God is faithful

What an interesting collection of readings this week. Take Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18. A gruesome story that makes little sense to us. It is easy to get hung up on the brutality of the sacrifice and miss the significance of the moment. This is an ancient way of promising that what is being promised will happen, or the person promising will end up like the animals whose remains they walk between. Or in other words, God will be faithful to this covenant or God will die. God makes this promise even while Abram sleeps. God’s faithfulness does not depend on our response. God just is faithful.

And God fulfilled the promise. Abram and Sarai did have a son, and through that son they had many descendants. God remained faithful to those many descendants. They were blessed, so that they might be a blessing for all creation and all life. For the gospel writers and for Paul, Jesus is how God fulfils the ultimate promise of this moment. Humanity would be restored, and creation renewed. Through Jesus, the beloved Son, God brings life. And God is faithful despite our response.

Last week we heard of Jesus identity as the beloved Son being tested in the wilderness. And Jesus held firm in the way of life. But the Tester was not done, and again in Luke 13:31-35 Jesus’ identity is tested. He is invited to place his own safety first. If we go back to Luke 9:51 Jesus sets his face to Jerusalem where he as a prophet must die. Jesus is immersed in God’s commitment to hope and the way of love. He is determinedly living that out. His sense of who he is leads him there, to the city of peace; where heaven and earth touch in the temple; where God’s will might be done on earth as in heaven; the symbol of all that God’s desires and cause of Divine lament when the ways hope, peace and love are left in the dust. He is living God’s faithfulness.

What are the ways we have experienced God’s faithfulness over the last two years? What gives us life at this time?