Genesis 14: Part One

I confess that I very nearly skipped this chapter. I thought maybe no one would notice or no one would care. Then I remembered something I read in a book by Philip Yancey – at least, I think that’s where it was. The claim was that people of Afghanistan ate up the Old Testament, that it made sense to them in ways perhaps the newer testament didn’t. They could relate to it. So, I reread chapter 14 and then I stopped and I prayed for the people of Afghanistan, all of them. And I prayed for our soldiers there, and for soldiers from other nations, and for the aid workers from various places. Then, I prayed especially hard for the terrorists hiding out in the hillsides.
You see, I don’t know what else to do besides pray. Some four thousand years ago, tribes of people were fighting each other in what we have come to think of as the Holy Lands. The notes in my study bible tell me that this section is important because it proves true the curse Noah put on his grandson Canaan in chapter nine. Ham (Canaan’s father) had seen Noah’s drunken nakedness, while Shem and Japheth showed more respect. So, Noah cursed Canaan and his descendants, willing that they would be an enslaved people.
It all makes my heart tired, achy and so very tired. There is a line of thought, a trail of theology in the Hebrew Scriptures in which God blesses those who do right and curses those who do wrong, and in which the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. I accept some measured truth in that: when we do the right thing, life has things in it that are easier. But bad things still happen to good people. The mistakes and wrongs I commit do in fact affect my children, and so it goes through the generations. But their ailments and dilemmas are not punishment from God for something I have done; they are consequences sometimes, and sometimes they are unrelated. There is a line of thought in the scriptures in which we are to understand that God takes side in battles and God sends troops into war and God even orders the wholesale slaughter of entire cities. But we are also told that God loves all people and that God craves peace.
In the midst of all this, I look to Jesus. It’s what I do when I cannot understand God, for while I have no hope of actually fully comprehending God, I also, in my paradoxical way, believe that God wishes to be known to us. God, in some measured way, reveals God’s self to us. The best, most complete, example of this is the incarnation of God in Jesus. God took flesh and dwelt amongst us. So, I look to Jesus.
I think if Jesus were in the midst of this battle, he would be praying. I have a hard time even imagining what else he would be doing, but I think when he taught us to love our enemies he meant it.
Now, don’t jump to conclusions too quickly. I am not without anxiety in these questions. Did Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that pastor who longed to study peace with Gandhi, do the right thing in taking part in the plot to assassinate Hiltler? If I’d had a gun to defend the Rwandans against the machetes, would I have used it? Do I want the peacekeepers in Darfur (more were killed this past week) to fire back when the refugee camps are raided? What should we do about Afghanistan?
I don’t know.
Sometimes I begin to read the bible, this record of people’s lived experience of God, and I swirl off into questions about how to live now. I wonder what the Word of God in and through these words really is. What are we to do? Today, the best I can do is to pray and to do my best to pray with great love. For I believe that God so loves the whole world and that Jesus is the Prince of Peace and that Isaiah’s vision of swords being turned into ploughshares is a real hope. So, I pray for God’s grace and God's lavish, reality-shattering love to be in and through us all. I pray for us all, friends and foe. And, oh, how I wish we could give that baby Jesus the gift of peace this Christmas.