Where is your brother?

[AI translation] My Christian Brothers and Sisters! We all know the unhappy story of Cain and Abel, I will not go into details. Our Word only mentions one moment of this story: after the fratricide took place, God asked Cain: "Where is your brother Abel? And he said, "I do not know, or am I the keeper of my brother?" (verse 9) This wimpy response from Cain reveals the deepest root that would then bear the sad fruit of murder. And this deepest cause is none other than a total lack of sense of responsibility towards his brother. It is this lack, its misery, and its remedy that I would now like to speak of in the light of the Word.It is wonderful how faithfully the first book of Moses reveals to us the development of sin. In Paradise, sin began with rebellion against God, with transgression of God's commandments, which resulted in separation from God, in the loss of fellowship with God. And behold, it is already evident that without God, men cannot live at peace with one another. Where man's fellowship with God is broken, there can no longer be fellowship among themselves, but envy, hatred, anger, and murder take its place. Out in the world, it is natural for everyone to live for himself and not to care for others. The Kain mentality is ingrained in the soul: 'am I the keeper of my brother'? (verse 9) Note that the inhabitants of a tenement often do not even know that the head of the family has died in their immediate neighbourhood, and that some ragged little orphans are facing the most terrible fate. They pass each other on the street as if they had nothing to do with each other. Or, if they do, they feel no responsibility for each other's troubles. If they do feel some responsibility, they are happy to pass it on to someone else as soon as possible. This is out there in the world, sad as it is, but it is natural, and it is good to reckon with the cold reality, instead of false illusions, that the world - a world turned away from God and unconsciously serving Satan - is made up of people with a Cainian spirit.
But it is no longer natural, it is a sign of some great and fatal evil, if this Kaninism has become common in the community of the elect, of those who have come to faith in Christ, that is, in the church, in the congregational community. A member of a Christian congregation cannot say to another person who is a member of that congregation, "Am I a keeper of my brother?" For belonging to the church of Christ means something very special, holy and mystical, even between one another. Do we know what is meant by the biblical expression that the church is the body of Christ? Now let us take the smallest form of the Church, the local congregation, and say this: the congregation of Pasaréti, the 3,500 souls who make up our congregation, this is the body of Christ. This word body means a living organism, a sentient and functioning organism, where each member is an integral part of the whole, where each part is equally necessary because each exists for the sake of the other. Each needs the healthy vitality of the other, they work together in a mutually vital and complementary way, taking care of the health of the whole organism, the whole body. Even the most distant and diverse members of the body interact with sensitive nerve fibres in such a way that, according to our Word, "whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with him; whether one member is honoured, all the members rejoice with him" (1 Cor 12:26). According to the teaching of Scripture, every local church is such a bodily organism of a healthy whole, the body of Christ on earth, with Christ in heaven as its head, brotherly love as its nervous system, the Holy Spirit as its life-giving spirit, and the Word of God as its nourishment.
If this is so, then our church is a very sick body! Its nervous system is so bad that the suffering or joy of one member is not communicated at all to the other members. A member can suffer in physical or spiritual misery for weeks or months without being noticed, if not by the whole body, then even by the other members around him. And even if they are aware of it because of the unpleasant proximity, no one suffers with it. No one is hurt, no one is disturbed, no one's heart or pocket is moved by the misery of the suffering member. Who is pained that a dear brother, who used to sit among us, has been lying at home in a cold flat, all alone, for almost two weeks? Wanting to give a sign of his absence, he writes a letter, and waits for days for someone to knock at the door of his lonely loneliness and do him the favour of taking his letter to the post office. Who among the three thousand five hundred members is so pained by the suffering of this one member that he will go to him, light the stove, and seek to relieve the gloom of his loneliness by quiet conversation? Who is pained that an eighty-four-year-old sick member should be mercifully confined to a dark cellar, but at any moment he could be out on the street, and there is not a corner of the world where he is welcome with open arms and a warm room? Or, if a brother dies somewhere, does anyone in the neighbourhood think that perhaps now again a soul has set out on the great journey with no one to help him point the way to salvation? Who among us feels a greater responsibility to the salvation of another soul? Who will do something to see that the soul of another brother or sister is not condemned but saved?
I know that if you were the only one in your street who knew that the flood was coming, that you must flee, and saw others living their lives in the quiet of their homes, unaware of the coming calamity, you would feel a sense of responsibility! Would you take the trouble to run down the street, calling to every house to hurry, pack, escape, there is trouble! Well, then, know that there is more trouble, a more fatal calamity coming: the day of wrath. God's punishing judgment, all the perils of hell and damnation, in which not life on earth but the loss of all eternity is at stake. Can you take it so seriously that responsibility rises up in you and you cry out wherever you can: 'Men, flee, run to the only sure refuge that can save you from God's wrath to come, to the cross of Jesus Christ!
It is also certain that if you were stopped in the street by an unknown brother and said: Have mercy on me, for I have gambled away my salvation! I am about to die without a single ray of hope of pardon!" would you stop to talk to him, and not say to him, "Am I the keeper of your soul? You would take from your memory all you have ever heard or read about forgiveness, salvation, the cross of Christ, and you would do everything to save a soul on the brink of hell. Well then, do you know that the one who does not even cry out for your help is in even greater peril? Could you not feel such a responsibility to him that you would knock on his door uninvited, and reveal to him some truth of the gospel which his soul has longed to know, but has never dared to speak of it to others? Do you know how many people are waiting for such a spiritual conversation?
I also know that if you knew for certain that one of your neighbors was starving, cold, drowning in misery, or had ragged little children crying around the sickbed, you would be pained by that member's suffering, and would feel some sense of responsibility for him, and would try to do something for him. Well, the very first thing is that the members of the body of Christ, at least the members who live near each other, should know about each other! Get to know each other, find out about each other's problems, troubles, joys, sorrows! It would take a hundred church members whose souls echo the question of God: "Where is... your brother?" And then he does not say, "It's none of my business," but goes off and looks for his brother. It would take a hundred churches to keep a constant social and spiritual eye on the ten or fifteen families closest to their homes, and tell the Lord God: Yes, I am the guardian of these few brethren! Here in the church he would also look around: where is my brother, why hasn't he come? Has he come to any harm? He would go and see if there was anything he needed. He would make the orphan, the abandoned, the hungry feel that he is not alone, that he has a community of brothers and sisters behind him, that loving hearts feel and suffer with him. Yes, it would only take a hundred such souls, kept in holy restlessness by God's question, "Where is... your brother?"
These hundred souls must come out from here, from among us. Do not say that you are incapable, you have no time, your own troubles are enough! It is the same in other words as Cain's answer, "Am I a keeper of my brother?" Do you know what Jesus would say in His gentle, scolding way? I have not spared my blood for them, you have spared your time and effort for them. I have come down from heaven to seek them, and thou wilt not go to the house next door after them. I have suffered unspeakable agonies for their salvation, and you are even too sad to pass on this good news! I have been spat on, mocked, tortured for them, you would shrink from a little unfriendly welcome! Do you know that it is a question of life and death, and eternal life and eternal death, as a result of your seemingly insignificant service? This big, sick body, this church, would be revived if a hundred members of this sick body would now feel the need and go out to find their brother who needs them.
God is asking at this moment, "Where is Abel your brother?" What have you done for him? What are you doing for him? Are you taking responsibility for him, or are you shaking off the responsibility in a Cain way, "or am I a keeper of my brother?"
Would to God that your brother, the absent "Abel" would realize that the Lord God Himself has spoken to you here!
Amen.
Date: 16 February 1947.