In the aftermath of the first murder on this planet came God's question: "Where is your brother?" The question was not a divine invitation to a philosophic dialogue on the mysteries of life; nor was it a cosmic pronouncement on life after death. Its purpose was both immediate and enduring.
The immediate forced Cain to stand before divine justice and grace: on the one hand, to be charged with the respon sibility of his brother's murder, to face sin. as betrayal of brotherhood, and to stand condemned as a sinner before the bar of, divine justice; on the other, to face the possibility that he could be whole again, given the mystery of the Creator's grace and redeeming love.
The enduring purpose of the question has kept history on its tiptoe. The question served notice on all time to come, on generations yet unborn, that no person is an island, and that life to be meaningful must be lived within the context of God and the human. Poor Cain missed the point, and therein lay his sin. And Cain, terrorized by the question, left a legacy of fear and troubled conscience, and never any shortage of successors.
In facing the question "Where is your brother ?" we shall have answered one of life's great issues, and one of pastoral ministry's great tasks.
Why do I say that? A minister is a spokesperson for God. As a minister, you deliver God's message. You mediate the Word. You lead in worship. You evangelize. You shepherd. You dedicate. You baptize. You marry. You bury. You weep. You rejoice. But in each of your functions, if God is on one end, the human is at the other end. It is the human that provides the context of ministry. Without one there is no power in your ministry; without the other there is no object for your ministry.
Practicing brotherhood must ever remain a passionate preoccupation of the Christian pastor. No one can read the Bible without the solemn discovery that brotherhood is one of the foremost concerns of the Scriptures. The prophet Malachi argued for human brotherhood from the point of God's creative power: "Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother?" (Mal. 2:10). The prophet's burden was directed particularly toward the priests, as if to stress that priesthood stands powerless in the performance of its task when it fails to practice the brother hood of the human kind.
Jesus stressed the importance of the issue in the way He trained His disciples. When He commanded them to model their prayer life by beginning with a confession of the fatherhood of God, He was not giving expression to a sentimental theological formula. "Our Father which art in heaven" is a deliberate acknowledgment of the opening of a new order, a new way of life, a new operating principle of the kingdom of God. Jesus introduced the disciples to a world of new concepts and relationships. On the one hand, God is no longer a distant, frightening, terror-inspiring, vengeful superbeing, but a warm, close, intimate, caring, loving, real person: someone to talk to, someone to lean on, someone to share our sorrows or joys our Father. On the other hand, to acknowledge God as "our Father in heaven" is to "accept our brother which is on earth." A new door in human relationships has opened in the name of Jesus. Distance has disappeared in the coming of Christ. God is in flesh, and behold, all men and women stand as one without any walls of separation in between.
Says the apostle Paul: "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. . . . There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:26-28).
The same apostle uses the word "mystery" to describe this unity of the human family that the gospel aims to bring about (Eph. 2:11-22; 3:1-6). Before Christ there was division, hostility, and alien ation; but in Christ the walls of hostility are removed, the barriers have been torn down, the two have become one. Of this mystery Paul was made a minister "according to the gift of the grace of God" (verse 7). And what's more, when this mystery is fully realized, "principalities and powers" will stand in awe and wonder at what great things the wisdom of God could accomplish (verses 9, 10). Paul indeed put a high premium on Christian brotherhood!
If brotherhood is so crucial to the understanding of what Christ has accomplished on earth, being our brother's keeper naturally becomes important to Christian ministry. When Jesus commanded us to "love thy neighbour as thyself (Matt. 22:39), He was affirming an eternal principle in human relationship: the existence of self is meaningful only when the existence of the other is recog nized and appreciated. In fact, the Scrip tures measure a person's spiritual maturity and responsibility by that person's unselfish, loving, and serving relationship with others. Is this not why the ministry of the despised Samaritan exceeded in righteousness all the sacrifices and the priestly performances of the Temple?
Jesus insists that what is done to the other is in fact done to Him. The parable of the last judgment (Matt. 25) indicates that we better be our "brother's keeper" if we wish to meet judgment in peace. The question of the Lord of judgment pertains not to theological expertise or doctrinal fundamentalism but to faithfulness to issues of being a brother's keeper: What have you done to the least of these? Did you sit at the table of bounty and let a poverty-stricken child go to bed hungry? Were you wearing a custom-made threepiece suit while the beggar down the street shivered and struggled in the biting cold? Were you having a glittering party while all along you knew very well that a child across the road was crying for a cup of milk? Were you preparing a great philanthropic oration while someone you knew was hurting with simple issues of dignity and self-worth? Where is that drink you could have given? Where is that clothing that could have covered someone's nakedness? Where is that smile that could have cheered a weary one ? Where is that visit that could have comforted a grieving widow? Where is that call or that handshake or that tap on the shoulder that would have conveyed to the other that he or she is indeed a child of God?
So to be a minister is to be God's spokesperson: to speak clearly for Him, to convey eloquently His life, His love, and His grace, and to mediate His meaning to those who need it the most and to do it all in the context of being a brother's keeper.
