“Am
I my brother’s keeper?” It’s a phrase
that has become embedded in society as a renouncement of interpersonal
responsibility. At the heart of Cain and
Abel’s story is the truth of how our worship informs our ethics. If we fail in our worship, in our understanding
of a transcendent and yet imminent God, then surely we will fail in our ethics,
in how we relate to one another as beings that bear the image of that God that
we so misunderstand.
There
is a foreshadowing of the trouble between these most famous of brothers in the
very names that they are given. Qana, the root for Cain, means to “acquire,
get, or possess.” Similarly appropriate
is the meaning of Abel’s name, “vapor, or breath”; a foreshadowing of his fate
at his brother’s hand. A good, though surprising
place to start the story, is worship. If
worship is giving God priority, then one brother fails while the other
succeeds. Abel probably brought the best
portion, the fattest portion desired by God.
Meanwhile, Cain brings “some of the fruits”, with no indication that
these are the first or the best. Cain
comes before God with the leftovers, while Abel makes sure God gets the “pick
of the litter.” Do you see how this was
not just a failure of the moment on Cain’s part? In order to worship properly, Abel had to
allow for God’s priority in his life each day of the week. He planned, dedicating the best of what he
had to God, so that when he comes to the altar, it is the culmination of all
the time leading up to that moment spent in worship. For Cain, on the other hand, worship is an
afterthought. While arriving at the
altar should be the culmination of a week spent in worship, instead it is a
brief interruption when Cain tries to feign obedience to God. Bruce K. Waltke would say, “Cain first fails
at the altar, and because he fails at the altar, he fails in the field. Because he fails in his theology, he will
fail in his ethics…Cain’s sin is tokenism.
He looks religious, but in his heart he is not totally dependent on God,
childlike, or grateful.”
A
truth we seldom recognize is that our worship affects the rest of our lives,
just as the rest of our lives affect our worship. When it comes to sin, we either rule, or are
ruled over. God warns Cain that his
failure at the altar can be compounded if he does not actively master the sin
which seeks to master him. God speaks emphatically;
“you” must master it. Responsibility is
Cain’s and Cain’s alone.
But
Cain isn’t interested in mastering sin.
His interest lies in placing the blame for his own failure at the feet
of his brother. He walks through the
field looking for Cain, just as God had walked through the garden looking for
Adam and Eve. And while God brought
judgment mingled with grace in his meeting with Adam and Eve, Cain brings
unbridled envy and jealousy to his meeting with Abel. Cain stands face to face with his brother,
and just as he had rejected God and His divine counsel, so he now rejects his
brother, Abel who is made in God’s image.
We see in Abel’s murder not just the first homicide, but an attempt to
eradicate God by erasing God’s image found in others. Cain doesn’t just murder Abel, he attempts to
murder God. When confronted by God,
Cain’s first response is to lie. How
many times do we reject the truth by seeking to deny it? When that doesn’t work, we then go back and
refuse to admit that we are responsible.
If we can’t change the facts, we argue that the facts are relevant. Why are you asking me, “Am I my brother’s
keeper?”
The
result of sin is alienation, not only from God but from each other. Sin drives a wedge between us, to the extent
that we fail to recognize the obligation we all have to “be our brother (or
sister’s) keeper.” This is especially
true when our actions negatively impact others.
God seeks to judge our callousness, just as He judged Adam and Eve’s
selfishness. God goes from asking
questions to prosecuting Cain, with Abel’s blood as the star witness. “What have you done?” are chilling words when
coming from a parent or a boss, so they must be deathly frightening when voiced
by God. God punishes Cain, the farmer,
by turning him into a wanderer; he is rootless with no identity or community. The punishment is fourfold: there is a meager
return from the soil, Cain is hidden from God’s face, he must live as a nomad,
and there is a constant danger of being killed.
In a morbidly ironic twist, Cain fears that none will be “his
keeper”. The murderer fears death.
We
see in Cain all the things that we hate in our own society: violence, jealousy,
and deceit. We also see in Cain our own
possible future, for sin lurks at the door seeking to master us as surely as it
sought to master Cain. It’s comforting
to know that even someone like Cain, judged and condemned by God, is also a
recipient of God’s grace. Cain leaves
God’s presence, but not His protection.
Walter Brueggemann would observe that, “the killer has no resources of
his own but must cast himself upon the mercy of the life-giver…The
acknowledgement of guilt and the
reality of grace come together in
this presentation.”
There is grace as well for those touched by Cain’s
violently sinful act. While Eve says “I
have gotten a man with the help of the Lord” when Cain is born, she attributes
the work to God by when Seth is born saying, “God has appointed for me another
offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” Eve sees God as entering the midst of
tragedy, all the while shining the light of hope into the darkness. In turn, Seth himself has a child and names
him “Enosh”, meaning “weakness”. Nahum
Sarna would say that, “it is the consciousness of human frailty, symbolized by
the name Enosh, that heightens man’s awareness of utter dependence upon God, a
situation that intuitively evokes prayer.”
The whole cycle of envy and violence brings much sorrow, but it also
brings recognition that man is dependent on God. Ever since that fateful day in the field, humankind
has sought to restore the peace that was shattered when man first shed another
man’s blood. May the coming of our
Lord’s kingdom restore not only humanity’s peace with God, but also our peace
with one another.
“Behold,
how good and pleasant it is
when
brothers dwell in unity!
It
is like the precious oil on the head,
running
down on the beard,
on
the beard of Aaron,
running
down on the collar of his robes!
It
is like the dew of Hermon,
which
falls on the mountains of Zion!
For
there the LORD has commanded the blessing,
life
forevermore.”
-
Psalm
133
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