July 24, 2022, Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)
The readings from Genesis and the Gospel for today offer us sage advice on the workings of prayer in our lives.
The First Reading (Gen. 18:20-32) is a continuation from last week where Abraham had met and served three visitors, one of whom promised to send him a son in one year. Now Abraham is walking along with the three men who have set their sights on Sodom and Gomorrah. At this point in their relationship, Abraham has become quite a friend of the Lord having entered into a three-part covenant of a land, a blessing and a nation. Thus, Abraham’s comfort enables him to speak freely in the presence of God.
The Lord declares that He has heard a great outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah because of the level of sin occurring there. He feels that He must personally inspect the injustice, violence, harsh treatment of the poor, and general immorality which is occurring there in order to make a decision concerning the fate of the two cities. But Abraham is concerned about Sodom because his nephew, Lot and his family, have made their home there.
So, Abraham says to God, “Will you really sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there were fifty righteous people in the city; would you really sweep away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people within it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike! Far be it from you! Should not the judge of all the world do what is just?” (Gen. 18:23-25).
The Lord gives in to Abraham and says, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” Abraham continues to badger God admitting the lowliness of his status, “See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am only dust and ashes! (Gen. 18:27). Yet, he asks God the same question, to be merciful in turn for decreasing levels of upright people. First for forty-five, then forty, then thirty, then twenty, and finally ten. In each case, God promises He will not destroy Sodom.
In this situation, Abraham demonstrates amazing faith in the justice of God and the incredible boldness of a mere human before the Creator of the world. He shows that often a person must act with persistence and a proper disposition – humility and confidence – in petitioning the Lord for a significant favor.
In the Gospel (Lk. 11:1-13) the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray and he offers them an explanation which demonstrates something similar to Abraham’s experience with God. He describes a man who goes to the house of a friend at midnight and asks to borrow three loaves of bread for an unexpected visitor. The man’s friend denies the request and closes the door as his family is sleeping within. But Jesus tells his disciples, “I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.” (Lk. 11:8). In other words, the man may not give the loaves of bread because of their friendship, but he will do so if his friend is persistent.
Jesus compares this scenario to the way in which God answers prayers. Unlike the stubborn man in the story who is reluctant to help his friend, God shows no hesitation to those who actively seek their requests. As the heavenly Father, God is more generous and giving than any human father who, even if he is wicked, gives good gifts to his children. In God’s case, “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Lk. 11:9).
However, Jesus furthers his explanation to his disciples on how to pray in a fashion which is very familiar to us. He lists for them what the content of their petitions should be in the prayer we have come to know as “The Lord’s Prayer.” Having been written for a non-Jewish community, Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, as opposed to that of Matthew, lacks some of the verses which would be difficult to comprehend by his Gentiles audience.
Most of us probably recite this prayer on a daily basis in a rote manner not taking the opportunity to understand what it really means. Jesus introduces the prayer saying, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name.’ (Lk. 11:2a). Saying that God’s name is hallowed means God’s name is holy. But the holiness of God’s name has much more meaning than, for example, a holy card or holy statue. The holiness of God’s name means that it is distinctive, otherworldly, and superior to any other divine entity. God’s name, His very being, is unique among any and everything in heaven or on earth. In the religious culture of the first century AD, to know a person’s name is knowledge of whom the person is. May all people, today, live in the knowledge of whom the Father is.
After recognizing the transcendence of God’s name, we come to the first petition, “your kingdom come” (Lk. 11:2b). At this point in history people are mainly under the auspices of the Roman Empire. They do not know of another kingdom. But both John the Baptist and Jesus have been announcing the immanence of God’s kingdom. When these Jews and Gentiles who had become Christians prayed, “your Kingdom come,” they were praying that the world order be changed. They were praying for the defeat of all that Rome stood for. They were praying for a very different world which would value sacrificial love rather than the accumulation of material goods. We still need to pray for that world. We need to pray that we might take steps away from materialism and into love.
Luke then goes right on to the petition, “Give us each day our daily bread” (Lk. 11:3). In the Gospels, bread is always associated with prayer as a reference to the Eucharist. The prayer for daily bread is not merely a prayer for physical sustenance. It is a prayer for the Eucharist. We who come to receive communion every week can easily forget the tremendous gift we receive in our hands or on our tongues. This is Jesus, really present right here right now, nourishing us, sustaining us. We should not take this gift for granted.
Next Jesus relates, “Forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us” (Lk. 11:4a). This statement is self-explanatory. We ask for forgiveness as we have forgiven others. The Christian norm for forgiving is the compassion and forgiveness of the Father. We have to stop destroying ourselves with our grudges, forgive, and move on.
Finally, the Lord’s prayer in Luke concludes with “do not subject us to the final test” (Lk. 11:4b). This considers that many people throughout the world will have answers to the problems of life that ignore the Lord. They answer every situation with the human expediency and morality, ignoring the words spoken by Christ.
The Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Luke is the prayer of the disciples of Jesus, as well as you and I, who recognize that true power is not to be found in an empire and that true happiness is not to be found in possessions. The Lord’s Prayer in Luke is ultimately a prayer to the Holy Spirit to empower us to live in the holiness of God’s name, to receive worthily the Eucharist, to forgive those who hurt us and to choose God before any other solution to the problems of life. It is a prayer designed for persistence following that of Abraham.
