“Now Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let’s go out to the field.’ And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’” (Genesis 4:8-9a)
“On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ ‘What is written in the Law?’ he replied. ‘How do you read it?’ He answered, ‘“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind”; and “Love your neighbour as yourself.”’ ‘You have answered correctly,’ Jesus replied. ‘Do this and you will live.’ But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’” (Luke 10:25-29)
The Genesis question is personal and exact: ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ It requires a precise answer from Cain, which he won’t give. He evades the honesty and responsibility the question demands of him. The closer I look the more I realise that the lawyer’s question to Jesus in Luke 10 is no less personal and exact: ‘And who is my neighbour?’ The answer places an expectation of honesty and responsibility on the “expert in the law.” We simply don’t know how he responded.
I’ve been watching the news this week with these two questions in my mind. Palestinian and Israeli, Republican and Democrat, Ukrainian and Russian … ‘Where is your brother?’ and ‘Who is my neighbour?’ I’ve been reflecting on my own community with the same two questions in mind. The under-funded and over-stretched Health and Care workers, the growing number of families dependent on our local Foodbank, the cutbacks to life-line services, the pensioners struggling to keep warm, the unemployed seeking solace in drugs and alcohol … ‘Where is your brother?’ and ‘Who is my neighbour?’
How do we respond?