For today’s message we are going back to the earliest moments in human history to look at one of the most basic issues in human life. We are looking at the way we feel about differences, and what we do about that feeling.
The Book of Genesis, in its opening stories, teaches us about what it means when men rise up against one another and do violence. That probes the deepest and most convoluted corners of the human heart. Our Scripture contains that haunting question, "Am I my brother’s keeper?" And it speaks about marked men, people on whom some curse has fallen. Our Scripture is about us and what we do to each other, because of differences.
Human history puts some tough questions to us. It asks how it could be that a Christian people, a people who had lived with the good news all their lives, some of whom had even given themselves to Christian missions ... how could it be that these same people would entrap and enslave Africans, treat these slaves with utter disrespect, break up their families, and justify it all with the Bible? How could that be? And yet it was. It happened. In our own nation.
History asks, too, how it could be that a people who first heard the gospel more than a thousand years ago, a people who had given the world the finest music, the most sophisticated philosophy, an extraordinary science, some of the world’s greatest Biblical scholars ... how could it be that Germany would entrap and enslave Jews, treat them with sheer contempt, break up their families, put them into concentration camps, and justify it all in the name of achieving a master race? How could this be? And yet it was. It happened. In our century and within the memory of many of us.
History’s question is contemporary, too. How can it be today that well-meaning people, people who have fought for good causes, people we have looked up to, people who have themselves suffered the slings and arrows of prejudice ... how can it be that today such people will blindly blame whole groups for the problems of our society? How can it be that today some will lash out emotionally, at others? How can this be? And yet it is. It happens. It happened just the other day in the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, when a congresswoman’s father cried out about what he called "racist Jews." It happened a year ago in the rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan, tracing everything that’s wrong with us, and there is plenty of it, but tracing it all to Christians, to Jews, to whites, to Asians, and so forth. It happens in the snarling laughter of the fashionable, who put down ordinary, hard-working folks as "bubbas"; it happens in the beer halls and bowling alleys of the working folks, who think that everybody with a college degree is an effete snob! It happens in the churches. Last week, after I found we had a Catholic priest worshipping with us, I sort of checked my memory to see whether I had said anything that might have been offensive or insulting to him; it’s so easy to do! We seem to be incurable name-callers, we are wrapped up in putting one another down.
The ancient story of Cain answers some questions about all of this. Why does prejudice happen? What are we going to do about it? And, most important, what is God’s response to it?
I
First, why does prejudice happen? Where does group hatred come from? When we speak out or reach out to harm someone else, we do this out of fear. Violence comes out of fear and insecurity. Hatred and prejudice are born when we are afraid that someone else is going to get ahead of us, someone else is going to take what we have.
"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 not regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. ... And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him."
Cain killed his brother Abel because Cain was anxious, Cain was fearful. Cain saw his own place eroding, he felt his brother taking over from him, and so Cain hated his brother and killed him.
As I see it, there is the root of violence, there is the source of disrespect. Fear. Anxiety. That deep down thing that is afraid that we are going to lose our place, our supremacy. And so we lash out in blind antagonism against those we think are the threat.
Now most of the time they don’t really threaten us at all. They would enhance our lives, not lessen us, if we would allow it. For someone else to get ahead in life does not mean that I fall backward. But that’s hard to see for many of us. That’s hard to accept.
Cain thought that he was losing out because God had looked with favor on Abel’s gift. But God assured Cain that he too could find favor, he too could be accepted. "If you do well, will your offering also not be accepted?" But that seething rage, that searing fear, that shattering anxiety, drove Cain to violence.
Margaret and I spent a Sabbath afternoon at Buchenwald in Germany a few weeks ago. We looked out on a place where at least 67,000 people were exterminated. Those who were already sick or elderly or otherwise unfit were marched straight into the gas chambers, their bodies then shoveled into the incinerators. Others who were healthier were given a semblance of life for a while, but were used for experiments -barbaric surgery, genetic manipulation, all of it in the most degrading circumstances, and all of it duly recorded in painfully minute detail. Why were they there? They were different, and they could be blamed for Germany’s problems. Who were they? They were Jews or Jehovah’s Witnesses, they were gypsies or homosexuals. They were different.
They were feared. So Cain slew Abel, out of fear. This is what anxiety does.
II
So what is to be done? What do we do in a world where hatred spews out so freely and where names like "nigger" and "Jew boy" and "spic" and "honky" flow out like hot volcanic lava, from hearts filled with fear? What is the answer when people are so afraid of one another that they cannot even contain the crude jokes and the insulting language? By the way, I know a little something about crude jokes and insulting language. It’s really interesting to be a member of one racial group, but deeply involved with another one, and to get a chance to hear what each one says about the other, when they think nobody’s listening. Last time I checked, I am still white. That means that in some groups, it’s assumed that it’s OK to say those words and tell those jokes around me. I’m one of them. But there are also some groups in which I either have been or still am the only white person, and sometimes they forget, and they assume it’s OK to say those other words and tell those other jokes around me! It turns out that racism is everybody’s dirty little secret!
Well, what is the answer? I want to suggest that Cain was headed in the right direction, but he just didn’t go far enough. Cain raised the right question, but with a sarcastic sting in it, and he didn’t go far enough.
"Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" He said, "I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?"
What a sneer in his voice, as I imagine it, "Am I my brother’s keeper?" Well, that’s a start. But it’s not far enough. There is a deeper way to think about it. For God says, "Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!" God says, "I want a better answer than that."
Let me tell you a true story about the better answer. Robert Hingson is a physician, an anesthesiologist, working out of Pittsburgh. A Baptist layman, he got interested in the plight of the diseased peoples of the world. He found out that thousands of the world’s children are dying from a host of contagious diseases. So Bob Hingson coaxed some money out of his colleagues in the medical profession, he talked some pharmaceutical manufacturers out of a supply of vaccine, and went off to Central America to inoculate children against some of the diseases that were taking their lives.
But Dr. Hingson found out that as soon as he set up shop and got the word out that he could keep people from having all this illness, they lined up by the hundreds and the thousands to receive treatment. He found that he and his one or two helpers could have vaccinated people twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, in an endless line, and still the task would not have been finished. And so Bob Hingson came back to Pittsburgh with a burden on his heart and an idea in his mind. He got together with some of his physicist friends, and they developed a high speed, high pressure inoculator, a kind of jet gun, so that a person can just bare his arm, and with one high pressure squirt instead of the usual needle, several different vaccines can go in simultaneously. Doesn’t even break the skin. Something like one thousand people an hour can be vaccinated with one of these! Now Dr. Hingson and his helpers could go anywhere in the world, set up with what he calls the "Peace Gun" and "shoot" thousands of people with health, not with death. In nearly forty years of work, it’s estimated that this one man’s efforts have immunized ten million people. Some nations have had diseases wholly eradicated, just from the efforts of this one man, this Baptist layman, Robert Hingson.
But now here’s why I think of him. Here’s why I mention him. Like anybody would have to do, in order to do this task in an orderly way, and so that he could receive financial support, he set up a non-profit foundation. It was called "My Brother’s Keeper." You know exactly where he got that name. "My Brother’s Keeper" But a Nigerian student challenged him, "We don’t need a keeper; we need a brother." Bob Hingson recognized immediately what was at stake; he changed the name. No longer is his group called, "My Brother’s Keeper". Now it is the "Brother’s Brother Foundation". The Brother’s Brother Foundation.
No, Cain, you are not your brother’s keeper. You are your brother’s brother. You are tied to him, you have the same father, you are equals, you must respect each other. But you have something to give to your brother at the point of his need. You have something you can share with your brother, but first you have to be sure you know you are his brother. No, we are not our brother’s keepers, making decisions for others and trying to run their lives. We are our brother’s brothers, and sisters, too, and we have something to share. Our brother’s blood is crying out to us from the ground, and it is not enough just to rid ourselves of prejudice. It is not enough just to purify our own hearts. It is certainly not enough just to be politically correct. We need to be doing something definite. We need to be doing something positive. We need to be helping where help is needed, to be a brother and a sister where there is illness or starvation or ignorance or poverty.
What is to be the answer to anxiety? Get up close. Use what we have. Be our brother’s brothers, not our brothers’ keepers.
III
And what about God? What is God’s response to all of this? What will God be doing in a world where fear abounds and anxiety has taken over, a world where people point fingers at one another, and worse?
There’s something fearful in this text, but, if you look at it closely, you find out it’s a blessing too. God’s response to Cain, Cain the persecutor, Cain the murderer, is to set him wandering and put a mark on him. Cain is destined to wander forever, having no home. Cain reminds me of a church I know, founded out in Prince George’s County thirty years ago by people who were running from the District and its people. And now, in the 1990’s, the population has shifted again, and these same folks are leaving that church and running off to other churches, farther out. Wanderers, when we let fear take us over!
But Cain the wanderer is to be marked as a sign for others. He is a marked man. But I say that if you read this text closely, in the curse placed on Cain, in the mark made against him, there is a hidden blessing. There is an avenue of grace. For it says that the "Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him." The mark protected Cain against those who would take vengeance on him.
I think that means there is still grace for all of us, and for our time. God has marked us, we are marked men, we are a generation of people who have inherited the results of hatred and fear. But God is giving us another chance. God is protecting us, and is giving us another chance.
What is God’s response to us in a world in which prejudice and distrust still abound?
As Christians, we believe that God’s response comes in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. As Christians, we believe that in Jesus Christ God tells us that He loves us, He accepts us. We do not have to fear that we are unacceptable. We are, red and yellow, black and white, precious in His sight. Just as we are, He accepts us.
As followers of Christ, we believe that God’s response comes in Jesus, and most especially in the cross. In the cross, Jesus bore in His own body the curse of violence and the sting of hatred. We can scarcely explain it, but we believe that God has made Him who knew no sin, to be sin for us, and that He has borne in His body the marks for our sins. We believe that all we like sheep have gone astray, that we have turned every one into his own way, but that the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. And with His stripes, His marks, we are healed. We believe that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, and freely gave himself up for us all, so that we can be joint heirs with him of all the grace of life.
As believers in Christ, we not only believe that God’s response comes in Jesus, through whom He tells us of His love and acceptance. We not only believe that God’s response comes in the cross of Christ, where He took into Himself the mark of Cain, the curse of sin. We also believe in the living, risen Christ, in the one who burst forth from the tomb of death, and who cries out, "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." We follow the risen Christ, marked men as we are, having felt hatred, having let anxiety take us over, having all too often ignored our brothers’ needs. But we follow Him as marked men, knowing that, like Cain, we need to be forgiven. Knowing that because of Him and His risen life, someday all nations will come together; some day all men and women, marked though they are, will come and sing the praises of their creator. We follow the risen Christ in sure and certain hope.
Despite hatred, hope. Despite, prejudice, hope. Despite death, hope. Hope. There is a professor at Howard University Divinity School, a teacher and scholar, with an unusual name. A name that tells this very story. The distinguished professor of New Testament, the author of the book Troubling Biblical Waters, is named Cain Hope Felder. Cain Hope Felder. Dr. Felder tells his own story: a young man who never knew his father, who grew up on the seamy side of the street, a young man whose family has been shattered by violence and devastated by crime. How could such a young man enter the Christian ministry and teach New Testament in a seminary? How else except that, though he bears the mark and the name of Cain, the curse, he also is claimed by Christ and therefore shot through and through with hope? His name utters the promise: Cain - hope. Cain, yes, but hope too. Grace. Possibility, even for marked men.
"You are not your own. You are bought with a price." Marked men though we are, we belong first to God. And if we know that, then we can learn to belong to one another.
