Land Sunday
Genesis 3:14-19, 4:8-16
Psalm 139:7-12
Romans 5:12-17
Matthew 12:38-40
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. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said, “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.” Cain said to the Lord, “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.” 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. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
It’s hard to find a family history that isn’t in some way messy. As they say, “Shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall.” If we look back into our family’s past we can often find a “black sheep,” sibling rivalry that never was reconciled, a stubborn parent or a cousin who is always drifting. After all, come on, no matter whose family we come from there’s no doubt our ancestors had “bad heir” days once and a while...or some lifeguard was not on duty at the “gene pool.”
We all carry baggage with us wherever we’ve come from, whether our family story descends from complicated European royalty, or a simple dream of a better life that came through Ellis Island.
It’s no surprise then that the story of the first human family is not without its warts and exposed rough patches. It’s a story of fallen, dishonored and broken relationships all around--between each other, between God, and even with the land. We look back at their story and say, how did God possibly work to bless the world through that family?--even as in the same breath we wonder the same question about our own family, “How could God possibly be at work...with what we've been through, and through what's happened in our past?”
The story of Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve’s first children, is the epitome of sabotage rearing its ugly head in a family system. Eve set up Cain for a fall from grace with the words she said as soon as he was born: “I have produced a man with the help of the Lord.” (4:1) Eve essentially calls him god-like, a “man as Yahweh”, the epitome of a strong, dominating first-born male. Abel’s birth doesn’t get any such praise. Genesis merely states the fact that he’s born. His own name gives him hardly anything to stand on--Abel means “vapor, nothingness, meaningless”. No fewer than seven times in the story does it say that Abel was Cain's brother--but never the other way around. Abel is never mentioned on his own merits. It’s clear who ranked ahead of the other brother.
Cain’s higher status even affected his offerings to God. He brought some fruit from the ground he was to tend to which were probably left-overs. But Abel brings the first animals of his flock of sheep for an offering--the best, the first creatures, given from God who made them and to whom they belonged. Is it then any wonder that God favors Abel's offering over Cains, the weak one, the “meaningless one”, who only has any meaning at all in his family because he is related to his brother? God began to show what is the hallmark of how God works in us--through recognition of the small and neglected ones.
Cain is so disconnected from Abel, so far “above” him, he does not even refer to him as his brother until after he has jealously murdered him. God asked, “Where is Abel, Cain?” and he replied, “What, am I my brother’s keeper?” God could have wreaked vengeance upon Cain, but instead chose to freely send him away from the land he had fed with his brother's blood, instead of seeds.
That’s usually where the story ends when it is told—even though it continues for the remainder of Genesis chapter four, a part which is omitted from today’s first reading. But the rest of the story shows that this is actually a family story that doesn’t end with this game of hunting a “forebear”. If we just look at that crisis--the relationship between Cain and Abel--we miss the larger story of God telling a story of redemption, grace and resurrection that begins with this first family, and reaches all the way to our own.
The seven generations that follow Cain--none of them were farmers. No one took care of the land that had been entrusted to Cain. By the time his ancestor Lamech came along, Lamech was saying things like “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.” (4:23-24) The same story of Cain and Abel was continuing to become the family mantra. But during all this time, Eve was watching. She saw what happened as a result of this hierarchy that had been set up between her sons. She saw what became as a result of the male who had taken the same kind of fall that she had when she ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree. It couldn’t go on like this. It had to stop. And God found a way to interrupt the way of violence with the way of grace. Adam and Eve birthed new life.
They birthed a son named Seth. This time Eve did not just speak about Abel, that forgotten, humble, servant-son. She spoke on his behalf, saying, “God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel.” Seth’s birth was their redemption, resurrection and new life, all rolled into one. Seth, which means “survival of the unfit”, became grace for this family that had thus far seen hierarchy creating death. With this new birth, the relationship of humanity with God was restored as Genesis recalls that God then was worshiped as the one to whom all were subject to. The relationship between humanity and the Earth was restored: the soil that had been filled with Abel’s blood had now been redeemed with the seeds of one born in his stead. The relationship of this first family and our ancestors was also restored. Thanks be to God that Seth is our ancestor, rather than Cain, for as Seth’s name testifies, God’s providence works even through families with checkered pasts, who are unfit—even through us who thrive but only for the new life given to us by God.
How is such a story of a second chance, and redemption possible? How can God continue to make way for us to rekindle our connection with one another and creation? The answer, I believe, lies hidden in the question that Cain asks God when God comes to him after Abel's murder. Cain asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Within this question is a deeper question: who are our brother and sister? Are we their keeper? We are, because we have been kept by the One who keeps us all--by God, whose keeping of us draws us closer in relationship, to God, to one another and to all Creation. Even going back to Adam, Eve and Seth, God “keeps” us as children. God does not have grandchildren. God only has children. For just because our parents were people of faith does not make it necessarily so for us. God adopts each of us, each successive generation, to keep us as children, no matter what birth order, or hierarchy, or earthly rank we want to impose on each other. We are our brother’s and sister’s keeper because God has made all of us brothers and sisters, every one--even with brother moon and sister stars, brother creatures and sister land. Here at United Lutheran we are one another's keeper—even across hierarchies of age, class and ethnicity—even between someone like Sam Richardson who can call a newborn baby like John Podolak a brother in this place!
On this day when we recall our brokenness that was exposed on 9/11, and the mix of emotions that still flood us ten years later, has the human family system siezed this opportunity to expand who we see as our brother and sister? Has it made us more interconnected with those brothers and sisters of our country and of our world who are different from us--or has it insulated us in reactive, fearful isolation?
With Adam and Eve who gave birth to Seth, we can be the answers to our prayers for peace, reconciliation and wholeness in the human family that we lift up this day. We too can dismantle the hierarchies in the world that keep our kinship anything other than as brother and sister. For that is how God manages to continue working God’s way of grace through a human family as messy and as quirky as us. We carry with us the promise this day that no matter how many strikes our family history puts against us, from the very beginning, God has left no family system beyond redemption, nor from claiming us as keepers of one another as the brothers and sisters God has made us.
Amen.
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