Sibling Rivalry

Eric Lemonholm

July 10, 2011

Proper 10 A – with alternate Scripture

Genesis 4:1-26; Matthew 5:38-42

Sibling Rivalry

 

The story continues.

Adam and Eve have a first son, and Eve calls him Cain, a name that comes from a word meaning “to create.”

Their next son is Abel.  Abel means vapor, nothingness.  His name signifies the transitory part he plays in this story.

Cain was a farmer, while Abel was a shepherd.

 

Yahweh God accepted Abel and his offering of meat, but God rejected Cain and his offering of grain.

Why did God have no regard for Cain’s offering of the fruit of the ground?

I don’t know.

Abel “brought of the firstlings of the flock, their fat portions.”

Perhaps, people often say, Abel gave his best, off the top, while Cain gave leftovers.

That’s a common guess, but the text does not say that!

In fact, that is reading into the text a moral that is not there.

We should not let God get off so easily.

God is mysterious, unpredictable and uncontrollable.

God is God.

Let’s not moralize or domesticate this story or this God whom we serve.

God accepts the gift of mutton from Abel, and rejects the gift of grain from Cain.

Why?  We cannot always explain why God does what God does.

There is an age old conflict between farmers and shepherds, between the more settled, valley dwelling, and civilized agriculturalists and the shepherds who wander the wilderness and the heights with their flocks.

Is God favoring the shepherd over the farmer?

Your guess is as good as mine!

 

In any case, God’s rejection of his offering angered Cain.

The Scripture says that “his countenance fell” – literally his face fell.

Perhaps we would say that he hung his head in shame.

Does Cain feel ashamed?

Is he angry at God, or at his brother Abel, or both?

 

Like the earlier stories of Adam and Eve, the LORD God is still intimate with the first family – still meeting them in person and speaking to them individually.

God speaks directly to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen?  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.”

Even though his parents had eaten of the forbidden fruit, Cain could still do well; God counsels Cain to resist and master sin, which is lurking at his door like a hungry lion.

 

Remember, God did not punish Cain because his offering was not acceptable to God.

Cain did not have to internalize God’s rejection of his offering.

He did not have to bottle up that shame and ferment it into anger and rage.

He did not have to vent that rage at his brother Abel.

He did not have to let his red cheeks of shame turn into a red face of rage.

Cain was basically punishing himself with his jealous anger, but he takes his anger out on his brother.

Cain kills Abel.

Violence and murder enter into the world.

 

How much violence is spawned from shame?

Think about it.

Hitler was able to mobilize the German nation to war and atrocities because they had been deeply shamed and punished after losing World War I.

When people become terrorists, they often do so because of the shame they feel for their culture and their religion.  It’s often connected to how others have treated their nations as colonies or sources of resources to be exploited – not for the good of their nations, but for the exploiters’ own benefit.

That does not justify terrorism at all: a much better response to shame and rage in the Middle East, for example, is to channel it into the struggle for freedom, as many are now doing in the Arab Spring.

How much of our nations’ response after 9/11 was motivated by vengeance or payback for losing face in the world to a small group of terrorists?

Closer to home, while “blacks and whites use drugs at about the same rate… African Americans are 10 times as likely to be imprisoned for drug offenses.”[i]

“Although the majority of drug users and dealers are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black and Latino.”[ii]

In 1980, we had 1.8 million people under US correctional supervision.

In 2007, we had 7.2 million.

“There are more African-American adults under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850.”[iii]

What are we doing with our massive prison industrial complex other than initiating the cycle of Cain on a massive scale?

We embed shame and rage in the psyches of convicts, many of whom were imprisoned for nonviolent offenses, and then we’re surprised when they get out of jail and reoffend?

How can we stop the cycle of Cain, the cycle of shame, rage, murder, and vengeance, rather than fanning the flames?

 

After Cain has murdered his brother, God comes to Cain, and – as he did with Adam and Eve in the garden, God asks a simple question, to which Cain could have confessed and been honest: “Where is your brother Abel?”

God calls Cain’s brother by his name – Abel.

Cain’s response, however, is a lie and an evasion: “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”

Am I my brother’s keeper?

It’s a fundamental question in the Bible.

And the biblical answer, over and over again, is Yes – you are your brother’s and your sister’s keeper.

As God has called us to care for creation, God calls us to care for God’s precious creatures, our fellow human beings.

But Cain denies that call to care for, to watch over, to keep his brother.

He washes his hands of responsibility for his brother.

 

But God knows what has happened, and asks in sorrow:

“What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.  When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”

Is this a punishment, or a consequence?

The blood cries out to Yahweh God from the ground; now the ground that opened to receive Abel’s blood is closed to Cain the farmer.

What is the worse punishment for a farmer?  Banishment from the soil.

Cain will no longer be a farmer, but a wanderer – kind of like his shepherd brother Abel.

Now, if God were truly pro-capital punishment, here would be the place to show it: the first murder, the first execution.

Instead, God shows mercy.  There’s no “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth” here.

 

Cain replies in anguish and fear:

 “My punishment is greater than I can bear!  Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.”

For Cain the farmer, to be driven away from the soil is to be hidden from God’s face.

To lose his connection with his home ground is to become a fugitive; then as now, to be a refugee and a wanderer is to be at risk of attack from others.

Cain is naturally afraid.

 

But even after Cain’s sin, his murder of Abel, God responds with mercy:

Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him.

God protects Cain in his exile.

 

I remember as a child asking, “Who is Cain afraid of?  Aren’t he and his parents the only people in the world?”

That’s not the point of the story, of course: it’s a story of all of us. 

Adam – Human – and Eve – Life – have sons named Cain – Create – and Abel – Empty.

Create kills Empty and is banished.

But then Create – Cain, wanders off, gets married, and builds the first city; and Cain’s descendents follow in his murderous footsteps.

The cycle of Cain, the cycle of shame, rage, and vengeance, continues.

 

And again, even though people have speculated that Cain must have married some unnamed sister, the Bible is silent – and indeed unconcerned – about such things.  To try to read the story as modern history is to miss the point, the real truth, of the story.

It’s a story about us.

We are Cain’s children.

Like Cain, we are subject to disappointment, depression, deflation of our hopes and dreams and egos.

 

There are plenty of politicians who want to manipulate us, to channel our shame and rage for their own purposes.

That’s how scapegoating works.

That’s how immigrants have often been targeted by politicians as scapegoats for our problems, as if this nation was not built by immigrants.

 

Like Cain, however, we have a choice.

Sin is lurking at our doors; but we must master it.

Put aside our shame, and channel our anger into doing well.

Nurture a passion for peace and justice rather than violence and vengeance.

Be zealous for good rather than evil, for love rather than hate.

 

We can’t do this by ourselves and for ourselves, of course.

We have a God of mercy, a God who puts a mark of protection even on Cain.

We have a God of mercy, who has marked us with the cross of Christ and sealed us by the power of the Holy Spirit in our baptisms.

We have a God of mercy, who forgives our sin, cleanses us from all unrighteousness, and sends us, not as fugitives, but as ambassadors of grace.

Thanks be to God!