Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Fr. Guiliano)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our readings today are full of dark comedy. They’re dark: they mention some sad things. Bad parents, lazy friends, and the potential destruction of two entire cities. Yet they are also comedic: funny in parts; they are some happy endings. 

I love to hear Jesus teaching his disciples to pray. He’s so wise, such a good teacher. But he is a little funny; he gets the point across in odd ways. He has his disciples imagine that prayer is like asking your friend for something you need in the middle of the night, and the initial response is Don’t bother me. Very relatable. The point is persistence: keep asking. The point is assurance: God is better than your lazy friends. 

I like that Jesus gets his point across through parables like this. It appeals to my narrative sensibilities and really to the way that all of us need stories and metaphors to understand basic things, including the nature of prayer. When the disciples ask, “Lord, teach us to pray” – he doesn’t just give them a prayer and that’s it. He doesn’t launch into an extended speech about what prayer is, like “Prayer comprises three parts” and forty-five minutes later he’s finally done. Instead, Jesus has them imagine several situations, social environments. Human friendship, hospitality, family life, gift-giving – prayer is like these things, and also in important ways not like them. 

God is better than your lazy friends; God is better than your evil parents (and better than good parents, too.)

We should read Genesis 18, our Old Testament lesson, partly in this light. Like the parables of Jesus, it’s dramatic, and funny. Is there anything more ridiculous than listening to Abraham bargain with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, as if he’s in a marketplace or a courthouse? Yet it’s revealing. The story tells us about God and prayer. 

Let’s remind ourselves of the setting. By this point in Genesis, Abraham has left his home and family, knowing that he is meant to receive what God has promised him. He’s spoken with God many times, and just before this story he has hosted three unnamed men who arrive during the heat of the day. Abraham has them sit down; he has their feet washed; he and his household prepare a meal for them. 

At some point in this scene, Abraham becomes aware that he is somehow hosting God in the presence of these three strangers. They speak to him as God. And the Lord promise again that Abraham and Sarah shall have a son, despite their old age. Sarah laughs, and God says, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”

Then, after all this, the men set out and look toward Sodom, and God reveals to Abraham that he plans to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins.

The dialogue begins in such a place. 

Abraham, having received the gift of knowing God’s plan, responds, believing that he has a part to play. “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” he says. 

Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?

There is the question animating this whole dialogue, these prayers of Abraham. Along with Abraham’s protestations, that he is but dust and ashes, that he shouldn’t really ask, he clearly feels he must know the answer, he must find out what God is like. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just? 

\And so Abraham pursues the issue: What if there are 50 righteous in the city? What if there are 45? What about 30 or 20? “Suppose ten are found there.” 

I mean, it’s a little ridiculous. Who is Abraham, we might say, that he should speak to God this way? And who is God that he must be talked to? Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just? Why talk at all?

These are some of the dynamics of prayer. This is the relationship Abraham needs, that we need, to understand what it means to pray, and what it means for God to be just. The story reveals what it means for God to be God. 

God is merciful. God is loving. God listens. He is patient and just. He will take time to reveal his ways to us; he will take up our cries and pleas; he will bring us into his own counsel. And he will speak with us in a way we can understand.

This story is not about Abraham talking God down from some wicked plans. No, it’s about Abraham understanding what it means to be a prophet, to be a person of prayer who knows God, as well as what it meant for God to enact his judgment. 

The chapter that follows this moment is just as important. When God goes to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, we are told it was for a specific reason. It’s not the one you probably think, which starts with Sodom and ends with y or ites. 

Remember Ezekiel 16:49: “This was the guilt of … Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” When the figures who met Abraham go down to Sodom in Genesis 19, they are met with threats of abuse and violence because they are strangers. 

Think about that contrast: The hospitality of Abraham in Genesis 18, the blessing on his household, his ability to speak with God all come together, in the negative picture of Sodom’s treatment of outsiders and its judgment in Genesis 19. Abraham’s family abounds; Sodom is destroyed. Abraham is hospitable; Sodom is not. Abraham seeks the Lord’s mercy, even for the wicked; Sodom seeks good for no one but itself.

​God is merciful. God is loving. God listens; he is patient and just. God hears our prayer; God responds to wickedness as a kind of anti-prayer. 

Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?

What does this mean for us?

At a key moment in our service, about 10 minutes from now, I will sing these words: “And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to say: Our Father…”

We will pray the Lord’s Prayer together; we will share in the honor granted to Jesus’ disciples and to Abraham, the honor of addressing God directly. When we approach him together, having lifted our hearts in thanksgiving, all facing east in the same direction, we may remember this story of Abraham. 

Abraham was given the privilege of knowing God’s will, or praying for the needs of the world. So are we.  

I’m not saying we wake up in the morning and find that God is waiting to tell us what it is he is doing with this or that city or that we have some special insight into weather events or earthquakes and so forth – such as the televangelist Pat Robertson claimed for himself nearly 20 years ago. [I don’t have much patience for that sort of claim, especially when it seems untampered by any of the mercy exhibited by Abraham and by God.]

No, what I mean is this: We are invited to speak with God like he is our friend, or as member of his family. We are to plead with him as a judge. We are to be persistent in praying for ourselves and for others.

And we should remember that our deeds are themselves like little prayers sent to heaven. Our hospitality and graciousness mean something to God. Our desires for justice and our seeking of it mean something to God. Our hopes for good things for those around us – and the ways that we ensure they receive them – mean something to God.

So, take it upon yourself, you who are merely dust and ashes, take it upon yourself to pray to the Judge of all the Earth, and take it upon yourself “to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”

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