Today we hear two very familiar stories. God is intent on destroying Sodom and Gomorrah for the evils that the two cities were perpetrating against humanity. Abraham pleads with God to spare the two cities so that those who are innocent do not suffer the horrible fate of the those who are evil. God agrees that if there is a minimum of 10 innocent families, God will not destroy the cities. In Luke’s Gospel, we hear Luke’s version of the “Lord’s Prayer”, and the familiar parables about God’s generosity. Rather than focus on God’s willingness to hear and grant our prayers, I would like to focus on the contrasting pictures of God that the three readings (I will get to Paul’s letter to the Colossians) with which we are presented.
To begin this reflection, I go back to my favorite definition of God which Benedictine Sister Joan Chittester wrote a number of years ago. She wrote, “God is changing changelessness.” I think this is important for us to keep in the back of our minds especially when we read/hear the contrasting descriptions of God throughout all of sacred scripture. God never changes. God remains God. However, humanity’s understanding of God is ALWAYS changing.
In the reading from Genesis, the God we encounter is the warrior God of the warring nomadic tribes. Abraham was a war lord of a nomadic tribe. The story of Abram soon to be Abraham was one of Abram choosing a God other than the gods of his people from the city of Ur. In cutting a covenant with this “new” God, Abram was transformed into Abraham. The God of Abraham would later be known in history as Israel’s God.
The gods of these ancient tribes were not to be trifled with. You cross them and you will find yourself diced up into little pieces and fed to the dogs. A case in point, note how Yahweh deals with Pharaoh and the people of Egypt, namely, the ten horrific plagues and the drowning of the Egyptian army and Pharaoh in the Red Sea. Yahweh dealt with equal severity those who adored the Golden Calf.
Contrast this picture of the warrior God with that of the God of the prophets and poetic literature. In the Song of Songs, in rather erotic terms, God is the lover who like a gazelle leaps after his Beloved, upon whose physical attributes I will not expound except to say, think of pomegranates. In prophetic literature, God’s portrait begins to be transformed into the husband of an adulterous Israel. The people of Israel, ignoring the covenant cut with Yahweh by their ancestors began to adore the gods of the Canaan. God, the much abused husband of an adulterous wife, maintains the covenant cut with Israel, even though she is cheating on him. God knows that her adultery will bring down great ruin upon Israel and allows it to happen. (God loves her so much that he gives her what she wants even if it might destroy her.) When Israel, beaten and broken, eventually returns to her husband, God welcomes her back and loves her as before. The Book of the Prophet Hosea is a an allegory of God, the maligned husband, married to a cheating harlot.
Now contrast these two pictures of God with the God Jesus paints for us today in the Gospel. Jesus describes God as his Abba, his daddy. Jesus’ God is the father of the prodigal son. Jesus’ God is painted as the one, who, you can go to for anything and be granted what you need. This is the God with whom Jesus has a most intimate relationship (see the Last Supper Discourse from John’s Gospel). In the language of Paul, this is the God with whom we share in the same son and daughter relationship as that of Jesus. We enter into this intimate relationship through baptism, the means by which we become adopted daughters and sons of God.
Yet we run into a conundrum. Not everything for which we ask we will receive. Not everything we seek will we find. To the “ask and you will receive, seek and you will find”, what about Jesus? Not everything for which he asked did he receive.
In the Passion accounts of the Gospels, with the exception of John, Jesus prays to his Abba to take away the torture and execution that awaits him the next day. In Matthew and Mark’s accounts, his Abba remains silent and does NOT answer Jesus’ prayer. In Luke’s account Jesus’ Abba sends an angel to comfort him. Nevertheless, God allows Jesus to be brutally tortured and executed. Why? Is the loving Abba of Jesus suddenly revealed to be the cruel and heartless warrior God of Abraham who has no problem obliterating the civilizations of Sodom and Gomorrah? Did a vengeful God needed his “pound of flesh” (“Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare) to get even with an evil humanity, even if that pound of flesh was extracted from his own son, Jesus?
This bloodthirsty God whose demand for a reparation for our sins has been a stumbling block for many people. The existentialist philosopher and author, Albert Camus, struggled with this question all of his life. He could never reconcile this idea of a bloodthirsty God with the portrait of God that Jesus gives to us, especially in the Gospel of Luke. As a result, Camus rejected Christianity. How do I reconcile this is in my own faith life?”
One, God did not demand that Jesus had to die. The power of SIN in the world had turned human hearts into inhuman hearts black and dead. This is an inhumanity that lived lives absent of all love. This is an inhumanity for whom greed, vengeance, and eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth was the main law of existence. Into this vast history of dead humanity, in which death, greed, and vengeance is the rule of life, Jesus is sent to give an alternative way of living. The rule of life, which Jesus reveals that God intended for humanity from the moment of creation, was that of selfless love, not being served, but serving the needs of those most in need. Jesus taught that in giving of ourselves for this new Gospel, this new rule for life, while our lives may be sacrificed, we will not die but have everlasting life.
In Colossians, Paul writes today, “And even when you were dead in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions; obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us, he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross. (Colossian 2: 11-14, NAB)
The dark heart of inhumanity would never be receptive to this new way of living. In spite of all the miracles of Jesus, feeding the 5000, calming the storm at sea, the exorcism of demons, the raising of people from the dead, the dead, black heart of inhumanity refused to change. As in the case of many of the prophets, in order to silence the prophet, inhumanity has to kill the prophet.
Jesus was not stupid. He knew that eventually the power of inhumanity would turn against him. His own religious leaders, their hearts equally dead and blackened, plotted the execution of Jesus. As horrific as this eventuality would be for him, Jesus reluctantly but resolutely accepted the fate of the prophets of his own religion. God, his Abba, didn’t take any vengeful glee from Jesus’ gruesome torture and execution. God, his Abba, grieved, as do all parents grieve the death of their children. However, God the Abba also knew what Jesus knew. In order for the cycle of death and destruction to be ended in human life, inhumanity had to be altered dramatically. The Gospel of Love had to reign supreme over the gospel of death. The only way for this to be achieved was Jesus dying in love for those whom he had created.
In order for this to happen, Jesus’ Abba, had to stand by in silence and allow inhumanity works its worse on the One for whom the Abba loved the most. As hard as this was, Jesus was not the loser, as inhumanity thought, but rose victorious. Standing by in silence, was Jesus’ Abba’s greatest act of love for his Son.
This is the message of Paul in the second reading. In order for humanity to break the cycle of death and violence, humanity had to witness Love at its most powerful. Jesus did not remain dead. Rather Jesus rose from the dead in the image of what God had intended humanity to be from the beginning. This is the humanity which Jesus offers to those who will be his disciples. The pattern of Jesus death and resurrection, what we call the Paschal Mystery, would be the model of human life from this point onward.
This continues to be played out in our lives today. Inhumanity has not been eliminated from our earth, evident by the sins of many governments, including our own. Prophets, Christian and non-Christian, e.g. Pope Francis I, Oscar Romero, Brother Roger Schütz, Martin Luther King Jr, Mahatma Ghandi, continue to be persecuted and executed for proclaiming and living the Gospel of Jesus, often by their own people and religious authorities.
Abram made the choice of rejecting the gods of the City of Ur, and by choosing God was transformed into Abraham. We are offered the same choice. We can choose inhumanity and accept the gods of our world, greed, death and vengeance. Or, we can choose humanity and the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus.
Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find continues to be our mission today. And what is that mission? It is reflected in the words of Jesus as expressed in today’s Gospel.
“When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test.” (Luke 11: 2b-4, NAB)
