MURDER AND THE ETERNAL QUESTION
Genesis 4:8-9
June 29, 2008
Let’s begin today’s lesson by re-reading God’s previous words. “…sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." There’s a reason all of this must be kept closely connected; it helps us to see how the narrative sets the stage for the dramatic events that will follow. First of all Cain probably feels abandoned by God’s challenge that not only says, “YOU must master it”; but also implies, “Because it is your responsibility.” God doesn’t say “We must master your sin, Cain”; but “You must master it.”
Have you ever been there? You thought you could depend on someone for help, but when the time came they said, “Sorry; I can’t help you; that’s something you’ll have to do by yourself.” You feel betrayed, do you not? Suddenly alone? Yet God says exactly that to Cain: “Mastering the sin that crouches at your door is up to you, not me. For I have already done my part; I have empowered you to make right choices, but I’m not going to make those choices for you.”
“…sin is crouching at your door…" I don’t know about you, but when I think about sin crouching at MY door I think of the addictions that seem always ready to consume me. And there are so many, a simple definition being, “anything growing into an interruption of one’s life, or in the process of becoming one’s master.” The most common addictions are to alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, sex, but there are others. These pursuits have a way of sometimes taking over one’s life (or large portions of it), to the extent they gradually become compulsions rather than just entertaining diversions. When that happens they corrupt our inter-relationships, not to mention our sensitivity to a real God-moment in life like happened to Cain. Addictions, in other words, replace God as our “ultimate concern”, and when the inevitable confrontation happens, the addiction wins out.
Little imagination is needed to see this happening to Cain. Maybe he was addicted to 1) a lust for power, 2) or to a need for recognition, 3) or to amassing private wealth. Whatever it was, he probably perceived himself to be in danger of losing his “ultimate concern”, what had replaced his God. But here the story takes a sudden and dramatic turn. After hearing God’s warning which I would paraphrase as, “If you will just listen to me, and then do what you know is right, you will be fine. But if you don’t, you’re going to make a mess of your life and you, my child, are going to have to clean up that mess." But we can only assume God’s warning didn’t assuage Cain’s anger, for instead of responding to God, who had gently confronted him, Cain reacts by confronting Abel, not so gently, suggesting they go, “…out into the field…” Cain’s plan has already been decided on and he’s not changing it.
Does that not sound familiar to you? Cain heard that still small voice saying 1) he needed to change his pursuits, 2) or he should be more generous, 3) or maybe re-think the kind of gift he was giving…4) but Cain ignored it and did what we had decided to do in the first place. It’s by remembering my own similar encounters with God that I know Cain’s mind was already made up. It gives me an eerie feeling of déjà vu when I read this—that, as we said last Sunday, Cain’s story is my story. For I, too, have been there (called onto God’s carpet), and done that (continued in disobedience)—and there were always consequences! Surely this is endemic to humankind, for the same thing that has happened to me happened to Cain before me.
But I’ll bet we’ve all be there, haven’t we? We know God’s will, but we rationalize it as being impossible or irrational or, most often, just not realistic. What we really mean, though, at least in most cases, is that God’s will doesn’t jibe with our will. Isn’t that exactly what Cain was saying? “No disrespect intended, Lord, but as far as I can see, I’ll be better off doing what I want, rather than doing what you want." I actually believe that if God came to you and me today, after catching us “with our hand in the cookie jar” so to speak, he would look directly at us and say, “This has now become a problem, and you must overcome it. I’m not going to stop you; you must stop yourself. But remember that I have empowered you to choose rightly.” How do you react to such confrontations—to such God-moments? Must it take a Cain-like disaster to make us re-think our self-centeredness?
One of the truly outstanding Christian writers today on the subject of addictions is one of our own, a United Methodist Minister named Gerald May. With regard to our propensity to willfully ignore God as we make our choices in life, he writes in his book, Addiction and Grace, “…full love for God means we must turn to God over and against other things. If our choice of God is to be made with integrity, we must first have felt other attractions and chosen, painfully, not to make them our gods.” May goes on to say that, “God creates us with our vulnerabilities. And then as we grow through life we are tempted and seduced … and forced to struggle with ourselves, [being] thrust repeatedly back upon our own weaknesses…” This very dance we perform with the God who never seeks another partner turns out to be the “perfect expression of love.” It is God’s gift of “grace, [that] empowers us to choose rightly…but it does not, and will not, determine that choice.” So Cain fell victim to, not what he couldn’t master, but to what he refused to master, not to an innocent tendency to make wrong choices, but to an evil power “lurking at his door.”
Now let’s look at the second part of our story. “And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?" That, my friends, the cynical, "Am I my brother's keeper?", if not THE eternal question, is certainly AN eternal question. We can easily hear the cynicism in Cain’s query, but we, too, ask it, 1) when we turn a blind eye to suffering, 2) every time we take from those who are too powerless to resist, 3) by turning a deaf ear to pleas for help from the “weary and heavy laden,” the ones Jesus invited to “come to [him]”, 4) and each time we choose to keep our abundance, claiming we actually need it to maintain our standing of living, thus robbing those who, unlike us, actually need it for survival. "Am I my brother's keeper?" The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, unequivocally and resoundingly, says, “YES!”
God’s question, “Where is your brother Abel?” is, in itself, most revealing. For if ever there was a question about whether God’s eye is truly on the sparrow, this exchange between God and Cain should provide the answer. Able was missing and God knew it. Yes, our Abel, the forgotten one in the family, Abel the humble laborer, the poor man who failed to “make it” as had his brother. Evidently, the descriptive adjectives, humble, poor and forgotten aren’t the screening tools God uses to separate the “wheat from the chaff”, the valuable from the undesirable, if, indeed that is ever one of God’s objectives. Rather, God actively sought the missing Abel and the fact that he even questioned Cain as to Abel’s whereabouts implies that Abel was not only God’s responsibility, but Cain’s as well. Maybe that means that if we expect to share in God’s glory, we are expected to share in his responsibilities.
Will Willimon, the former Dean of the Duke University Chapel and current Bishop of our own Alabama Conference, recently wrote that, “Any truly Wesleyan vision of the Christian life includes direct, personal, sacrificial encounter with suffering persons—simply collecting money for someone else to work with the poor is not enough.” So let us not fail to notice that God was always aware of Abel, just as he was Cain, and when Abel went missing, God began to search for him. And Abel’s brother was the one God held accountable. By implication, does this not include us, when we suffer, when we fall below the poverty line, when we have crisis’s in our lives, but no less when we are the brother or sister of one who does?
But Cain’s response was to cynically pose a question disparaging God for even daring to ask about his brother’s fate. Haven’t you seen that, someone explodes in anger or cynicism if you even dare to bring up a subject about which they already feel guilty? There are several messages here, but let me pursue this one in closing. Cain wantonly took the life of his brother. But this story is not so much about murder as it is 1) about distancing ourselves from God, 2) about refusing to humble ourselves and listen obediently during the God moments I mentioned earlier, 3) and about giving in to what Gerald May called “other attractions”, the activities that will always be there to pull us away from God as far as possible. Sin truly is, then, 1) more a power than a devil, 2) more the spirit of evil than an evil spirit. But even so, “he has empowered us to make right choices.” For, 1 John 4:4 tells us, “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”
Genesis 4:8-9
June 29, 2008
Let’s begin today’s lesson by re-reading God’s previous words. “…sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." There’s a reason all of this must be kept closely connected; it helps us to see how the narrative sets the stage for the dramatic events that will follow. First of all Cain probably feels abandoned by God’s challenge that not only says, “YOU must master it”; but also implies, “Because it is your responsibility.” God doesn’t say “We must master your sin, Cain”; but “You must master it.”
Have you ever been there? You thought you could depend on someone for help, but when the time came they said, “Sorry; I can’t help you; that’s something you’ll have to do by yourself.” You feel betrayed, do you not? Suddenly alone? Yet God says exactly that to Cain: “Mastering the sin that crouches at your door is up to you, not me. For I have already done my part; I have empowered you to make right choices, but I’m not going to make those choices for you.”
“…sin is crouching at your door…" I don’t know about you, but when I think about sin crouching at MY door I think of the addictions that seem always ready to consume me. And there are so many, a simple definition being, “anything growing into an interruption of one’s life, or in the process of becoming one’s master.” The most common addictions are to alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, sex, but there are others. These pursuits have a way of sometimes taking over one’s life (or large portions of it), to the extent they gradually become compulsions rather than just entertaining diversions. When that happens they corrupt our inter-relationships, not to mention our sensitivity to a real God-moment in life like happened to Cain. Addictions, in other words, replace God as our “ultimate concern”, and when the inevitable confrontation happens, the addiction wins out.
Little imagination is needed to see this happening to Cain. Maybe he was addicted to 1) a lust for power, 2) or to a need for recognition, 3) or to amassing private wealth. Whatever it was, he probably perceived himself to be in danger of losing his “ultimate concern”, what had replaced his God. But here the story takes a sudden and dramatic turn. After hearing God’s warning which I would paraphrase as, “If you will just listen to me, and then do what you know is right, you will be fine. But if you don’t, you’re going to make a mess of your life and you, my child, are going to have to clean up that mess." But we can only assume God’s warning didn’t assuage Cain’s anger, for instead of responding to God, who had gently confronted him, Cain reacts by confronting Abel, not so gently, suggesting they go, “…out into the field…” Cain’s plan has already been decided on and he’s not changing it.
Does that not sound familiar to you? Cain heard that still small voice saying 1) he needed to change his pursuits, 2) or he should be more generous, 3) or maybe re-think the kind of gift he was giving…4) but Cain ignored it and did what we had decided to do in the first place. It’s by remembering my own similar encounters with God that I know Cain’s mind was already made up. It gives me an eerie feeling of déjà vu when I read this—that, as we said last Sunday, Cain’s story is my story. For I, too, have been there (called onto God’s carpet), and done that (continued in disobedience)—and there were always consequences! Surely this is endemic to humankind, for the same thing that has happened to me happened to Cain before me.
But I’ll bet we’ve all be there, haven’t we? We know God’s will, but we rationalize it as being impossible or irrational or, most often, just not realistic. What we really mean, though, at least in most cases, is that God’s will doesn’t jibe with our will. Isn’t that exactly what Cain was saying? “No disrespect intended, Lord, but as far as I can see, I’ll be better off doing what I want, rather than doing what you want." I actually believe that if God came to you and me today, after catching us “with our hand in the cookie jar” so to speak, he would look directly at us and say, “This has now become a problem, and you must overcome it. I’m not going to stop you; you must stop yourself. But remember that I have empowered you to choose rightly.” How do you react to such confrontations—to such God-moments? Must it take a Cain-like disaster to make us re-think our self-centeredness?
One of the truly outstanding Christian writers today on the subject of addictions is one of our own, a United Methodist Minister named Gerald May. With regard to our propensity to willfully ignore God as we make our choices in life, he writes in his book, Addiction and Grace, “…full love for God means we must turn to God over and against other things. If our choice of God is to be made with integrity, we must first have felt other attractions and chosen, painfully, not to make them our gods.” May goes on to say that, “God creates us with our vulnerabilities. And then as we grow through life we are tempted and seduced … and forced to struggle with ourselves, [being] thrust repeatedly back upon our own weaknesses…” This very dance we perform with the God who never seeks another partner turns out to be the “perfect expression of love.” It is God’s gift of “grace, [that] empowers us to choose rightly…but it does not, and will not, determine that choice.” So Cain fell victim to, not what he couldn’t master, but to what he refused to master, not to an innocent tendency to make wrong choices, but to an evil power “lurking at his door.”
Now let’s look at the second part of our story. “And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?" That, my friends, the cynical, "Am I my brother's keeper?", if not THE eternal question, is certainly AN eternal question. We can easily hear the cynicism in Cain’s query, but we, too, ask it, 1) when we turn a blind eye to suffering, 2) every time we take from those who are too powerless to resist, 3) by turning a deaf ear to pleas for help from the “weary and heavy laden,” the ones Jesus invited to “come to [him]”, 4) and each time we choose to keep our abundance, claiming we actually need it to maintain our standing of living, thus robbing those who, unlike us, actually need it for survival. "Am I my brother's keeper?" The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, unequivocally and resoundingly, says, “YES!”
God’s question, “Where is your brother Abel?” is, in itself, most revealing. For if ever there was a question about whether God’s eye is truly on the sparrow, this exchange between God and Cain should provide the answer. Able was missing and God knew it. Yes, our Abel, the forgotten one in the family, Abel the humble laborer, the poor man who failed to “make it” as had his brother. Evidently, the descriptive adjectives, humble, poor and forgotten aren’t the screening tools God uses to separate the “wheat from the chaff”, the valuable from the undesirable, if, indeed that is ever one of God’s objectives. Rather, God actively sought the missing Abel and the fact that he even questioned Cain as to Abel’s whereabouts implies that Abel was not only God’s responsibility, but Cain’s as well. Maybe that means that if we expect to share in God’s glory, we are expected to share in his responsibilities.
Will Willimon, the former Dean of the Duke University Chapel and current Bishop of our own Alabama Conference, recently wrote that, “Any truly Wesleyan vision of the Christian life includes direct, personal, sacrificial encounter with suffering persons—simply collecting money for someone else to work with the poor is not enough.” So let us not fail to notice that God was always aware of Abel, just as he was Cain, and when Abel went missing, God began to search for him. And Abel’s brother was the one God held accountable. By implication, does this not include us, when we suffer, when we fall below the poverty line, when we have crisis’s in our lives, but no less when we are the brother or sister of one who does?
But Cain’s response was to cynically pose a question disparaging God for even daring to ask about his brother’s fate. Haven’t you seen that, someone explodes in anger or cynicism if you even dare to bring up a subject about which they already feel guilty? There are several messages here, but let me pursue this one in closing. Cain wantonly took the life of his brother. But this story is not so much about murder as it is 1) about distancing ourselves from God, 2) about refusing to humble ourselves and listen obediently during the God moments I mentioned earlier, 3) and about giving in to what Gerald May called “other attractions”, the activities that will always be there to pull us away from God as far as possible. Sin truly is, then, 1) more a power than a devil, 2) more the spirit of evil than an evil spirit. But even so, “he has empowered us to make right choices.” For, 1 John 4:4 tells us, “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”
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