This is the question Cain asks God: Am I my brother’s keeper? But Cain’s question comes in response to another question by God. God’s first words in scripture are the words we considered in a previous blog: Where are you? But the questions didn’t stop there. Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree from which I said not to eat? And the questions keep coming here. Where is your brother? What have you done?
One of the images of God I learned growing up was how God’s honor and holiness were offended and angered by my sin. Offended and angered so much that Jesus’ death was the sacrifice that appeased God’s offended honor and anger.
And yet, these stories of beginnings in Genesis tell a very different story. The show a God who is seeking out humankind. When God discovers that the relationship is disrupted by the actions of humanity, God energy goes toward continuing to seek and to be with and to reconcile, even while there are consequences for actions. God makes clothes of skin for the man and the woman in the garden. God marks Cain so that his punishment is not unbearable.
In fact, the whole Biblical story continues this theme of a God seeking to win back the hearts of God’s people.
With the Noah story, God repents, because God realizes that the harshness of anger and punishment is not an expression of God’s identity. And so, God binds God’s heart to humanity by making covenant. God invites humanity to bind their hearts in the same way. When humanity goes astray, God keeps seeking. God delivers from slavery. God sends prophets and through them speaks of God’s yearning to reconciled. For Christians, Jesus is the fullest expression of that seeking.
Here in the story of Cain and Abel, the questions appear to be simple dialogue to move the action along. But if we sit with the questions and let them resonate in our minds and hearts, the can touch something deep within us. Where is your brother? What have you done? God offers a chance for Cain to come clean. To confess. To be honest. Who knows what direction the story would have gone if Cain had answered differently.
But instead, Cain answers God’s question with a question of his own. This exchange between Cain and God has a poignancy to it. Before he asks his question, Cain begins his response to God with dishonesty: I do not know. You have to wonder if just the speaking of this lie evokes in Cain images of the violence he inflicted upon his brother. Maybe it was all the feelings that were evoked with those images that lead him to ask, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
It can be fascinating to wonder what is going on inside of Cain. Is Cain being surly and brazen? Does Cain really expect God to give an answer? Does he expect God to enter into a dialogue with him around the question? Even more, does he expect God to agree with his perspective? Does he expect God to pause, reflect, and then say, “Well, now that I think about it, no you are probably not your brother’s keeper. These things happen.”
It is possible to hear Cain’s question as rhetorical, as an expression of his emotion. But taking that stance can move us away from wondering: Well, how would I answer the question?
Am I my brother’s keeper? What does it feel like in my mind and heart when I answer the question, “No”? Am I my brother’s keeper? What does it feel like in my mind and heart when I answer the question, “Yes”?
When we answer the question with a “No,” it can feel like calloused indifference. It is a response that is common over the course of human history. We encounter the other. The image of brother or sister does not come to mind. The image of keeper does not come to mind. And so, it is easy to move on with our lives: “I’ve got enough to do to look after myself.” Or it is easy to move against the other in some way, because they become a threat or the enemy.
When we answer the questions with a “Yes,” it is easy to feel a sense of duty that can often be neglected because of our own selfishness. With the “Yes,” we begin to ask: Well, who, really, is my brother? And what, really, does it mean to be their keeper?
Those are important questions for us to consider if Cain’s question is to become a question of faith. And yet, often, our reflections on these questions lead to limiting who we name as brother and what it means to be a keeper? Is there a way these questions can expand our minds and hearts?
Keeper. This is where the delimiting begins.
Surely God doesn’t expect me to be responsible for everyone’s safety and well-being all the time. And so, we begin to decide which actions or attitudes are keeping and not keeping. Keeping can carry with it the idea of control and possession. But the word “keep” comes from an Old English word that means simply “to look.” Keeping a brother or sister begins with looking at them, with really seeing them.
Cain did not really see his brother; he saw a person who had something he did not. Cain could have responded to his anger by wondering why that was so. There were lots of signs that he needed to do this. The images of sin lurking at your door and desiring to overtake you are powerful ones. If Cain could have stopped to consider what it really means to be a keeper, the story might have turned out differently.
Only by really looking at another can we begin to look out for, to have regard for one another.
Brother. This is where the delimiting continues.
So who, really, is my brother or sister? Is this person or that person? How can a person I’ve never seen or don’t know by my brother or sister? We take this thought-provoking question and turn it into a law that we interpret and obey. It’s almost like, if I can put them in the category of “not my brother or sister,” I am relieved of the role of keeper.
The parable of the Good Samaritan comes in response to a question, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus turns the question on its head, suggesting that the real question is “How, and to whom, should I be a neighbor?” By expanding the expression of love beyond those we know to even those who are our enemies, Jesus invites us to expand our consideration of who is our brother and sister.
Steven Shoemaker puts it this way: “The first murder was fratricide, and all murder since has been the killing of a brother, a sister.”
With his question, Cain is trying to dismiss his actions and distance himself from interacting with God. The irony is the question keeps him engaged with God, whether he wants to be or not. May we accept the invitation to consider what it means, really, to be the keeper of our brother or sister.