I love the way Scripture echoes.  Genesis 2 talks of God breathing in the breath of life...so two chapters later, Adam who received God's CPR, calls his second son, "Breath".  That is beautiful.

One day, Cain and Abel bring an offering to God.  Notice, up to this point, God has not asked for an offering.  This is the first act of worship described in Scripture.  And we don’t know what prompts this moment.  Maybe gratitude or holy obligation or some messy mixture that still stirs in us on Sunday morning that brings you to church rather than lounging around reading the comics.  But there is this worship moment.  And we are told that God’s reaction to Cain’s offering is, “Eh,” while God responds to Abel with applause and a standing ovation.  Again, we don’t know why.  Perhaps Cain brought some broccoli, I am sure he did not bring corn, because this story would be totally different.  Maybe, some rabbis suggest, it was what was in Cain’s heart or that he brought leftovers to God.  That is challenging.  How many of us, when we pray or worship or tend our relationship with the Holy Other offer God lukewarm left overs?  And as interesting as dwelling with why the brothers worshiped and why God gave Cain’s gift only one star and Abel’s gift five stars, it is the next scene that captures my heart.

God says to Cain, why are you angry?  Why are you distressed and dejected?  The Hebrew here can be translated, why are your faces downcast?  God names Cain’s innermost feelings.  God cuts through the masks we often wear and shines a light on what is in our souls.  And that is not easy.  We like to think we have everyone fooled when we put on a smile and say that everything is “Fine, just fine,” even though we say that through clinched teeth and our shoulders are more tense and tight than a freshly wound spring.  C.S. Lewis often said that God’s interest and affection and insight into us was the intolerable compliment.  We couldn’t handle that.  In some ways, religion likes to put conditions on unconditional love. In churches we make each other jump through hoops with statements of faith and membership forms and even this act of passing the offering plates that put barriers between us and God.  God becomes distant and disinterested in us.  But in this story, God comes to Cain as a counselor and confident.  Be careful, Cain, God says, brokenness can beget brokenness.  Do you notice that Genesis 4 echoes Genesis 3?  There is temptation that leads to a decision and action that leads to conversation that leads to consequences.  The writers of Genesis introduce this theme in the early pages of Scripture and return to this refrain time and time again.  You could even say, holy week, is a riff on that same refrain.

So, Cain goes and murders Abel.  And I don’t think this is because of some defective or deficient strain in our DNA that has been passed down.  I think it is because brokenness begets brokenness.  Someone gossips about you behind your back, you feel your checks rush, flood red with anger and hurt and humiliation, and so you turn around and spread a rumor about that person.  The cycles of violence, physical and emotional and psychological have been turning since the very beginning of human relationships.  That was true in the time when people shared sacred stories around campfires and it is still turn over cups of coffee we share at Starbucks.  Brokenness begets brokenness and it takes grace, more than just positive thinking or our own will, to over come and break out of that.  Most of us get mired in the messiness of relationships.  We know what it is like to feel hurt and harmed by family and friends, to clinch our fists and teeth and try to count to ten.  We know the greatest lie is told in the rhyme, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me."  Words hurt.  And we hurt each other.  Just like in Genesis 3, God asks Cain, where is Abel?  God continually asks, where are you?  God asks us to be open to our location.  Or to quote an author, we need to pay attention to what we are paying attention to.  Cain shrugs his shoulders, “How should I know where Abel is?  Go ask the sheep.”  While our ethic of love demands us to care for each other, to be each other’s keepers, in the initial pages of Scripture it is God who is the keeper of humans.  Notice, even when God convicts Cain of the crime, it does not break the bond of unconditional love or unceasing grace.  Cain cries out over his punishment and God promises to watch and keep Cain, even though he was unwilling to do the same.  God marks Cain not with a scarlet letter, but as a sacred sign, even a blessing, to live differently.

Cain goes off and settles in Nod, means wandering or restlessness.  It means he was unsettled.  Ever been to Nod?  Ever unpack the boxes in a new place, but still feel homeless?  Ever been in that place where your soul was restless and could not find rest?  If so, you’ve visited Nod, maybe you are living or vacationing there right now.  So what?  Why care about this story?  On the one hand, I think this narrative pushes back on redemptive violence.  It holds that mirror to the ways we hurt and harm each other.  Even when we don’t kill, we still damage each other.  This narrative tells us that from the very beginning, before there was Moses with the Ten Commandments, killing, harming each other, was un-kosher in God’s creation.  This story point great themes of life and death, intimacy and jealousy, offering and inadequacy, honesty and political spinning.  Finally, this story reminds us that the great phrase, "Whoever you are and wherever you are really," was not created by the UCC, it was God’s gospel truth from the very beginning.  So may you this week, gaze, not just glace, at the relationships in your life.  May you this week, know that our God does not put a mark of judgement but one of unconditional love upon us.  And may you pause where you are, survey your surroundings, to see if you are in Nod or Oz or Sarasota or somewhere in-between, but may you know the truth of whoever and wherever God is there.  And may that be good news to heal our souls for the living out of these days.  Amen.