Talking to God
The challenge of not getting what you want
Homily for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C.
Our readings today are about talking to God, which means they are about prayer, and that’s something a lot of people struggle with. But in both the reading from Genesis and the Gospel, we hear two different ways of doing this.
In the first reading we learn that not even 10 righteous people could be found in Sodom and Gomorrah. Our father Abraham is living in the midst of great sin, just as we are right now. But Abraham intercedes for these people anyway, trying to persuade God to show mercy, while also considering justice.
As for the number 10, that’s significant because it is the number required for a minyan, which is a Jewish prayer group. That’s M-I-N-Y-A-N, so you don’t think I’m talking about the little yellow cartoon characters. The ancient rabbis believed that when 10 are gathered, God is present. Jesus will lower that number, saying that that when two or three are gathered, he is there, and even if we go alone into our chamber, God hears us.
So just what is this conversation between Abraham and God?
It’s a prayer, isn’t it? The difference between Abraham and us, is that God answers him directly, and Abraham negotiates with him like there’s some kind of deal to be made.
Don’t we try to negotiate with God, too? Haven’t we sat beside a hospital bed and prayed, “Please, God, save her, and I will return to church–I will do this or that.”
Abraham says “Since I am able to speak to the Lord.” He knows that many in Sodom are not speaking to the Lord. They have forgotten Him and rejected His law, but Abraham prays for them anyway.
Many today have also forgotten the Lord and rejected His law, and we need to pray for them, too–for the lost, for the faithless, for the sinners: especially our own family members and friends who have lost the faith or stopped coming to mass, because if we don’t pray for them, who will? God loves them dearly, and he has not forgotten them.
Abraham was blessed, and so talked to God–but through Jesus, we are all blessed, and we can all address our Father in heaven, as Jesus taught us to. But it goes even deeper than that because through our baptism and confirmation the Holy Spirit now dwells within us. As Paul writes, we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us, with groaning too deep for words. The Spirit helps us in our weakness to pray–to communicate with God.
There is nothing in the Lord’s Prayer that couldn’t be prayed by a practicing Jewish person. It’s not that God was never referred to as Father in the Old Testament. But in the Old Testament, God is only addressed as Father by the whole of Israel, or by the king. What we heard in today’s gospel is unique because each of us, individually, can pray this way, with the same intimacy that Jesus Himself shares with the Father.
And Jesus takes this lesson on prayer even further, with a parable about a persistent friend asking for bread in the middle of the night. The word translated here as “persistent” is less polite in the original, which is closer to audacity or even shamelessness. So he is telling us to pray boldly, and God will answer.
At this moment, some of us may be thinking the same thing: I have prayers that God has not answered, even when I prayed persistently, audaciously, even shamelessly. Please, save my job. Please, release my child from addiction. Please, do not let the one I love die. And so we think — God said, if I had faith the size of a mustard seed, he would answer my prayers. And we’re left wondering, what’s smaller than a mustard seed, and is that really the size of my faith?
This is a mistake I have made, and you may have as well. We insist that God answer our prayers–our way. We ask, but we also want to dictate His response.
Oh, He hears us. He knows what we want. What we want may be very good. But we don’t see the whole picture. We see a little portion of life on earth for a few human souls over a limited number of years. God sees the entire universe beyond all limits of time and space for every soul that ever was or ever will be.
And it may be that this hunger today, this addiction today, this cancer today — has an effect in eternity that we cannot see or even imagine. We all know by faith that this life is not the end, and we know by faith that God hears us, and is answering our prayers in His time, in His way. The struggle is to learn to accept that, and still say, thy will, not mine, be done.
At the very end of today’s gospel, we see just what God gives in response to every prayer, every time. The answer is right there. Every prayer is answered with and by the same thing: the Holy Spirit. That’s the greatest gift God can give us. The gift of grace. The gift of Himself.
The Sunday after I prayed for something and did not get the answer I wanted, I came to mass, and was given God himself in the Eucharist. He didn’t give me a stone or a scorpion. And although He didn’t give me what I wanted, He gave me what I needed.
This world is not all there is, and we must trust that the prayers we don’t see answered in this world the way we want, will nonetheless be answered, along with all our other questions, when we come face-to-face with the One who loves us above all–the one who wants, always, what is best for us, and Who gives it to us even when we don’t recognize it.
This is powerful, one to keep - thank you
Very well put