May 14, 2006, 5th Sunday in the Easter-Time

Cain Slaying Abel : Johann Loth

Am I my Brother’s Keeper?

Most of my life I have used the question of Cain as recorded in Genesis 4:9, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” to emphasize the fact that Cain was trying to deny the fact that he had any responsibility for caring for his brother, as many of us show little concern for our brothers. I have begun what I have called “brother’s keepers” programs, for it was my contention, along with thousands of others, that we are indeed our brother’s keepers, for we have many responsibilities toward them.

It is true that Cain’s attitude was bad, and ours may be equally so. However, a closer examination of the story and the words have led me to the conclusion that if God had answered the question, He might well have said, “No, you are not your brother’s keeper, but what does that sarcastic and evasive answer have to do with the question I asked you?”

When we examine the use of the terms “keep” and “keeper” in the Bible, we will discover they are often used in describing how one cares for animals or prisoners. The mean spirit and sarcasm of Cain can be perceived more readily, and the reason for the negative answer to the question can be given if we paraphrase it. If he had said, “Am I his watchdog?” he would be asking about the same thing. It would be about the same as if he said, “Am I his jailer?” The correct answer is, “No.”

Suppose a mother came home where she had left her two teen-age children working or playing. When she enters, she sees only one. She asks, “Where is your brother?” The remaining irreverent child might ask, “Am I a baby sitter?” One can easily see that the answer is the same in all these situations. “No, you are not a baby-sitter (keeper of babies), a jailer (keeper of prisoners), a watchdog (keeper of sheep).” But that does not absolve us of guilt if we have failed in our responsibilities to our brother, whatever they may be.
A whole system of theology has been built around such philosophies and programs as “brother’s keepers.” We have no objection to the usual normal work of such programs. They involve such things as being watchful for the welfare of your brother, especially if he is weak. When he misses a service, inquiry is made concerning the reasons. Whatever help he may need is offered. We have mutual responsibilities, as ours is a “one-another” religion. These kinds of attitudes and actions are authorized by many such passages as “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).

The role of the elders as shepherds comes nearer being that which was suggested by Cain, since Hebrews 13:17 says, “they watch for your souls.” Many brethren today reject the idea that even the elders have any authority as a keeper of the sheep, but are merely supposed to lead by example. They are like a shepherd who walks out in front of the sheep and merely hopes they will follow. If a sheep starts to wander away, the shepherd (according to that philosophy) has no authority to send his sheep dog to round hem up or do more than say, “Please come back.”

I reject that as false doctrine. It is true that the elders are not to be “keepers of the flock” in the sense of “lording it over God’s heritage” (1 Peter 5:3), but this does not imply that they are therefore without authority to lead and discipline as God directs. It is true that the term “rule” in Hebrews 13:17 is not the kind of autocratic rule Jesus had in mind in Mark 10:42-43 when He said, “Ye know that they who are accounted to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it is not so among you.” They do have authority, however, to keep watch for the flock in a sense that Cain did not.

If we assign our own meaning to “keeper” and say that you are to be my “keeper” in the sense that I am to be yours, which would involve mutual care and concern for each other, there is little damage done. However, there is always a problem when one takes a Bible expression and assigns a different meaning to it than it originally had in the Bible. We do not find that meaning attached to the word anywhere in the Bible. The Lord’s Supper may become a eucharistic sacrament. Baptism may become a sacramental act by which salvation is automatically conferred. A bishop may become “the chief elder” and even have authority over a “diocese.” A brother’s keeper may become a “senior prayer partner,” a “discipler,” a “spiritual advisor,” or a “guru” of some other kind.

Therefore it is better to find the scriptural meaning of a term and use it in a scriptural way. If we do that, then we should be aware that Cain was saying something like this: “Why are you asking me about my brother’s whereabouts? Am I supposed to be his baby-sitter, watching his every move? Am I supposed to be his jailer, making sure I know where he is all the time? Am I supposed to be his sheep dog chasing him if he goes astray?” The correct answer to those questions is, “No, but so what?” Of course, the question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” was merely a hypocritical, sarcastic rejoinder to God’s question, trying to hide the fact that he had murdered his brother.

We may also pretend that since we are not in authority over our brother as his “discipler” or “spiritual advisor” or “senior prayer partner” as was conceived either in Gainesville or Boston, we have no obligation to him, and do not need to know or care about where he is. We may thus be as responsible for his death as Cain was for Abel’s death. And being a hypocrite or liar will not absolve us from guilt. The principle of what God said in Ezekiel 33:7-9 still applies to us. “So thou, son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die, and thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way; that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thy hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it, and he turn not away; he shall die in his iniquity, but thou hast delivered thy soul.” It is probable that this is what most of us have meant by the phrase, “brother’s keepers,” but it is almost certain that is not what Cain meant by it. It might be helpful when we use a term which is found in the scriptures that we are sure we use it the same way it is used, or explain how we are using it.
From: T. Pierce Brown; From: Old Paths Archive; www.oldpaths.com

Blessed Damien The Leper

Profile

In the 1800’s, the Hawaiian Islands suffered a severe leprosy epidemic, which was dealt with largely by isolating lepers on the island of Molokai. They were simply dumped there and left to fend for themselves. The crews of the boats carrying them there were afraid to land, so they simply came in close and forced the lepers to jump overboard and scramble through the surf as best they could. Ashore, they found no law and no organized society, simply desperate persons waiting for death.

A Belgian missionary priest, Joseph Van Veuster (Damien of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart), born in 1840, came to Hawaii in 1863, and in 1873 was sent at his own request to Molokai to work among the lepers. He organized burial details and funeral services, so that death might have some dignity. He taught the people how to grow crops and feed themselves better. He organized a choir, and got persons to sing who had not sung in years. He gave them medical attention. (Government doctors had been making regular visits, but they were afraid of contagion, and would not come close to the patients. They inspected their sores from a distance and then left medicines on a table and fled. Damien personally washed and anointed and bandaged their sores.)
There was already a small chapel on the island. It proved too small, and with the aid of patients he built a larger one, which soon overflowed every Sunday. Damien contracted leprosy himself in 1885, and continued to work there until his death on 15 April 1889.

Prayer

Almighty Father, we praise your name for your servant Damien, missionary to the lepers, and for all those who, following in the footsteps of your beloved Son, have preached the good news of salvation to the despised and rejected of the earth, not counting the cost to themselves; and we pray that your love for us may enkindle in our hearts an answering love for you and our neighbors, and that your grace may give us wisdom to see the opportunities you give us to serve you, and the courage to grasp them; that in all things we may be made conformable unto the image of the same your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, who now lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever.

Some people thought Damien was a hero for going to Molokai and others thought he was crazy. When a Protestant clergyman wrote that Damien was guilty of immoral behavior, Robert Louis Stevenson vigorously defended him in an “Open Letter to Dr. Hyde.”
During the beatification homily, Pope John Paul II said: “Holiness is not perfection according to human criteria; it is not reserved for a small number of exceptional persons. It is for everyone; it is the Lord who brings us to holiness, when we are willing to collaborate in the salvation of the world for the glory of God, despite our sin and our sometimes rebellious temperament.

Portrait of a Young Damien

Criticisms

Upon his death, a global discussion arose as to the mysteries of Damien’s life and his work on the island of Molokai. Much criticism came especially out of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in Hawaii. It has been argued for decades that these church leaders took a stance against Damien merely out of spite for Catholicism in general. They derided Damien as a “false shepherd” who was driven by personal ambition and ego. The most famous treatise published against Damien was by a Honolulu Presbyterian, Reverend C. M. Hyde, in a letter dated August 2, 1889 to a fellow pastor, Reverend H. B. Gage. Reverend Hyde wrote:
In answer to your inquiries about Father Damien, I can only reply that we who knew the man are surprised at the extravagant newspaper laudations, as if he was a most saintly philanthropist. The simple truth is, he was a coarse, dirty man, head-strong and bigoted. He was not sent to Molokai, but went there without orders; did not stay at the leper settlement (before he became one himself), but circulated freely over the whole island (less than half the island is devoted to the lepers), and he came often to Honolulu. He had no hand in the reforms and improvements inaugurated, which were the work of our Board of Health, as occasion required and means were provided. He was not a pure man in his relations with women, and the leprosy of which he died should be attributed to his vices and carelessness. Others have done much for the lepers, our own ministers, the government physicians, and so forth, but never with the Catholic idea of meriting eternal life. [1]
Having read the letter, Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, also a Presbyterian, drafted an equally famous treatise as a rebuttal in defense of Damien and derided Reverend Hyde for creating gossip to support his blatant anti-Catholic agenda. On October 26, 1889, Stevenson wrote: When we have failed, and another has succeeded; when we have stood by, and another has stepped in; when we sit and grow bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain, uncouth peasant steps into the battle, under the eyes of God, and succours the afflicted, and consoles the dying, and is himself afflicted in his turn, and dies upon the field of honour — the battle cannot be retrieved as your unhappy irritation has suggested. It is a lost battle, and lost for ever. [2]
In addition to calling Reverend Hyde a “crank”, Stevenson answered the charge that Damien was “not sent to Molokai but went there without orders” by arguing that:
Is this a misreading? or do you really mean the words for blame? I have heard Christ, in the pulpits of our Church, held up for imitation on the ground that His sacrifice was voluntary. Does Dr. Hyde think otherwise? [3]
In the process of examining Damien’s fitness for beatification and canonization, the Roman Curia pored over a great deal of documentation of published and unpublished criticisms against the missionary’s life and work. Diaries and interviews were scoured and debated. In the end it was found that what Stevenson called “heroism” was indeed genuine.

Portrait of Bless Damien in old age

In Honor of Mother’s Day:

Some Motherly Advice…
• Always change your underwear; you never know when you’ll have an accident.
• Don’t make that face or it’ll freeze in that position.
• Be careful or you’ll put your eye out.
• What if everyone jumped off a cliff? Would you do it, too?
• You have enough dirt behind those ears to grow potatoes!
• Close that door! Were you born in a barn?
• If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.
• Don’t put that in your mouth; you don’t know where it’s been!

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What the Bible says about Mothers…
• Gen 3:20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
• Ex 20:12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
• Lev 19:3 “‘Each of you must respect his mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths. I am the LORD your God.
• Deu 5:16 “Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
• Prov 10:1 The proverbs of Solomon: A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son grief to his mother.
• Isa 66:13 As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.”
• Ezek 16:44 “‘Everyone who quotes proverbs will quote this proverb about you: “Like mother, like daughter.”
• Luke 1:43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
• Luke 2:51 Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.
• John 19:26-27 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

Amen. Fiat!