16 Then the men set out from there, and they looked towards Sodom; and Abraham went with them to set them on their way. 17The Lord said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, 18seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?* 19No, for I have chosen* him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; so that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.’ 20Then the Lord said, ‘How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! 21I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me; and if not, I will know.’22 So the men turned from there, and went towards Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the Lord.* 23Then Abraham came near and said, ‘Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? 25Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?’ 26And the Lord said, ‘If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.’ 27Abraham answered, ‘Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. 28Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?’ And he said, ‘I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.’ 29Again he spoke to him, ‘Suppose forty are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of forty I will not do it.’ 30Then he said, ‘Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there.’ He answered, ‘I will not do it, if I find thirty there.’ 31He said, ‘Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.’ 32Then he said, ‘Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.’ 33And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.
What does it mean to pray for our own city and how does Abraham teach us about prayer?
1.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
“Ring around the
rosie a pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!” That’s the
first thing we learn when we pray for Sodom – we all fall down. My oldest
daughter Emma was participating in a semester abroad program with Westmont in
San Francisco – and decided to do her internship at the state run hospital as a
chaplain’s assistant. Her first day was Ash Wed and she called me at the end of
the day having imposed ashes on hundreds of hurting, sick people. With deep
emotion quaking in her voice she said to me, “Dad, I don’t know how to describe
it. It was both beautiful and terrible.” She’s right. We are beautiful and
broken creatures. That’s what we confess
to one another on Ash Wednesday. That’s the beautiful and terrible truth that
we learn in prayer. We are all ashes.
Ashes that sing, ashes with a purpose. We are ashes that love our children,
ashes that hurt one another, ashes that brag about ourselves and ashes that sacrifice
to help others. In our text from Genesis
and in the midst of prayer, Abraham in vs. 27 says, “Let me take it upon myself
to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.”
In the midst of his
prayer, Abraham recognizes the beautiful and terrible truth that the fate of
Sodom is connected to his own fate. It’s about the fate of his family and
friends – because we all sin, we are all mortal, broken, beautiful, wicked,
good and created by God, we all fall down. I didn’t grow up in a tradition that
practiced Ash Wednesday. When I first encountered it I was a bit skeptical. Who
would want to do that? And yet I have discovered from others and myself that I
am often eager to wear them. Why? Because as painful as it is – we deeply want
to know the truth about ourselves, we deeply wish to confess all who we are, all that we’ve
done. In the mini-series True Detective,
Matthew McConaughey’s character, a cerebral yet broken detective says, “Look –
everybody knows there’s something wrong with them. They just don’t know what it
is. Everybody wants confession. Everybody wants some cathartic narrative for
it. The guilty especially. And everybody’s guilty.”
We pray for others
because we recognize our own frailty, that everybody’s guilty, and that we all
fall down. To wrestle with the fate of the city, the fate of the unrighteous,
is always to wrestle with ourselves, to confess our own sinfulness. When we
wear ashes we remember like Abraham that at our most fundamental level there is
no us and them. And like Abraham we remember that I am, you are, she is, but
dust and ashes.
our silence. It does not mean that we may say nothing to a holy God.
In fact, we learn the exact opposite. We are ashes that speak to God.
2.
Stop groveling and start arguing.
Yet, even though we
may be ash, God is not looking for “yes” men. God is looking is for true companions
not silent partners. God doesn’t hide his plans from Abraham, doesn’t smite him
for arguing. In fact, Genesis reveals a God who relishes in haggling and struggle.
And Abraham is not shy. He says to God, “25Far be it from you to do
such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare
as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
what is just?’” We find this same spirit in the New Testament. In Luke 18,
Jesus also counsels such relentless, pressuring of God. We should remember that
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob chose the Israelites as his people, and
“Israel” literally means, “God wrestler.” Prayer in its highest form and
grandest success assumes the attitude of a wrestler with God.
Sojourner Truth, a
leader in both abolitionism and the woman’s suffrage movement, had no problem
praying what was on her mind. When her son fell ill she prayed, “Oh, God, you
know how much I am distressed, for I have told you again and again. Now, God,
help me get my son. If you were in trouble, as I am, and I could help you, as
you can me, think I wouldn’t do it? Yes, God, you know I would do it.”
Jesus’s own teaching
on persistence in prayer ends with a question of faith – “And yet, when the Son
of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Faith in prayer isn’t so much about
believing in the impossible as it is arguing with God about the possible.
Why? Why does God
invite argument and struggle, only to yield? Simply this - because in arguing
with God about God’s own mercy we in fact take on God’s own qualities of
passion and grace. When we argue with God about God’s mercy, we become more
merciful, we become ashes that love.
