Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C
Reflecting on Genesis 18: 2-32
Should not the judge of all the world act with justice? Abraham is cajoling God, trying to manipulate God into sparing the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah because of the innocent citizens who live there (including his nephew Lot and his family). And you know what? It worked!
This odd story from the 18th chapter of Genesis is hard to hear. Is God really that petulant and out of control? God is the victim of anthropomorphism here. Humans are vengeful and violent, and so their God is made in their image. But God can be walked off the ledge with flattery, and so the towns are saved.
What an unsettling image of God. Our own experience of God, incarnate in Jesus and radiating from the works of the New Testament, is so different. Jesus implores us to keep asking, keep knocking. Then we remember Abraham, whose love for his family living in those towns compelled him to continue in that Oriental bargaining so common in his time. He asked, he knocked, and God acted.
I’m thinking of the First Baptist Church in Kerrville, Texas. This church has become the north star for the town, the place where they come to grieve, to bring food, comfort, and prayer. One of their members is still unaccounted for. Twenty-eight of their children have died.
The whole world is asking, seeking, and knocking, begging God to intervene in this horror. We all need to ask for the Holy Spirit. That’s the promise, that no one who asks for the Spirit will be denied.
Come, Holy Spirit, and bring Divine comfort to all the grieving in the Hill Country of Texas.
When have you asked, and been given the Spirit?
Kathy McGovern © 2025