WEEK OF JANUARY 9-12

We have been reading from the early chapters in the Book of Genesis, and the readers’ voices resound as if from some primeval cave, reciting stories like that of Cain and Abel. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9) asks the murderer Cain, thus echoing humanity’s ancient, and very modern, attempt to exonerate itself from the claims of mutuality and community. The question strikes us as ironic, because, from Jesus, we have come to know the simple answer: yes.

Coincidentally, Christ Church played host last week to a community forum where visionary possibilities for the Detroit Metropolitan Area were presented. As we were once again confronted with awareness of the monumental obstacles faced by the City of Detroit, Cain’s anguished voice could be heard crying out from the past, “My punishment is greater than what I can bear!”(Genesis4:13)

The little semi-circular gathering in St. Paul’s Chapel can offer no grand solutions, only the measured psalm-phrases, emerging from the same primeval cave of collective memory and desperate hope: “Open my eyes, that I may see…” (Psalm 119:18)