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"What If There WAS Only One?" - Text(s): Genesis 18:20-32
- Pastor Ken Nelson
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Old Testament and Gospel lessons each week are supposed to be alike with regard to subject matter. That's because Jesus told his followers that he was the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament writings and promises. So when a gospel lesson is selected for a particular week, the fine and knowledgeable folks who created this thing we call the "lectionary" (your four weekly lessons) read that gospel and select an Old Testament story that shows how Jesus did fulfill it.
Well, we don't have to press too awfully much to see how Genesis 18 and Luke 11 line up. Jesus is teaching his disciples about prayer, emphasizing our access to God. Jesus invites persistence, even importunity in his story about a friend seeking aid, and Abraham shows plenty of that. Old Testament stories teach us plenty about human nature. Good thing they also teach us about the character of God.
When our story in Genesis begins, Abraham has just learned two things. First, he has learned that this lovely elderly lady he's been married to and lying down next to for a good long time is going to have a baby. Second, he has learned that a town he knows little about, but in which his nephew and family is unfortunately living, is going to be destroyed. The narrative that follows has to do, not with Sarah, but with Sodom - as one writer put it, the story now has to do "with Sodom and its doom, rather than with Sarah and her womb."
The Genesis storyteller here creates an incredible, and to some, a troubling scenario in which Abraham tests the limits of God's patience and God appears to be willing to even change his mind. There are few stories in the Bible like it. God tells Abraham that complaints have risen to his ears about Sodom. The word "complaint" is translated in our lesson as "outcry." The great Old Testament scholar Gerhard Von Rad suggested that a better translation was "foul play."
What was this "foul play?" Sodomy is the common answer, though elsewhere in the Bible (Ezekiel 16:48, Isaiah 1:10 and 3:9, and Jeremiah 23:14) it says that the Sodomites were condemned for lives of pride and prosperous ease with little evidence that aid or hospitality to the poor and the needy were common among them. At any rate, the fate of the Sodomites evokes this first-ever debate between God and human beings about the interplay of judgment and mercy.
"Was Sodom guilty?" God's answer was a resounding, "Yes." But Abraham's concern is not so much if the Sodomites are guilty, but what happens to people if, in the eyes of God, they are guilty. Or, more to the point, what will happen to the innocent minority, which includes his nephew Lot and his family? Abraham can't abide the thought that the innocent might be caught up in the punishment of the guilty.
Abraham probes the character of God, seeking through prayer (see the link to our gospel lesson here?) whether God is both just and merciful. Ah, now we're getting somewhere.
So Abraham says to God, "Have you considered.that there might be as many as fifty righteous people left in the city? If so, will you spare the city for fifty?" And God says that he will. The issue of justice and mercy is now joined. God's justice can be stayed by his mercy - if that is he can find any deserving of mercy. So, now we learn that in this world not only can a few ruin things for many, but with God, a few can save things for many. But just how few...and how many? Here you may do well to ponder if you may be among the few who could save many.
But the story continues, and Abraham, now emboldened by the fact that God is in a bargaining mood says, "What if I'm short five?" To which God says, "You've got your five. I won't destroy it for forty-five." Now the juices of debate (that is, faith & prayer) are starting to flow. Abraham has no clue as to the quantity of righteous people in Sodom, so he'd better press on. He bargains God down to 40, then to 30, then to 20, and finally to 10. God says: "Find me ten and I'll spare, not just the ten, but everyone there." (By the way, do you know that to this day, when Orthodox Jewish men meet daily for prayer, there must be ten. It's called a "minyan." And if there are not ten, they do not pray. Or they wait until one of them gets on a cell phone and calls "Rueben the relief prayer" who drops everything and drives down to the synagogue so that there will be ten...but I digress.)
But Abraham, seemingly successful in his bidding war with God, now has a problem. Who defines "righteous?" In the Old Testament, that usually meant "the tsadiqim" or "people who know God." And, if the primary ingredient of righteousness is to know God, how can we know one we've never seen? Abraham had Lot in mind when he bargained God down to 10, but later the Bible tells us Lot's family was not that large. Abraham was bargaining on (invoking) the righteousness of someone he had never known.
"Will you save the city, O Lord, if there are but ten righteous ones left?" And God didn't bat an eye. Moreover God didn't say; "That's far enough, my judgement can't be stayed with such disproportionate numbers." God didn't end the conversation...Abraham did. What if there was only - one? What if God found only one righteous man among us? Would that do the trick, and turn judgement to mercy? What do you think? Have anyone particular in mind? Now I could turn this into a story about what you are supposed to do. I could tell you to do what Abraham does for others in the story, intercede for them. I could tell you to do the same for folks who you don't know personally, even ones you do but don't particularly like. I want you to pray to God that he might "save" others through your prayers and prayerful service.
But in a much larger sense, I don't want you to do what Abraham did. He stopped at 10, and was willing to let God's righteous anger flow if there were less. What if there was only one? I want you to believe there is only one. And he loves you. And because of him, you are safe and saved. How much has the heavenly Father given those who ask him? More than you could ever imagine! AMEN
