Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
To the modern western mind, Abrahams haggling or bargaining with God, in today’s first reading, may sound preposterous. To me, coming from India, I am not alarmed. Haggling is part of our daily life. In fact, for us haggling is an art. We do not buy anything without haggling. Every morning, when the fish monger comes to my house, my dad has to haggle. The fish monger already knows that my dad will haggle. So the price he quotes is already higher than the original price. My dad haggles and brings the price down. At the end of it all, the fish monger is happy that he got the price he wanted and my dad is happy that he saved a few bucks. Or, at least he thinks he did. Haggling was and is common in the Middle-East as well. Abraham’s bargaining with God follows this practice.
Abraham’s dialogue with God is more than haggling, though. It tells us about the power of a righteous life. Particularly, it says that the prayer of just one “righteous person” holds a lot of value in God’s sight. It also tells us the about the power of having an Abraham-like closeness with God. The Hebrew mind could not imagine a human person haggling with God. It is Abraham’s closeness with God that makes him defy the rules of divine engagement. In the gospel reading, the parallel to God is the friend who is in bed for the night with his family and the persistent friend is like Abraham. His confidence makes him approach his friend at an unearthly hour. His persistence comes from his closeness and confidence in the friendship.
Here are my three practical implications:
1. God is Closer. Abraham’s closeness with God, as attractive as it is, still falls short of the closeness Jesus showed. When the disciples came to him and asked him to teach them how to pray, Jesus taught them to call God, “Abba.” It does not get closer than that. This way of imagining one’s relationship with God was a paradigm shift for the people of Jesus’ time. Sadly, though, even today people struggle to imagine God as a parent. I think that sometimes “religion” comes in the way of our closeness with God. Religion is the formal communitarian structure of our relationship with God. Oftentimes this formality overshadows our personal relationship with God. Saying prayers becomes more important that the closeness. Obligations become more important than affection. Laws become more important than the spirit of the commandments. The bottom line is this - religion without closeness to God is empty ritual. Yet, Jesus teaches us that religion is not merely an individualistic pursuit. True faith and religiosity should bring us together into a community to pray, “Our Father.” True religiosity combines closeness with God and with the community. This week, could you reflect upon the closeness that Christ wants you to have with God as a Catholic?
2. The Our Father: A Prayer of the Righteous. I made a reference to the value of the prayer of the righteous person. Abraham was one of those righteous people in the Old Testament whose prayer had great value in God’s sight. Even God succumbed to Abraham’s bargaining. What accounts for Abraham’s righteousness? Abraham’s righteousness is seen in the cause that he pleads before God. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah were guilty. Abraham knew that. Yet he pleads for them. For the sake of five good people in Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham bargains for the life of the rest of the population. Abraham’s righteousness is seen bargaining for the life of a very sinful people. The “Our Father” verbalizes this. I call the “Our Father,” the prayer of the righteous because it makes us plead like Abraham did. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive…,” Jesus teaches us to pray. This means that today we are not being taught to merely pray for our own protection; we are not being taught to seek the destruction of those we think are evil; we are not being taught to seek our own righteousness while “sinful people” go to hell; on the contrary, we are being taught to pray for our enemies, to forgive them as God forgives us, and to plead the cause of those who consider evil. The “Our Father” is a prayer of the righteous person.
3. “How Much More!” Third, we do have to come to terms with Jesus’ words, “"And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” What is the chance that these words are not meant to make spoilt, pampered Christians out of us? These words are meant to make us like Abraham. These words are meant to make of us a righteous people; a people close to God like Abraham, caring for our community like Abraham, and pleading the cause of people like Abraham. Prayer is not always about getting what we want or wish. Prayer is about becoming a certain kind of people. Jesus says, “… how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those to ask.” This week, let us ask for this closeness with God. This week, let us ask for the grace of a righteous relationship with God and others. This week, let us ask for the Holy Spirit. Perhaps, then, the doors that we knock at, will open before us. Perhaps then, everything else we ask will be ours as well.
Every celebration of the Eucharist is the “Our Father” in practice. We come as a community, address God as Father, to offer our selves to God, and pray for the world. In this Eucharist we enter into communion with Christ. Abraham could not do that. But we can. Let us do so now.
- Fr. Satish Joseph