2022-Jul-24: Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

 

Opening prayer

Heavenly Father, send forth your Spirit to enlighten our minds
and dispose our hearts to accept your truth.
Help us to listen to one another with openness and honesty,
eager to learn from the talents and intuitions that you have given each of us. Never let differences of opinion diminish our mutual esteem and love.
May we leave this meeting with more knowledge and love for you and your Son.
In the unity of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Theme of the liturgy 

We learn the proper way to prayer

Genesis 18:20-32

This week’s text continues the story from the three visitors under the terebinths of Mamre (18:1-10a). After the guests have eaten, drunk, and rested, Abraham escorts them to the road, and they depart on their way to Sodom. We read that the Holy One has heard the great outcry against the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah but no specifics about the nature of their wickedness. It is interesting that even the Holy does not rush to judgment without a firsthand accounting of the situation. Are we guilty of prejudicing people without first understanding the facts?

Two of the three guests continue while Abraham and the Holy One can now have a private conversation where in typical Old Testament fashion, Abraham plays the part of the Defence Attorney in defence of vulnerable people whom he does not even know. Are we ready to go to bat for the underserved?

Of course, the narrative continues into Genesis 19, wherein it does not turn out so well for Sodom and Gomorrah. God’s judgment rains down upon Sodom, famous for its violent disregard of the norms of hospitality, cannot produce even one righteous soul to fend off destruction, and so succumbs.

Psalm 138

In Hebrew, the name for the book of Psalms is 'tehillim', or praises, because from beginning to end, the God we confess is the subject of our praise.

Psalm 138 is classified as a psalm of thanksgiving, sung in the voice of an individual. In eight brief verses, the singer of Psalm 138 gives thanks to God in the presence of three groups: the gods (verses 1-3); the kings of the earth (verses 4-6); and enemies (verses 7-8)

The verb 'yadah' means to give thanks, to praise, or better still, to confess in the sense of giving testimony. 

These thanksgiving psalms always ask us to look backwards and forwards simultaneously. We glance to the past—to those moments where the faithfulness of God was on full display—so that we might stare into our present with great hope for the future. 

The psalmist concludes with such a plea because he knows full well that in the midst of such a world, he cannot save himself. Deliverance can only come from this God—the One who answers the cries of his people.

Colossians 2:12-14 

This passage is from the third in a four-part series on Colossians, this text addresses a controversy among the Colossians. Some are judging others for not following certain dogmatic ideas and self-abasing practices.

Colossians 2 exhorts us to remain steadfast in the gospel which we have been taught, specifically to be rooted in the Messiah, in whom the “entire fullness of deity dwells bodily.” 

In the Messiah’s crucifixion, God forgave all people, blotting out the entire record of debts against us with its decrees - similar to how debtors' debts were annulled and they set free from unjust contracts in the Jubilee Year (Luke 4:18)

Gospel Luke 11:1-13

Luke, more than any other evangelist, demonstrates the importance of prayer in Jesus’ life and ministry (3:21, 5:16, 6:12, 9:18, 9:28, 10:21-22, 11:1, 22:41-4, 23:46).

There are two versions of the Lord’s prayer - both communal prayers that call God our Father (Abba Father, the term Jesus himself used) indicating personal relationships. 

The longer version for a Jewish audience is in Matthew 6:9-13 and is structurally similar to the Jewish prayers 'Amidah' (which means standing) or the 'Shemoney Esreh' (which means eighteen) 

Today's Gospel passage by Luke 11:1-4 contains the shorter version for a Gentile audience - where the Father figure was an all-powerful presence who could decide if his newborn child will be raised in the family, sold as a slave or killed. God the Father in the New Testament is a personal, intimate, sacred, and trusted authority.

It has 5 petitions:

1. With the first petition, we recognize God as the very source of holiness ('hagiastheto' in Greek) and seek to approach God with the joyful reverence of love. 
2. With the second petition, we ask for the coming of the kingdom, we are again asking for a gift God wants to give.
3. With the third petition, we ask for bread - the daily necessities for body and soul
4. With the fourth petition, we ask for forgiveness or release from spiritual captivity — for the forgiver as much as the forgiven. In forgiving others we free ourselves to experience God’s forgiving love more fully, which makes us love still more (7:47).
5. Finally, with the fifth petition, we request deliverance from temptation or “times of trial” that can cripple or destroy the soul (Luke 8:13). 

Jesus sites 2 parables - the first parable, not found in Matthew, is of the insistent friend (11:5-8) - we too need to be persistent in our supplications to Our Father. The Twelve Apostles’ teaching or Didache instructs Christians to pray the Lord’s prayer three times a day. Since the early Church Fathers’ time, Christians recited the Lord’s prayer during the liturgy, especially before Holy Communion. Not everything that happens is God’s will. But we can affirm with St. Paul, “in all things God works for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). The point of prayer is not to change God’s mind but to shape ours, to make us fit for the kingdom, ready to live the only life possible in God’s household: one of love.

The second parable, the invitation to ask, also food in Matthew, concentrates on the answer to prayer. The bottom line is that God answers their prayer not with material things but with generosity by granting an even better gift in the form of the Holy Spirit