17th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Cycle C 21-22
SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Genesis 18:20-32 | Colossians 2:12-14 | Luke 11:1-13
Oh God, protector of those who hope in you, without whom nothing has firm foundation, nothing is holy, bestow in abundance your mercy upon us and grant that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may use the good things that pass in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever, amen.
There’s something so incredibly encouraging and hopeful in this set of readings, and I’m praying I can get you in touch with it, because I know how much I need it. And I know most of you need it, because one of the things we struggle with throughout life is a recognition of our weaknesses, our failings, our inability to do what we think we should be doing or feeling we’re missing the mark. I guess there’s two things we get in trouble with in our relationship with God and ourselves. It’s either we’re too full of ourselves, thinking we don’t need anything or anybody. We’re autonomous. We can handle everything. That’s one extreme. The other is, and this is actually the more beneficial one, is we don’t feel we’re enough. We feel we miss the mark. We feel we’ve failed, and that feeling of failure is a very interesting sense of something about being human. And that is it’s healthy in the sense that what we’re dealing with in our relationship with God is a relationship wherein he longs to be a part of who we are. He wants us to know that the thing that we’re here for, the work that we have to do is not something we’re supposed to do on our own. We’re supposed to do it in partnership — in partnership with him, with God himself, displayed to us in this beautiful figure of Jesus, who was there to do what Paul says so beautifully. He comes to us in our imperfection, in our brokenness, in our least valued state, in our own sense of ourselves, and then there he gives us everything we need: forgiveness, life, mercy. He loves us in our imperfection, yet so often that imperfection makes us not only feel unworthy of what we should be, we not only feel that we’re missing the mark, we’re doing the wrong thing or not doing enough, but then we have this double whammy of then feeling God is separated from us, distant from us. It’s called shame. It’s a killer. It’s awful, but it has a benefit, a little gift at the end if you pay attention, because what it does, it awakens in us a realization that we aren’t enough and that that’s the way — and this is the mystery — to feel this mystery, that we are not supposed to be enough and that, when we’re not enough, instead of wallowing in self-pity, we need to move into a direction that this whole set of readings is about. And that is to persistently, continually, hopefully turning to God over and over again and asking him for what we need. We need him, his spirit, his life in us. That’s our daily bread.
So the first reading is really interesting, about this relationship that God establishes with Abraham, because they no longer become close, and then Abraham turns around and starts demanding, not demanding but at least suggesting to God that he not be so tough on people. It’s interesting that he’s got this sort of — I don't know — sense of his, “Hey, I’ve got an in with God. I can ask him to change and do things for me and do things differently.” And it’s interesting. It’s kind of presented as a virtue, persistence, and it is, because it’s grounded in one simple thing, that when you turn to God and ask him for something — if you listen to the rest of the readings, it’s clear — he comes to us in our sinfulness, filled with a desire to give us every single thing we need. That’s called redemption, unmerited love, mercy. So when we’re not enough, we’re encouraged to do one very simple thing: turn to God and ask him for what you need. That’s the key. And when you do that, you have to do it with two things: absolute perseverance grounded in hope and a realization of what it is that we go through when we ask God for something. There’s a mystery of how to deal with it, and it’s beautifully presented in the gospel, because we’ve looked at the longing of the disciples to know how to pray to God. That’s a very simple thing, and Jesus says, “All right, this is what you do. You pray to God by recognizing who he is, and one of the most beautiful things about him is that he’s there to give you your daily bread and to forgive you, which is part of that bread, that acceptance of who you are as you are.” And so you’re looking at this prayer for life being poured into you by the Father, and all you’re asked to do is to return it to other people. And the best image of the way we love each other is forgiveness, loving people not because they deserve it but because that’s who you are and that’s who God is in you.
So how do you get this daily bread? Well, the beautiful thing about the parable he gives, it’s about a man who needs bread, and he comes to the person who can give it to him. So that’s an image of us when we recognize we don’t have enough bread for the things we need to accomplish. We don’t have enough energy, insight, wisdom, forgiveness in our heart. You turn to this figure who is then represented by sort of being asleep, which is the way most — people think God isn’t really that present. We tend to get so busy with what we’re doing, concerned for ourselves. We’re not even thinking about him, and so — I love this image. When we’re in trouble, when we’re really in need and we want something, we turn to God, and he’s going to answer us. But he’s asking for persistent. Well, why doesn’t he answer us right away? Why doesn’t he say, “Sure, yes. I’ll fix it”? No, there’s a process that he’s going to use, invite us into that enables us to receive the gift that we’re seeking. He’s not going to just fix us because we asked. He’s going to take you through a process, and the process is called transformation. In fact, we don’t really want to be just given things. That’s the story of Adam and Eve. They wanted to work for things, and we do want to be engaged in the work that changes us and transforms us. And so he says, “The first thing you do is you ask.” And when you’re asking for something, it seems so clear that what you’re doing is you’re saying, “Father, I need this. I don’t have it. I must — you’ve got to help me. I want something that I can’t get on my own.” And so let’s just say there’s something blocked inside of me, keeping me from the source of life that I need to have, and there’s so many images we could have about our own growth and development and evolution as a human being that we find ourselves constantly engaged in sometimes repairing the damage that’s been done to us or the things that we missed learning. And they’re sort of like these things that are hidden from us, gems of wisdom, gems of understanding ourselves, and we ask God, “Take me out of the pain and the emptiness I feel.” He’s going to say, “Okay, I will do that, but here’s what you’ve got to do on your part. Ask me to help, and then seek. Seek what it is that I want to give you. Figure it out. Find it.”
It’s interesting that he asks — first you ask for a favor, a gift from God, and then he goes, “Seek it.” Well, if God — God knows what we need before we do. He wants us to know what it is. So you seek it, and what’s interesting about the work seek, it’s different than the word search. He doesn’t say, “Go searching for the answer,” because a search is looking for something you already know what it is, like you need a certain answer to a certain problem, or you lost your pen, or you lost your clip-ons, and you’re looking for them. You’re searching for them. No, seeking is more mysterious. It’s looking for something that you don’t even know what it is, but it’s out there. And if you know that God is there to reveal it to you, your openness is saying, “Whatever it is, show me. I’m willing to see it. I want to find out what’s missing in me.” And that process takes time, reflection, conversations with other people. Sometimes it takes a therapist. Sometimes it takes some anti-depressants or something. It’s like working to get to the heart of who you are and what it is you are missing in your life. Something is separated from you that needs to be there. So you look for it, and that’s the painful part. But here’s the key: hope, which is a form of persistence. You’re not looking for it hoping it will be there and wondering if it will, and if it’s not, then you don’t know what you’re going to do. That’s not going to work. You have to do it knowing God will reveal to you the thing that you need to be in touch with. He will give you what you need.
As Jesus said, if a parent knows how to give their child what they need, and God is listening to your prayer, knowing you’re his child and you’re wanting something, and God knows what it is, and he wants you to see it. Then he said, “I’ll help you see it.” And then there’s this crazy thing. You find it, and you find it’s something that is there, that is locked, something that you can’t get to, but you know what it is. “I don’t have enough trust in you, God. I don’t have enough belief in myself. I’m listening to all the negative voices in me, and I won’t counter them, because I think they’re right.” Something like that is going on, and the answer, when you see it, is to knock. I love that image, because think of it as something that’s hidden from you that you’re separate from. It’s like having a part of yourself that didn’t grow up and didn’t evolve enough and didn’t become what it was supposed to be. And then you see it, and then what you want is you want it to be healed, and that’s when you knock. And the interesting thing about knocking is it’s you recognizing, “I’ve found it.” But you don’t have to open it. It’s locked, and that’s when God does his miracle. He unlocked it for you. He opens the door. You see the flaw, the mistake, the lie that you’ve been living with, the mistake you’ve been making, the thing that’s kept you from the peace that is your inheritance. And you see it, and then it’s seen and healed at the same moment. But the knocking is your work, the seeking, the looking, the pounding, wanting to find it and finding it, wanting it to be open for you. What a gift to believe in this process, and how beautiful it is that God would say to you, “It’s the bread that I am that I want you to feel inside of you. It is always available to you, but it’s blocked so often by trauma, by damaged experiences, by lies being poured into you when you’re too young to discern they’re not really lies, and they become a part of you.” All of that is so real in terms of your journey, and if you’re feeling that, when you’re crying out to God, there’s something wrong, you should have had it figured out before you cried out — that’s sometimes what I feel like. I should have it all together, because God has blessed me with whatever ordination or some baptism or something. I’m supposed to be cleansed of everything wrong. No. No, it’s a process, and the process is something that is not easy, but it has two ingredients that are essential: belief that no matter how far you’ve been or how bad you’ve been, God has little — has no way of limiting anything from you. It’s little in his eyes, because it’s big in our eyes, but it’s forgotten by God. By the time you’ve done it, you’re forgiven, which means you deserve everything. And then you deserve an answer to your prayer, which is the greatest of insight and awareness and consciousness connected with a conviction that this insight that you find that’s there is going to become part of you. It’s like a part of you that’s been enclosed and dark and without light, and you knock on it. It opens. The light enters, and you’re renewed.
Father, you promise us the gift of life, which can be seen as the gift of your light, your enlightening us, seeing through the darkness, into the darkness and finding the treasure that’s hidden there. Bless us with this process of responding to your invitation to find the newness of life that is your promise, that is our inheritance, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.