The very first story in the Bible is the story of creation. In the first 3 chapters of Genesis, God creates the day and the night, the sun and the moon, the land and the sea, fish and fowl; animals to walk the land and a couple who are blessed to live in the midst of it all.

Adam and Eve have everything they could ever want or need, but a serpent tempts them into wanting even more which leads to their exile from the garden. By the end of chapter 3, it is clear that they cannot just feed off the land God has made and enjoy what it has to offer. Now they will need to claim a plot, toil, and till it in order to feed themselves and their family.

Which leads us to chapter 4 - the second story in the Bible - the one about their sons, Cain and Able.

Cain was a farmer. Able, a shepherd.

Farmers are settlers. Shepherds are nomads.

Farmers need to work the land to grow food and shepherds need to roam the land to find it. Farmers need to establish boundaries. Shepherds need to cross them.

There is a tension built into this story from the very beginning.

Who owns this land? Who has a right to determine how it is used, who profits from it, and how we might live upon it together?

Each brother brought an offering to God. Cain brought “the fruits of the soil,” and Able brought “portions from the first born of his flock.”

God preferred Able’s offering and Cain was upset… so upset that God warned him, saying: “(Cain) Why are you angry? …. If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

You may remember that Cain lost that battle. In his anger, he lured his brother out into a field and killed him in a fit of rage.

“Where is your brother Able?” asked God.

“I don’t know,” Cain lied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

It’s a rhetorical question.

There is only one right answer.

The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.

And the sad truth, my friends, is that blood has been crying out from the ground ever since.

I tell you this story because it seems to be an easy one to forget.

We forget that we are still our brother’s keeper. And our sisters.

We forget that we belong to each other.

And when we forget this and harm one another, God knows, because God always hears the cry: the cry of blood from the ground,

the cry of children cut down…

“God always hears the cry of the oppressed” (Thanks to Rob Bell and Dan Golden and their book, “Jesus Wants to Save Christians” for this insight and many more).

Fast forward a few chapters and you’ll see that God chose a people - the children of Abraham - and blessed them with this knowledge and much else.

God makes a covenant with Abraham that gets renewed with Moses and David and on down the line through various kings and prophets.

“I will be your God and you will be my people.”

“I have blessed you to be a blessing.”

“If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?”

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, in story after story, we follow the ups and downs of God’s chosen people. Sometimes they are the ones being oppressed by the empire du jour- like when they were slaves in Egypt -  and God is faithful.

Whenever the Hebrews find themselves on the underside of empire, God hears their cries and liberates them. And whenever God rescues them, God renews the covenant and reminds them to treat others the way God has treated them.

Free the captives, for you were once captive and I freed you.

Show hospitality, for you were once a stranger in a strange land and I took care of you.

Give freely to the poor, for I have always given freely to you.

The more God’s people do things God’s way the better life is - not just for them, but for everyone around them.

And yet somehow sin is never far from the door.

Prosperity has a way of breeding greed rather than gratitude, and the people forget their story.

The accumulation of power leads to an ever greater need for control.

The establishment of a national identity leads to suspicion of the other.

And eventually, rather than conform to God’s ways, God’s people give themselves over to the ways of the empires from which God has freed them. The formerly oppressed become the oppressors. Those whom God once rescued in their distress become deaf to the cries of those they are distressing. The wheel turns and the cycle begins again.

In passages like this love song from Isaiah, God laments their failure. I gave you my very best, says God, and in return:

(I) expected justice,   but saw bloodshed;righteousness,   but heard a cry!

The Israelites have failed to do what was right and broken God’s heart. They have become an empire as violent and oppressive as any other, and now, in a world where the strong take what they can and the weak endure what they must, Israel will be overtaken by a power even stronger then themselves. According to the prophet, God will now give them over to the consequences of their actions.

It is an old song.

It is an old story.

God is just.

Blood will tell.

Those who abuse their power will eventually get what’s coming to them.

Those who live by the sword…

But it’s not the only song and it’s not the only way to tell the story.

Genesis might be the first story in the Bible, but it’s not the oldest. Does anyone know what the oldest story in the Bible actually is? It is the story of Job, a righteous man who suffered.

Job was an innocent man who did what was right in the sight of God and in spite of that, suffered the loss of all he held dear.

Here is another point of tension built into the whole Biblical narrative from before the beginning: Suffering is not always a punishment.

Suffering is not always deserved.

Sometimes we suffer the consequences of our bad actions and sometimes we suffer because of the bad actions of others, whether we deserve it or not.

Those who ruled over Jerusalem in the days of Isaiah abused their power and lost everything when the Babylonians tore down their walls, destroyed Jerusalem, and carried their people away.

But, and this is always the case, many of the people killed or carried away were innocent. Many of those people had nothing to do with the decisions made by their rulers and had they been consulted would have reminded the King and his court of God’s commands. They would have called those in power back to God’s ways. They didn’t want things to go down the way they did, but neither did they have the power to stop it, and so a multitude suffered because of the terrible decisions made by a few.

Sometimes we suffer the consequences of our bad actions and sometimes we suffer because of the bad actions of others whether we deserve it or not. Both stories can be true at the same time and so we need to tread carefully in times like these.

You may not know this, but Canada is angry at us - at the United States - right now. Like, furious (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/opinion/canada-america-allies.html?searchResultPosition=18). Do know how egregiously awful you need to be to upset Canada? I don’t think anyone here has a beef with Canada, but the policies of this administration are turning our closest ally against us.

I have no doubt that the vast majority of Ukrainians and Russians want nothing more than for the war to end and for their people to live in peace with each other. And I know from year’s of peace work that the same goes for the vast majority of Jews and Palestinians.

I know there are Jews here in America, in Israel, and all over the world who want the assault on Gaza to end, who want to see a flood of aid sent to the people who are starving, who believe that this war is unjustified and awful and see how the actions of the Israeli government are isolating their country from the rest of the world in a way that will lead to more antisemitism not less. As Jews they believe with all their hearts in those words - “never forget” - and want to be true to them. But their government plows on …and it plows on with our support.

We may be shocked and appalled by what Israel is doing to the people of Gaza right now, but we need to remember that the United States has been complicit in this occupation, in the apartheid, and now in the genocide of the Palestinian people.

“Israel has dropped more than 100,000 tons of explosives on Gaza. That is more than was dropped on Dresden and Hamburg, Germany, and London combined during World War II. Israel has destroyed over 70 percent of all the structures in Gaza and seems determined to destroy it all (Ezra Klein https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-philippe-sands.html).

I don’t imagine that any of us here want any part of that, and yet over 65% of the weaponry at Israel’s disposal has come from our country, regardless of which party has been in control.   

It is unfair to paint an entire people with one brush, to hold all the citizens of any country at fault for the decisions of their leaders. This is not our fault, anymore than this occupation is the fault of all Jews or October 7th the fault of all Palestinians, but we will all still suffer the consequences of decisions made by our leaders, and it is hard to imagine that anyone is suffering more right now than our siblings in Gaza.

It’s not our fault or theirs, but in what way is it our responsibility? Actually, let me break that down even further.

What response is within our ability?

I think we go back to the beginning - the beginning of our story and theirs - and we remember that we belong to each other.

We remember that we are our brother and our sisters’ keeper. We remember that there is no such thing as other people’s children…they are all our children. These are all our children.

And because we belong to each other, we refuse to look away and we refuse to be silent. Even if it causes division, even if it requires hard conversation.

Jesus says look, if you can see the signs in the sky and predict the weather you can sure as all get out see the signs of what is happening to people around you and if they are being harmed you can’t just smooth it over and pretend everything is okay.

This is not okay.

Ten days ago, in Italy, a Catholic Cardinal (Matteo Zuppi) lead a prayer vigil for child victims of this war, beginning with the 16 Israeli children who died on Oct. 7, followed by the names of the 12,211 Palestinian children who have died in the aftermath.

The document was 469 pages long.

It took seven hours to read.

This is not okay.

And so we must remember that we belong to each other, we must speak up for each other, and then we must show up for each other.

You can show up at the Standing Together rally and the Faithful Witness rally that happen on Wednesdays right outside our doors.

You can volunteer to help or come with as many friends as you can find to this interfaith concert for the Children of the Sumud school on October 4.

You can talk to Ruth after worship and give her money directly.

You can call our representatives and let them know you stand with Gaza and that they will have your vote if they can find the courage to do what is right and stand up for Gaza too.

And you can pray… pray for the people being harmed and pray for those who are perpetrating it.

After the sermon, Adam and Jeremy are going to play a nice long meditation so we can hold all of this in prayer and I hope you will pray, not just for Gaza or these children, but for Israel’s government and for ours.

Pray that our leaders find their way back to God, the one who taught us from the very beginning that we belong to each other and the one who hears our cries when we forget that age old truth.

One last thought before I close and we lift our prayers together.

I’ve been looking at Enaam’s face all week; this mother holding her son. His name was Jihad. When I heard that it gave me pause. I think most of us hear that word and we think holy war, war against the infidel, and it does not stir up peaceful feelings.

But Jihad has an older deeper meaning. In Islam, Jihad is a war within the self against evil and sin. It’s the same war Cain fought and lost when he killed his brother. It’s a war humans have been waging and losing ever since. I look at Israel right now and I see a country that is succeeding militarily but losing the war for its very soul, and if things do not change, I fear our country is not far behind.

But I look at Enaam and I see someone who has won that war within herself.

When her son died for lack of medicine, Enaam could’ve collapsed in bitterness and hatred. But instead, she transformed her grief into a determination to care for the children around her. She started the Sumud school as an act of hope and resistance to protect their lives, their culture, their language, and their place upon this earth. That is why it is called Sumud. That is what Sumud means in Arabic. Sumud is a quiet persistence, a non-violent resistance to displacement, a steadfast resolve to claim the land as a place where her people have as much a right to live and flourish as anyone else.

Not just any land, but a holy land, a promised land, a land of abundance with enough for both the nomads and the settlers, the citizen and the foreigner, the shepherds and the farmers, the Jews and the Palestinians.

The land God made for all of Adam and Eve and Abraham’s children.

A land that belongs to us just as we belong to each other.

May we never forget.

May we always remember.

Amen.