Talk about bargaining with God! Abraham sure had a lot of nerve standing up to God in the first reading for mass today. What was he thinking? Why would the God of the universe pay any attention to one man’s request?
The relationship between Abraham and God was so close that God could not hide the fact from Abraham that He was getting ready to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. God chose Abraham to be the father of many nations and for all his descendents to be faithful to Him by living in righteousness and in justice. He had to tell him the truth. Abraham could have just accepted the fact that God was going to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, but he didn’t. Why? Why didn’t Abraham just keep quiet and accept God’s will? That is a very good question. Abraham pleaded and argued and bargained with God out of compassion for the city and all the human lives that would be lost, but foremost on his mind and in his heart was his nephew Lot and his family who were living in the city. Abraham was afraid for their lives and this is what gave him the audacity to argue with God himself. You’ve got to respect that. Out of fear for his nephew’s life Abraham kept pleading and begging and bargaining with God, wheedling him down by five lives, ten, twenty, thirty and by the time he was done God said he would spare the entire city if ten righteous people could be found within it’s walls.
We really should learn something from the way Abraham pleaded and bargained with God on behalf of those he loved. We should never give up in praying for our loved ones either. Do you ever wonder why God doesn’t always listen to what we pray for? It might be because we do not have a close relationship with Him through our prayer life. It’s like that with Jesus too. We pray the rosary and ask for Mary to intercede with her son to grant our requests. The reason why we do this is because Mary is the closest person to Jesus and he listens to his mother. Their relationship is so close that Jesus wants to please his mother and will often listen to the requests she makes on our behalf, and sometimes in his infinite compassion Jesus will grant them. However, it is a much better thing to have a close personal relationship with Christ himself through our prayer life and the sacraments.
Sometimes our heartfelt requests in prayer are not really logical or even the right thing. That happened in today’s gospel when Jesus was in a large crowd of people and a scribe approached him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus responded that “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”. Perhaps Jesus knew that man did not really have it in him to leave his home permanently and wander about the countryside with him, indefinitely. Maybe this was the Lord’s way of letting him down gently. However, there was another disciple that Jesus asked to follow him, but the man wanted to go and bury his father first. It seemed pretty harsh and out of character for Jesus, when he told this man to let the dead bury their own dead. What was that all about?
Maybe this was the same point of view God had in the first reading today. The city of Sodom and Gomorrah was already doomed. There was no point in being concerned about it because they were all going to die. The only thing left in God’s mind was that He wanted Abraham to be the seed from which many future generations would flourish, because Abraham was a righteous man. The city was dead to sin but Abraham lived in righteousness. Perhaps Christ was trying to say that the dead man was already dead but this disciple needed to focus on life now, by following Him. We too, need to look ahead after the death of a loved one after a period of grieving. To grieve for too extended period of time is life draining, not life giving.
One last thing to note about Jesus today. He was poor. He had no home of his own and it’s hard to tell by the gospel today if it bothered him that he did not have a place to call home. Jesus was both human and divine and the human side of Christ may have sometimes wished for a private place to call home. Jesus had no home on earth, except within the hearts of those who came to believe in him and love him. This is still true today. And this is a good thought for the day. We clutter our lives, our minds and our hearts with so many other things and people too sometimes, that there is very little room for Jesus. Perhaps we should think about simplifying things in our life to have less distractions and more time for prayer and to frequent the sacraments. Christ awaits us there.
