The readings this week are: Jeremiah 31:27-34 and Luke 18:1-8.

This is, I promise, our last portion of Jeremiah as approach the end of our journey through the prophets.  But it is an interesting one.  Somewhwat ironically, given how this missive started, it brings our attention onto the tension between 'together' and 'individual', as it seems to mark a turning point in Hebrew thinking about identity.

As I understand it, up until around this point in history (c. 580s BC), the main Israelite understanding of 'self' was as part of the whole.  Identity was defined by tribe, and by nation.  Which makes some sense at a time when mortality rates were higher, and life expectancy lower than we know now - the survival of the individual becomes secondary to the survival of the whole.  That meant there was also an understanding of corporate religious identity - it was the nation that believed, that was God's people - it was the nation that either sinned, or was righteous, was either favoured by God, or - as in the time of Jeremiah - not!  You can find echoes of this way of thinking still around 600 years later in the gospels, when Jesus is asked the question of the blind man, "Who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9)

But in this passage, Jeremiah offers a new way of thinking, instead he proclaims, "In those days they shall no longer say: 'The parents have eaten sour grapes,    and the children's teeth are set on edge.' But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge."

OK, it's not a very cheery way of saying it (would we expect it to be from him?) - but what he's really saying is, from now on you can understand your relationship with God as not only corporate, but individual.  It can be about you and him - this time, it's personal!  That's the amazing truth that we've inherited, through Jesus teaching and life - that God is interested in us not only as parts of a whole, but as individuals, loved with infinite passion one by one.

I think that's amazing - the creator of the universe is interested in little ol' me!

It comes with a challenge too, though, it means we can't brush things off as someone else's problem, we can't delegate our involvement in God's plan for the world - we need to take responsibility.  When we see in justice, sorrow, hurt, pain - how we respond, as individuals, makes a difference.  We learn, like the judge in Jesus' parable that it is on us to help the poor, and those in need, now not later.  God loves us, and calls us to love others, as individuals as well as a people.

Pause for prayer:  Sometimes I find it easier to enjoy knowing God personally by doing something with him.  So maybe try and think of something you can do together, whilst having a chat.  Sometimes I go for a walk, and talk to him as I would anyone else I was out and about with; but maybe it's sitting down over a cup of tea...  Whatever it is, have a go at imagining him there (he actually is there, but sometimes it helps to deliberately picture it!), whilst doing something perfectly normal, and just have a chat about what's going on.  Enjoy for a moment that the almighty can also be all matey.