The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

With the first birth, Eve names her son Cain (Qayin), playing on the verb qanah, “to acquire,” and cries, “I have gotten a man with the help of Yahweh.” The Hebrew is bolder still: the particle ’eth before Yahweh is ordinarily the marker of a direct object, so Eve may well be saying, “I have gotten a man: the Lord!” Clinging to the promise of Genesis 3:15 that the woman’s Seed would crush the serpent, she seems to think she holds the Savior in her arms; in fact she holds the first murderer. Her two sons soon bring their offerings before God: Cain the fruit of the cursed ground, Abel the firstborn of his flock. The Lord regards Abel, not Cain, and Hebrews 11:4 names the difference as faith: Abel trusted the coming Redeemer, while Cain approached on the strength of his own hands.

God warns the sullen Cain that sin is “crouching” (rovets) at the door like a beast, its “desire” (teshuqah) bent on mastering him, the very word spoken over Eve in the curse. Cain lets the beast win and murders his brother, and Abel’s blood “cries” from the ground for justice. Yet even here grace appears: God sets a mark on Cain to guard the murderer’s life, a shield of mercy over a man who showed only self-pity. Abel’s blood cried for vengeance; centuries on, the blood of Christ would cry from the cross a better word, the word of forgiveness.

Paul presses the Corinthians back to the ABCs of the faith, for some among them had begun to deny the resurrection of the dead. He reminds them of the Gospel he “delivered” (paredoka) after he had “received” (parelabon) it, the rabbinic language of a sacred tradition handed down intact, not invented. By this Gospel, he says, “you are being saved” (sozesthe), a present tense marking a salvation still at work in them. He then sets out the message in four clauses: that Christ died for our sins, was buried, has been raised, and appeared. The grammar preaches: “died” and “was buried” stand in the past tense, but “has been raised” (egegertai) shifts to the perfect, the tense of a past act whose effect abides; Christ rose and remains the living, reigning Lord.

He “appeared” (ophthe), the verb the Greek Old Testament uses for God appearing to the patriarchs; He appeared to Peter, the Twelve, and more than five hundred at once, most still alive to be questioned. Last of all He appeared to Paul, who seizes his opponents’ cruelest insult, ektroma, “a miscarriage,” and owns it: he is the least of the apostles, unfit even for the name, since he persecuted the Church. Then the confession of the day: “by the grace of God I am what I am.” He labored harder than all of them, yet corrects himself at once, “not I, but the grace of God,” which toiled beside him like a master workman.

Luke tells us in advance whom Jesus is addressing: those “trusting in themselves” (pepoithotas eph’ heautois) that they are righteous and “despising” everyone else. Two men go up to the temple to pray. The Pharisee takes his stand by himself and recites what amounts to a résumé: he thanks God that he is not like “the rest” of men, nor like the tax collector beside him, and he counts his fasting and his tithes. He asks God for nothing, since he believes he needs nothing.

The tax collector stands far off, will not raise his eyes, and beats his breast, and his prayer holds the heart of the parable. English Bibles render it “God, be merciful to me,” but the verb is hilastheti, “be propitiated.” Standing in the temple court while the sacrifice burns, he is pleading the shed blood: “cover my sin by the atonement that is offered.” Jesus’ verdict overturns every expectation: this man, not the Pharisee, went down to his house “justified” (dedikaiomenos), a passive that names God as the One who declared him righteous. Forensic justification by grace alone, the doctrine Paul would unfold, falls here from the lips of Jesus Himself: God humbles the one who exalts himself and exalts the one who pleads for mercy.