The passage we heard from Genesis has long been one of my favorite old testament stories. The nerve of Abraham negotiating with God is both astounding and inspiring. The bidding to save the city of Sodom starts at fifty righteous people. By the time we're finished, God has been negotiated down to ten...
Haggling is venerated in many cultures. Our waspy Anglican tradition isn't one of them – when we negotiate, it is through lawyers and it often signals that a relationship has been broken. But in much of the world, a shopkeeper is insulted if you don't want to haggle. Its a sign of a healthy relationship.
Clearly God is not a shopkeeper. Yet here, early on in scripture, we are more or less given a lesson in the value of haggling with God. Look at the success Abraham achieves. Look how far God moves. It signals a healthy relationship and it is a good thing.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I have the sense that God enjoys the dialogue – the haggling – with Abraham. After all, God desires to be in relationship with us.
The matching of this old testament passage with the reading from Luke is remarkable. The disciples are asking to be taught how to pray and the passage from Genesis is also a lesson in how to pray. When these two powerful lessons are combined, what are they telling us?
Abraham doesn't need any instruction in how to pray and haggle with God. Perhaps with proper instruction and preparation he would never have dared do what he did... Perhaps if Abraham had been better schooled in how to be subservient and respectful and utterly deferential, he would have been more ready to accept God's judgment against Sodom...
Abraham's is willing to be pushy in his prayer, his relationship with God. We tend to value politeness, deference, subservience, and eloquence in prayer. Abraham's example is one of speaking whats on your mind. It also happens to be a very good lesson in how to negotiate – but that is a different sermon...
Flash forward to the disciples with Jesus – “Lord teach us to pray as John taught his disciples...” The disciples must be a bit disappointed because the answer doesn't sound very much like a John the Baptist answer – John with the fasting, and the locusts, and the sack cloth... No doubt John's prayer practice also severe...
Teach us to pray the way John taught his disciples to pray... but the answer from Jesus is not severe...
Look at the simple prayer that follows. Six short lines... And this is one of those times when its hard to just hear Luke, without other evangelists whispering in our ears... According to Luke this very brief, unembellished prayer is what comes from the mouth of Jesus.
The first two lines, hallowed be Your name and Your kingdom come echo the beginning of Luke's Gospel. There the shepherds have gathered at the manger at the birth of Jesus and they say Glory to God and on earth peace – in other words: hallowed be God's name and let God's peaceable kingdom be on earth.
The third line – give us daily what we need daily. This is when my inner Abraham wants to negotiate... could we work out, for example, a yearly, or at least a monthly plan... but Jesus is truly calling his disciples, us, to live in the present, to live daily. Still, give us this weekly our weekly bread... would that be so bad? The truth is my desire for safety and security comes at a price – I am less present today and,worse, the security I gain will be at the price of someone else's security... I don't hear Jesus being willing to haggle on this.
Forgive us for we ourselves forgive everyone... Do we? Really? When the Lord's prayer breezes by 5 or so times a day in our worship we say “forgive us our sins AS we forgive those who sin against us” - which isn't quite the same. It has conditional possibilities, which I naturally love... If I don't forgive I won't be forgiven... or the method by which I forgive is the method by which I will be forgiven. Or maybe if I don't forgive right away, but savor my righteous indignation for a while and then forgive... Luke offers no negotiating room. “We ourselves forgive everyone.” I may have some work to do in this area...
And finally – do not bring us to the time of trial. If we are going to be forgiven, whats so bad about a trial? But the time of trial is not a courtroom drama. Precious metals, like silver, are tried, that is to say purified, by extreme heat – so that the silver is separated from the dross. Save us from being tried as silver is tried.
We are entitled to speak up in prayer – it makes for a healthy relationship with God and, at least according to Abraham and according to Jesus, it makes a difference in God. We may not get exactly what we want – Sodom was, in the end, destroyed. But throughout scripture we're called into relationship with God. In relationship, there is give and take... there is shared responsibility, and most of all there is honesty.
In Luke's gospel, we are called to simple, direct, immediate prayer. How are we going to live in God's kingdom today? Any desire we have to make our prayer life more complex, more eloquent, more attractive, more severe – we might want to examine where that desire comes from.
The Letter to the Colossians adds one more interesting dimension to the day. “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and deceit. Do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink... Do not let anyone disqualify you... As you have received Christ Jesus, continue to live in him.”
There are a number of ways we receive Christ – prayer and Eucharist being high on the list. Our Benedictine tradition reminds us to receive strangers as Christ and in doing so we receive Christ – we find the face of Jesus in the face of strangers (and even in the faces of those who are not strangers...). We are continually receiving Christ.
Sometimes our Christian practice seems to be designed to make us worthy to receive Christ – with an emphasis on repenting and rebuking... The truth is we are never worthy to receive Christ. Jesus doesn't come to us because we love him... Jesus comes to us because he loves us.
What I hear Paul saying is don't be so worried about getting ready to receive Christ – we've already done that. We need to be worried about living in Christ – about living in God's kingdom. Issues of what is clean or unclean are not so important. Issues of who is hungry, who is suffering, who is being deprived of justice are the things Jesus puts before us.
Paul seems to be urging us to have the courage of our convictions – even when others, devout and authoritative thought they may appear – are urging us away from our convictions. Too often in our society the way to get by and be effective is to be politically savvy. So we soften our message, take large steps back from where our heart tells us we should be, compromise in oh so many ways. In a political world, that is the way.
But is not the way of Jesus. We may, as Abraham did, negotiate with God. We certainly must engage in prayer. But once we have understood what God is calling us to do, then we must proceed and not worry about reaction of others.
Of course its more complicated than that – we are never in the position of fully understanding God. So humility must be part of the way in which we proceed. And, I believe, community must be part of the way in which we proceed.
Our world, and even our little Anglican part of the Christian Church, is filled with any number of folks ready to condemn, ready to disqualify, ready to distract. Sometimes they are armed with the gospel of prosperity... sometimes the gospel of communism, or capitalism, or consumerism... sometimes they are armed with that most dangerous non-Christian gospel of all, the gospel of the status quo.
And through the din, Abraham says go ahead and talk to God – its not that difficult. And Jesus says honor God's name and live in God's kingdom. And Paul says get on with it.
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