How do you talk to God when you want something? Especially when you want something for someone you love? We were taught as children to end our days with something akin to “God bless Mommy and Daddy and sister and brother and….”
That training has had its effects. A study I read once said that 80% of Catholics pray every day and that their most frequent topic of prayer is that God will take care of their families.
Yet, how do we pray?
Our first reading today gives a rather remarkable lesson on how to pray for others…family, friends, and people we don’t know.
The reading starts off in a fascinating way—from God’s point of view. God and Abraham have entered into a permanent relationship. They have promised to be mutually faithful to each other. Now there is a potential problem in that relationship: God is considering if he should inflict a punishment on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. God thinks that might disturb Abraham; Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family are living in the vicinity of the cities. They would likely be destroyed, too.
So, what does God do? He decides to talk about it with Abraham. God explains his concern: “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave, that I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me. I mean to find out.”
Abraham’s Model
Then pay close attention to how Abraham responds—and, how God responds back. How does Abraham, known as “a friend of God,” pray?
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?”
He answered, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.”
But Abraham persisted, saying, “What if only forty are found there?”
He replied, “I will forbear doing it for the sake of forty.”
Then Abraham said, “Let not my Lord grow impatient if I go on.
What if only thirty are found there?”
He replied, “I will forbear doing it if I can find but thirty there.”
Still Abraham went on,
“Since I have thus dared to speak to my Lord,
what if there are no more than twenty?”
He answered, “I will not destroy it 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?”
He replied, “For the sake of those ten, I will not destroy it.”
Abraham Drew Nearer
As the story unfolds, God is standing in front of Abraham while Abraham walks with the messengers who had just told him within a year, old age or not, he and Sarah would have a son. The other men move on, and it’s just Abraham and God on the road—which overlooks this great plain.
Abraham starts by drawing nearer—getting closer to God. Even though he must have had feelings about this news from God, those feelings make him brave, rather than reticent, angry, or afraid.Like God, Abraham wants to talk about the problem.
Abraham appealed to God’s sense of justice.
He focuses on what he knows of God from their relationship: God is just, good. Abraham talks about that—certainly from his point of view, but also with a certain underlying respect for the goodness he sees in God: “Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty?” he asks.
Abraham was respectful.
Time and again, Abraham notes that he is talking to God. While Abraham confronts God, “Far be it for you to do such a thing,” he also says, “See, how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes!” Abraham doesn’t demand from God or imply God owes Abraham. He pleads—with respectful awareness that God is God, and Abraham is not.
Abraham and God talked and listened to each other.
Abraham pours out his soul. God responds to Abraham’s logic, intention, and concerns. Both talk –and both listen to each other. In the end they strike a deal: If there are 10 innocent people in the cities, God will not destroy them.
A Fascinating End to the Story
Chapter 19 of Genesis tells the rest of this story. The two men (who were really angels) who had told Abraham and Sarah the good news of Isaac’s conception-to-be, went on to Sodom. Lot was sitting by the city gate. He offered the men hospitality for the night (ie he showed himself to be righteous). But the people of Sodom came to the door and attempted to hurt the strangers (proving themselves to be unrighteous). Lot tried to protect them, failed, and was pulled by the angels back inside. They told him the destruction of Sodom was to be very soon, to leave with his sons-in-law to be, daughters, and wife. But the sons-in-law made fun of Lot. So Lot, daughters, and wife (4 innocent people) left Sodom just before it was destroyed. Abraham watched it from the hills above the plain. The chapter ends with “So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow.”
Now, an interesting thing is that as far as I could tell, Abraham never knew that Lot was safe. While Chapter 19 tells what happened to Lot after the destruction, Chapter 20 picks up the story of Abraham and does not mention Lot again.
Hmmm. Fascinating.
Applications for Us
If we copy Abraham’s model of Intercessory Prayer, we (1) draw nearer to God when we have a concern; (2) speak to God, trusting in his goodness; (3) remain respectful, recognizing God is God and we are not; (4) keep talking—and listening, to have real conversation—unashamed and fully disclosing our point of view, but also listening and responding to God’s perspective (5) recognize that God may indeed hear us and respond to us—though we may never know the influence we had.
That last piece is what sticks with me today. Abraham didn’t know that his intercession saved Lot. Yet it did.
I had never seen that detail of this story before. It spurs me on to pray for others beyond my family, friends, and parish. In St. Faustina’s Diary and many other writings of saints, God urges people to pray for lost souls they don’t know. I can be lax about that. Yet, here, from the first book of the Bible, comes knowledge that God does hear and respond to our prayers. Even if it looks like we have no influence.
Prayer:
Lord, this motivates me to pray more fervently in the Universal Prayers at mass, the intercessions in the Liturgy of the Hours, the prayer I say when I hear an ambulance, and spontaneous prayers that come from my lips when I watch the news. Sometimes those are just habitual prayers, Lord. Help me to plead for others like Abraham pleaded, Lord. Help me to trust you are God and have a broader view, but, still, you listen to us when we pray for others who are not praying for themselves. Lead me, guide me, Lord.
