IF NOT YOU, WHO IS YOUR BROTHER'S KEEPER?

I Corinthians 8:1-13

Genesis 4:2b-9

One of the best known stories from the First Testament ends with Cain's question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" If questions were golf, this is the Tiger Woods of questions. This is the 800 pound gorilla of questions. It's a question that goes to the very heart of how we understand our lives as religious persons, and yet, since it happens in the middle of the first murder story, somehow the importance of the question goes begging. What do you think? Are you your brother's keeper? I don't mean "keeper" as in zoo keeper or jailer. I mean it in the sense Cain applied it -- as someone who is responsible for the welfare of another. And I don't mean just the ones you like. Cain had murdered his brother, so I think it's safe to say at that moment he didn't like him very much. Are you your brother's keeper even if you don't approve of him? And, if you aren't, who will care for your brother?

Before we discuss that, I need to bring you up to date a little bit. I like to believe that all the congregations I serve keep notebooks on the things I do when I'm not here, but on the outside chance that you haven't been able to keep up, let's review:

As you may remember, I'm the prosecuting attorney in Boyd County. In 2004, two thoroughly nasty pieces of work named Nolan and Campbell went to the home of two drug dealers to buy marijuana. For reasons best left to those wiser than I, they decided to rob and kill them, and they returned and did that, shooting and knifing the man and his wife, then setting fire to the house to try and cover it up. Tragically, there were two children in the house when it was set ablaze. Thankfully, the children weren't hurt, but children are sympathetic victims, and suddenly, this was a death penalty case.

By “death penalty case”, I mean that it was a case where the death penalty could legally be imposed, and one in which it seemed to me that a jury might, indeed, do so. Not all murder cases are death penalty cases. Only the worst of the worst homicides are “death qualified”, and the law is very specific about that. Even among death qualified cases, the prosecutor has discretion in whether or not to seek capital punishment, depending on whether or not he thinks the jury would be receptive to it.

I want you to remember that situation as we turn to the scripture for today, from Paul's first letter to the church at Corinth. Paul is writing about eating meat sacrificed to idols.

You see, in the world of ancient Corinth, pagan temples didn't just take a honking big ox, throw it whole into the flames and burn it to cinders. They burnt the entrails, and the hooves, and maybe the head. Then, the person making the sacrifice invited friends and family in for a feast at which the meat of the sacrificial animal was consumed. For a culture that did not, as a rule, eat meat, it was a big-time party.

But, what if you were a Christian? This meat had been "blessed" by some pagan priest, and the proceeds of the party were being used to support the temple of some pagan deity. For some of the members of Paul's church, this was no problem. Paul says, "We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one."

For others, as Paul puts it, "Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled."

Paul recognized that, ". . . food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do", but he was wise enough to know that there is another, deeper, problem here, one that touches even us, today.The problem? Not everyone's faith is as strong as Paul's was. Things that wouldn't harm Paul's faith a bit, he recognized, could crush the faith of a weaker member of the church of Jesus Christ. Paul recognized that the correct measure for his behavior wasn't what was good or bad, harmful or not harmful for him. It was what was good or bad for his brothers and sisters in the church at Corinth. He said,

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.

Paul is saying to his church that if they, the church leaders, are seen eating this meat in the temples of an idol by one who still doesn't understand that the idols are fake, won't that person be emboldened to think that the myriad gods and goddesses of the pagan Roman world are real?

“Therefore”, Paul concludes, “if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.”

Paul has done a lot more than to address a dietary problem in Corinth. He has answered Cain's question for Christians definitely and forever: yes, you are your brother's keeper. You are responsible for your brother's and sister's well-being. Our strength must be enlisted in the protection of the weakest of our community. It is not what we are free to do that governs our behavior, it is our responsibilities to our brothers and sisters that must shape our every word, deed and thought. By claiming Christ as our Lord and Master, we have taken upon ourselves the care and keeping of our brothers and sisters. If we fail to do so, Paul says, “... this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge.”

Church, I want that statement of Paul’s to rivet itself into your brains. “... this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge.” Christ Jesus, the only-begotten, totally unique, never been this way before Son of the Most High God laid himself down on a timber, extended his left hand and let some Roman bang a nail into it; extended his right hand and his feet, and permitted the same, then was hoist into the air to die in humiliation for the salvation of the weakest, most unregenerate back-sliding reprobate in the community. Hear that, church! Christ did not die just for your saintly Aunt Margaret. He died for all of us, even the ones that are very tough to love. Jesus Christ permitted himself to be killed for the salvation of Nolan and Campbell.

I picked my way through the charred remains of the house, still dripping from the fire hoses. The floor was in pretty good condition. You often find the floors, and even the carpets, sound at a fire scene. Near a door, there was discoloration of the carpet outlining where one body had been. I stood in what was once the hall, near the bathroom where the children were put to die, and I thought about the horror that might have been, and the horror that was.

I can’t tell you how angry I was, how much I hated those who had done this, how much I wanted them to suffer and die. They had it coming. Not only that, but I had more than the right to ask for the death penalty – I had a DUTY to do so. That’s my job – to enforce all the laws.

Hold on to that thought for a minute.

Television gives you an awful view of what happens in real courts, and soap operas are the worst. Work with me here, and I’ll tell you what really happens.

First, the jury has to be “death qualified.” There’s a horrible phrase -- “death qualified”. That means that the judge and the lawyers have to ask them if they could, providing they were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, return a verdict of death.

I stood there in the ashes and in my mind’s eye, I saw myself asking those questions. Then, I saw myself, at the end of the case, urging those death qualified jurors to return a decision that these two men, for whom I cannot, even now, dredge up any love, should die for their crimes. And, just as clearly, I heard a voice say, “The preacher said it would be all right to do that.”

The preacher. Me.

I really want to tell you that this text from Paul's letter came into my mind, but it didn't. Later, at the Archabbey of St. Meinrad, where I go every year, the passage that came to me was from the first letter of Peter, not Paul. The author of that letter wrote, “Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ.”

If I were to stand in front of that jury and ask them to return a verdict of death, the words I speak must be as one speaking the very words of God. I searched my mind for some example in Scripture or experience from which I might conclude that the very words of God included me telling otherwise ordinary Boyd County people that it would be alright for them to decide to kill somebody in cold blood.

I could find none.

Hear what I'm saying. I am not saying these two don't deserve death, in my mind. I am saying I cannot find anywhere in Scripture or experience where I am led to believe that any of us has the right to make that decision.

That hung me up.

If those prospective jurors were going to return a verdict of death, somebody would have to tell them that that this is the right and proper thing to do, and that somebody would have to be me. I'm the prosecutor.

But I'm also a Christian, and a minister. Can a Christian give another person permission to kill? In 2 Corinthians, Paul calls us "Ambassadors for Christ". An Ambassador is someone who speaks for another. Can an Ambassador for Christ urge others to kill?

What if someone heard those words, and took me to be speaking for the church as a whole? What if that person concluded that if the preacher said it, it must represent the teaching of the church? Whatever your beliefs about the death penalty, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has not adopted a position on capital punishment.

Can the civil law of the land supersede the very words of Jesus when he said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”, John 13:34-35.

What if there were someone on that jury with a poor opinion of Christians who heard me say that, and concluded, “Christians are hypocrites, just like I always thought. They talk about love, then turn around and try to get us to put some poor fool in the electric chair.”

Many times worse, what if someone on that jury, or someone in the public reading about the trial, was “on the bubble” about committing their lives to Jesus Christ, heard that and turned from the commitment? That happened, in another county. A commonwealth's attorney who was very active in her church argued for a death verdict. One of the members of the church heard that, and came to question her own faith.

To paraphrase Paul, I concluded, “Therefore, if what I say causes my brother to fall into sin, I will not speak of this, so that I will not cause him to fall.” It's not our pious words upon which we'll be judged by those around us – it is our actions. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”, said Jesus.

I want to be crystal clear about this: You cannot earn your way into heaven by your works, BUT by your works you can deny your brother entry. You can lead him into sin as surely as can Satan. You can be a supporter of your brother's efforts to find his way to God, or you can be a stumbling block to him. If you are a stumbling block to your brother, and do it in the name of Christ, it will be counted against you as surely as if you had committed murder.

Our obedience unto Baptism, our confession of belief, our life in the church is not what we are about as Christians. Paul tells us that what our business as Christians is is to protect the weakest among us from falling into sin by reason of something we do.

If our brother or sister is tempted into the sin of idolatry because he or she sees us eat meat, then we cannot eat meat, even if to do so would not be a sin for us. THAT is the measure of our behavior as Christians. It's not some sappy slogan on the sign out front of the church. It's hard, church. It's hard to love those who are not lovable. It's hard to give up those things we have every right to do because to do them might harm our brothers and sisters.

I could not tell those twelve jurors I hadn't even met yet that they had the power reserved to God alone to decide life or death, however carefully it was done. To do so might cause them to fall into the sin of believing they are wiser than God. I told the courts that I could not, and at the next election, I lost my job, my life's work; my twenty-four year career. And, the jobs of five other families who worked for me. I must now live with that decision.

Tertullian, an early church father, once planned to undertake a course of action which could have resulted in his death. His advisers told him that if he undertook the action, he might be killed. Tertullian replied, “Must we live?” Those who save their lives will lose them. Those who lose their lives on account of me will have everlasting life.

There's one other thing. Many people in Boyd County think I threw away my career, and the jobs of my wife, my secretaries and my assistants for two criminals the world would do very well without, and, from that perspective, I'm the dumbest man alive. I could easily have kept the case, kept my mouth shut, plead it out for a life sentence, and maybe all those people would still have their jobs. All I had to do was to hide my faith under a basket. I chose not to do so. If we, as Christians, cannot stand up and give our Christianity as the very reason that we do the things we do, then there is no point in being a Christian. I might as well be a righteous Muslim, or Hindu or Buddhist. I did what I did, and I said why I did it as clearly as I could manage so that as many people as possible could know that Christianity is the religion of love. "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

I've told you now why I did what I did. You decide if I am dumb or not. It doesn't matter at this point. What matters is what you will do. How will you present yourself as a Christian? Will you permit your actions to lead a weaker brother or sister into sin? Or will you, as Tertullian did, value your very life as nothing against your obligation to be the best Christian those about you know?

Paul answers Cain's question with a resounding, "YES". Yes, we are our brother's keeper. Yes, we are challenged to love the unlovable. The question this Sunday, here, now, is: do you believe it?

Amen.