Cain, Abel and New Year’s Resolutions

In 2021, one of my goals is to read the whole Bible. I want to read it like a story, not an assignment. I want to get to know the characters better, to see their storylines weave in and out of one another, to see themes develop. And being who I am, I don’t want to wait to January 1st to start.

So this morning I flipped open the cover to Genesis. Creation begins, God making each day’s work designed to bring the life of the next day’s work. He creates people, one from the other, one flesh without even the separation of a name. The fall happens, and this flesh is divided, and in the act of naming, a division is noted. The consequences of choosing to disobey God are laid out.

I pull out my journal and start to write down questions I have. When and why did the animals change from eating plants? What did the serpent look like before? Why did God say that man “must not be allowed to reach out his hand and eat from the tree of life? God DOES want us to eat from the tree of life. Is it the “reach out his hand” that had to change? Why?

I return to reading, and move on to the first brothers, Cain and Abel. Abel kept the flocks and Cain worked the soil. It was those two words which gave me pause. “kept” and “worked.” A quick search on blueletterbible.org showed me that a keeper was one who holds something that has been entrusted to them, while the word describing Cain denotes servitude, that one would make themselves a servant of the other. And Cain..is serving…the soil.

I flipped back to Genesis 2 and reread the consequences of the fall of man. God says to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.” Something clicked in my head. What we see with these brothers is not that one chose one job and one did another. What is demonstrated is that Abel is doing the work assigned to man at creation and Cain is doing the work which is the result of the fall of man.

The brothers each bring God an offering, Cain bringing “some of the fruits of the soil” and Able bringing “fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock.” My whole life I have heard this explained as “Cain brought some, but Abel brought his best.”

I pulled my journal back out. I had questions.

Was it that Cain didn’t bring the best? Or is it that he brought the fruit of HIS toil, the result of the curse? Perhaps the point was not that Cain didn’t pick the perfect potato, but that his offering wasn’t returning to God what was His. Cain offered to God the evidence of his own hard work.

For much of my life, reading this rejection stung. It felt arbitrary. I guess God likes steak, more than vegetables. There is no explanation of how Cain’s vegetables are subpar, just that they are “some.” Couldn’t they have been good ones? There is nothing telling us that Cain had any guidelines on what to offer.

In the same way, I often felt that I didn’t know how to pick a good offering. I would work at doing what I thought was right, but it didn’t seem to turn out how I thought it should. I would find myself bargaining with God, “If You ______, then I will ______.” Or sometimes, “Come on, God, I _______. Can’t You do better?” I would try to do the right things, but I often felt like giving up. I felt like I was standing before a flesh-eating God with a basket of small potatoes.

Not to mention, Abel didn’t have to do much to make the animals fat. He just had to watch them, guide them, and let them do what animals were made to do.

How many times had I seen others, who without even seeming to try, just had this easy faith and lives that reflected the favor of God? How is that fair?

Poor Cain, I used to think. He was set up.

God tells Cain off and Cain doesn’t go hunt down his brother, he invites him to the very field that where he had worked so hard to grow “some fruit.” There, he lashes out. He murders his brother. God reappears and the curse that is issued to Cain is that he will no longer be able to produce crops and he will be nomadic. Then God tacks on that Cain can not be killed.

How does that punishment fit the crime? Shouldn’t Cain be killed? (Oh, isn’t that the trouble with the knowledge of good and evil? We question God’s justice constantly.)

Perhaps the punishment is not just this really specific literal punishment of this one guy. Perhaps the punishment is there for anyone who attempts to build his offering on his own merit. The punishment exists for those who slaughter the representation of the offering which is simply returning to God what God has entrusted to him.

The toil will no longer bear fruit. There will be no sense of home, of community. And the result of that punishment, it will make man wish to make that fruitless, rootless toiling come to any end…but it never will.

It is grim, for sure. Hopeless, one might think. Except…

When God tells Cain off, if I change the voice in my head from a condemning, angry voice, I hear the offer of hope. God says to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

Cain wasn’t set up. Just like his parents weren’t set up in the garden. They had options. Cain had options. The very fact that Abel kept flocks shows us that even outside the garden walls, we can do what God designed us to do. We do not live hopeless existences bound to failure at every turn. We have options, and God reminds us that we must rule over it. And if we must, one can assume…we can. God says as much to Cain.

The story of Cain and Abel is not about a ruthless, picky God. It is the example of what happens when we live our lives under the curse of the fall of man, when we chose to tend our own garden. No potato Cain picked would have been good enough.

And this story offers hope.

Abel’s sacrifice was never Abel’s sacrifice. The point isn’t that Abel created something special. It’s that GOD created something special. God created that animal. God created the fat and ordered its birth. We don’t have to create an offering good enough for God. We just have to tend to what God creates and return thanks to Him.

God is not a flesh eating monster waiting to condemn me and consume me. God is a provider. God gives good gifts and equips us well. God has good things for us to do and it doesn’t have to be an endless death march through life.

What does this have to do with New Year’s resolutions? Many of us are sitting with good intentions of improving ourselves. We have a list of things that will make us better people. Go running. Make the bed daily. Lose weight. Be a better spouse/parent/friend. Read the Bible.

These are good potatoes. These are good sheep. One of these is not more noble than the others.

But we did not create our bodies to serve a scale or to run a race. We did not form our relationships. We did not author the Bible. God did those things for us, for His glory and for our good. It is right for us to care for them.

As you (and I) go forward with our goals this year, ask these 3 questions.

What is the good gift God has given you?

How can you tend to it well?

And how can you return it with thanksgiving to the One who gave it to you?

Then you will not toil in drudgery.

Then you keep well.

And I think you will find that what you offer will be accepted.

A Candlelight Christmas Observation

On Christmas Eve, I went to church.

Not metaphorical church. Actual church.

I welcomed people and took attendance. I handed out candy canes to the children as they left. I stood with my family, held a little white candle and sang Silent Night.

I don’t take for granted that my church has a large building with good ventilation and space to spread out. I don’t take it for granted that our people have been willing to wear masks. We have been relatively fortunate to this point, a credit I give not just to God’s mercy, but also to our congregation and leaders’ willingness to see safety measures as a way to show care to one another.

Back in the spring, when I attended our last in person service before the shut down, I cried. So many people were absent. I stood in the lobby at the end with a friend who said, “Wasn’t that amazing?” I told him I was so confused at how others had said the same thing. To me, it felt like a funeral. I saw empty seats that people would never again fill, because they will drift or die before we returned to church.

Christmas Eve, we took reservations and assigned seats. As always, masks were required, and we had extras on hand in case someone forgot theirs. People were met at the door and walked to their row. There was very little milling about. The service was beautiful. Our young leaders stood overseeing the service and I couldn’t help but marvel at how much they’ve grown in the past year. They were confident. They led and spoke and worshipped, not just skillfully but honestly and humbly. Our church’s former pastor was in attendance. A friend of mine entered with her daughter and her family, a little pack of people I’ve prayed for for years. I saw friends from out of town.

Then came the moment we all had waited for. Our pastor lit his candle from the Christ candle and began to pass the light through the people gathered. The large gaps between us were bridged for a second as a person would enter the next person’s space, briefly, just long enough to light the other’s candle. People hurried back to their original spot.

Here was the moment I’d waited for. I looked at my children and husband, lit by the warm glow in each of their hands. Beautiful.

Then I turned my head to look around. On Christmas Eve’s past, this is the most beautiful moment of the year. The room, so full that staff is worried about fire codes, and the balcony overflows, swells beyond capacity with Christmas glory. And yet, this year, entire rows were dark. Some rows only had 2 little lights, separated by 10 unlit spaces. In some places, there were three and four empty rows before the next family was found.

Somewhere from behind, the sense of a funeral service in the middle of a celebration, that ache I felt in the spring, tapped me on the shoulder. There were spots left open for people who registered, but did not attend. Were they sick? Were they afraid? Or did a church service not feel necessary? I thought of other churches who were meeting at the same moment, and of their empty seats.

I thought of empty seats that I know where these people were gone from our earthly gathering forever. I tried to touch the truth that I know they are worshipping in a way I can’t comprehend, but holding hands with that truth was the reminder that there are orphans and widows spending their first Christmas feeling utterly alone.

I turned back to see my family. There was that moment of beauty I longed to see. My son, singing loudly behind his mask, whose faith has been deepened in the past year. He has had the opportunity to serve our food bank and on Sundays, to eat meals weekly with a mentor, read devotionals on his Bible app. My daughter tucked into me and I was reminded of the times she and I watched church online with her tucked onto the recliner with me. She has served alongside me all year, her desire to help being nurtured by the opportunities she’s had to do things like take temperatures and check kid’s in to Kid’s City. My husband, the introvert, noticing our pastor and his young daughter in front of us with their candle, prompted me to snap a picture of that moment. I thought of all the times he’d watched our pastor online, while he worked on his etsy store or in our living room, and how those moments have served to speak to him.

A few moments later, lights extinguished, everyone was headed home. On my drive home, I called a friend who hadn’t come because of a number of 2020 reasons. She was finishing her time with her extended family and was preparing to watch the online service. We wished Merry Christmas and I left her to attend church online. I spoke another friend, her family shuttered away after positive Covid tests. There was a sweetness in her tone when she told me how her husband had run to the bathroom for candles. They’d shut out all the lights in their home and lit candles for the candle light portion of the service.

Then as I arrived home, I found my husband cooking spaghetti. Soon, dinner was served. We lit all the candles on our advent wreath. There under the glow of hope, peace, joy, love and Christ, we shared a meal.

I have seen people post that it was weird or different to have their Christmas Eve services at home. Can I encourage you with the truth that Christmas Eve at in person service was a little weird and different as well. Everyone recognizes the ache for others. I cannot deny that on both sides virtual and in person, the “different” sense was missing others. However, everyone I’ve heard from, no matter how they attended Christmas Eve service, all noted what they gained from the experience. They all found value in the experience.

In the spring, with the shutdowns, I heard many people saying, “We need to open the church. For some people, the only community they have is Sunday morning!” We also know that Christmas Eve is often the only time during the year that some people will attend and hear Jesus’s name. These are arguments given for returning to “normal.”

These reasons, however, are not good reasons to return to the old ways of “doing church.” They are symptoms of a disease that has infected the church for some time. They are evidence that the church has been in a pandemic, of sorts, for far longer than Covid has been around.

These reasons bear witness to the fact that we have decided that the best we can give the lonely, the widowed, the orphaned, and the isolated, is roughly one hour a week of sitting near them listening to someone speak. A few moments of coffee and conversation on each side of the hour and we declare we are caring well.

These reasons bear witness to the dreadful silence on the lips of believers. Assurance is private. Joy is contained. Compassion is restrained. Our faith has become so used to being bound by ties and tight shoes that we have lost the sense of undignified worship of the Father. That there are people who literally hear nothing of our faith from us, and that we hope for the one chance a year to take them with us to a service where someone else says the name of Jesus to them, oh believer, it should not be so.

As we prepare for the new year, as we hope that 2020 will leave 2020 in 2020 and not leak over into 2021, I plead with you to review the year and look for what growth has come with this experience.

See in the disruption of your schedule and the cancelation of your activities what has been able to flourish because you are using your time differently. See where you had to get creative to see loved ones. See where relationships have grown. See where you were able to learn new skills in order to meet a need created by the pandemic. See where you have read new books or listened to podcasts that have broadened your perspective. See the opportunities. See the connections.

See the places where there was candlelight, no matter if you lit your light in a sanctuary or in your living room.

Don’t be afraid to let some of 2020 carry forward. Don’t long for 2019.

And if all you can see are empty seats, unlit candles, reach out. Call your pastor. Text a friend. See how you might help light those candle, carry the light into our world and our neighborhoods and our homes. Be willing to try new ways to form and foster community. Trust that human touch will return. Hugs will return. In the meantime, intentionally seek out those who weren’t getting hugged before the pandemic so that when things do settle down, they aren’t forgotten again.

Until we meet again, friend, whether it be through in person or virtual means, BE THE CHURCH.