Sun 23 Sept Sermon: A tale of two brothers - Cain and Abel

Continuing our journey through some of the stories in the Book of Genesis:
today we meet Cain and Abel.

READINGS: Genesis 4:1-16; Genesis 4:17-25;
Leviticus 19:15-18

SERMON ‘A tale of two brothers’
Let’s pray: May the words of my mouth, and the thoughts 
of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, 
O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

What is it about siblings, about families,
that has the capacity to somehow make you lose the plot completely?
It’s a two-edged sword to be known so well:
there’s the comfort of belonging,
but, there’s discomfort too:
of those closest to you knowing just which buttons will produce a certain response.

Last week, we saw the end to humans living in the paradise that was Eden:
choosing to eat of the forbidden fruit,
choosing to cover themselves up
and cover up what they’d done.
The story tells us that these first humans were sent away:
choices have consequences.
For its early hearers, the story was a way of explaining why life can be hard at times.

This morning, we’ve moved on to the next instalment of the story.
Humans are now beginning to learn how to live outside of Eden –
to work the land,
to raise a family,
navigate their way in the world.
So we’re told that, in the course of time, Adam and Eve became parents to sons:
Cain and Abel –
and some Biblical scholars suggest that, the way the text reads, these two brothers are twins.
The story doesn’t mess about –
we move straight from their birth to when they have grown old enough to work.
Both are farmers.
Cain, like his father before him, is a tiller of soil.
He grows crops.
Abel keeps animals.

At some point, Cain sees fit to make an offering to God,
and so, brings a portion of his crops.
As we know, Abel also does this, bringing the best, choicest of cuts
from some of the firstborn of the flock.
And a weird thing happens:
God doesn’t seem to get particularly excited about Cain’s crops.
Abel’s offering is preferred.
Why?
Has God got something against vegetarians?
Possibly not.
However, there have been many convoluted and torturous explanations for why God
seemed to prefer one to the other.
Most of them revolve around the attitude of mind and heart.
Abel gave of the very best to God –
put God first by offering to God the very best he had...
Cain, it’s been suggested, did make an offering,
but it was done probably because he thought he should have,
and, he didn’t offer the best:
Cain’s attitude was one of holding back the really good stuff for himself,
and giving God the leftovers.
Okay.
It sounds plausible enough.
But:
Nowhere in the passage does it even begin to say anything of the kind.
There’s absolutely no reason given as to why God prefers one offering over the other
Something else is going on here.
And, to put it mildly, Cain is not best pleased with God’s reaction.

Back in the day, the comedian, Harry Enfield, used to portray a teenager called ‘Kevin’.
Kevin hid behind his long hair,
was pretty moody,
and spoke very little –
about the only time he’d respond to his mother was to complain using his catch-phrase:
‘That’s so unfair!’
In our story of two brothers, Cain’s gone a wee bit ‘Kevin’ in his response to God:
he’s very angry, and is having a right good sulk.
It’s not fair at all, thinks Cain.
But, life out of Eden isn’t fair.
Life is harder.
There’ll be harvests of stones and thistles;
what’s gathered will be through sweat of the brow and solid grafting.
Childbirth will be painful.
Eden was easy.
Out of Eden, you have to work at life,
and, even when you do,
there’s no guarantee that all your ducks are going to end up all nicely lined up in a row.
So, if the lesson in Eden was that relationships require honesty, transparency,
and that choices have consequences,
here, out of Eden,
we find a more brutal version of that.
‘Do what is right,’ says God,
‘sin is crouching at your door...
it wants to be your master:
you must master it.’

Out of Eden, when the odds seem stacked against you, how will you choose to cope?
That seems to be the question underlying our story in Genesis this morning.
And, the measure by which you manage,
is the measure of your character...
And the decisions you make, as you try to steer your way though life
aren’t just decisions which will affect you:
they impact upon the lives of others.
We're connected.
As the poet, John Donne, observed:
‘No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.'   ...
Later he says:
‘Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.’

Cain has a choice:
to focus on the niggling sense of unfairness;
to let it seep into the fibre of his being so that,
like the fruit in the garden that his parents ate,
he can focus on nothing else.
‘That’s so unfair!’
And the unfairness whispers into his soul,
just like the voice of the snake whispered in the Garden...
and a choice is made:
not to shake it off and ask God to show him how to follow
more closely in God’s ways –
how to better walk with God ...
no, Cain’s all focused upon himself –
his pride’s taken a battering;
he hunkers down in his humiliation and revels in it,
and lets it become his master,
lets it direct his next course of action,
which is very definitely not to do the right thing.
He makes a catastrophic choice, which not only changes his life, but the lives of his family.
Unable to take his anger out on God,
he takes it out on the one who, in his mind, has been chosen as God’s favourite.
He takes his brother out to the field and there,
unleashes all that rage and pain, and jealous fury.
The ground is stained red with Abel’s blood.
Cain chooses death.

In a documentary about people who kill others,
a police psychologist observed that the primary cause of
the majority of murders was...humiliation.
You can see it at play here in the story of Cain, the first murderer.
The psychologist said that, for the murderer,
the only way to overcome the humiliation –
the loss of face –
was to strike out and kill, as a way of regaining the sense of self-status.
Cain can’t kill God,
but he can sure as heck kill his upstart brother,
who caused the whole situation in the first place.
In response to living in a world broken after Eden,
a world where life is not necessarily fair,
Cain seeks to rectify it with a chilling finality.
The choice destroys Abel, and destroys the family.
And, interestingly for those who would make arguments for the death penalty:
although God could choose to kill Cain,
on the basis a life for a life,
that’s not what happens.
Cain is spared.
Spared, but not unpunished.
He is sent away from his family, to be an exile forever...
is marked –
so that none kill him,
even though he, at times, might think it better to die
than to live with the stain and stigma of his brother’s death.
As a song by the Eurythmics puts it:
‘dying is easy, it’s living that’s hard.’

What do we take from this brutal, bloody story – the story of the first murder?
This tale of two brothers?
Well there’s an obvious one:
please don’t kill people!
But beyond the obvious?
What choices are we going to make as we find our way in the world?
When things don’t go our way,
when things go wrong,
when the harvest is poor,
when loved ones die,
when others hurt us in some way...?
Do we allow ourselves, a little like Cain, to let circumstances turn our focus
inward in such a way that we can no longer see God’s way?
Do we let it niggle, rather than nip it in the bud.
Do we open the door a little, and, in so doing,
let sin whisper in our ears and poison our hearts and minds so that the wound festers?
Do we get caught up in our need to retaliate,
rather than our need to choose another way –
to break away from a cycle of wrong choices that not only hurt ourselves, but the lives of others?
Here’s a small but powerful one –
remember the old saying:
‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me?’
Well, that’s nonsense.
Because it does hurt.
Bones might not be broken,
but a small part of someone’s soul can feel diminished – especially if it’s an ongoing thing.
When we’re angry, while we might not lash out and kill our brother, our sister, our neighbour,
we might strike them down with words.

What’s the right way – the better way?
Instead of choosing to turn in on ourselves,
of hunkering down in our humiliation and hurt,
choose God:
give the hurt to him.
Prayer is a great way of working through things:
as you pray, often, situations clarify themselves in your mind...
you see the reality of a thing,
the way you’re responding.
And in the giving of it to God,
you begin to let it go,
to let God deal with it,
to find your self-worth, and status in him,
as his beloved Child.
Hunker down in God’s love,
let God be your foundation,
your focus,
give the mess,
the sense of unfairness,
even the humiliation and hurt pride to God.

Cain chose to let his rage master him.
Cain chose to open the door to sin with horrifying consequences.
Cain chose to serve his need for revenge, rather that to love God, and love his brother.
Cain...chose death.
Every day, we make choices.
And every day, there are times we make mistakes.
Choose to trust in God’s grace, God’s mercy.
As God’s people, do what is right in God’s eyes:
choose to love God;
choose to love your brothers and sisters, your neighbours.
Are we our brother’s, our sister’s keeper?
Yes.
And because we are,
this day, every day, unlike Cain,
we.... choose... life. Amen.