SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
24 JULY 2022
The
disciples of Jesus have observed Jesus praying often. He prayed before every major event in his
ministry. He prayed before calling his
disciples. He was praying when he was transfigured
on Mount Tabor. He prayed when Peter
confessed that he was the promised Messiah. He prayed before revealing the
truth about his suffering and death. He
prayed on the night before his arrest in the Garden. According to Luke, Jesus uttered three
sentences as he is dying on the cross.
Two of those three are in the form of prayer.
The
disciples ask him to teach them how to pray.
They have noticed that prayer for their master is the driving force, the
renewing wind that renews him with strength and focuses his sense of
mission. They have come to understand
that this type of prayer needs to be taught, and not just observed. In response, he teaches the model prayer of
all disciples: the Lord’s Prayer. It is a shorter and terser version than the
one that we pray from the Gospel of Saint Matthew.
However,
the parable that Jesus tells after teaching the Lord’s Prayer can be
confusing. The man finally gets what he
wants, because he is so persistent in banging on his friend’s door. We might think that we can get anything we
want from God by persistently pestering him with our prayers. With this attitude toward prayer, asking,
seeking, and knocking is like putting a coin in vending machine to get the
desired object. All of us know from our
own experience that “the squeaky wheel does not always get the grease.” We have prayed fervently for many good and
worthy causes – like healing from cancer or some other deadly disease for a
loved one.
Jesus
himself prayed fervently in the Garden that he be spared from a horrible death. His prayer was not answered. The key to understanding the power of the
prayer of Jesus is the very first word of the Lord’s Prayer: “Father.”
Jesus has absolute trust in the unconditional love of his Father and
invites us to imitate that same trust.
In fact, we often miss the real meaning of the parable. The father is reluctant to answer the door
because he does not want to disturb his children, who are safely sleeping in
their locked home. All of us who have
experienced the love of a father, or the love of one who has treated us as a
father, understands this point. Good
fathers or father figures would never hand us snakes or scorpions. How much more would the Father, whose name is
hallowed, give us what we need?
The other
important element is the awareness that God’s Kingdom has come. Fatal illnesses, tragic accidents, racism,
wars, and all kinds of divisions continue to exist in the world in which we
live. However, God’s Kingdom is in our
midst. “Seek
and you shall find” makes sense when we become more conscious that the gift of
God’s kingdom has already been given to us.
There is nothing we need to do to earn it. In that Kingdom, there is healing for
grieving families and reconciliation for those who are divided. There is sharing in the rising of Christ in
the midst of our dying to self. That is
what we need to understand in hearing the prayer of Abraham. It seems that he is bargaining with God in his
failed efforts to protect Sodom from destruction. What Abraham is doing is more
complicated. He is trying to balance
mercy with justice. In his prayer, he
comes to understand the mind of God.
There is so much wickedness in Sodom that God’s justice must
prevail. But in his mercy, God delivers
Abraham and his family.
The Lord
invites us to be persistent in prayer, trusting the Father’s unconditional love
and looking for signs of the Kingdom in our midst. We will receive our daily bread. We know the Lord’s forgiveness of our sins
and extend that forgiveness to others.
We can trust that we will not be subjected the final test, as Jesus
persisted in denying Satan’s tests in the desert.
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