This week's readings are Genesis 15.1–12,17–18 and Luke 13.31–35.

There are some weeks when the set readings make it like the world of the Bible and our own are not a million miles apart, when we catch a glimpse of our shared humanity, expectations, and experiences of life, the universe, and everything. And then there are some weeks when someone makes their bed between the split carcasses of an assortment of freshly slaughtered animals, and has a direct experience of God appearing to them in the form of a smoking fire-pot and a flaming torch...

If you've just read through this passage from Genesis and asked, 'What the... what, what?' you are most definitely not alone. As with any obscure passage or symbolic rite whose practitioners have disappeared into the mists of the past, interpretations abound. Read around and you will find attempts at explanation that range from the deeply symbolic, to reconstructions of assumed ancient legal practices.

Let us not, though, let the untranslatable details of a foreign time distract us from the main point - whatever God and Abraham were up to here, it somehow sealed a promise, and formed an unbreakable bond of covenant. To the wandering, childless nomad, is given a promise of myriad descendants to continue his line, and a land to call his, and their, own. To the abundantly, impossibly generous God is given a response of awesome trust and faith - a willingness to believe against all the odds that gets recorded in history as 'righteousness'.

This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

And yet, there’s a fascinating juxtaposition at the heart of the reading. Verses 13-15 (which the lectionary 'helpfully' omits) say this: “Then the Lord said to Abram, ‘Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; but I will bring judgement on the nation that they serve, and afterwards they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.'"

Here, the suffering, oppression, and mistreatment that nations have inflicted upon one another throughout history stand in stark contrast to the individual experience that introduces for the first time in the scriptures the word shalom, 'peace'. Not just the absence of war, but a holistic peace, encompassing body, mind, and spirit.

Yet even by the time of Jesus - closer to Abraham than we are now - the corporate experience of suffering had eclipsed the personal experience of peace, and the relationship had soured. A promise that had been given as a gift had been grasped as a right, and the children of a father who had listened to God and believed in righteousness - tarnished by a history of suffering from which they had carried only their wounds and not their blessings - had built for themselves a capital that ‘kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.’

It can be easy (particularly when supported by readings like these) to point at nation states (particularly at the moment) and generalise about behaviours, cast judgements, and decry the way in which power corrupts. Absolutely, nations (particularly at the moment) should be held to account for war crimes, crimes agains humanity, and genocide. We might, though, do well to also remember that the story that led to the behaviour of 'Jerusalem' sdid not begin with a nation, but with the heart of one man and his relationship with his God. That heart was good. So was that relationship. 

God’s attitude, unlike the human actors in this multi-generational story, has not faltered. Despite Jerusalem’s failings, and its perverse refusal of the prophets, the response of Jesus - of God - is not to turn his back on his people, but to weep over the city, to long for it, to desire to gather its people under the wings of care, protection, love, and peace.

Perhaps the way back to that true and lasting peace begins, as it always has, in individual hearts and their response to the God of love. And there's only one heart over which you have charge.