November 4 2007 Lectionary Reading: Genesis 4.1-10

Theme: What it is to be human……..

There are some wonderful views to be had from the mountain summits of the West Highlands. From some of the higher peaks, you can see great distances over the landscape of lochs, mountains and rivers. Take Ben More, for instance, above Crianlarich. From its summit, to the north east, you can see the mountains around Loch Tay, where the river Tay has its source, which will open out into the great seascape of the Firth of Tay. If you look south east, you will see the hills and mountains round the rivers that will eventually flow into the River Forth, and out to the vast estuary of the Firth of Forth.

In the opening chapters of Genesis, we are among the summits. To stand here, is to look out over the landscape of the Bible. Here in Genesis we stand at the headwaters of what will be some of the great currents of the Scriptures. Reading from the early chapters of the Book of Genesis this morning gives as an opportunity to consider what the Scriptures say about the great matters of human origins, what human life is like. What it is to be human. And hear the answers Genesis gives us to these questions.

From the summit of Genesis 2, we read it last week, we see that God creates human life, gives that life as a gift to the first two human beings and we also catch a glimpse of what the human relationship with the living God was meant to be. As the Garden of Eden springs into abundant life, with the crystal clear waters welling up to water the ground, the trees flourish, the leaves grow green, fruit is on every hand. So the two human beings, Adam and Eve are set in in the garden in the kindness and love of God. And they themselves are to be rooted, growing, flourishing in their relationship with the living God. There is nothing, when we first meet them, to hinder their relationship with God, no sin, no guilt, or shame.

The view from the summit, here in Genesis, the glorious, profound truth in Genesis 2 is that as men and women, we were created for a relationship with God. In a great loving movement, God, the living God of grace and love, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit – has given us life, and created us, to share life with Him. Which is why we find our true life, our true being in Him, He created us for life in His company. In God is fullness of life, fullness with one another, richness of life, all we need is in Him. This was our original state as human beings, declares Genesis.

How different, by contrast, the scene that appears before us, in Genesis 4. Here are the two sons of the first two human beings. Cain, the elder son, the one who tills the ground. Abel, the younger son, the one who tends the flocks of sheep. Cain the farmer. Abel the shepherd. Cain, the first farmer, the ancestor of those who dig the ground and plant crops – Abel, the first shepherd, ancestor of those who search for green pastures for their flocks, and care for them. But of course, once again, something deeper is being revealed to us here.

In a sacrifice to the Lord. Cain brings the produce of the fields. Abel brings lambs from the flock. The Lord, we are told, looks with favour on Abel. But not on Cain, and Cain is angry. Days later, out in the open fields, in a fit of jealous rage, Cain kills Abel.

Now, the question is: Where is Eden now – the flourishing place of peace and abundant life ? In place of peace, abundant life, here is jealousy anger and death. What has happened to change everything ?

Well, of course, between the Garden of Eden, the murderous intent of Cain and the death of Abel in a ploughed field there lies a fault line, the Fall, as it used to be called. Genesis recounts how the two human beings in Eden, Adam and Eve, refused to listen to God, and through that refusal were ejected from the Garden. Sin has entered human life.

And now, where we read in Genesis 4, the human relationship with God is dissolving. Where once there was communion with God under His absolute care and protection, we now see something different. Where God made the man, out of the soil of the earth, out of nothing, and breathed life into him, and breathed life into the woman likewise, and the two human beings shared in the life of God. As the relationship with God dissolves, we see human beings slipping back into nothingness. We see human life, cut of from the source of life, slipping back into that nothingness, into the weakness, instability, frailty that you and I know. In Cain’s murder of his brother, Abel, we see the dramatic climax of the disintegrating relationship with God.

It might help here, to remember that Jesus teaches us that life in God is summed up in these words: we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves. Our life in God can be summed up as love for God and love for others. And actually, that is what we see in the garden of Eden, the first two human beings living in the presence of God, loving Him, and one another.

But now look at Cain. The Lord warns him, do what is right ! for sin is crouching at your door ! But Cain does not listen, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American thinker and writer wrote: frightful, is the solitude of the soul which is without God in the world-this…..houseless, fatherless, aimless Cain, the man who hears only the sound of his own footsteps in God's resplendent creation. Cain is defiant towards God, and harbours murderous intent towards his brother, Abel. As human life slips away from God, so human life slides slowly towards nothingness. And from the human heart, says the Lord Jesus, there now springs theft, murder, greed, malice, deceit, envy slander, arrogance and folly. And if we had any doubts about what the human heart is like, we only need remember how the world despised and rejected Jesus Christ, the Lord of life, at the Cross, and still despises and rejects Him.

But the amazing declaration of the Scriptures, when we gaze over the whole great sunlit landscape of the Bible, is that the living God has not given up what He has made. This is God’s creation ! Women and men, are those He has created ! and the declaration of the Bible, is that it is into this world, into our time, into this disintegrating world, that the living Word, Jesus Christ has come.

Now, there is little time left to unfold all this. But isn’t it wonderful how John in his gospel speaks of Jesus as a human being ? John in his gospel tells us of the perfect relationship Jesus has with the living God – what is set before us in the gospel of John is an account of the life of Jesus: here is a human life of unbroken communion with God, and of perfect faithfulness to God, a life lived always in God – always in the Father’s will, a life of love. In the letter we read this morning, John writes, This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us…….. we might add to this: this is how we know what human life is: we know by looking at Jesus. We know what perfect human life is by looking at Jesus, and His life of love. What is human life ? looking at Jesus, looking at the light that shines in Him – we see human life is life lived in love for God, and love for others.

Now, we can grasp - we can understand - why the great apostle Paul speaks of Jesus as the second Adam. Where the first Adam failed, was faithless, turned away from the living God, and in doing so turned, diverted the course of the whole human race towards nothingness:

Jesus, the second Adam, is the new source of human life, the root, the wellspring of the new human life. In Him, through Him, with Him the restoration of the world, the restoration of men and women, the restoration of you and me, has begun !

AMEN.