In
our Old Testament reading, we also have Abraham’s bargaining prayer. I’m no
stranger to bargaining prayers on the airplane, either, I’m afraid. I’ve been
known to scan incoming passengers during boarding, looking for cute babies and
cozy families. When I spot them, I pray, “OK, God, you won’t bring down a plane
with that cute child on it, will you?” Or, “Surely, you’ll save us so that nice family won’t perish ...?
Such
questionable theology isn't what we’re supposed to take away from our first
reading, either. Abraham has just welcomed God in the guise of three strangers,
offering them model hospitality in his desert tent. He and Sarah have just
received the promise that they will have a son in their old age. It’s God’s
plan that the descendants of Abraham, a just and righteous man, will become a “great
and mighty nation” that will, in turn, bless all the nations of the earth. So
as our reading begins, God and Abraham are looking over at the cities of Sodom
and Gomorrah, where the outcry of the people, the desperate outcry of the
oppressed, has reached God’s ears.[1]
Sodom
and Gomorrah are not wicked, by the way, because of the sexual
orientation of their citizens! It is clear from the text that Sodom and Gomorrah are wicked because they
ignore the most often-repeated divine law in the whole Hebrew Bible: their
people mistreat the stranger, the sojourner, the foreigner, in their land. Instead
of generous hospitality, they offer violent abuse to those who have come into
their borders. Because of their repeated offenses, God’s justice demands that
these unrepentant cities be destroyed.
Abraham,
being the just and righteous man that he is, is concerned not only with his own
family in Sodom, but with the fate of the whole city, good and evil alike. God
and Abraham both seem to understand that goodness has to reach a critical mass
in order for it to offset the evil around it. For the Jewish writer of Genesis,
that critical mass is ten. That’s why Abraham stops his bargaining there. Ten
is the number that constitutes a “minyan;” it’s the number that represents
Jewish community.[2]
Without a community to stand up to evil, to practice right relationship with
God and with one another, evil tends to prevail. For Sodom and Gomorrah to turn
from their cruel ways, it would have taken more than a couple of individuals—it
would have taken a righteous community.
So
Abraham courageously and persistently bargains with the Holy One, just as cleverly
as he might bargain with a powerful spice merchant down at the local bazaar. What’s
interesting in this prayer isn’t Abraham’s bargaining skill, though. What’s
interesting is that God offers Abraham the opportunity to bargain. God knows
that the innocent will be allowed to escape. God knows that the cities are
going to be destroyed. So why tell Abraham about God’s plans? God wants to give
Abraham a chance to demonstrate his own righteousness, by trying to convince
God to save the whole.[3] God always wants us
involved in doing justice and righteousness.
Jesus,
too, encourages us to ask “shamelessly” and persistently for the salvation of
the whole. He teaches us to pray for God’s Kingdom to come on earth, for God’s
rule, God’s dream for the world, to be made real in the world of humans. What’s
that Kingdom like? It is a kingdom of right relationship with God and with one
another, a kingdom where justice reigns, a kingdom where we all have the bread,
the sustenance, that we need each day, a kingdom where we forgive one another
like God forgives us, a kingdom without the burden of debt. Scholar John Dominic
Crossan describes Jesus’ prayer this way: “The Lord’s Prayer is . . . a prayer
from the heart of Judaism on the lips of Christianity for the conscience of the
world . . . . [It is] a radical manifesto and a hymn of hope for all humanity
in language addressed to all the earth.”[4]
When
Jesus encourages us to ask, to knock, to persist—when Jesus promises always to
answer our prayer, notice what Jesus promises to give us: Jesus doesn’t promise
us a new house, a better job, a miraculous cure, or a safe airplane flight.
Jesus promises to give us the gift of the Holy Spirit. “How much more your
father will give the Holy Spirit from heaven to those who ask him,” Jesus
assures us. Some ancient manuscripts of Luke 11 even add, “Your Holy Spirit
come upon us and cleanse us” after the well-known words “your kingdom come.”[5] The prayer would then
read, “Your Kingdom come; Your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us. Give us
every day the bread we need.” In other words, God’s Kingdom coming has
everything to do with the Holy Spirit, with that Spirit that binds us together
in Community, that Spirit that gives birth to the Church.
It
makes sense: God’s Spirit—the Advocate, the Comforter—makes present in us
the Kingdom of God that Jesus himself made present in his bodily words and
actions.[6] Just like God visited
Abraham, blessed him, and gave him a chance to speak out against evil, so too
the Holy Spirit surrounds us, blesses us, and gives us the strength to speak
out against evil. As we know from St. Paul, when we have the Holy Spirit, we
have those fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.[7] In the Spirit, we form a beloved
community that can withstand testing and trial, a community that can stand
against evil.
A
Roman Catholic friend sent me a newsclip yesterday as I was writing this
sermon. The article described how Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami gathered
with 25 Knights of Columbus on motorcycles to pray the rosary in front of “Alligator
Alcatraz” last week. The Archbishop is concerned for the detainees because of
the dangerously hot and unsanitary conditions that have made this camp infamous
around the world.[8]
The Catholic Church hasn't been allowed inside to hold mass for the imprisoned migrants there, but the Archbishop is determined not to give up. He and his fellow Christians
showed up to be Christian community in the only way that they could--to face
down evil, to bring the outcry of the suffering to God, to pray the prayer that
Jesus taught us.
I
had a mysterious prayer experience once as a teenager that’s etched in my heart
and soul. I was on a school trip to Europe, a self-absorbed teen with
a Peanuts quote on my bulletin board that read, “I love humankind; it’s
people I can’t stand.” One afternoon, I was sitting on a hillside praying very
hard for the health of our trip leader, a kind and loving teacher who had
injured his back. I wanted God to heal his back, and probably to prove God’s
existence to me at the same time. Some bargaining may have been involved. Suddenly,
the sky above me turned tremendously and beautifully blue. I heard the words—not
aloud but still clear as a bell—“I am Love, and I want you to love my people.”
I’ll never forget that moment. You see, my teacher’s back was healed the next
day. It might have been a coincidence; it might have been an answer to prayer.
But the healing is not what marked my soul. In that prayer, I had glimpsed the
Holy Spirit, and I had been called to love. I’m the one who was changed,
empowered, and made whole.
There
are all kinds of ways to pray—some more mature than others. But we know one
thing for sure. Given all the evil in this world, God needs God’s righteous
community to speak up without ceasing, to bang on the doors of heaven and
earth, crying out for right relationship and justice for the whole of
creation.
[1]
This noun is associated in the
Prophets and Psalms with the shrieks of torment of the oppressed. See note for
Genesis 18: 20 in Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Vol. 1 (New York: WW
Norton, 2019), 58.
[2]
Carla Friedman, “The Education
of Abraham,” 2005. Found at https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/education-abraham.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
Quoted by Diana Butler Bass, “Sunday Musings,” July 26, 2025. Found at https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com.
[5]
Frederick Christian
Bauerschmidt, The Love that is God: An Invitation to Christian Faith (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020), 45.
[6] Ibid.
[7]
Galatians 5
[8]
Gina Christian, “Archbishop
Wenski Leads Knights on Bikes to Pray Rosary at Alligator Alcatraz, in The
Boston Pilot, July 25, 2025. Found at https://www.thebostonpilot.com/article.php?id=200365.
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