My Sister and Brother’s Keeper March 14, 2021 Dr. Roger Ray, pastor
Genesis 4: 9Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’ 10And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!
After a year of living with this pandemic, I had the good fortune to receive the Pfizer vaccine recently and so I now have a reasonable confidence that even if I am exposed to the Covid-19 virus, that I am not likely to become seriously ill. Which has given me a little more freedom of movement, but caution is still very important until most other people have been vaccinated.
I recently had a real melt down after an attempt at going to a public place. I try to walk several miles every day for health reasons. Exercise is not really an option for me, I am aware that it is the only way to maintain my health. But when it is raining or when the sidewalks are covered in ice, keeping up that discipline gets to be more challenging. On a recent bad weather day, after consulting with my physician, I went to our local mall to get in my steps indoors. I had not been to the mall for year, and I was pleased that, at the entrance, there were large banners announcing the rules that everyone had to wear a mask at all times, that there are directional arrows on the floor to keep the flow of human traffic appropriately separated, and there were even markers on the floor to help everyone know what six feet looks like.
However, the hundreds of people in the mall were wandering about in much the way that a herd of cows would….. without masks, and paying no attention to the directional arrows on the foor, or to the distance needed to make being indoors together a little safer.
I am pretty well protected by my vaccine but I know that I am in a tiny minority and that I was surrounded by people who, though they may not have had any particular malice in their hearts, that is, they didn’t come to mall set on killing some strangers, but in their indifference to the virus safety measures we have all had hammered into our skulls every day for a year now, could only mean that they would rather give a deadly disease to random strangers than to be bothered with properly wearing a mask, and maintaining some distance.
I really don’t want to believe that most of the people in my small mid-western city are evil but based on the evidence at hand, it seems to be inescapably true. Which, initially makes me very angry but when the rage subsides, what I am left with is profound sadness. I had no idea that most of my local peers could be so beset with depraved indifference, an almost casual acceptance that their carelessness is precisely what is prolonging the pandemic and causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
The pandemic will eventually be more or less over. We will eventually get to the point where this is not such a lethal event, but when it is over, what will we have learned about ourselves? How has it changed us, or, more to the point, how has it failed to change us?
With your permission, I would like to process our present ethical dilemma theologically.
I grew up in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) the more progressive of the four American denominations spun off by Irish Presbyterians during the massive revival period of the mid-19thcentury.
It will seem like an almost crazy issue to our ears, but what caused the major rift between the founders of my heritage and Presbyterians was the controversy between infant baptism and believers’ baptism. In an age when the Bible was thought to be absolutely true and detailed obedience to the demands of scripture were considered to be determinative of salvation, with either heaven or hell hanging in the balance, you want to get the details right.
The founders of my mother church, Alexander Campbell and Barton Warren Stone, felt that baptism was crucial to being in a saving relationship with God and that infant baptism just didn’t count because the person being baptized had not made any personal choice in the matter. If you recall, the gospels all include a large role for the Hebrew prophetic preacher known as John the Baptist. The practice of Baptism is not an ancient Jewish practice, but it wasn’t entirely invented by Christians either.
In the ministry of John the Baptist, it appears to have been a kind of ritual bath in which penitent Jews could renew their faith by confessing their sinfulness, and getting a kind of fresh start in life. Some historians also believe that it was used during times of evangelical Judaism to baptize gentile converts to the faith, especially for female converts. Men had a more ancient and a rather more painful and bloody ritual to undergo but I don’t think there is any reason to discuss that now.
One flaw in the legalistic interpretation of the gospel’s take on baptism being for forgiveness of sins is the fact that all four gospels also give accounts of Jesus being baptized, and if baptism was for forgiveness of sins and Jesus was said to be sinless, in fact, the spotless nature of his semi-divine soul was crucial to the interpretation of his death being sufficient for the salvation of the world, then why was Jesus baptized?
I realize that this is a very foreign religious exercise for those of us who long ago abandoned such legalistic and creedal Christian beliefs, but, if you can get your head into that space . . . if baptism is for the forgiveness of sins and Jesus was sinless, why on earth did all four gospel writers give us detailed descriptions of Jesus’ baptism?
I will confess that when I was a puppy preacher, this was actually a problem for me. I just couldn’t understand why I was supposed to take baptism so seriously, to teach classes for young people every spring and to hold Easter Sunrise baptism services year after year, when, the event of the baptism of Jesus made the whole thing seem to be suspect.
I have to credit my homiletics professor at Vanderbilt, Dr. David Buttrick, with delivering one of the truly memorable lectures of my graduate school career on just this topic. He was certainly one of us, in that he was not a biblical legalist, he was not a supernatural theistic religious person but so far as the preaching value of the four accounts of the baptism of Jesus goes, Buttrick said, “No one gets to live innocently in this fallen world. Even if you can make yourself believe that Jesus never personally committed a sin, he wore clothes, ate food, and slept in houses, all related to industries of slavery, oppression, and abuse.
If you know that the wheat in the bread in your hand was grown, harvested, and ground by slaves, can you innocently eat it? If you know that the wool in your robe came from sheep cared for by slaves, sheered by slaves, combed, washed and spun into thread by slaves, can you then dispassionately wear that robe?
And, again, please bear with me as I wade into the weeds a bit farther, we modern Americans have been raised with the notion that sin is always personal. Just as the revivalists of the modern era have insisted that those who would be saved must first accept Jesus Christ as their “personal” savior. I have created tremendous discomfort in a number of clergy gatherings when I have pointed out to my evangelical peers that the word “personal” does not appear in either the Old or New Testaments. That no one in the Bible ever accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior. The concept would not have even made sense in the first century church.
In almost all of the Bible, sin is primarily social sin . . . it is a culture that mistreats the poor, that enslaves neighbors, and takes advantage of immigrants. There are person sins, but the big ones, the ones that really matter, are societal. If this is the first time you have ever heard this concept discussed, your reflex reaction will be to dismiss it. I can only ask you to take some time to think about it and consider it with an awareness of the biblical narratives.
It is, of course, obviously absurd to believe that anyone, not even you, could live an entirely pure life, with no impure thoughts, words, or deeds, but even if you could, unless you lived on an island all by yourself, if you live in society at all, you are participating in the collective sin of culture.
There are virtually no bananas on the grocery store shelves that were not grown and harvested in virtually slave conditions. Have you ever eaten a banana? Almost all coffee is grown in cruel, slave like conditions. Did you have a cup of coffee today?
And if you are concerned about dogs being left outside in the cold, have you ever seen a hog farm, a cattle farm, a chicken operation, a turkey farm? Are we innocent of animal cruelty or participating in forced labor, or even child labor, if we wear clothing made by children, eat produce grown and harvested by forced labor, or eat the meats produced through animal cruelty?
This awareness has driven many people, including notable persons like Gandhi, to eat a vegetarian diet, to make their own clothes, right down to spinning their own cotton, and living in a community sharing in gardening and construction and even sanitation duties. But no matter how hard you may try; nobody gets to be innocent.
I took as our wisdom lesson for the day a couple of verses from the 4th chapter of Genesis that will be very familiar to those of you who grew up in a traditional church. It is a part of the story of the Bible’s first family, that sorry fit of jealousy that drove Adam and Eve’s two sons to fall into a lethal conflict. Cain killed Abel and a very anthropomorphic representation of God shows up in the narrative to confront Cain. God asks him, “Where is your brother Abel?”
On the one hand, this is a specific question within the events of a specific pair of brothers, but, of course, that’s not how the Bible really works. It isn’t about Cain and Able, it is about you and me. It is about all of us. Cain asks the question that everyone in this pandemic plagued world must answer, “Am I am brother’s keeper?” Am I somehow responsible for the whereabouts, the well-being of my sisters and brothers? What about the strangers at the mall?
What about the people who are afraid to go ahead and get the vaccine? What about the people who live in countries that are too poor to buy vaccines?
What is it to me that entire villages of Eskimos in Alaska are collapsing under the weight of virus infections? Why is it a concern of mine that parts of Central and South America are awash in virus infections with no hope of a vaccine on the horizon? Am I responsible for the well-being of random coffee plantation workers in Nicaragua, banana plantation workers in Costa Rica, coconut and palm farmers in the Dominican Republic?
If the stupid people in the mall who will ignore a full year of warnings and media education about how to stay safe, choose to place themselves, their own children, and total strangers at risk, what does it matter to me if I get my 10,000 steps in?
Folks, I am, right at this moment, wearing clothing that was manufactured in a South Korean sweat shop. And what is more, I adopted my daughter 32 years ago from South Korea where her birth mother was an unwed teen, working in sweat shop making clothes to be sold in America. And you, my friends, are not much more distantly connected to this industry than I am. Check the labels in your clothes and even your shoes. You are, consciously or unconsciously, supporting forced child labor.
And I drank a lot of coffee before I came here, and I am likely to have a fruit smoothy before this day is over with fruit harvested by slaves in Central America. I still eat meat. I try to live lightly on the earth. I invest in renewable energy, avoid over packaging, I don’t shop at Walmart, and I try to buy locally grown foods, but you don’t get to live in this world innocently.
I acknowledge that obviously none of us are innocent, none of us are pure, but the question I hope this sermon asks is, “Are you trying as hard as you reasonably can?” And when it comes down to observing the basics of limiting the spread of a deadly virus, what possible excuse does anyone have for not wearing a mask, washing your hands, and keeping some distance between yourselves and others?
I’m not asking to raise your own sheep and cotton, to weave your own cloth and makes your own clothes. I’m not suggesting that you never eat imported foods or become a strict vegetarian. But if you won’t do the easy stuff that could stop a tidal wave of deaths, then how can you tell yourself that you are not evil?
Am I my brother’s keeper? You bet I am! Are you your sister’s keeper, are you responsible for helping to make her world safer, healthier, to give her a shot at living a full life? You bet you are! And for those of us who, by nothing but chance, were born in a wealthy country, are we the keepers of Haiti, Columbia, the Sudan, and Myanmar? There is currently a shortage of vaccines in the world, but a lot of wealthy nations have already purchased future production, more than enough to vaccinate their entire population two times. Is that just? Is that fair? Is that in any way defensible?
Now, to be fair, President Biden announced last month that the US would donate $4 billion in vaccines to poor countries, we just haven’t done it yet. Who has? Russia and China, in part for international relations and, in part, because if we vaccinate all of the USA and Europe but leave poor nations mired in Covid-19, then there will be a steady supply of new mutated viruses that will not be stopped by our vaccines.
If we want the pandemic to end in the USA, we have to make sure that the pandemic ends everywhere. It is the right thing to do ethically, and it is the right thing to do selfishly.
I am glad that my health and my age made it possible for me to be vaccinated but it is not lost on me that being recently vaccinated is also purely an accident of having been born in America. More specifically, being born white and belonging to the professional middle class in America, advantaged me once again. My significant other, Silvia, is a professor in a university town near Chapeco, Brazil.
Now that I am vaccinated, I was planning to go see her, but we have decided this week to delay our reunion until it is safer. Chapeco is currently in near collapse from Covid-19 infections. I wish that I could go and walk through the airport vaccinating everyone I see but that is not how the politics of vaccines work.
Again, you may not feel connected to what is happening in South America, but you just are not that far off. We can all celebrate the genius of the pharmaceutical scientists who have given us several highly effective vaccines in just one year.
But what does it mean for me to be vaccinated if Silvia cannot be? And more than that, all of the millions of people in Brazil who, by no fault of their own, happened to have been born south of Texas?
I know that it is uncommon for me to mention the Bible at all in our progressive community but if you can indulge me just a little more. There is, in scripture, both an awareness of our obligation to those who are near at hand, the people who drink from the same spring with you, the people who walk in the same mall as you do, as well as those who do not speak English, can’t shop on Amazon.com, and who live where there is no prospect of a vaccination program.
The prophet Ezekiel said, (Ezekiel 34.18) Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet? You may think that because you personally feel safe that you don’t have to worry about the safety of the people around you, and that is true if you don’t mind being a despicable human being who doesn’t deserve to live . . . . did I say that out loud?
But even though we have not gotten to be consistently concerned about those who are leaning over the same fountain for a drink as we are, it is too small a thing for us to be concerned with the other people at the mall and to not care about the people in the poorer nations of the world. When the Hebrews were being liberated from their long captivity in Babylon and allowed to return to Judah and rebuild their temple and their culture, the prophet Isaiah wrote, speaking for God,
(Isaiah 49:6) ‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’
The remnant of Israel was the opposite of a global superpower. They were not wealthy. They were not powerful. They were dependent upon the charity of foreigners to even have the lumbar to begin rebuilding their temple, but even then, Isaiah wanted for them to remember, it is not enough that their nation be restored for their own welfare alone.
If they were going to be lucky enough to be restored at all, they had to realize that their good fortune meant that they needed to be a blessing to the world.
Is the Modena, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Johnson and Johnson vaccines a blessing for Europe and America or are these vaccines a blessing to the world? That, my friends, depends entirely upon who we are. Are we deplorable, narcissistic, self-serving bastards, or are we decent and compassionate folks? Honestly, I can’t wait to see the evidence.
