SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2005)
Readings:
Genesis 18:20-32
Psalms 138:1-3, 6-8
Colossians 2:12-14
Luke 11:1-13
This Sunday’s readings tell us a great deal about prayer, from the person of Abraham at the beginning of recorded time, and from the Master of a new time and new era, our Lord Jesus, the Christ. Once again, our Genesis reading is from the Yahwist strain that runs through the first book of the Bible, a strain that makes God appear to be ‘just one of the guys,’ the anthropomorphic strain. Indeed, God even speaks to the reader (us) in the most ordinary of ways: “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave, that I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me. I mean to find out.” (Similarly, in Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol,” the ghost of Christmas Present tells Scrooge that he had heard all about him, and he didn’t think he could possibly be that bad. However, the ghost then suggests that they were not exaggerating.)
What God had to say about Sodom and Gomorrah was of great interest to Abraham, not only because he surely had heard of some of the same rumors, but because he also had family living there. The visitors from last week’s gospel are just leaving, satiated no doubt with the fifty pounds of bread and 1,100 pound steer, and Abraham is now free to question God like any ordinary man. You can almost see Abraham tap God on the shoulder, and boldly ask: “Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty? (Did he think this was a deportation raid?). Suppose there were fifty innocent people in the city; would you wipe out the place, rather than spare it for the sake of the fifty people within it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to make the innocent die with the guilty, so that the innocent and the guilty would be treated alike! (Has Abraham been talking with Netanyahu?). Should not the judge of the world act with justice?” (Also a good question for bishops!)
Abraham was surely pleased with his cajoling God, the “judge of the world, to not act and destroy the cities. Further thought must have made Abraham wonder, ‘why did I start so high, although given the size of the two cities, fifty was hardly a high number. It surely did not take much time to work up the boldness, even for a person of “dust and ashes,” to lower the number of good people by five. 45, 40, 30 (big jump), it goes back and forth between Abraham, who is buoyed by God’s generosity and “dares” to ask God for another two downgrades, lowering the bar to just 10 good people. Surely Abraham thought, as bad as the rumors were, there have to be at least ten good people in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, especially counting his small number of relatives. God doesn’t spare generosity and Abraham must have felt more than successful.
The naturalness with which Abraham speaks to God says a great deal about how we should approach God in prayer, and the greatest of teachers, Jesus, would agree, as we will see. It’s important to remember that Abraham is convinced that his God has the power to change the world for the better, even the world of Sodom and Gomorrah, and he would not be “daring” to speak to God if he did not trust God to bring about change. It’s not that God changes His mind, after all God is fully omniscient, but God is also a just God, and He needed to “go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond” to the complaints against them; God says, “I mean to find out.” There is nothing capricious about the God of Abraham.
In today’s gospel from Luke we find Jesus praying in a “certain place,” something He surely did with some frequency. One of His disciples, who knew little about prayer, approaches Jesus and says: “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.” Jesus taught them a model prayer, enshrined in every Eucharist we celebrate, and written in our hearts and on our lips since before our First Communions. Jesus addresses God as “Father,” ‘Abba’ in Aramaic, is meant to reveal the personal intimacy Jesus has with His father, and the intimacy we share in by virtue of our baptism. We pray to God as “Daddy,” a figure characteristically kind and benevolent. Our allegiance to God is total, and so it is God’s kingdom that we desire should be established, not some selfish personal kingdom, and surely not some flawed earthly kingdom. In a sign of our dependence on God, we ask for the “daily bread” we need to be given “each day” to further build up God’s kingdom, not the size of our bodies. Self-awareness is necessary for Jesus’ disciples. To ask for our sins to be forgiven we must be consciously aware of our own sinfulness. Confident in God’s goodness, we go further and make our forgiveness by God dependent on our ability to forgive others, a challenging concept to say the least.
Jesus demonstrates the boldness of our prayers with a parable and an admonition. Indeed, the “midnight friend” parable also highlights the importance of hospitality which we spoke of last week. To have something to offer the unexpected visit of a friend was of supreme importance to the main character in the parable, and he is rewarded, not because of the generosity of the disturbed-at-midnight friend, but rather because he was persistent. Indeed, our prayers need to be persistent, especially because they are aimed at situations which don’t have easy answers.
Jesus tells His disciples to “ask – seek – knock,” for only then can you “receive,” “find,” and have doors opened for you. If human fathers, who are sometimes “wicked,” give “good gifts” to their children, imagine what the “Father in heaven” will give. Indeed, that Abba will give “the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.” With that Holy Spirit will come gifts aplenty, and those gifts are the very foundation of the kingdom we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer. With the Holy Spirit, shared with us at our baptisms, we are enabled to do God’s work against all odds, and thus establish the kingdom which Jesus came into our troubled world to establish.
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