First Thursday in Advent

Care Enough to Give the Best

Imagine it…you volunteer to host the big Christmas dinner for your extended family. And you need a centerpiece for the final festive touch. So, you swing by the cemetery and swipe some dusty plastic flowers off a grave to fit the bill. Next, you need some meat to serve. So you hunt through Dollar Store selections of canned goods until you find a nearly expired can of Spam. And you add some moldy fruit to the mix. Do you think your guests would feel special? What would your actions reveal about how much—or little—you esteemed them?  

 We wouldn’t dream of treating other humans this way. Yet these actions come close to how the children of Israel were treating God during the life of Malachi. They offered their wilted stuff. Their leftovers. The junk they didn’t plan to use for themselves. And then they couldn’t understand why that offended him.

 In doing so they followed in a long tradition. In fact, the problem of God getting less than he deserves has been around since the beginning. As early as the fourth chapter of the entire Bible we read about a murder that happened because someone gave God a half-hearted gift. 

 Eve gave birth to a son, Cain, and to his little brother, Abel. When the boys grew up, Abel shepherded a flock, and Cain worked the ground—the farmer and the cowhand. And the story went south fast: “It happened in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord from the fruit of the ground. But Abel brought of the firstlings of his sheep and of their fat” (Gen 4:3–4). 

What Abel brought was “of the firstlings.” Those were the firstborn animals. Abel also brought of the fat portions. Both the firstborn and the fat portions were considered the best. 

 But Cain “brought an offering to the Lord from the fruit of the ground.” It wasn’t wrong to bring grain or produce—the text calls what both brothers brought an “offering,” and later God gave instructions about how to give Him grain offerings. The problem was not the kind of gift, but the quality, or lack thereof. Where were Cain’s firstfruits? Where was his best? Apparently, he just threw together some stuff he’d grown. It reminds me of the time a friend brought week-old donuts to our Bible study as a joke—except Cain was serious. 

 Imagine farmers bringing bruised windfall pears or average cuts of rhubarb to State Fair judges. No way they’d do that. Only the most mammoth squash will do. And the quality of what farmers would bring to a competition is the quality God expected from Cain. But Cain tossed together some cast-off veggies. Meanwhile, his kid brother “cared enough to send the very best.” So, of course, God preferred Abel’s offering. 

 As a result, “Cain was very angry and his face fell.” He assumed, as we sometimes do, that God is lucky to get anything we offer and obligated to accept it, even if it’s second-hand and ho-hum. 

 But God is gracious, so he gave Cain a second chance. 

 But did Cain say, “Thanks, God, let me run and get the better kumquats”? No. After luring Abel to the field where no one could hear his cries, Cain committed murder.  

 When the Lord showed up after the deed was done, he did the same thing with Cain that he’d done when Cain’s father sinned—He asked a question: “Where is Abel, your brother?” But Adam’s son was shameless. He answered with “I dunno” followed by a smart-alecky “Keeper of my brother, am I?” His tone suggested God was unreasonable even to ask. 

 “What have you done?” God demands. “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.” As a consequence, he pronounced a curse, saying the ground would no longer yield produce for Cain. 

 What? God didn’t kill Cain, like he deserved? No.

 And to make matter’s worse, Cain had the audacity to complain: “My punishment is greater than I can bear!” Clueless.

 The story ends with Cain departing from the presence of Yahweh and settling in Nod (“wandering”), east of Eden. East. That’s the direction his parents went when driven from the orchard. So Cain went to the land of wandering, away from the presence of God. 

 And the Land of Nod is where we would still live had it not been for Jesus Christ. He made it possible, through the reconciliation brought by the most costly, pleasing sacrifice of all time, for us to return to fellowship with the Father, no matter what we’ve done. 

 Humans have a long history of bringing God our leftovers. Millennia after Cain, the people in Malachi’s day were still trying to get away with ho-hum sacrifices. And we do it too—ironically, sometimes even more so at Christmastime, the very season set apart to remember that God gave the greatest gift of all. 

 Most of us no longer live in worlds where sheep and cattle and grain alone represent our income. We trade in money, time, and energy. But no matter what kind of world we inhabit, we serve a God who is worthy of our best. Do we toss out our spare change or give from the first of our income? Do we care for the poor all year or only by donating expired cans of beets during the holidays? Do we give God our sleepiest hours or our most productive energy? Do we faithfully worship weekly while ignoring the suffering of other humans Monday through Saturday? The New Testament tells us that God wants more than compartments of our lives. He wants us—our whole beings—as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1–2). 

 What we give tells a lot about our regard for the recipient. What are you giving him for Christmas? —Sandra Glahn

Prayer:

Grant me, O Lord, the grace to put aside every hindrance, and help me to run with endurance the race set before me, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.  

He will come again in glory

to judge the living and the dead

And his kingdom will have no end.

Photo credit: Anita Jankovic on Unsplash