Genesis chapter 13

Sometimes, it is easy to get so wrapped up in what you are doing, in work, in family, in doing things for the church, that you fail to see what is going on around you. You don't appreciate how things look from the outside and you don't realise the impact what you are doing is having on others. Or maybe it is a case of wanting to protect what you have, to look after it, nurture it, no matter what is going on outside.

Here, Lot and Abram had become so rich, had so many flocks, tents, servants and so on, that there was not enough room for both of them. The servants had taken to fighting amongst themselves - Lot's servants against Abram's servants, as each one tried to get the best land, the closest position to the water and so on. There they were, surrounded by enemies on all sides, and they spent their time bickering amongst themselves.

When you consider it, they were just behaving like a typical family. My boys will often disagree, tease each other unmercifully until one of them gets really upset, yet let anyone from outside the family step in, and woah, they stand as one! I think when the bible talks about things like this, it is so refreshing. God doesn't hide the way people are, He doesn't dress up the Old Testament heroes to make them look good, perfect, better than the rest of us. We read of Noah getting drunk, Abram and Lot's servants fighting, David's sons trying to kill one another, and there is also rape, murder, incest in the bible. God doesn't say these things are good, He just tells it like it is. So when we read of Abraham, Moses, Peter, and others, we read of their good points and their bad points, they are not held up to be superheroes, wonderful men and women who always did the right thing no matter what, perfect Christians who never strayed. No, we see them as they were, real ordinary people like you and me, sometimes getting it right, and sometimes getting it wrong.

Then again, Isn't the fighting between Abram's and Lot's servants typical of the church at times? Everyone being so busy to protect their position, their ministry, their roles that they don't realise how it looks from the outside, how non believers see it and how it gets reported in the press? Here, when the Church of England says nothing about a particular matter, everyone criticise the church for not speaking out. Then when the Archbishop of York does say something, he gets criticised for either what he has said or what he has left unsaid. Then you also have disagreements within a church (like we had here at a local church a while ago, when half the congregation left to go to another church) and disagreements between denominations.

What a message that sends out about the church, concentrating on the disagreements, the upsets, the negative things. Where is the love we are supposed to show? What about all the work the church is doing in this country and overseas? The people being helped, the starving, the homeless, the hurting? I guess good news makes bad press.

And here with Lot and Abram, it was a similar thing. I bet all the Canaanites and Perizzites could see was the two lots of shepherds quarrelling over who got to the water first, who got that piece of land over there to graze their flocks on and so on. They were a family, uncle and nephew, and yet they were fighting all the time (or at least the servants were).

I love what Abram did here. He didn't as the elder, the patriarch in the family, choose the best land, the biggest area, the one with the best water supply. He could have easily done this as it was his right, but instead, he chose to split everything 50:50, and what’s more, he gave Lot the first choice. Lot himself wasn't slow in coming forward either. He eyed up the surrounding land and saw the lush pastures of the plain of Jordan, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and chose to take these as his portion.

Genesis 13:10-11 Lot looked. He saw the whole plain of the Jordan spread out, well watered (this was before God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah), like God's garden, like Egypt, and stretching all the way to Zoar. Lot took the whole plain of the Jordan. Lot set out to the east. (The Message)

To be honest, it sounds like he took the easiest option. He saw that the land stretching out looked like God's garden, well watered and presumably fruitful (not something to be sneezed at in the Middle East) yet with the bright lights of the cities nearby, and it looked like the best of both worlds. Beautiful countryside to live in, earn a living from and yet with the attractions and amenities of the city nearby. Yet the attractions of the cities caused all sorts of problems for Lot later….

In the same way as Lot and Abram settled their differences, we in the church also need to settle our differences. It's not a case of one denomination being better than another, of one church in a town being the best one, we are all servants of God, and we have all been called in one way or another. Just because I go to an evangelical/charismatic church doesn't make me better than my neighbour, who goes to a Church of England church or vice versa. Each person is different, unique and will have different ways of worshipping, of giving praise to God. It's not a case of one way being better than another, of God only listening to our prayers if we say them in this way, or that way, of a service only being done right if we use the Book of Common Prayer, and so on. God sees into the heart of each one of us, and we need our hearts to be right with God, not man. We need to love the sinner but hate the sin, let our faith work through us, the love of God to shine out from within and to really be disciples of Jesus here on earth, not people whose disagreements are always being reported unfavourably in the press and who are continually gossiping about others, trying to maintain the status quo or improve our standing in the church.