Once upon a time there was a farmer, and his name was Sam. Most mornings in March Sam did general work around his farm: but this morning he was going fishing, in the wild river that ran along the western edge of his farm.

The snow had been melting, and the river was cold, and the rapids were full and fast, loud with rushing water. In the fall the rapids were often the best place to fish; but he was not going to fish the rapids today. In the summer he liked to fish the shallows, in his waders, looking for a wily trout. But he was not going to fish the shallows today.

Today he would fish the depths. As the wild river ran along the western edge of Sam’s farm, it ran down one set of rapids, into a quiet deep stretch for more than a quarter of a mile, and then into another set of rapids. Today Sam had in mind to fish those quiet depths, from his canoe, to see if he could find a cautious lunker trout hiding in the depths.

He unloaded the canoe from the rack on top of his jeep. He set it in the water, tying the painter around a handy boulder to keep it from floating away. He loaded his tackle into it: a nylon stringer to hold his catch, his tackle box with lures: spoons and spinners, plugs and plastic worms. And his spinning rod.

Sam fished all morning, paddling up to the base of the upper rapids and then drifting down to the lower rapids. He ran jigs from the upper rapids into the depths. He cast spinners close to the bank, and drew them into the depths. He trolled with a plastic worm. He caught nothing. But it was a fine morning, with bright sun and crisp air, and Sam was content as he paddled his canoe back up the wild river to the upper rapids, to try another round.

He had just reached the upper rapids when he saw the trout. It was a large trout, and the sunshine penetrated deep into the water and reflected from the trout’s flank. Sam turned to watch the trout, and the prow of the canoe turned, and the rapids were too close, and Sam was leaning, not far but too far, as a surge of water from the rapids of the wild river lifted the prow of the canoe, and in that moment the canoe was overturned.

The water was so cold. It soaked through Sam’s clothes at once. He was under the canoe. After the bright sunlight it was dark as night under the canoe. Sam tried to kick himself free. Somehow his legs had gotten twisted in the painter and the stringer. He felt a moment of panic as he kicked to break free: he could not break free. He was caught under the canoe. There was a pocket of air trapped under the canoe, and he realized he could breathe. But he was trapped, and so cold, and he knew that hypothermia was already starting. He knew he was going to die.

And then he drew back from that thought. Maybe he was not going to die. He surprised himself as he heard himself praying. He might have said, “O God, save me!” He might have said, “Dear Lord, if you get me out of this, I’ll be faithful in going to church every Sunday from now on.” But he didn’t say either of these things. Instead, he heard himself asking a question: “God, am I going to die?”

Our text verse this morning is Genesis 2:15, which says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.”

To till it and to keep it. What is the assignment that the Lord God gives to Adam? What does the Lord God instruct Adam, and us, to do with regard to our garden, to our patch of earth? The text says, “to till it and keep it.” At least, that’s what the text says, in our pew Bible’s translation, the New Revised Standard Version. And there are many translations that would agree with that.

But not all of them. That’s because the two verbs, ‘to till’ and ‘to keep,’ are actually pretty rich terms. In order to get the fullness of this passage, there are a couple of Hebrew words you need to know about. Most of us don’t get excited when the preacher starts to discuss words in foreign languages, but these two words are pretty intriguing. The first is the word rabad, translated here as ‘to till,’ and the second is the word shamar, translated here as ‘to keep.’ As it turns out, these two terms are very rich in their wealth and depth of meaning.

The first, rabad, has the basic meaning of ‘to serve.’ When the children of Israel were in slavery in Egypt, for the four centuries before the Exodus, they had to serve the Egyptians: that’s the word rabad. In order to marry Rachel and Leah, Jacob had to pay the bride price to his father-in-law Laban. He had to serve him for fourteen years: that’s the word rabad. If you are a religious person and set your heart and life to serve the Lord – if you do that as your formal vocation, as one of the priests of Israel, or if you do that personally, as any worshipful individual – when you serve the Lord, that’s the word rabad. When Isaiah writes about the Messiah as the Servant of the Lord: that’s the word rabad.

And when it comes to the land, this term rabad gets used in a Hebrew idiom. We might say that a farmer tills the fields or that a gardener tends the garden: but the standard Hebrew idiom says that the farmer serves the fields and that the gardener serves the garden.

Now, not all service is the same, but we do need to recognize that there is a basic difference between being a servant and being a boss. The Israelites in Egypt served by making bricks; Jacob served Laban by taking care of farm animals; in Isaiah’s vision the Messiah served the Lord by laying down his life for the salvation of the people. As servants of God, you and I are responsible to do what God commands us to do. In all these examples of service, the details of the work come out different. But all of these situations have this one thing in common: the servant is not the boss. The Israelites didn’t get to tell the Egyptians what to do. Jacob didn’t get to boss Laban around. The Messiah did not issue commands to the Lord. And we ourselves are not in charge of God. So when you serve the garden, when you serve the land, that tells you something important about what you’re doing as a gardener or a farmer. You don’t get to boss the land around, to make it do whatever you want. When the Bible speaks of the work of gardeners and farmers, tending gardens and tilling fields, it uses this term, rabad, which isn’t about commanding the land or dominating the land: it’s about serving the land.

The second term, shamar, has the basic meaning of ‘to protect.’ You might build a fence or a hedge around your house to protect it: you’d use the word shamar to say that. Ezekiel writes about how God has set him as a sentinel on the wall: that’s the word shamar. We are commanded to guard our thoughts, to keep our hearts pure, to guard our tongues, to keep the Sabbath, to keep all the commands of the Lord: all of these use the word shamar.

You remember the story of the brothers Cain and Abel, sons of Adam and Eve, and how Cain murdered his brother. In Genesis 4:9, we read how God then asks Cain a question: Where is your brother Abel? Of course, Cain knows the answer to this question: he knows Abel is dead, because he killed him. And of course God knows the answer to this question also. This is not only because, as our theology would teach us regarding omniscience, God always knows everything we’ve done. It is also because, as the following verse tells us, the blood of Abel cries out to God from the ground where Cain murdered him.

So God knew the answer before asking the question. This happens often in scripture: God already knows the answer but goes ahead and asks the question. Why does God do that? It’s not as if divine omniscience isn’t working at full speed today so God is hoping we’ll speak up with the answer to fill in the blanks. No, when you see God asking some Bible character a question, it’s not because God needs to figure out the answer, it’s because that person needs to figure out the answer.

It’s like when the teacher calls on you in class and asks you a question. Teachers don’t do that because they need help remembering: they ask because you need help remembering. Teachers ask those hard questions because you need to know those answers, and by asking the question they help you learn and remember and know those answers.

This is one of the reasons we all need to be people who read a chunk of the Bible as part of our daily Christian practice: so that we can read the questions God asks in the Bible, and listen to God’s voice addressing that same question to us. It’s not as if God doesn’t know what our answer to the question needs to be; but often we don’t know what our answer to the question needs to be until we hear the question and think about it.

So God asks Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” God already knows the answer. But Cain needs the opportunity to grapple with the question, to ask himself “What have I done!?” Cain needs the opportunity to repent, and God provides that opportunity by asking that question.

But Cain is not interested in repentance, and so he does not confess his sin or hang his head in remorse. Instead, he gives his famous response: “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

We might take a moment to notice that Cain’s response has two parts: a statement and a question. And let’s notice as well that the statement part, where Cain says “I do not know,” that part is a deliberate lie. Because of course Cain does know what happened to his brother. He knows he told Abel, “Hey, come out to the far meadow with me, there’s something out there I want to show you,” and when he got his brother out there he killed him, and buried the corpse there where he thought no one would find it. It was a lie when Cain said he did not know. And after he told the lie, he asked God a question: a rhetorical question, a question designed to distract God from that lie, a theoretical question, a theological question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

I read a story, maybe you saw it too, about this experiment they ran a few years back at the San Diego Zoo where they taught a chimpanzee named Bruce to read. The chimp got good at reading children’s books. He liked Goodnight Moon and Harold and the Purple Crayon, and he especially liked the Little Bear and Babar stories. So they gave him a couple of books they thought would be more challenging: they gave him a copy of the Bible and a copy of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Bruce the chimp started reading both of these books, but soon began to look quite distressed. “I’m confused,” he said. “Reading these two books, I can’t tell if I’m supposed to be my brother’s keeper or my keeper’s brother.”

I confess, I don’t like the phrase my brother’s keeper. It sounds difficult in my ear. It sounds like Cain is the owner and Abel is the animal: Abel is supposed to be kept on a leash, he’s like a zoo animal, a chimpanzee kept in a cage by a zookeeper, It’s like Abel is a thing that belongs to Cain and Cain is supposed to keep him in his pocket. It’s like the insult of saying someone is a kept woman, only Abel is supposed to be a kept brother.

So Cain asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and we can hear the sarcasm in his voice, indicating that he is sure that the answer to his question is No. God asks, “Where is your brother Abel?” and Cain’s answer might as well be, “I do not know. I’m not my brother’s keeper.”

Yet when Cain speaks up to deny that he is his brother’s keeper, it is that same root word, shamar, and so we can see that he is denying he is his brother’s guardian. He is denying that he has a responsibility to watch out for his brother. When you come right down to it, Cain is denying that he is his brother’s brother.

So. In our text, Genesis 2:19, it says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” And now that we know the root meaning of those two words, we can see that in the biblical story of the creation of the world, God entrusted to the first humans the basic responsibility to live as servants and guardians of the garden. God did not set it up for them to dominate the garden, to make the garden do whatever humans can compel it to do. It was not to despoil the garden, to take whatever we can get from it for our own purposes, leaving it barren and ruined. The twofold task God assigns to us humans is this: we are to serve or tend the land, and we are to guard or defend the land. Perhaps the English word that captures this idea the most clearly is steward. The task God gives Adam is service to the land, and stewardship of the land.

There in the frigid water, trapped in the dark under the canoe, Sam had prayed a prayer: “God, am I going to die?” The brief answer to that question, as we of course all know, is Yes. All of us are going to die. Perhaps within the next few minutes; perhaps in a year, or ten years, or fifty years. But yes: we are going to die. So God could have simply said Yes, and it would have been the truth.

Yet God did not simply say Yes. God did not say anything that Sam could hear. But Sam did notice that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, in his air pocket under the canoe: there was enough light refracted through the water for him to see. And while he wasn’t exactly calm, he wasn’t as full of panic as he had been, in those first moments of shock as he hit the cold water and struggled in the dark under the canoe with his legs enmeshed in the twisted lines. He was still entangled and trapped, and terribly cold. And the light was dim, but there was light, enough to see that it was the painter that was twisted around his left ankle, while his right boot was tangled in the stringer. The right side was looser. In that dim light he could see how to rotate his right foot, to untangle his boot. And he did. That gave him some flexibility, and he could move his left foot enough to gain some slack, and he could twist and maneuver enough to get his left hand down there to get free from the painter. Sam took a deep breath, and pushed down and away from the canoe, and came out into the sunshine.

Yet Sam was still so cold, and his clothes were heavy and trying to pull him under. He swam a few strokes. He was nearly spent. But he caught hold of a boulder near the bank, and he started to crawl and drag himself out of the current. He was shivering so hard. The breeze was not that strong, but the wind chill made him feel like he was soaking in ice. He wanted to just lie there and rest. He had always loved this wild river on the west end of his farm, and maybe this was a good way to die, a good day to die, a good place to die. He was out of the water, but he was still drenched, and so cold. He tried to speak, to tell himself to stand up, to keep moving, to walk to the jeep, but his teeth were chattering so hard that he couldn’t make distinct words come out. And he thought, Maybe the reason this wild river is here is so that I’ll have this good place to die today.

Why are there rivers, anyway? Why are there wild rivers, with impressive rapids and waterfalls? Why are there deep rivers, wide rivers, rivers that swell with spring rain and snowmelt, rivers so full of water that they overflow their banks and flood the countryside with water?

Why are there rivers? Perhaps there are wild rivers so that we can appreciate their wildness. So that we can feel the wild astonishing vibrancy of the Creator who makes white water, wild rapids, depths and shallows and waterfalls. That could be the reason, or part of the reason. God created wild rivers, and majestic ocean coastlines, and soaring mountains, and primeval forests, and perhaps part of the reason why God created such things was so that we would have ever so many opportunities to feel the breathless awe of the wildness and majesty of the creation, and the wildness and majesty of the Creator who called such things into existence.

But maybe you want to suggest that there’s another reason. Maybe you’d want to propose that rivers are there to provide water for the farms and for the cities. That’s a very utilitarian answer, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Maybe that’s an answer that focuses more than it should on ourselves as humans, on how rivers are useful for us, to provide our drinking water and our irrigation water. Still. We are humans, after all. We can hardly escape seeing rivers in human terms. Maybe God made rivers to bring water from one place to another, to water the earth, to provide drinking water and irrigation water.

Sometimes people look at a river and see it as a convenient way to sweep away the waste. It’s the easy way to get rid of the trash and the sewage. You just dump it into the river, and then it’s gone. Of course, it’s not really gone gone. But it’s gone from here. It may cause a problem for the people living downstream. But that’s their problem. As long as the people who are upstream from us don’t start dumping trash and sewage and waste into the river, which would cause a problem for us: that would be bad. We want to make sure that doesn’t happen; and in the meantime, the river is a convenient way to clear out all that noxious stuff from our place.

Suppose you are a farmer, contemplating a meadow. As you look at that meadow, you think to yourself, “I have been given the charge to till the earth, and keep it.” Suppose you are a devout farmer, and feel how important it is to fulfill that charge. What will that mean for you, to till the earth, and keep it, with regard to that meadow?

Perhaps you will think that tilling the earth certainly implies domesticating it, ruling over it: plowing that meadow, disking it, planting corn in neat rows, growing a crop. And perhaps you will think that keeping it is an affirmation of your property rights over that land: it is your land and no one else’s, and no outsider should presume to say what you must do with your land.

Yet suppose you are a devout farmer who knows that “to till the earth and keep it” means to serve the land, and steward it. Perhaps you would then answer that question differently. As a faithful believer, you would affirm that God gave you the responsibility of service and guardianship over this meadow. And that would mean you would have to ask, what is the proper use for this meadow? How do I steward and serve this meadow? Perhaps that will indeed mean planting corn there. Perhaps it will be for planting a variety of vegetables. Perhaps it will mean leaving it fallow. Perhaps it will mean planting trees. It will be for that prayerful farmer to discern what is best – best for your family, yes, and best for the community, and best for the land itself. Because you know that the Lord God has assigned to you the responsibility to serve this meadow, and steward it.

And what would that look like for a patch of woodland? Or a river? Or a wild river?

What should we think about the wild river? Should we till it and keep it – that is, should we take it for our own use, clear out the rapids, make it into a lake, maybe a fish farm, to help feed the world, or a public recreation area for a whole community, and not just for white water rafters?

Somehow Sam forced himself to his feet, and he began a slow jog up the path along the river. He was shivering so hard that he was having trouble coordinating his feet: it felt more like he was staggering than jogging. The path was not smooth, and he saw how easily he could step wrong and trip or turn an ankle. Then it happened: a rock shifted under his foot, and he stumbled and almost fell, his arms waving wildly as he struggled to regain his balance, his heart pounding with fear: but he kept on jogging, clumsy as he was. And his feet and legs started to remember how to do it, and his jog was moving a little faster, and his breath was ragged and then he was climbing into the jeep. He turned the key, and the engine fired up, and Sam turned the heater up high, and drove back to the farmhouse. The heater was going full blast, and the air from the vents felt hot to the touch, but he was still so cold.

He got out of the jeep and stumbled his way into his house. He turned the shower on. His fingers were stiff and clumsy as he tried to get his boots off, and in the end he just climbed into the shower, and stood there in the hot water for ten minutes before he was warm enough to get his clothes off. But in the end, he was warm again, and dried off, and dressed again in warm dry clothing. And Sam lived. He lived with a new awareness that the farm and the river were not his to own and exploit; they were his to serve and to steward. And that’s what he tried to do, day by day.