STANDING AND SPEAKING FOR GOD
“In those days, the LORD said: ‘The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave, that I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me.’ . . . Then Abraham drew nearer to the LORD and said: ‘Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty? Suppose there were fifty innocent people in the city; would you wipe out the place, rather than spare it for the sake of the fifty innocent people within it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to make the innocent die with the guilty.’” Genesis 18: 20-25
“And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? . . . If you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give to those who ask him?” Luke 11:9-13
One of the highlights of this story is Abraham’s God-like concern for the welfare of the innocent people of Sodom and Gomorrah – even if it means that the guilty people will go unpunished. And he could have asked that the innocent be saved and the guilty be punished, but he does not ask for that.
Abraham, now an old man, had spent decades listening to God and now he seems to be thinking like God. We, who are striving to listen to God are Abraham’s descendants, willing to speak for “the innocent” and for “the guilty.” How deep is our concern for them? And what should happen to the ones doing the oppressing and the defiling?
THE CONVERSATION
This story seems strange to me. Abraham, rather than God, seems to be the one with the right disposition. How can this be?
In some ways the words coming from God sound like the messages of today’s TV-news commentators, “Let’s go down and see if things are as bad as they are reported to be.” Where are these commentators leading us? Where are the writers of the week’s Sacred Readings leading us? How are WE going to respond? Are we going to conclude that the situation needs to be stopped immediately, even if everyone (or even some one) is obliterated? Are we going to see that everyone needs to be “saved”, “the innocent” and “the guilty”? Are we, the “numerous as the stars” descendants of Abraham, the disciples of Jesus? Are we being called to initiate or join the rescue operation?
ABRAHAM, GOD AND TV-NEWS COMMENTATORS
What I have always found disturbing about this Abraham story is that, while Abraham seems to have the “God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus” disposition toward the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, God seems to be speaking from a disposition of today’s TV-News commentators with the often more philosophical but less caring point of view, “Destroy everyone, if you have to. Just fix it quickly and let’s move on.”
This Abraham-God role reversal reminds me of a recently deceased friend, Sister Joan, a master teacher, who often told me stories of how she, like God in this Abraham story, would go on about God using His power to right situations, regardless of the damage caused to people who were “in the way.” She would go on and on until one of the children couldn’t hear any more and would stand and speak up for God. Then this master teacher would let this young disciple speak of the God she had come to know.
The next time we are listening to a TV-news commentator or an acquaintance missing God’s message, let’s think that Abraham, Jesus and the Father are sitting next to us, listening, too, and perhaps nudging us to “stand and speak up for God.”
YOU AND I: TODAY’S ABRAHAMS
We need to be the Abrahams of today, seeing the situations around us as what they sometimes are, the Sodoms and Gamorrahs, places where a lot of us are showing little concern for anyone other than ourselves, looking for as much pleasure as we can experience in the present moment, and probably not standing and speaking up for God.
Sister Loretta