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“Ever Eastward” Baccalaureate Sermon Centre College May 24 “Ever Eastward” Baccalaureate Sermon Centre College May 24, 2015 Rick Axtell Professor of Religion and College Chaplain Texts: Genesis 4: 1-16; Jeremiah 31: 15-17, 21; Psalm 46 Every day women and men become legends Sins that go against our skin become blessings The movement is a rhythm to us Freedom is like religion to us1 These words from this year’s Oscar-winning song, Glory, capture the spirit of the marchers at Selma Alabama 50 years ago. I won’t attempt the rest of Common’s lyrics, since I’m not known for my skills as a rapper. But you know the story he’s celebrating: Lined up at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, advocates of civil rights in the Jim Crow south began a march eastward to Montgomery to petition for the right to vote. But this trek was only one step in a journey toward a civilization built on the proposition that all of us are created equal. On that Bloody Sunday, what they faced on that bridge was a barrage of police brutality that shocked the nation. Amid clouds of tear gas, troopers on horseback rushed the peaceful demonstrators, fracturing skulls and ribs with their billy clubs, while others chased and beat the injured. The iconic photo of Mrs. Amelia Boynton lying unconscious on the ground stirred the conscience of America.2 And that spring, Lyndon Johnson presented a bill to Congress that became the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now, 50 years later, John Legend and Common remind us in their song: “Selma’s now, for every man woman and child.” Selma’s now. This year, we’ve witnessed the deaths of black men at the hands of police in Ferguson, and Staten Island, and Cleveland, and Madison, and Charleston, and Baltimore—men whose deaths expose a national pattern that Michelle Alexander calls The New Jim Crow.3 Does the turmoil of your senior year signal another step in this journey toward a more perfect union? The answer to that question may be up to us. This is a bridge we still have to cross. Today’s reading from the ancient story of Cain and Abel presents an archetypal image of the human condition that may provide some insight into the events that shook us this year. And perhaps it can give us insight into your own journey as well. For, barring any atrocious misbehavior between now and 3:00, your four-year journey will end with a trip across this stage. And what a journey it’s been. It began with parents who set you on the bridge to a bright future and dreamed this day would come, and will annoy you with incessant picture-taking all day. Humor them. It’s their journey, too. You remember those first steps—that acceptance letter from Admissions or Posse or Bonner, or that call from a recruiter that made you one of the athletes who’d lead Centre to 37 Conference Championships, including this year’s historic 10-0 football season and our women’s soccer team in the Elite 8. Your Centre journey has taken you to the temples of India, and the ruins of Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, and Chichen Itza; to the glaciers of New Zealand and the volcanoes of Guatemala; to the Parthenon in Athens and the ancient city of Petra in Jordan. You’ve explored the great cities of Strasbourg and London, Shanghai and Barcelona, Prague and Jerusalem, Havana and Vienna, Bangkok and Lima, and the villages of Cameroon and Chiapas, Uganda and Barbados. So many bridges crossed. This class has circled the globe, and you’ve circled the flame (some of you in the last few days, apparently). We’re glad you showed up today, fully robed. Today is the end of a great journey, but also the bridge to your future. So with Cain and Abel as our guides, I want to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re going. In the Bible, Cain and Abel are the first human brothers. The text tells us nothing of their boyhood friendship. We read only that Abel becomes a shepherd and Cain a farmer. Already in this first human family, this primal brotherhood, there is difference. And this differentiation, this unexpected reality of division in human relations, takes on the dimension of tragedy. The brothers bring offerings to their God—Abel from his flock, and Cain from his harvest. This inscrutable Deity accepts Abel’s offering but rejects Cain’s. We don’t know why.4 Cain does not know why. But it’s not hard to imagine the agony of this rejection, the arbitrariness of this preferential judgment from the authority one hopes to please, this blow to one’s self-worth. Has Abel earned this favor? What have I done to be eclipsed by this chosen one? The story of this primal conflict seems inescapable:5 It’s also the story of Jacob, his mom’s favorite, supplanting Esau. It’s Rachel’s golden boy, Joseph, superseding his older brothers. It’s the treachery of Claudius against his brother Hamlet.6 It’s the “C” at the top of your seminar paper, the fruit of months of work, and the “A” your fellow student received for the inexplicably brilliant product of an Adderall-infused all-nighter.7 We know this story.8 Cain is grieved by God’s partiality toward Abel. The God who rejected his offering now warns him that sin is crouching like a predatory animal outside the tent. God assures Cain he has the power to master this beast. But you can feel it lurking when Cain calls his brother out to the field...9 “And there, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him.”10 His “brother” Abel, the text reminds us. And we are left with the iconic image of Abel lying unconscious on the ground. So God puts Cain on trial: “Where is Abel, your brother?” And Cain’s response is as chilling as it is ethically significant: “I don’t know, am I my brother’s keeper?” The divine response is as powerful as any line in the Bible: “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.” Six times, the text repeats the word “brother.” This brother who never speaks in the text has not lost his voice. It cries out from the very soil that produced Cain’s offering, soil now satiated by the sacrifice of the innocent. God decrees that the soil will no longer yield its harvest for this first farmer, Cain. Instead, he is sentenced to wander on the earth. But to ease Cain’s fear of blood vengeance, God puts a mark of protection on him.11 The vicious cycle of bloodshed must be stopped before it starts. And so Cain travels further eastward, to dwell in the land of Nod—the land of wandering—east of Eden. Cain’s story then becomes a tale of cultural development. It is Cain who establishes the first city, and his descendants are history’s first metalworkers and musicians.12 But the cycle of killing persists in this city east of Eden. A descendant of Cain boasts that he has killed a mere boy in return for not so much as a wound.13 Such is life in the city. And this is all we hear of Cain. Cain has set civilization in motion. The city, with all its cultural advances, has been founded. And somewhere in the distance, a faint but persistent voice cries out from the ground. We are left with the question of whether we can find a way to cross the bridges that divide us—the great ethical challenge for every age. This morning, it’s worth exploring what this foundational narrative might mean for us as you graduate. For you are about to be cast out of this Edenic Paradise you’ve so affectionately known as Centre, wanderers for a time in the “Land of Nod,” which would be a great name for the late-night café where you’ll wait on tables to pay for grad school. Or perhaps the Land of Nod is that familiar bedroom waiting for you back home until you figure out how glassblowing, Cormac McCarthy, and existentialism can be parlayed into a career. (Perhaps you shouldn’t have nodded off in those economics classes). From here you’ll journey into a world of unprecedented cultural change. And on one level, cultural change is what the story of Cain and Abel is about—this archetypal story of the ruptures at the heart of every advance in human development. You see, the death of Abel, the herder, at the hands of Cain, the planter, is the triumph of agriculture over the nomadic ways that preceded it. It pictures the cultural transition during the Iron Age era from which these stories arose. The foundation of urban civilization is not far behind, and foundation stories like this one picture the terrible sacrifice on which each new cultural shift is grounded.14 Now, we, too, are undergoing an historic cultural transition—a change as momentous as the evolution from nomadic herding to agriculture and cities—Cain’s story. For us, it’s an unparalleled information technology revolution, in a globalizing marketplace with integrating power that is all-encompassing. When I came to Centre 20 years ago, we didn’t have email. We’d never heard of PowerPoint or Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, or, thankfully, Yik Yak. To “like” something was to have positive internal feelings about it.
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