If you wanted to make peace with a nearby tribe in the ancient Near East, it usually required spilling a lot of blood.  I’m not saying that this should make sense to us now, but somehow it did make sense to them then.  Instead of spilling each other’s blood, they would take a few animals, saw them in two, and allow their blood to create a sort of river in the crevice of a hillside.

Don’t worry, it gets worse.

Once the “river” had been created by these poor animals’ blood, the leader of each tribe would take off their sandals, and walk the blood river.  Squish. In between toes. Squish. All over the robes.  Squish.  Did some get in my hair? It was a graphic way of saying, “If I break my end of the covenant—or promise—of peace between our tribes, this is what you can do to me.  It was known as the “blood path”.

Okay.  So the father of the Hebrew people was a man named Abraham.  And Abraham is a man with a story.  And in this story, God reaches out to him to form a relationship and partnership with him. And so He does what Abraham would have expected Him to do: He has Abraham saw a cow, goat and ram in half, with a few butchered birds thrown in for good measure.

You know, like you would.

Here is the “blood path”.  Abraham likely would have seen this done between warring tribes.  He knew what was going to happen next.  God would “walk” the blood path, and then he would be required to walk it.

And so, as the story goes, God walks the blood path as a pillar of smoke, which was one of the ways that He would manifest Himself.  And then—and you can picture Abraham taking his sandals off and getting ready to step in to the blood—God pushes him out of the way and walks the blood path again.  This time as a sort of fire, which was another way God made Himself known.

Are you confused?  So was Abraham.

Stand beside Abraham and notice what’s just happened: God is forming a relationship with Abraham, a relationship where he doesn’t have to worry that he is at war with God anymore, and God walks the blood path twice: once for Himself, and once for Abraham.  In effect, the Giver of Life has said, “If I renege on this relationship, you can shed My blood.  If you are unfaithful to the terms of this relationship…you can shed My blood.”

Only God’s life is on the line here.

All this, thousands of years before a Jewish rabbi named Jesus embodies this very reality.

Can you see why this story has been passed down from generation to generation?  Earlier in the Hebrew Scriptures, we are told that the universe and reality and the very dirt itself is built upon the foundation of grace.  But this story is taking things much further: it is not just that we are being invited to live within the reality or essence or foundation of grace, but further to have a relationship with the One who founded the world on this grace.

Do with that what you will, but this is the message that these early Hebrews are trying to imbed within us.  The deepest reality of the universe is grace, and it is within this grace that the Giver of Life wants to have a relationship with us.

And, of course, people have struggled with this for generations.  There has always been this desire within us to have to prove ourselves, earn our keep, validate our worth, measure up to some standard.

In other words, people have been trying to step in the blood for as long as we can remember.

But…the oldest memory says we don’t have to tiptoe around this God.  We don’t have to constantly be anxious that we aren’t measuring up, aren’t pulling our weight, aren’t good enough to be in His (or Her) Presence.

We are invited, instead, to try not to step in the blood. To simply allow ourselves to be held, to be nurtured, to be known, to be loved. 

Our Parent would have it no other way.