Eighth Sunday after Trinity 2007

An aspiring comic scriptwriter could do worse than study the book of Genesis. He could do far worse. For the dialogue that comprises our first reading this morning is a brilliant example of the comic writer’s art. The subject is the sin of Sodom and God’s planned destruction of the city. Abraham is perturbed at the possible loss of innocent life amidst the conflagration, and petitions the Almighty on behalf of hapless humanity.

In the conversation that ensues two features are remarkable. The first is the boldness of Abraham, who has no hesitation in addressing God directly. He argues with him and urges him to change tack. The second is the responsiveness of God, who listens and is won over. He is susceptible to the pleas of a mortal, and changes his mind.

In the hands of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, say, it could be a very funny sketch. Yet let’s leave aside for a moment the arresting image of Abraham, sitting on a park bench, tweaking the sleeve of the Omnipotent’s raincoat. What we are left with is a pattern of behaviour that is familiar. Humanity pleads; God listens. The plea is repeated; God acts. That pattern of plea and response is how we commonly understand our prayer.

It is, after all, a pattern that Jesus appears to commend. He it is who tells the parable of the friend who bangs on the door at midnight asking for three loaves of bread (some friend, we might think). The door is locked, the householder is in bed, and his children are with him. It’s not a promising scenario for the socially embarrassed and bread deprived friend. Yet, says Jesus, his persistence in asking eventually compels the householder to get up, disturb the children, unlock the door and hand over what he has been asked for. His perseverance is rewarded.

‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened’. According to the Gospel of Luke Jesus endorses that Genesis pattern of prayer. Humanity pleads; God listens. The plea is repeated; God acts.

I suspect that I’m not alone in feeling dissatisfied with the pattern. All too often it just doesn’t seem to work. Our prayers do not secure what we pray for: witness the agony of the McCann family, for whom the smug advice we were offered as children about God sometimes saying ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ must seem insulting. The pattern also betrays a rather odd image of God as a sort of auctioneer, selling his divine influence to the highest bidder, as it were, to the one who’s prayed longest and hardest.

So let me suggest a return to the comparison with which I began, between the Genesis dialogue and a comic script. One of the conceits of comedy is that the audience knows the truth which is concealed from the characters. The same is true of Abraham’s conversation. He is concerned that God may destroy the innocent along with the guilty. He embarks upon a negotiation, bartering God down, and securing his agreement that if as few as ten righteous are found then Sodom will not be destroyed. Abraham is no doubt mightily pleased with his efforts. Yet we the audience already know the outcome – don’t we? We know that God is just: more than that, that he is perfectly just. We know that he would be incapable of destroying innocent life.

What is actually revealed to us in the dialogue is Abraham, not God. What is revealed is Abraham’s credulity, his willingness to believe or suspect evil of God. What is revealed is the falseness of his humility. What is revealed is his presumption, his arrogant belief that he is more moral than God. Abraham’s questions - Abraham’s prayer - are about Abraham.

And the same comedic conceit runs through the Gospel. Jesus has taught his disciples to call God Father, and puts to them those famous rhetorical questions about fish and eggs, snakes and scorpions. The questions are what Dick Cheney would call ‘no-brainers’. We know the answers – don’t we? We know that our loving Father will never hurt us or trap us; we know that he eternally wants what is best for us. The teaching of Jesus sheds light only upon those who will not or cannot accept that, upon those who lay their own meanness or trickery, or that of others, at God’s door. Again, prayer reveals to us more about the one who prays than about the one to whom prayer is offered.

God is unchanging. He is not susceptible to our chaotic desires, treasured longings and fevered requests. As Paul writes to the Colossians, the earthly authorities, with their ethics and their strictures, have been disarmed. They have been set aside by Christ and nailed to the cross, symbol both of God’s love for the world and of the truth that in the world love is destined to suffer before it prevails.

Once we have grasped that prayer is about we who offer it than the one to who we offer it; once we have grasped that in Christ God has defeated the power of despair and death; then we understand our prayer anew. What will our prayer reveal about us? We must bang on the door throughout the night, not because by so doing we will eventually grind God down and persuade him to stir himself, but rather because in our patient, persistent waiting we will discover something of our own helplessness before God. We must ask for fish and for eggs. We will not change his mind about his giving them to us. God does not need to be persuaded that peace in Iraq is desirable or that an end to the English floods would be welcome. But when we pray for these things we unite ourselves to the suffering of our neighbours and find within ourselves the power to be God’s agents of transformation in the world he loves so dearly.

Michael Mayne, formerly Dean of Westminster, a priest remarkable for his holiness and his humanity writes about prayer in this way: ‘ … I have come to understand the heart of it as a disciplined taking of time to remind ourselves of who we are and whose we are, in which the one necessary element is stillness’. Amen.


Sunday 29 July 2007,
Genesis 18: 20-32;
Colossians 2: 6-15;
Luke 11: 1-13.