Show Notes
The Mark of Cain
By Kendra Arsenault
“16 He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, 17 and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” (Revelation
13:15-17).
I recently moved to a city that still has “Blue Laws” in place. This is particularly interesting to me because Blue laws show the history of a city and the history of its values. It’s also something I’ve often heard talked about in sermons regarding future Sunday laws. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with what a “Blue Law” is it’s a law that was created back in colonial times and still stands today, but is not enforced. The fear surrounding “Blue Laws” is that the laws that prohibited work on Sunday back in the early 1900s will be reinforced at the end of time since they’re still technically a law. While on a city tour a few weeks ago, the tour guide shared with us some of the more unknown blue laws that are still on the books today. Some of these would be quite interesting if they were brought back.
- Duels can be carried out to the death on Sunday as long as the governor is present.
- It is illegal to take a lion to the movies. (This particular law was created due to this eccentric and wildly wealthy woman who apparently, before the days of wild animal regulations, would bring her pet lion to the movies.)
- It’s illegal to play the fiddle (this may have been an attempt to systematically remove the homeless and other beggars and poor from the city).
- It is illegal to bathe unless your doctor gives you a prescription. BUT, it’s also illegal not to bathe before going to bed.
- Roosters may not go into bakeries.
- It is illegal to eat peanuts in church.
Aside from some of these quirky laws, we learned about the history of how the city treated convicted criminals. During Revolutionary times when America was struggling for independence from England, there was a particular pardon called, the “Benefit of Clergy,” which allowed members of the church to be tried by their parish rather than by the state and thus escape the death penalty. In exchange, they would receive a branding on their thumbs. This branding included a T for theft, an F for felony, and M for murder. This was a one-time branding. If they were convicted again, they would receive the full penalty for their crime. This branding often made them unemployable tho and turned them into homeless wanderers, often dependent upon the kindness of family and friends for food and shelter, or working laborious jobs that no one else wanted. To be branded with this mark ensured that you would live a hard life.
This branding for the criminals of old, reminded me of a similar story in the Bible, where God branded a murderer rather than give him the death penalty. This branding sentenced this murderer to a life of wandering and reflection. This branding is the Mark of Cain.
The mark of the beast is often spoken of as a terrifying branding that will be forced upon the faithful if they’re not so very careful. Maybe it’s an implanted chip or a change made to our DNA through a vaccine, but whatever it is, it’s always this external force that we must be vigilant to guard against. It’s a principle in exegesis to return to first mentions in order to gather more insight on how a mysterious term might be used in different parts of Scripture. The first mention of a mark, is the mark given to Cain. And it was not a mark forced upon him in his innocence. It was not a mark that he received because he lacked discernment or did not watch carefully what was happening in the world around him. It was a revelatory mark, a mark that revealed a hidden secret, his very real guilt, the guilt of bloodshed.
When I think about the Mark of Cain, I see it as the mark of violence. October is Domestic Violence Awareness month and I thought it would be appropriate for us to discuss how violence shows up in prophecy. The mark of the beast is not something external that is placed upon the innocent thus turning them evil. It is a mark that reveals what is already in the heart. And as wide as the gap between Cain and Abel, there is a crying contrast between those who earn the Mark of Cain, and the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
In contrast to those who bear the mark, Revelation goes on to describe another kind of people saying, “Then I saw the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him were 144,000 who had His name and his Father's name written on their foreheads.” (Revelation 14:1).
Jesus is spoken of in contrast to the beast, as a Lamb. His followers, bear His mark. The mark of Abel. The mark of being slain, the mark of those victimized by the Cains of this world. Jesus in so many ways, is our example, a model after whom we pattern our lives. But Jesus is more than that, He is savior, a Savior from ourselves.
“David Buss, professor of psychology at the University of Texas-Austin,
surveyed 5,000 people for his book,
The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind is Designed to Kill, and found that 91% of men and 84% of women had thought about killing someone, often with very specific hypothetical victims and methods in mind. Though we may like to think that murderers are either pathological misfits or hardened criminals, as author David Buss highlights, the vast majority of murders are committed by people who, until the day they kill, seem perfectly normal.”
Now this book goes on to highlight the ways our brains have been wired to deal with perceived danger and that at times, our brains misfire. The rage we experience in a traffic jam or when someone says something cruel and injurious to our ego and we go red with rage, all of this a misfire since there is no real existential threat of danger, no, kill or be killed scenario happening. And yet violence is incredibly accessible for us.
October is Domestic violence awareness month, and Domestic violence statistics since the pandemic have risen. Families have been under incredible amounts of stress since the pandemic, financial stress, the loss of family members, where one or both financial providers have been fired from work. There have been lots to be angry about. Mallory Littlejohn, Legal Director, Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation paints this picture. "It's a really horrible situation. Imagine needing to wake up in the morning, go to work, take care of your kids, because they're homeschooling, [but] you're working from home and so was your abuser." Data obtained from the Illinois Domestic Violence Hotline received 28,749 calls for help in 2020. That's a 16% increase from the previous year and at its busiest, the hotline received almost 150 calls in one day.”
This is a single hotline number, in a single state. 30,000 calls that year. Multiply that by 10 states, by 50. Violence is its own epidemic and it is rising. But there is a beacon of hope in it all.
Jesus is called “Immanuel” God with us. The book of Revelation ends with the declaration, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” (Revelation 21:3). Jesus is the ultimate pattern of what it means to dwell well with other people. He has lived with contentious, judgmental, even violent domestic partners. This is not a sermon about remaining in violent and dangerous situations. This is about, how do we not become the monster we seek to destroy. As a survivor of domestic violence, I know all too well the difficulties of leaving, the barriers to making it to safety, the religious beliefs and impediments that keep a person in a dangerous relationship along with the rage that is present in the aftermath of violation.
Looking to Jesus as my model, I see how an all-powerful God, chooses to lay down all of the ways that He could overpower us, and force us to conform. The omniscient One, who knows our every thought and our every misdeed never took the opportunity to humiliate another person by revealing intimate secrets about their life. The omnipotent one never used His potency and power to dominate those who opposed him.
He was wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove. The lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
Now, some of you do not have domestic partners or roommates, and so there are certain challenges that are inherent in “dwelling with” someone that you may not be faced with in everyday life. The ebbs and flows of human behavior. The morose and dark moods that your domestic partner might experience. Mental illness and physical health challenges. Frustration from work, seeping into the home life. Dysfunctional styles of communication and family systems that they have carried over from both of your families of origin. A triggering statement of judgment said from an unmindful spouse. All of these can all make for volatile eruptions, that no matter how much you have prepared in the past, will catch you off guard and often trigger a trauma response.
Regardless of how you may have vowed to yourself to never raise your voice again, never let that curse word slip out of your mouth, never ignore that call, people have a funny way of testing our limits in ways we did not expect.
Not all violence is physical. When we feel powerless and hurt, the temptation is to hit people. We hit them with any object we can get our hands-on. We use our words. You… xyz. We withhold affection, hitting them with a loss of love. We even use the Bible...God said.
The Mark of the Beast is not a mystical branding from the enemy that sneaks up on us unaware. The Mark of the Beast is the work of a lifetime. A lifetime of not restraining unkind words. Not restraining ourselves from the opportunity to use excessive force. Whether that’s physical force, the force of our words, or the force of our Biblical knowledge.
Some say the Mark of the Beast is the Sunday Law. But the mark is the abuse of power. It is bending the will of those less powerful than you through coercion. It is the employer bending the will of their employee because of their economic vulnerability. It is the spouse who uses their tone, and words, and lack of affection, to bend the will of the one they call beloved. It is even a denominational President using their power of influence to target and abuse those who are already marginalized among us. The Mark of the Beast is the antithesis to the gentleness of the Lamb.
Jesus... wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove. The lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
The classic Disney tale, Beauty and the Beast, provides commentary on what makes us truly human and what makes us a monster. The handsome alpha male Gaston, vs. the pained introverted beast. One looks like a human but acts like an animal. One looks an animal but acts humanely. We see beasts like creatures depicted in Revelation and in Daniel. These are people and institutions that have lost their humanity.
Revelation 13, for example, provides some description.
“And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads...it was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear's, and its mouth was like a lion's mouth...Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon...it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.” (Rev 13:1-2, 11-12, 16-17 ESV)
An interesting descriptor of this beast, this institution, this system that has lost its humanity, says it causes ALL, the rich and the poor, the slave and the free to be marked and that no one can buy or sell unless he has this mark. I pose to you a controversial question, do we already bear this mark? We often think of receiving that mark of the beast as some future event to avoid. But what about our accountability to non-violence in the here and now? What about our collective culpability not just to individual acts of violence but our participation in systematic acts of violence.
A few years back when I was studying my undergraduate degree in International Development, I spent a lot of time examining carbon footprints, the cost of sustaining human life, how food subsidies affect and cripple foreign markets, how big companies like Nike are essentially run on slave labor, how oil is a motivator for war, how our fuel industries are raping the earth and destroying natural habitats, how the computer chips and silicon made for our iPhones and computers are mined by children in poverty-stricken providence of Africa. And the thought dawned on me one day, that there is no place I can go to escape the guilt of our current technological and industrial age. The clothes I buy, the computers I use, my phone, my food. I would have to completely live off of the grid and set myself back to the 1800s to really be free of the blood guilt I have on my hands, by participating in the purchases in this economy.
I’m not trying to be an alarmist but I am trying to be aware. There is a movement to more sustainable, fair trade economies, but that is not by and large the bulk of our industry. The computers on which we are having this conversation, the gas we put in our cars, the clothes we buy from cheap overseas labor, is not something we often question. Was the person who made this shirt given a livable wage? These are questions that I am challenging myself to ask, because I am not only responsible to make a personal individual commitment to non-violence, but I am also culpable for the systematic violence that I participate in. So, I ask again, whose hands among us are clean?
To buy or sell, to participate in our current economy, in many ways is a
must. Who then can cleanse us from this guilt? Will our good deeds save us? Proverbs says, “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin’?” and “There are those who are clean in their own eyes but are not washed of their filth.” (Proverbs 20:9;
30:12). As Paul implores upon his hearers, “As it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one.’” (Romans
3:10).
The collective guilt that we all bear, means we are all on equal footing, all equally sinners, all cleansed by one agent--the blood of Jesus.
Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
I want to invite you, to pause for a moment. To think about the comparisons we make between our lives and the “other”. The divides we have created between “the sinner” and ourselves. The caricatures we have made of what the Mark of the Beast looks like.
We have a commitment to non-violence, not only in our personal lives and on an individual level, but also on a communal level.
When it comes to our communal culpability and guilt, we can do what we can and educate ourselves in how to participate in a more just economy. To buy fair trade. To inquire about the companies that we invest in and the establishments where we buy at. There is only so much within our power to do, but if every person does a little, and sees the value of their contribution, then a little can turn into much. Like the widow’s mite, it can inspire many small offerings to God from many people that eventually make up great wealth in His storehouse.
As far as our personal commitment to non-violence, we must seek the help we need to keep our hands to ourselves. The temptation to hit others with our words, with our righteousness, with our “Thus saith the Lords”, and learn what it is to walk with mercy and to love justice.
In honor of this Domestic Violence month, I am going to speak of a mark that is particularly accessible to the community sitting in this room and also something not often talked about, and that is the mark of religious abuse. “God said,” is the ultimate source of religious power. The phrase, “the Bible says,” can be used just as bluntly as a fist. It is the ultimate trump card and a coercive way to impress upon vulnerable minds your particular points. “God said,” when God hath not said, or God did not mean it to be used in that way, is the ultimate meaning of “using the Lord’s name in vain.”
So who are the vulnerable among, those we are most often tempted to abuse using religious language? Maybe it’s those who wear their brokenness more openly. These are the ones we can easily label as living “immoral lives” and we can easily pick them from the herd and display them as unworthy wearers of Christ’s name. Maybe it’s those darn feminists who keep asking for equality when the Bible “so clearly states” that the subordination of women in religious offices and in the home is pleasing to God. I can tell you, as one who has experienced religious abuse, from both a community and from individuals, this kind of Bible-thumping, while you might feel you are on a warpath for Jesus, it is the most damaging behavior and I doubt not, that those who use the Bible in this way, are those of whom Jesus spoke saying, “There will come a time when They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.” (John 16:2).
Or maybe it’s LGBTQ community, they’re an easy target. The people who make up 7% of the population but are 40% of the homeless youth. The ones who are already four times more likely to commit suicide, those are the ones we should target and beat up with our theology. Right?
The mark of the beast is wholly within our power to refrain from receiving. We must keep the commitment to keep our hands unstained from blood, abuse, and violence. We must watch our words and do our part to restrain the unkindness that comes o too naturally for us. To follow the pattern of Jesus, and to by God, be saved by Him from ourselves that we too might become wise as serpents, gentle as doves like the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.