the Price of Souls: Never Give Up

There's some old-fashioned Middle Eastern haggling going in today's Old Testament Reading (Genesis 18:20-32) between Abraham and God. The subject is Sodom and Gomorrah, and the price of souls is.... well.... the subject of negotiation. Listen To Abraham's approach:

"Then Abraham drew nearer to him 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, so that the innocent and the guilty would be treated alike! Should not the judge of all the world act with justice?"

The LORD replied, "If I find fifty innocent people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake." Abraham spoke up again: "See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes! What if there are five less than fifty innocent people? Will you destroy the whole city because of those five?" "I will not destroy it," he answered, "if I find forty-five there."

But Abraham persisted, saying, "What if only forty are found there?" He replied, "I will forebear doing it for the sake of the forty." Then he said, "Let not my Lord grow impatient if I go on. What if only thirty are found there?" He replied, "I will forebear doing it if I can find but thirty there."

Still he went on, "Since I have thus dared to speak to my Lord, what if there are no more than twenty?" "I will not destroy it," he answered, "for the sake of the twenty." But he still persisted: "Please, let not my Lord grow angry if I speak up this last time. What if there are at least ten there?" "For the sake of those ten," he replied, "I will not destroy it."

Set aside the fact that Sodom and Gomorrah ended up being destroyed anyway because, according to the story, only Lot and his family were righteous. Set aside, too, the fact that our concepts of God have matured in the four millenia since Abraham struck this bargaining pose with the Almighty.

There is still something quite admirable in Abraham's intercessory persistence. A similar merciful winsomeness adheres to the persistent friend in today's gospel parable (Luke 11:1-13). Jesus commends his persitence in asking for help:

"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. "

Thank heaven that God NEVER gives up on us. And thank God that there are these kinds of people, ...irksome, troubling, nagginhg intercessors who continue to pray for faithless relatives and friends when everyone else has folded up their tents and gone home.

They are like dripping water faucets, like recurring taps on the divine Shoulder. But they get the job done. I know at least two families who are facing this type of situation with family members right now.... dealing with those who are recalcitrant in regard to self-care, and in regard to their responsibilities to God and others. But my friends keep on praying and hoping that somehow, some way God will intervene and change their family members' lives.

These hapless, hopeful intercessors are reflections of the Divine Mercy, which never asks whether it should persist in love. He only asks that we continue to respond, both on our own and on behalf of others, "for us and for the whole world."

On Swooping Birds and Transfigured Messiahs

I love Sunday's Lectionary readings (Lent II, year C), which link an Old Testament theophany, Abram's Covenant Making (Genesis 15:1-20), with a New Testament one, Jesus' transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36). A theophany is an incident of God's self- revelation.

The Genesis account is incredibly earthy, even scandalous and humorous. It recounts God's instructions to Abram (his name change to Abraham comes later, in chapter 18) to lay out a sacrifice. Abram does so, but then is forced to wait all day, guarding the exposed carcasses which eventually attract carrion. The New American Bible translation here is anemic (what else is new?). For verse 11, NAB translates "Abram stayed with them." A better rendering (one followed by all other major English translations) is the infinitely more picturesque "Abram shooed them away."

What a testament to the scandalous earthiness of Abram's religion!

This YHWH is no mere God of the intellect, satisfied with a vague internal locution giving Abram bragging rights over the land. God demands physicality in the form of a sacrifice. What is more, that physicality becomes darned inconvenient to Abram. I visualize the elderly patriarch running frantically to and fro, trying desparately to keep the birds from making off with the sacrificial animal parts. Eventually, Abram falls into an exhausted sleep while only God himself completes the cutting of the covenant by walking alone between the sacrificed animals.

Likewise, in my mind, the Transfiguration is an earthy oddity in the New Testament. Recorded in all three synoptic gospels, it falls squarely into the middle of Jesus' earthly ministry, and, like an embarassing sore thumb, sticks out amidst the more pedestrian teaching and healing accounts. We moderns don't really know what to do with it.

The Transfiguration sits there, a solemn testament to the complex spiritual-physicality of Jesus' passion and resurrection. In all of the gospel accounts, this dream-like event is inextricably linked with the first direct prediction of Jesus' coming death to his disciples which follows. In fact, here in Luke that very passion is the very topic of conversation among Jesus, Moses and Elijah during the vision itself. How odd, how compelling, to find in the middle of the gospels something which both seems out of this world and yet so compellingly connected to it.

How like our God, the God of blessed bread and broken body, of shed blood and uplifted cup, of cleansing bath and clean conscience!