Today’s readings: Genesis 18, 20-32; Colossians 2, 12-24; Luke 11, 1-13.
Many often remark that things have gone astray and that we’ve lost our compass. All that is happening around us marks daily life profoundly, and if we let go, it easily makes us to see things as thwarted. History, though, is always cyclic in its unfolding, with the best and worst of times constantly alternating.
In today’s reading from Genesis, Sodom and Gomorrah stand for a world that is corrupt and seems unredeemable. But Genesis drives home the message that nothing and no one is unredeemable in the eyes of God. God’s mercy is infinite, limitless to the extent that there seem to be no non-negotiables with God. Abraham interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah. He pleaded with God boldly but with firm faith and trust. This is vital for us today. It is easy to fall into gloom. But it takes boldness and faith, especially of those who believe in the God of the possible, to intercede for the world we live in.
It is important for Christians, as Karl Barth would remind us, to interpret reality with the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other. We cannot afford to be naive in the way we articulate our faith and in our reading of the signs of the times.
We are called to read these signs, to be knowledgable about the unfolding of events around us, and keep our feet on the ground when we interpret politics, the dynamics of the economy, and what is weighing down people’s lives and conditioning how they live and thrive.
In The Practice of Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggemann recalls that the great prophets of Israel only rarely addressed specific social issues and generally were not advocates for particular causes. More often, he explains, the prophets aim beyond and beneath specific issues to the underlying governance of Yahweh and the profound way in which Jerusalem must come to terms with that governance.
True prophetic preaching is publicly articulated belief in God. This is the major challenge we and our churches face today: public articulation of our beliefs. Imagine how illusory it may sound, especially for those downtrodden or marginalised in our societies, to repeat today’s gospel: Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be open to you.
Many ask, search and knock and remain unanswered. Even our own prayers may remain unanswered. This is where the prophecy of the Abrahams of our time comes in. This is where the Church is called to be prophetic and where each and every believer needs to come to terms mainly with the governance of God.
God Himself seems to have lost control and to have lost count of the endless suffering in the world perpetuated not just by natural calamities, paradoxically labelled ‘acts of God’, but by fellow citizens of this same planet. Terrorism seems to be here to stay. Isis seems very often to be having the last word in a very insecure Europe. The dark events seem not even to capture our attention any longer, if not for very short intervals between one alert and the next on our smartphones.
How can our preaching be credible in a world ridden with gloom? How can we be credible in our claims about God’s infinite love, about His power, and when we speak of, to quote St Paul, His having “cancelled every record of the debt that we had to pay”. We need to examine our consciences thoroughly when it comes to the credibility of the public articulation of our faith, which on the surface still features powerfully in terms of saints and fireworks but which remains dismally disconnected to contemporaneity.
At times we even sound ridiculous, nailing the God we believe in to our petty sins and failing to see the big picture that provokes us and the world, and that demands of us more depth and intelligence in the way we manifest and transmit our belief. There is so much ambiguity in a faith we easily present as rooted in the past but which fails seriously to connect with the present.
This explains why many are dismissive of that faith, and indeed of the Church as irrelevant and sometimes toxic. The challenge ahead lies in imagining God, creator and deliverer, as really an effective agent of all that gives shape to our living.