The Land Cries Out (Genesis 4:1-16)

The clothes he wore were not that different from the ones we wore ourselves:  faded jeans, a t-shirt, well-worn tennis shoes, and a baseball cap to shield his eyes from the bright New Mexico sun. 

In his hands he held a drum.  At least, that’s what it looked like to us.  To him, it was much more than that.

Standing in a circle, outside, at the foot of a mountain the Navajo call “Dzilth-na-o-dith-hle,” we listened as he explained.

“This drum,” he said, “is a prayer.  It is made from a gourd which grew in the earth, and was fed by sunlight and rain.

“When I look at this drum – when I pick it up, when I beat it and hear its sound – I see and hear and feel the earth, the sun, and the rain.  Every song I play on this drum then becomes a prayer of gratitude for these things – the earth, the sun, and the rain – because the earth, the sun and the rain are in the drum.  They are, in a very real way, what the drum is made of.

“The cover of this drum is made of leather stretched tight over the opening.  So the life of the animal that this leather came from is also a part of this drum, and every song is also a prayer of thanks for that animal’s life and its blessing to us.

“This is why it’s important to treat the land well, with love, and to treat the animals well.  The life of the land and the life of the animals becomes our life.  The life of the land and the life of the animals becomes our food, our clothing, our shelter, and even our music.

“If we want to have a good life filled with blessings, we need to be thankful for the life of the land, the sun, the rain, and the animals.  From their life comes our life.  If their life is good, then our life has a chance of being good.  If their life is bad, filled with suffering – if things are out of balance – then the same will be true for us.

“This is what the drum teaches me.  This is what I remember whenever I see it or play it.

“It is my prayer.”

And then he began to beat the drum and sing a song.  It was a song about clouds and thunderstorms and rainbows.

As we sang, I looked up at Dzilth-na-o-dith-hle.  I was told that the name means “mountain with no name.”  In Navajo artwork, a feather often indicates the sacredness of the objected depicted.  A painting of a mountain, for example, might show a feather standing upright from the summit.

There were no feathers on Dzilth-na-o-dith-hle.  There were, however, communication towers.  Another Navajo I met called those “white man’s feathers,” not only because they looked like feathers standing up, but also because they represented what has become sacred in this modern age:  technological advancement.

And what good is the land unless we can make “improvements” to it?  The towers were ugly.  They ruined the beauty of that sacred mountain.  A service road was carved into the side of the mountain leading up to the towers, leaving a long scar.  

The towers do provide many benefits to us, but was the sacredness and beauty of the land on which they were placed considered before they were built?

When God created the earth, God said it was good.  God took delight in the land.  Also, the vegetation and the animals.  All are good.  All are beautiful.

The drum was a blessing, and it was a reminder of the beauty and sacredness of the land, the vegetation, and the animals.  Anytime the drum is played, the drummer is mindful of these things.

What about the blessings we receive from the land?  Every meal of which we partake… do we even think about where it came from? 

I don’t always pray before I eat, at least not in the traditional sense.  But I do try to remember to pause for just a moment, to be mindful.  Through the food I eat, I am directly connected to the land.  The life of the land becomes my life in the eating of the meal.  The life of the vegetation and animals becomes my life.

Was the land treated well?  I hope so, because its life now becomes my life.  Was the vegetation treated well?  Were the animals treated well?  I hope so, because their life now becomes my life.

When God created the earth, God created humans and put them in charge, to care for the land, the vegetation, and the animals.  From the land, the vegetation and the animals, humanity receives many blessings, and those blessings continue to flow as long as humanity cares for creation. 

Adam and Eve, the first humans, had two sons:  Cain and Abel. Cain was a tiller of the ground, and Abel a keeper of sheep.  Things were in balance, and the connection to the land was very apparent.

But then Cain began to resent his brother Abel. God’s preference for the animals that Abel tended seemed to outweigh God’s prefence for the crops Cain grew.  Things got out of balance, and Cain couldn’t take it any longer.  He was no longer grateful for the blessings of the land; instead, he was angry because the land wasn’t giving him enough.

His brother seemed to have everything!  He was the favorite one!

One day, Cain rose up and killed his brother Abel.  It was the first murder, the first time any life had ever been taken out of anger. 

Back in the day before Cain’s anger grew, he and his brother would eat together: vegetables from Cain’s garden, and lambchops from Abel’s flock.  It was no trivial thing when an animal was killed for its meat.  It was a sacred act.  And in eating, there was always recognition of the connection to the land, and gratitude for the blessing.  In fact, a portion of the meat was always offered to God as a sacrifice of gratitude.

In killing Abel, there was obviously none of that.  Only anger, resentment, jealousy, and a desire to get more for oneself, which, of course, is the complete opposite of gratitude.

God came to Cain and asked, “Where is your brother?”

Cain said, “How am I supposed to know?  Am I my brother’s keeper?”

God said, “Listen!  Your brother’s blood is crying out to me!  It’s crying out to me from the ground; the very ground itself is crying out, the same ground that you tend and care for!”

Cain had lost his connection to the ground, the land.  He had lost sight of the blessings of the land, and could only focus on the blessings that his brother had, the blessings of the animals.  He forgot that the animals themselves depend on the land.

And now the land itself was crying out.

Cain was not satisfied with the blessings of the land and the crops he grew.  He wanted more blessings than he already had, so he used violence in an effort to take them by force.

Are we any different?

Do we eat with mindfulness?  Are we aware of the connection we have to the land, the direct connection that we have through the food we eat? 

Do we even know where our food comes from?

Does it come from a farm down the street?  Believe it or not, there are farms here in southern California.  There’s even a small farm at the corner of Spring & Elm where I buy much of the produce I use to prepare our Wednesday Night Dinners.  That’s fresh!  Or is your produce shipped from another continent via planes, cargo ships or trucks, all of which add pollutants to the atmosphere?

Have you met the farmer who grows your produce? 

Is the food you buy even natural, or does it contain a long list of unpronounceable artificial ingredients that originated in an industrial factory or science lab somewhere?

How can you maintain your connection to the land if your food comes from a lab?

And how do we recognize and acknowledge the sacredness of the land?  By ripping the land open through mining?  By choking the trees and animals with pollution?  By buying things that are used once then thrown away, rather than durable products that can be used over and over?

On the same day I started working on this sermon, I read that Anterra Energy spilled over 80,000 gallons of crude oil from a pipeline in a wilderness area in Alberta, Canada.  The oil flowed into a nearby body of water.  This kind of thing happens all the time, in North America and around the world.  Do we think about the land that was destroyed, and the wildlife destroyed, every time we use gasoline?  At the very least, do we offer up a prayer of gratitude for the part of creation that was destroyed, the plants and animals of the land that were sacrificed so we could pull through the drive-thru lane in our car?

We are connected to the land.  We have forgotten that connection, and made it hard to see, but the connection is there.  In fact, Genesis says that we were formed from the dust of the ground.  What we do to the land, we do to ourselves.  How we treat the land, and all that lives upon it – plants, animals – is how we treat ourselves.

And reminders of that connection are all around us: a drum. A meal.  Everything around us.  It all shows our connection to the land, if only we can learn to see.