Sunday 25 July 2010

Homily for 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 25 July 2010
May I begin this morning by reflecting with you on the first reading from Genesis, which is the famous passage where Abraham is shown interceding and almost bargaining with God over the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. We see at once that this is from a very ancient source because in the opening verses God is depicted as behaving like a human being- he doesn’t know exactly what has been going on and intends to go down and find out for himself – so much for an omniscient God!
There are two main points I think to this story. First, we must remember that Abraham hasn’t been Abraham very long – it was only in the previous chapter that God appeared to Abram as he was then and made his covenant with him, to make him “the father of a multitude of nations” (Gen 17 iv onwards). As signs that now a special relationship existed between Abram and God, he has a new identity- a new name - and he and all his male household are circumcised. God wants this new identity to go deep: “so shall my covenant be in your flesh as an everlasting covenant” (Gen 17 xiii) - it is not something superficial! Then last week we saw how God visits Abraham under the appearance of three young men, to whom Abraham gives hospitality, another sign of friendship, this new intimacy with God that involves a sharing of our lives and our resources with him. Now today Abraham moves on further in this new relationship. He is trying to understand the nature of God, and what we see in this great game of haggling with God over how many will be saved in these wicked cities, is Abraham trying to get an answer to the questions that all thinking people ask sooner or later in life: is God just? Is God fair? Or is God merciful? Does he let everybody off no matter what they’ve done? And should he? Because if people who do wrong get off scot free, where’s the justice in that? (And, of course, the footnote to that is: well if there’s no advantage in being good, I may as well be bad!) So Abraham begins by asking God “Are you really going to destroy the just man with the sinner?” And at the end of the cross-examination God says “I will not destroy it for the sake of ten” - and here we come to the second point I want to raise with you, the idea that the just can save not just themselves but the unjust too, that it is possible for a whole community to be saved by the merits of a few. This is something that the Jews were unclear about at this period – I suppose this story in its present form is dated from the post-exilic time, late 6th c BC – a generation or so before this, the prophet Ezekiel is quite clear that we can’t be saved by the merits of somebody else: he says, talking about a faithless land “even if these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness”. (Ezek 14 xiv). But as Catholics we know different don’t we: we know that the whole human race was saved by one person, by the suffering and death of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Our second reading reminds us of that: St Paul tells the Colossians that Jesus has “cancelled every record of the debt that we had to pay”. Do you remember what Jesus says on the cross- “it is finished”- in the Greek tetelestai, the very word as I told you on Good Friday that archaeologists have found written across tax bills of the time of Christ, to say they are paid in full. And of course as Catholics we know too that we do no go it alone, we rely for support in our daily lives and in our journey to heaven on the assistance of our fellow Christians, and especially the saints who have gone before us- how often we hear the priest remind us in Confession that we can rely on “the merits and prayers of the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints” as well as “whatever good we have done and evil we have endured”. In the Mass we call on the aid of the saints: after the long list in the Roman Canon the priest says “may their merits and prayers gain us your constant help and protection” and Canon III speaks of “Mary the Virgin Mother of God, the apostles, the martyrs and all your saints on whose constant intercession we rely for help”. So this Genesis reading is partly about what we might call the righteousness of God – the balance that God has to hold between mercy and justice – and partly about the whole idea of being saved by someone else’s merits, foreign to the Jewish mind but part of our everyday experience as Catholics.
And now let’s pass to our Gospel reading. St Luke, after giving us his version of the Lord’s Prayer, talks about prayer in general. He is thinking here only of one form of prayer, the most common of all- praying to ask God for things. We of course realise that prayer involves much more than just asking for things- we should have praise in there somewhere and thanks too, when we talk to God, we know that really, don’t we, even if we don’t always manage to put it into practice. So the evangelist says we will always get what we need from our loving Father- “knock and the door will be opened to you, for the one who asks always receives…” Now the problem with that is, that doesn’t match up to our experience at all- we ask and we don’t get. But what does Luke actually say we will receive? He doesn’t say it’s a straightforward asking for something and receiving exactly what we described in our prayer a few days later. It’s not like filling in one of those forms at Argos and after a bit of a queue voila your new whatever it is is ready for collection! It’s not like Amazon – click on the book you want and hey presto tomorrow the postman delivers it! May be it’s more like E-Bay: you hope you’re going to get what you want, but maybe your bid just wasn’t high enough and you don’t get it. No, if you look carefully at this passage, St Luke says what God will give us in response to our request is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God that will help us discern what our needs really are, what our behaviour in any given situation should be, how we cope with the now, whatever the demands of the present moment in our lives are, and that will be the answer to our prayer. Look at St James- it should be his feast day today - do you remember what a pushy mother James and John had, asking Our Lord to give her sons the top jobs once he set up his new regime? What was the answer to that request, to that prayer? Jesus saw behind that demand for the right hand post, the real desire of James and John to be as close to him as they could, because of their devotion to him. And that desire he grants- can you drink the cup that I am going to drink? He asks them, and they reply so enthusiastically, “Sure we can!, just try us!” And we know that St James in his desire to be a close follower, a close imitator, of Our Lord, followed him so closely that he was the first of the apostles to be put to death – he drank indeed from the same cup that our Lord had done. O God, help us to trust in your justice and in your mercy, help us to realise our dependence not just on you but on our fellow Christians, especially your Holy Mother and all the saints. We are knocking at your door with our many prayers, our many needs, this morning- O Jesus, open the door and give us your Holy Spirit. Saint James, pray for us. Amen.