Seventeenth Sunday in ordinary time, Cycle C. Today’s readings: Genesis 18:20-32; Colossians 2:12-14; Luke 11:1-13
I detest haggling; when in countries where it is practised, I always feel very awkward during the bargaining that invariably accompanies any trip to the local market. Friends of mine engage in this process with gusto, countering the shopkeeper’s requested price by offering an alternative sum I consider frankly ridiculous, possibly insulting.
Thus it proceeds: the trader lowers the asking price slightly, and the shopper retorts with a marginally higher offer, back and forth. Occasionally it reaches an apparent impasse: the shopkeeper will raise his arms in mock frustration: “That is impossible; you want to ruin me!” The shoppers then go through the rigmarole of pretending to walk away from the shop or stall until the trader finally calls them back and agrees to a sum acceptable for all.
This same feeling of awkwardness is inevitably aroused within me whenever I ponder today’s first reading. In an effort to thwart God’s impending judgment upon Sodom, Abraham uses his best haggling techniques. He starts off by asking if God will still destroy the corrupt city if he finds 50 innocent people in it. Having been assured that God will spare it if he finds that many good people, Abraham persistently comes back – again and again – until he finally obtains the assurance that if God finds even 10 just good people in Sodom, it shall be spared.
The term “chutzpah”, coined by Abraham’s Jewish descendants thousands of years later, perfectly describes the attitude he demonstrates in this incident. Although in other instances in the book of Genesis, Abraham appears rather cowardly, yet when confronting God and trying to ensure the safety of his cousin Lot and his family, domiciled in Sodom, he manages to achieve a very delicate balance of courage, brazenness and humility.
The reader expects God to become irritated at any moment during this exchange; it feels like Abraham is poking a lion who might snap at any moment. Yet God doesn’t. Commenting on this scriptural episode and similar exchanges between God and other Old Testament figures, in a reflection entitled ‘God loves those who argue’, the late great Rabbi Jonathan Sacks comments that “God wants an Abraham, a Moses, a Jeremiah and a Job to challenge him, sometimes to plead for mercy or to urge him to act swiftly in defence of his people”.
According to Sacks, Abraham’s attitude is not something that God merely tolerates; rather, he claims, God himself “chose as his prophets people who were prepared to argue with Heaven for the sake of Heaven in the name of justice and truth”.
Nevertheless, it is not a simple prophet who brings this lesson to perfection, but God’s own son. In today’s gospel, Jesus reminds us that when we approach God in prayer we do not do so as mere suppliants, but as sons and daughters. Asked by his disciples to teach them to pray, Jesus gives them a model prayer and a masterclass.
In the ‘Our Father’, Christ not only offers us a template of prayer, but also invites us to develop an entire attitude of childlike trust and simplicity with which to approach God. The more we know God, as Abraham and Jesus did, the more freely and sincerely we will approach him, and the more serenely we will receive the fruits of our prayer.
In the ‘Our Father’, Christ not only offers us a template of prayer, but also invites us to develop an entire attitude of childlike trust and simplicity with which to approach God
In the words of Pope Francis: “The object of prayer is of secondary importance; what matters, above all, is Christ’s relationship with the Father. This is what prayer does: it transforms the desire and models it according to the will of God, whatever that may be, because the one who prays aspires first of all to union with God, who is merciful love.”
bgatt@maltachurchtribunals.org