The Second Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 5B

2nd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 5B June 6, 2021 As a spin-off of my work on family systems theory for my continuing education this year, I’ve been reading the book Friedman’s Fables by Edwin Friedman. Friedman was a Jewish rabbi, who used the psychological system of Bowen Family Systems theory (developed by Murray Bowen) and expanded it to think about how organizations, groups, churches, react in the similar predictable patterns through which families interact. In Friedman’s Fables, Friedman draws upon his knowledge of family systems theory and Jewish midrash (the process of taking a story from scripture and embellishing it or expanding upon it through imaginative interpretation), and he has written a series of stories to help the reader more playfully engage some of the principals that lead to deeper personal development through self-differentiation. This week, as I was reading, I came upon the story that is titled Raising Cain: A Case History of the First Family. It is, fortuitously enough for this preacher, Friedman’s form of midrash on our Old Testament reading for today. The basis of the story is that an angelic messenger has written a psychological case study of the first family—Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel. The case study says that they family came in for counseling because “the sons have been quarrelling a good deal, and both mother and father appear quite helpless to do anything about it. Most of the focus is on the older brother, who broods a lot, is extremely sullen, and is very jealous of his far more successful younger brother.” The story continues by looking at the parents (Adam and Eve) and their relationship: “At the beginning of their marriage, both husband and wife seemed to have lived in a very blissful state, naïve, it appears, about what was happening all around them. Something, we’re not sure what, changed that, and things have never been the same since. The husband growls continuously about his lot and why life has to be so difficult, whereas the wife never fails to remind him of how much pain she went through to bear him sons. But it is more than their discontent that seems to be seeping down, particularly to their elder son. More pernicious still may be their attitude toward their discontent. Neither husband or wife seems capable of accepting responsibility for their own destiny. Both are always claiming that their lives would be far different were it not for how the other behaved. The man tends to blame his wife, and the wife tend to blame the environment….Neither seems capable of taking responsibility for personal desires, loves, or hates. Each sees the other as causing his or her own pain. Ironically, they thus each give their partner great power to guilt the other.”i After focusing on the parents, the case study moves on to look at the children-Cain and Abel. The narrator reports: “There seems to be no strength in the family at all, by which I mean the capacity of some member to say, I am me, this is where I stand. I end here and you begin there, etc. It may be this constant expectation that the other should be his keeper that prevents each from taking responsibility for himself. And as long as this attitude persists in the parents, we can hardly expect the boys to act more pleasantly toward each another, still less at times to be watchful over the other. This situation will certainly leave a ‘mark’ on one of them.” He concludes, “In a family like this, with no one able to tolerate his own solitariness, or, for that matter, anyone else’s, I fear the weakness in the children will never be corrected. Actually, my fantasies are worse. For, if the current inability each parent manifests to deal with his or her own pain continues, I fear that Cain’s view of life will never truly focus on himself and, perceiving the source of all his problems in his brother, he may one day up and kill him.”ii In his commentary on this fable, Friedman cuts straight to the heart of it by inviting the reader to “suppose the human family’s original sin is blaming others,” and then asks, “How can the members of any generation modify that transmitted attitude?”iii “Suppose the human family’s original sin is blaming others.” It’s certainly in evidence in the Genesis reading. It starts with a simple question from God to Adam and Eve: “where are you?” and then devolves into Adam blaming Eve and Eve blaming the snake. We see rampant blame at work in the gospel reading for today. It starts with Jesus’s family’s anxiety about what he is up to and their attempts to restrain him because they believe he has gone crazy and then escalates into a full on blame-game name calling by the Scribes who accuse Jesus of being possessed by Beelzebub. All of these groups are reacting to change which naturally brings anxiety, but as opposed to dwelling with their own discomfort, they are quick to try to pass that discomfort on to others by blaming. “Suppose the human family’s original sin is blaming others.” Does that give us more of an explanation of the state of the world, the state of our country, or the problems that we see in our families, in our churches? How does Jesus offer the antidote to blame in his person, in his teachings? What role does blame play in your life on a regular basis? Who do you find your blame directed most frequently toward? Your invitation this week is this. To pay attention to the very first taste of blame that you feel on the tip of your tongue or in your heart, and to draw back from it. Before speaking or acting, be curious about what pain your blame is springing from, pay attention to where you end and the other begins, and then speak or act out of that space. i. Edwin Friedman, Friedman’s Fables (New York: Guilford Press, 1990), 47-48. ii. Ibid. 49. iii. Edwin Friedman, Friedman’s Fables: Discussion Questions (New York: Guilford Press, 1990), 9.