Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
I was only about ten years old. My parents had just bought my brother his first ever guitar. The day my brother received it we all gazed at it as if it was a new BMW. At the end of the day, it was neatly put back in its cover. My brother then wrapped it in a bed cover to protect the guitar cover from being ruined. Like God gave instructions to Adam and Eve that they were not to even touch the tree in the middle of the garden, I was given the same instructions. The next day, my parents went to work and my brother went out with his friends. Meanwhile, little Mr. Inquisitive was at home itching to take a chance at being Eric Clapton. My hands trembled as I unwrapped the cover and amidst many inspection of the door way, got the guitar out of the cover. To my misfortune, I had hardly even touched the strings and one of them broke. You can imagine my horror. I did not even know that a guitar string could be replaced. I thought that the guitar was ruined forever. I quickly put the guitar back in its cover, wrapped it the way it was and placed it back in its closet. Now, what I did after the guitar was broken is what is important. I remember kneeling before the prominently placed pictures of the Sacred Heart and Mary, and pleading on my knees with them. I prayed that somehow the string would attach itself to the guitar. I would pray really hard for about five minutes, and then go and peek to see it God had mended the guitar. On seeing that the string was still broken, I would go and pray even harder. This happened about 10 times. Finally, it was evening. Everyone came back home and hell broke loose over the broken guitar string. I never owned up to having broken it.
When I think about the incident, I still feel hurt. If God wanted, God could have mended the guitar. Why did God not hear the prayers of a little innocent boy? Why did God not mend the guitar?
My point is this. The first reading and particularly the gospel reading is meant to evoke tremendous confidence in God. Abraham tactfully negotiates with God in order to save the city of Sodom. God is willing to save the city if only he found ten good people. Of course, we know that the city is destroyed because God could not find even five good people. But look at the way Abraham negotiates with God. And then Jesus in the gospel reading says, “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.” So on one hand we have a God, who just tells us to ask, seek and knock and, on the other hand, are our some fruitless experiences of our asking, seeking, and knocking. Some of our prayers, things we pray for with fervor seem to go unanswered. For example, what stopped God from mending my guitar? What stopped God from healing my aunt from cancer? What prevents God from stopping an accident that would take the father of two young children away? What stops God from giving employment to a friend of mine? I am sure you have similar questions.
I hope to deal with this predicament in this homily. And allow me to do in three points.
1. First of all, how do we understand prayer? From the readings we have today, it is very easy to think that prayer is about intercession. You will be surprised by how many people associate prayer with seeking God’s favour or talking to God about our life. What we should not ignore in today’s readings is the relationship Abraham and Jesus shared with God before they present God with their intercessions. Take Abraham’s conversation with God for example. There is something comical about the way about the way Abraham negotiates the case of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham’s boldness and his craftiness in his negotiation with God, his reminding God of how God should act, and his confidence in influencing God’s decision points a deep, intimate and trusting relationship. Jesus captures this best in the prayer that he taught his disciples. God is first and foremost, father and mother. Prayer, my dear friends, in other words is first and foremost about RELATIONSHIP. If we want to find out if we are prayerful people or not, we need to first look at our relationship with God. I am a prayerful person if I am in deep, intimate, and trusting relationship with God. Our intercession needs to fit into this relationship with God. Outside our relationship with God, intercessory prayers are only babbling words.
2. I do want to say something about intercessory prayer. I am totally intrigued by Abraham’s negotiation with God. He is crazy in the way he brings his heart desire before God. Many times we hear about how we must bring our needs before God with some caution. For example, it would be OK for me to pray for daily bread but it would be crazy to prayer for new Jaguar when I already a decent car. I, on the other hand, am the kind of guy who thinks that it is fine to bring even your craziest needs before God. After all, did not Abraham bring a two sinful cities before God? Who else shall we take our crazy needs to? Go ahead, pray that you may get a Jag, or that you don’t get caught if you have lied about your income, or that you may inherit your father’s estate, or that it may not rain at your wedding or that USA may win the world cup. And also bring your genuine needs before God. That you may conceive and have a child, or that you be miraculously healed of cancer, or that you may find employment or get a promotion. But here is the deal. WE bring all our crazy and genuine needs before God but must leave it to God to provide for us in God’s own wisdom, time and space. Deal or No Deal?
3. We must recognize that, often, we are the answer to people’s prayers. Sodom and Gomorrah needed somebody like Abraham to be an answer to their need for survival. Even as we pray for our needs we should know that for someone in the world praying for their needs, we are the answer to their prayer. Think about Haiti, for example. Six months after that devastating earthquake, people are still in dire desperation. Someone there is praying for daily bread. Did any of us decide that we would keep one meal aside a month and send that money for charity to Haiti? And please do not say, I have already donated before. Someone there is still praying for food, for medicine, for shelter, for hope. People all over the world are crying for help. It is up to us to become the answer to someone’s prayer, every month, every week, every day.
The Eucharist is the most powerful prayer. This Eucharist is Christ praying to the Father on our behalf. It is not for his own sake but for us. This prayer is precsious in the sight of the God. As we offer this Eucharist, let us pray that our prayers may be like that of Jesus.
- Fr. Satish Joseph