And maybe it's because we just finished with all of the family Christmas celebrations, but this brief passage, filled with names I can't pronounce very well and characters I've never really studied, left me thinking about families.
First I thought about the primordial first family: Adam and Eve with Cain, Abel, and later Seth. I find it amazing that the very first family in all of scripture is one messed up bunch! What must their life have been like? How did Adam and Even respond when they heard one of their sons had killed the other and had left the home? You can picture the couple, trying to decide if they remove Cain's pictures from the wall and maintaining Abel's childhood bedroom as a shrine to his memory.
You can imagine Adam and Eve among the people, trying to keep their eyes downcast and act as if they can't hear the whispers, "You heard about what happened with their two sons haven't you?" Or even the anxiety that rises with the innocent question from a new acquintance, "Do you have any children?"
And what about Cain? Did Cain ever come home for birthdays or other celebrations or was he an outcast for the rest of his life? Was there ever forgiveness?
And what about Seth, the child who was born after all of this betrayal and murder? Did Adam and Eve try to raise him protected from these painful stories of the past? You can imagine a lot of pressure to redeem the family name was placed on this final child in the family, a pressure to make good grades, get into a good college, never get arrested or as much as a speeding ticket.
This is the first family we're given in scripture. I don't know about you but I find that actually more of a comfort than a problem. I come from a family with Cains and Abels and Seths and Adams and Eves, and I suspect you do as well. If we learn anything from this story, though, I think we learn that God works even in the midst of messed up families and life situations. The one consisent character throughout all this family drama is God, working to redeem, working to reconcile, working to restore.
There is a hope, then, that God remains at work in our lives and in the lives of those we love, just as God did with Cain and Adam and Eve. God does not demand that your family resemble a Norman Rockwell painting in order to be a part of our community of faith, but God calls broken people who carry shame and grief, guilt and heartache into our church.
A prayer I have for us is that we will continue to become a community that creates a space for honest sharing about these situations in our lives. What a gift it is to be able to tell someone, "I'm having a really hard time dealing with _________" and to have them hold your hand, cry with you, pray with you, and covenant to walk alongside you. Oftentimes when we are willing to share those things about ourselves, others begin to share their own struggles and we realize that none of us have it all together. There is a comfort in that community, a sense of solidarity, a sense of belonging.
God works through broken people like us and God works to restore and heal us. Let us look, then, at our ancestors in the faith and find where they reflect us; let us look at how God worked in their lives, and then look around in our own life to see where the Good News is beginning to shine.
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