Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commcommons.church for more information.

For those of you that I haven't met before in person or online, I'm Scott. I'm part of the team here. And today, together, we are gonna step back into a series of conversations that we're having about some of the first stories that are found at the beginning of the Hebrew Bible. These are stories that take us back to mythic, prehistorical landscapes, to images of a very different kind of gods, to an utterly different backstory of the universe than those we know were floating around in the ancient Near East. And over the past couple of weeks, if you've been tracking with us, Jeremy has walked us through two different creation narratives.

We considered how each of these reflects the efforts of different authors at different times to tell and retell a story. And this is a story that shaped this tiny little insignificant nomadic Hebrew tribe and informed their imagination of a God who created by very different means and for very different reasons than the deities of the Egyptian and Assyrian empires around them. So that they came to believe that humanity doesn't come to exist nor isn't meant to exist in a permanent state of chaos and violence, but rather that our source is divine breath and consciousness with goodness at its core, with goodness bursting out from water and land and sky and stars and every human heart. And while this kind of story was so important to the ancient world, it's important for us too. And why is this?

Well, because as Jeremy pointed out last week, Genesis is so vital because it offers us an alternative mythology to ground our identities in. And something happens. I don't know if you know this. Something happens when you start to see your the fact that your story springs from a source of spirit fused creativity, That your story is sustained by divine breath, that your story can't be reduced to the chaos and tension that swirl around you. Something happens when we begin to believe that our story is part of a grander, more hopeful tale.

One that we get to play our unique part in. Now, with that said, today, we need to push into some of the grittier stories of this text. But before we're gonna do that, I wanna invite you to just take a moment, maybe pause with me, and let's pray for a second. God, creator God, source of all the strands of story that bring us to this moment. You're the source of all the good that keeps and holds and finds us.

Teach us again to trust the ways of your spirit, how it moves in and over our lives, and the ways that you invite and you encourage us to join in your creative work that still continues. Even as we ask in this moment that your peaceable kingdom would come on earth where power and strife wound your creation, That you would be a source for the rest and the peace that we seek today in the quiet of our hearts. That you would be a guide as we return to text and words that reflect your posture toward us, and that we would receive your welcome. We ask in the name of Christ, our hope. Amen.

Okay. So today we need to talk about common experience, the curse of comparison, freedom as foundation, and the God of wandering. So we're gonna jump right into our story from Genesis four today and it's familiar to many of us, would think, and it goes like this. That Cave or that Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. And in the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord.

And Abel also brought an offering, fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. And the Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering, God did not look on it with favor. So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast and God came to Cain and said, why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?

But if you don't do what is right, sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, but you must rule over it. Now Cain said to his brother Abel, let's go out to the field. And while they were out in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. And then the Lord said to Cain, where is your brother Abel?

I don't know, Cain said. Am I my brother's keeper? Now, it's interesting that like a thriller or a noir film, this story comes right at us at the beginning. It's this torrid scene of foreboding and violence. It's meant to pierce your imagination and get the action moving.

And just for a little context here, we've hopped a chapter in the text. Genesis one and two, that's where we've been the last two weeks. Genesis three that we've hopped over, that tells the story of the first man and woman, of Adam and Eve, how they move against the order and peaceable world of a gracious creator, and they find themselves pushed out of the goodness and flourishing that was intended for them. Genesis four where we find ourselves today, it picks up the story and tells us that Eve gave birth to two sons, to Cain and to Abel, and then we watch a murder sequence. Except it's more than that.

But before we get into some of the nuance here, I want to return to something that we're trying to make clear as we work through these stories, which is that it's important to read these as mythical attempts to answer the question of why things are the way they are, not how they got to be the way they are. And to be honest, it's a bit jolting to move from the poetic language and the beautiful images of creation that we've been looking at the last couple of weeks and step right into this. Right? But it's also comforting to know, I think, that ancient authors and poets had a profound capacity for honesty and that they turned that honesty into myth for a world that felt like it was spinning sideways. A world that still feels like it's off its axis sometimes.

Right? Which I think is actually one of the reasons why these texts are trustworthy. They're worth your time. It's not because they are the foundations of theological explanations about human error and culpability and sinfulness. No.

I actually wanna suggest that you shouldn't react to them that way. I think their truth can be found if we suspend our awareness of the theological apparatus that's been built on a story like this just for a moment. And instead reflect on your life and your story and consider how these myths don't just reflect back on ancient imagination, but also a kind of common experience. So that the power of the text is not its capacity to answer your biggest questions, but its ability to convince you that you aren't alone in having those questions. Because the ancient authors that pulled these tales together looked out at their world, which is rife with violence and sorrow and confusion, and they spoke the truth when they wrote stories that leave us wondering, what in the world does this say about me?

And what, in fact, might it say about God? And we're gonna come back to that before we're done today. But first, let's take a closer look at this story. To begin, I wanna show you an accurate depiction of Cain and Abel. And yes, I'm showing you a picture of my brother and I in a sermon about two brothers because it a, it wouldn't be right if I didn't, but also because when I told him that I was preaching this text and I asked if he had any thoughts, he glibly responded, well, clearly, you're Cain, which which is a reference, I think, to how I'm the oldest, which I am, and how I almost killed him a time or two.

That also is true. But also, let's just be clear that he likes to play the innocent little brother victim card far too often. The point is is that I responded to him and informed him that Jewish rabbis in the commentary Baray Shi Rabbah argued yeah. Say that name again backwards. In this commentary, they argued that both brothers are actually responsible for the violence that unfolds.

See, the rabbis, they had this way of looking at the text and they they see this pause in verse eight after it says that Cain spoke to his brother Abel. And in that gap, they imagined an argument developing as the brothers started to talk and agree about how to divide the world. One of them took the land and the other every moving thing. And then Cain says to Abel, the land that you're standing on right now is mine. And Abel retorts, while the skins you're wearing are mine.

So Abel says, take off my garments. And Cain says, get off my land. And it starts to sound like every argument I've had with my own brother. Right? And out of this quarrel, the text says, out of this quarrel, Cain rose against his brother.

And that sounds a little comical. Right? But the truth is that this kind of interpretation is in line with broader theological perspective because scholars think that one of the compelling motivations of this myth, it's trying to address our sibling problem. It's trying to reconcile how we live in a world full of divisive relationships and connections. And truth is, I can see this because I did fight lots with my brother, but I also have to admit that the story is a little bit more complex than that.

See, the story says that the two brothers bring their individual offerings before God. And it's important to remember that this depiction predates any kind of Hebrew ritual or prescriptions for worship. Those occur and emerge much later in the Hebrew Bible. They're being read back into this mythic tale. The point is that there's nothing to distinguish the two offerings that the brothers bring.

They're not different in quantity. They're not different in quality. It's actually fifteenth century Christian reformers that moralize Cain's offerings as being somehow unsatisfactory. The Hebrew text doesn't do this, which just means that we have to acknowledge how the story gives no explanation for why God favors one over the other. And this is why we should all be on team Cain when he's bothered by it.

He gets angry, and the Hebrew grammar here is super interesting. It implies that his emotions are more like depression. This sends him into a sort of an episode of being distraught and inconsolable because it is unfair. Read the text. God appears to favor one person over another for no perceivable reason and this taps into the mythic power of Cain's competitiveness which reveals the curse of comparison that we all carry.

Just think about how how children, and coincidentally, how global leaders always want what someone else has. How perhaps for as long as you can remember, you know you've measured your worth by comparing yourself to a parent or a friend or a colleague. How for as long as we have told stories, humans have told stories in which our gods favor us and our moral standing and destroy our enemies for their wrongdoing. And see, this story doesn't even attempt to explain why God prefers Abel, and I don't even think that's the point. The point isn't that God prefers Abel.

The point is that Cain thinks that God does. Just like it isn't always true that someone has more or accomplishes more or inherits more and that this somehow makes them intrinsically more than me. The point is that like Cain, I think those things are true. And the truths of this ancient myth bear out in the data that contemporary social scientists like Brene Brown are finding and telling us about that honestly, none of us can find a way to wholehearted life free from the taskmasters of productivity and performance until we stop comparing ourselves to the person beside us. It can't happen until we learn to let go of the score that we are silently keeping.

In the exact measurements we take of our own selves that leave us feeling like we aren't worthy. And in some cases that somehow it feels like God is against us. Now why do I think this? Why do I take this interpretation? Well, it's because when I read these words carefully, there's some really striking elements here.

God sees that Cain is distraught, that Abel's apparent success or status, these things somehow have disturbed him. And so God says to him, why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? Which, for the record sounds a lot like a rhetorical question. God knows why.

Right? Doesn't he? K. There's a rhetorical question here but then there's also it seems like it could also be read as a compassionate check-in because in the very next verse, God says, if you do what is right, Cain, will you not be accepted? But if you don't do what is right, sin is crouching at your door.

It desires to have you, but you must rule over it. And for the record, verse seven here is widely regarded by scholars as one of the most difficult in the book of Genesis to translate and interpret. That does not mean that we aren't gonna lean in here because there's a couple things to note. The first is that this is the first reference in the biblical text to sin. The previous chapter is widely regarded by lots of Christians and Christian thinkers and practitioners as an account of human mistake making and resistance to God's kindness, but here in this story, sin is named.

But isn't it interesting how it's depicted? Scholar Celia Sinclair points out that sin isn't imagined here as breaking the rules because God's law and commandment, they don't even exist yet. Sin here isn't missing the mark or failing to meet God's standard of righteousness in acting ethically and fairly with others. No. Here, the ancient poets paint a picture of sin as an external force, a roving predator, a force that takes on a life of its own.

And God appears to be warning Cain graciously. Be careful. This anger and disappointment that you feel, this perception that you are somehow less than, this is a dangerous force. And don't we know that that's true for all the times that our disappointment morphs into anger and harshness as we push others away? But then secondly, it's also important to note the conditional language throughout this passage.

There are all those ifs that imply that Cain has real agency. And then there's this ambiguous verb form that's used to describe how God tells Cain that he must master sin. Scholars actually debate whether it might all might be better translated, you may master. You have the means to master it, which just means that despite the senseless violence this story seems to be about, there's actually more going on here. How God comes to Cain before anything happens, and God paints a picture of an open and a free future with real possibilities in it.

And that is a very different origin story for our relationship to all that's wrong in our world. Our relationship to all that feels wrong in us because we know that the forces of desire and the chaos of selfishness and greed, These things sometimes do take us as their victims and leave us bearing scars caused by others when we had no choice. We also know that we sometimes use these forces as our weapons to our shame. But here, we catch glimpse of an ancient imagination that doesn't see sin as our foundational state, but freedom instead. Freedom to choose the right.

Freedom to let go of slights and offenses. Freedom to face the dark places where sin and desire and chaos lurk and not be afraid. Freedom to take back the parts of your story that others thought they claimed. Freedom to stand for others who don't have a voice or strength. Freedom to forgive your enemies and every other iteration of yourself.

Freedom to start daily from a place of potential and goodness that God brings to you. Now, mean, we're all sitting here. We know that this story proceeds into tragedy. Right? But that doesn't mean we know the story well.

See, we don't know why or even how Cain murders his brother. And God finds him and cries out, what have you done? Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. And much like we see in Genesis three, the chapter before, human resistance and action against God's best do have some serious consequences because God tells Cain that because of what he's done, his work and his labor will now be futile. That the ground that received his brother's blood is now going to resist him, and that he is going to be a restless wanderer on the earth.

And the text is so curious because it tells us that this breaks Cain's heart. He tells God, I cannot bear this punishment in part because I I don't wanna be driven from your presence, but also because when I go out there, people are going to seek revenge. My life is going to be in danger. And despite what your intuition or your Sunday school teachers may have told you, this is the heart of the story. This story is not about a crime of passion or the punishments that are dealt out for crimes like this.

Both of those things happen, but they are not the point because this is not a moralistic tale. The core of this story is Cain's passionate plea and God's movement toward it. Because after Cain says these things, God promises that no one will harm him. Let me say that again. God says to the murdering character, no one will harm you.

And then verse 16 says that Cain goes out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, East Of Eden. And here's what's curious about this. That place named Nod, it literally means wandering. That Cain's gone out into the land of wandering. And in a way, Cain passes into anonymity and out of the divine story the ancient authors are telling.

And my guess is that for most of us, that's where we think the story's over, except it isn't. Because in the following verses, we learn that Cain and his wife have a child. And, if you are wondering how Cain can have a wife because it's just him and his biological parents in the world, stop thinking that because that's not the point. The ancient author isn't trying to give you those kinds of questions or the answers for them. Cain has a child.

Cain builds a city, and we learn of his descendants up to seven generations, a number that scholars like to point out as mirroring the seven days of creation. Because I don't know if you know this, but creation keeps going. And we learn that music and metalworking apparently emerged from these generations of Cain's descendants, which again seems like a super random throw in. Right? Until we catch on that Cain, whose name literally means to bring forth or to create.

Cain is more than just the guy who killed his brother. Remember, this is a story composed for an ancient world full of chaos and uncertainty and violence. And at the beginning today, we recognize that it's also a story for our world that's full of its own confusion and difficulty and anxiety. We recognize that this is a story for our imaginations because it offers us an image of the divine that we may not have considered. See, here we find a story whose main plot point is not a murder scene followed by judgment, but rather this primal myth centers on the discovery that the benevolent force of all good, the force behind all that grows and shines and moves that this god goes with Cain into all of his wandering.

And maybe, just maybe, this God might be with us in ours. With us in our biggest mistakes when we feel there's no way back. In those moments where we let others down and all of our opportunities dry up around us. Those times when we feel aimless and our identity shimmers in front of our face like a mirage. We don't know where we're going.

We don't know who we are. Those experiences when we feel pushed away and abandoned, and we are left to find a way out on our own. And when you realize that this is what the story is about, Your perspective changes, I think. You start to recognize that scripture is rarely going to offer you an easy answer to the hardest questions that your life teaches you to ask. You realize that scripture is not intended to give you a manual of full safe instructions, but scripture is trying to convince you time and time again like Cain or that like Cain, your darkness and your weakness and your mistakes, these are not the origin of who you are, and they don't have to be the end of your story.

Let's pray. God, if you are a creator, then you are also the god of all our wandering. And we're grateful for the ways that these ancient words bring comfort, the ways that they remind us that our struggle and our difficulty and our many questions, that we do not do these things alone. And we see clearly again how you're always working to heal the things that harm us. We can see how an ancient story can bring us to a place where we acknowledge our interpretations of the world.

We we we see the ways in which these things weigh us down. They become the burden of comparison that we carry with us and how this crushes us. It stifles our creativity and our joy. And yet we also see how you are faithfully present. How you teach us to live from a deeper truth that you know so well, and the truth is that in your image, we are meant to be free.

Free to embrace this life, free to embrace our weaknesses and allowing them to form vulnerable love and tender faith. And so we ask that you would go with us into the dark and burnt out places that we find ourselves. We pray that you would restore and tend and create your story in us each and every day. Go with us and give us courage to trust. We ask in the name of Christ.

Amen.