8th Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 12 C
July 25, 2004
Lectionary
Genesis 18:20-33
Colossians 2:6-15
Luke 11:1-13
I find a very powerful, even startling convergence between the reading from Genesis and the reading from the Gospel according to Luke.
We start with Abraham's bargaining session with God - one of the most amusing and refreshing passages in scripture. It is not enough that Abraham dares to negotiate with God, but Abraham appears to win. The next time I negotiate a contract I want Abraham as my agent.
Flip forward to the Gospel. The disciples say "Teach us how to pray." Well, in a sense, that is exactly what Abraham was doing as well - teaching us, by example, how to pray.
Luke appears to takes us further. "Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened." Initiate the relationship and God will respond. Of course Abraham's prayer also clearly assumes that God will respond.
We, bad as we may be, know how to give good gifts - how much better the gifts that God knows how to give.
But we have to knock. We have to ask. We have to haggle just as Abraham did.
In both the Gospel and in the passage from Genesis it is clear that we have responsibilities in our relationship with God. In honest prayer we approach God, but we have to be honest and we have to approach. Abraham honestly prays, in the form of negotiation, to change the fate of Sodom. Do we have the honesty and courage to pray in the form of negotiation with God for the facts of our own world?
Of course, Abraham's successful bargaining with God notwithstanding, Sodom still gets destroyed. In the very next chapter of Genesis, God rains down hellfire and brimstone and wipes away the city. Apparently God did not find those 10 good men that Abraham had haggled for... And we all share the experience of asking in prayer for things that we do not receive.
At some level, though, we know that prayer is not a way of getting things - even good gifts - from God. It is a way of growing in our relationship with God - growing toward wholeness. If our prayers appear to be answered, or if they do not, we still grow in wholeness when we pray. God knows how to give good gifts - but that is not the same as giving us what we want.
I think there is a second layer of convergence between the Genesis story and the Gospel story this morning. I see a link between the idea of gifts from God that Luke talks about and the fate of Sodom. Maybe this is just a crafty excuse for me to talk about Sodom...
Much has been made over the millennia of the sin of Sodom. In modern times we have come to associate that sin with a certain sexual orientation and have even conferred upon the sin legal standing as the crime of Sodomy.
As our Church struggles with the issues of ordination of openly gay people to high positions and how to properly honor the committed relationships between persons of the same sex, our notion of the sin of Sodom works its way into the text and sub-text of that dialogue.
There are those who want the dialogue to be absolute - that is to say they want no dialogue at all. God gives the law and we must follow or, quite literally, be damned.
But the story of Abraham we heard complicates things. It tells us to haggle with God - to pray. And Jesus, in this morning's Gospel, commands us to begin that dialogue. Jesus doesn't say: "If you want to, ask..." "If you are so moved, knock..." Jesus says ask! Knock! No equivocation. No qualifiers. So those who want simple, absolute answers, are not well served by this morning's readings.
So what is the sin of Sodom about which Abraham, and we, apparently can negotiate? Scholars have debated this and remain divided. So we leave the area of fact and enter the area of thought. All I can tell you is what I honestly think.
I don't think the sin of Sodom was homosexuality as many believe. And I don't think the sin was violation of the rules of hospitality as others propose.
The sin, in my opinion, was the abuse of a gift from God. And that is why I see a second link between the Gospel according to Luke and the story of Sodom.
The men of Sodom were using a gift from God as a weapon - as a tool to humiliate and violate others. Relationship and love had nothing to do with it. Even sex, in the way we think about sex, really had nothing to do with it. Power and domination had everything to do with it.
So God gives us a gift and, in Sodom, we make a weapon. That, I think, is the sin of Sodom. That is the sin from which even Abraham's artful negotiation could not save Sodom.
Today, of course, we still regularly use sex as a weapon for power and domination - at Abu Graib prison in Iraq, in our prison system at home, in offices where employees are sexually harassed, in churches where the proper boundaries between adults and children have been notoriously violated, in our advertising where sex is used as a weapon against our judgement and willpower... perhaps in our own homes, in this Monastery, maybe even in our own hearts...
And although sex may have been the particular gift abused in Sodom, it is certainly not the only gift from God that we abuse. When we use the gift of industry to destroy the environment, is that the sin of Sodom? When we use the gift of science to build weapons of war so horrible that "mutually assured destruction" is the term used to describe their use, is that the sin of Sodom? When we use the gift of great wealth to allow some to live in unfathomable comfort while others are denied even enough to eat, let alone basic dignity, is that the sin of Sodom?
The danger, for me, in the traditional way we think about Sodom is that we become concerned with what they did wrong there and then. As long as we don't do the thing they did, then we are OK. And if we abhor the thing they did, then we must be really good.
But Abraham's negotiation was not about abhorring. It wasn't about being orthodox or upholding tradition. It was about seeking an honest, fresh understanding with God. It was about asking, about knocking.
We know that God showers us with gifts - great and wonderful gifts. We know that when we knock, God answers.
But how do we use our gifts - the gifts that God gives us? How do we honor God with those gifts? How do we injure others and the rest of God's creation with those gifts? How do we take God's gifts and make weapons? How do we repent and amend?
Let us pray: Creator God, all good gifts come from you and you have given to us in great abundance. Help us to leave behind the desire to respond in petty, greedy, defensive ways. Help us to grow toward wholeness with you, with our brothers and sisters, and with all of your creation so that we can respond to your gifts in love. In Jesus' name we pray.
Br. Scott Wesley, OHC
