The Mark of Cain
A Sermon for Prairie Crossing Unitarian
Universalist Congregation
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Rev. Clare Butterfield
Reading: Genesis 4:1-16
Now the man knew his wife Eve and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, "I have produced a man with the help of the Lord." Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. The Lord said 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."
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, "No 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.
Sermon:
Everything is connected. Let's start there, with this perplexing little story from one of the oldest parts of Hebrew Scripture. I used it today because today is a confluence of various recent events that could be important to those of us who are trying to live religious and ethical lives. This is veteran's day weekend, and I'm mindful of that. Some of you probably celebrate that holiday rather personally, don't you? I wish you a good one.
Veterans Day during a war is a particularly loaded combination. Those of us who are old enough to remember how hard the Vietnam protests were on veterans want to make sure we don't do that again to people who have, in good faith and with courage we're not certain we possess, served our country in the armed forces.
On the other hand, in case you weren't sure, I do not support this war myself. Of course I'm in the majority there, but I didn't support it from the beginning - didn't understand what it had to do with a terrible attack on civilians in New York by people who were apparently mostly from Saudi Arabia, have thought for a long time that we've made circumstances that were difficult for people already much worse by our military presence, and have suspected from the get-go that there was more to do with the oil supply than the so-called "war on terrorism" in the decision-making here. That's my bias, and it will be evident as we go along, so I thought I'd just get it out on the table to begin with.
But we find ourselves in conversation these days with worried parents, where we don't expect them. Looking at a new office space for Faith in Place the other day, the realtor had a West Point sticker on his window. Turns out it was for his son, who is in Kuwait and about to move into Iraq, where he will be for a year. What can we say in response but that we hope he comes home soon? That realtor and I may disagree rather strongly on the war - I have no idea if we do or not. We agree, however, that his son's life is precious, and we hope (I less fervently than he) that his son retains it for many years yet.
There are probably some parents here of children in that war - I don't know you all well enough yet to know whether there are. There are enough young people over there that some of them must be related to some of you. May they all come home healthy and soon.
But everything is connected. I'm sure that's one of the points of this story. Everything is connected and everything is strangely bound to the earth. Abel's blood cries out from the ground - and God hears it. And Cain is cursed from the ground - his penalty for violence is alienation from the ground.
God is a strangely small and arbitrary figure in this story, as he is in some of the other of the most ancient Hebrew texts - clearly this is a God who walks the earth, doesn't know everything that's going on and competes for loyalty with other gods. It was that kind of time. But why should he so arbitrarily prefer the offerings of the flock from the offerings of the field? There is no justification for this other than the general emphasis among the early Hebrew people on blood sacrifice, perhaps initially human (the story of Abraham & Isaac is another troubling tale in Genesis) and then animal. Blood for blood is a disturbing human practice, so it's not surprising that it shows up in the gods that humans worship. There's nothing in the text to suggest anything except that Cain and Abel are pursuing the livelihoods assigned to them.
This is also a story about birthrights and reversal, which is another common motif in early Hebrew Scripture. Cain is the firstborn. He should enjoy the preference of God. But God prefers his brother Abel. He responds with jealousy, with rage, with duplicity and ultimately with violence. How sadly human that is.
So why talk about this story today? Because it's Veteran's Day weekend. Because we are at war, and because we just held an election which appears to be rather soundly repudiating that war. Because we have to have the courage to continue the work we have started by that election, and I think this story is instructive to us in some ways about the job ahead and about what, exactly, it is that we're struggling with.
The relationships in the Cain and Abel story are adolescent relationships. There are the two jealous brothers (or at least one jealous brother - we're not sure what Abel has to say about any of this), and the bad and arbitrary Dad figure who chooses one over the other for no good reason.
Why tell the story this way? It strikes me that it's not to make any deeply theological point about the nature of God, except the point that Genesis frequently makes, that ours is not to question the mysterious ways of God. I think it's as likely that the arbitrary preference of one over the other is simply a way to explain the anger of the character Cain - to bring him to the point of violence, which is what the story is really about - the first act of violence in the world.
God is not blameworthy in the way the story is told. Our imputation of blame to him - of the accusation of being arbitrary and unjust - is a modern reader's import into the ancient story.
This is an origin story. It explains the origin of violence. And it comes right after the story that explains the origin of disobedience which resulted in the expulsion of Adam & Eve from the garden, and which resulted in the birth of Cain & Abel to begin with. There are more subtle readings we could give each of these stories, but they are in fact pretty early storytelling and not terribly subtle.
So here, in this story we go disobedience one better. We take the misbehavior of following our own desires to the point of violence against another person. And not just another person, but Cain's own brother. And not just violence, but violence unto death - an uncorrectable action.
This is a case where the violence is clearly unjustified, exposed, and, oddly enough, forgiven. Cain is marked by his deed, and there is no hiding it even from this oddly unpowerful God, but he is also marked by God to protect him as he goes into the world a known murderer.
This is also a tribal story, of course. Cain is a special ancestor - he bears the mark of God's favor. And how he had descendants is one of those dangling little facts of the ancient scripture - he leaves his home and goes East of Eden to the land of Nod where he marries and has children. We lose track of his descendants at this point - the line that gets traced in ensuing chapters is traced back to Adam & Eve and their later-born children. But who were those other people from whom Cain selected his wife? Up to this point we've only heard about Adam & Eve (and that other creation story which is less specific about which humans are created). Seriously, isn't the Bible fun?
This story is the first story about our violence as humans. It tells us that our violence in this case was certainly not justified - it grew out of anger, jealousy and cowardice. Which is a rather sophisticated analysis of where violence in humans often comes from, in my view. But what does it have to say to us now?
I doubt that our essential nature has changed all that much since this story was written. And one of the ways in which we are now violent in a more organized fashion, is through war.
What does this story have to tell us about the war?
We could play with the symbolism of jealousy and the presumptive rights of the firstborn - the anger that one feels when someone else gets a sign of favor that we feel entitled to ourselves. What, just for purposes of argument, if the possession of large amounts of oil were a sign of God's favor, and what if it were inappropriately bestowed upon the followers of the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, instead of the followers of some other prophet, perceived to be preferable? Might a government respond in adolescent fashion, with anger and jealousy?
What if the war were, in some part, a proxy battle between Christianity and Islam - a battle between the firstborn faith and the second.
I know that's a disturbing idea. But I think this story and the other stories of scripture are useful to us in that they hold up a special kind of mirror to our actions - and raise the possibility of such disturbing ideas. They make us ask if we're acting as we should.
You may have heard about a recent study by two
epidemiologists from the Johns Hopkins school of public health attempting to
estimate the number of civilian deaths in Iraq since March 2003 and July 2006.
Their study, which used standard epidemiological methodology and house-to-house
surveys of over 7000 families, concluded that there were at least 650,000
additional deaths of civilians in this period, 90% of which were caused by
violence. Perhaps a third of these were caused by violence by our side, the rest
by the internal struggles of the various warring groups in Iraq.
Numbers are a dangerous game in a moral analysis - we can't really take the
position that 600,000 lives lost are more important than 100,000 lives lost - we
don't want to diminish the value or dignity of any life.
But this was careful research, cautiously announced in a responsible way. And even if it's off by a third or a half, it suggests a staggering reality unleashed by our actions.
The blood of our brother cries out to God from the ground.
This outcry leaves us with two hard and ugly questions. Is war ever justified, and can this war be justified.
The notion of a just war is one that has its origin with St. Augustine, that wonderful 5th century theologian. In his view a war could be waged only to avenge a wrong inflicted by a nation against the nation waging the war. This idea was refined in the middle ages to distinguish between defensive and offensive wars. Defensive wars can only be fought on ones own territory after being attacked, and are therefore just. Offensive wars, on the other hand, are subject to a just war analysis.
In the case of our war on Iraq, we are clearly in the offensive territory - the fight is far from home. As a just war it would have to be in response to an act of aggression by the nation being subjected to our attack. And though attempts were made, that worked for a while, to link Iraq to the 9/11 attack, all parties since have acknowledged that they were not involved in it.
Therefore this particular war doesn't meet the test.
So is war ever justified?
Many of us will hold very different views on that question. I can only disclose to you my struggle. I frankly doubt that I'm a pacifist, at least in theory. When people were dying in the Balkans, in Rwanda, in Darfur, I was wondering where the army was.
But over time I think what I've come to favor is an international version of a police force. One that is well-regulated and empowered through international authority to act when the integrity of the body of a people is threatened and not otherwise.
The reason that I believe that we might sometimes allow for violent intervention within the borders of another nation has to do with time. Every human action must be ethically analyzed not only for its short-term but also for its long-term effects. Where integrity of the body is threatened to such a degree that there is no long term without intervention, intervention may be permissible. Probably even then there are some pretty hard judgments to be made - such as the likelihood that intervention will actually improve the situation.
If the most basic analysis tells you that more will die by acting than by not acting, then you probably ought to do nothing. That analysis was fairly foreseeable in the case of this war, and whatever subsequent analysis you believe on civilian deaths, clearly more have died than would have done, even had Saddam Hussein remained in power. We have done great harm here. We have sown the wind and we will harvest the whirlwind.
Police have stand-offs with armed people who take hostages and international police can surround a nation economically. It works very badly but I think recent history tells us that it works less badly than war usually does.
I'm afraid that these days I'm disposed to think that war is more justifiable in theory than in practice. The way that we fight them now makes it particularly hard to make appropriate ethical decisions. We have a recent historical tendency to make claims about the efficacy of air wars which allow a certain carelessness in decision making - because all the losses will presumably be on the other side. Of course there will also be more of those - the myth of the surgical strike is just that. Perhaps one ethical threshold for intervention is that if it isn't worth the lives of our own sons and daughters then it isn't worth the lives of those of other people either.
And of course, when we do send in ground forces there are currently economic factors at work that prevent the children of the decision makers from being included in the pool at risk, for the most part. We should probably never intervene militarily without a draft that subjects every child equally to the likelihood of military service.
I say this as the mother of a 20-year old son, so
you know I do not come to this conclusion lightly or happily.
I don't think I'm a pacifist, but it's pretty hard to be happy with the way war
has worked out in practice in the last 20 years or so. Weapons are more intense
and the risk to our own children has been minimized after all that bad publicity
in Vietnam. Decisions cannot be made properly when the costs are so out of
balance.
They can also not be made properly where they are viewed as economic decisions rather than moral ones. Where the decision-makers profit from the war and can view it as an economic positive for the country it is not possible to make a morally appropriate decision. This one was not made properly and we have to say this. On Tuesday we did say it. I believe we have to go on saying it, until our troops come home.
Our departure will unleash a greater disaster whether we go now or five years from now. But later gives us more time to create more people with good reasons to hate us.
That's where we are, and as people trying to be ethical we have to say so.
The mark of Cain, as it turns out, is the mark of fear - and the mark of violence against the other based on fear. Fear and jealousy and the idea that someone else is getting something that is really due to you.
And yet everything that is here belongs to all of us, and especially to our children. Ethical decisions always privilege the future over the present. The future is much worse because of the decisions our nation has recently made. We have much to atone for, and lessons to learn for the future.
This is not in any way to criticize the young men & women who were told by their government to go and went. May they all come home soundly and soon.
The mark of Cain lurks in all our ancestry. The blood of our brother cries out from the ground. And we ask, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and even as the words leave our lips, we know. We know.
Amen.