"Prayers and Promises"

First Presbyterian Church
February 25, 2007
Peter S. Buehler
Genesis 18:22-33

Far be it from you to do such a thing,
to slay the righteous with the wicked…

Every so often, television takes God seriously. This was the case in the TV series that ended last year, which many of us really miss, NBC's "The West Wing."

One episode I will remember included a funeral service for President Jed Bartlet's personal secretary, Mrs. Landingham, killed by a drunken driver.
After the funeral in Washington's National Cathedral, Bartlet ordered the cathedral doors sealed. We wondered what was going to happen. After all, we had come to know President Bartlet, played brilliantly by actor Martin Sheen, as a deeply religious man, a true believer who could quoted scripture from memory and often prayed on his knees. Nevertheless, we didn't know what to expect. We quickly realize that the President, grieving and angry, had something to say to God in private. Then he let it out: "(Mrs. Landingham) bought her first new car and you hit her with a drunk driver, is that supposed to be funny? I think you're vindictive." His tirade continued; the floodgates of Bartlet's fury were wide open.
He accused God of being complicit in the wounding of his closest advisor by an assassin's bullet. "What was Josh Lyman?" he started. "A warning shot? That was my son. What did I ever do to your son but glorify and praise his name?"

Those of us watching were stunned. But Bartlet was not finished. He yelled at God in Latin, Haec credam a deo pio? A deo iusto? A deo scito?" "Am I really to believe that these are the acts of a loving God? A just God? A wise God?"
(Material from "God Is With Us, Even If We Think Not," by David Waters, posted on beliefnet)

We ask: Was this a tirade or a prayer?

What is prayer? If the simplest definition of the word "pray" is "to entreat" -- "to ask earnestly"; "to beseech"; "to implore"; even "to beg" -- was what Jed Bartlet shouted at God a prayer?

Have you ever confronted God? Have you ever shouted at God? If so, did you feel you had permission, even God's permission, to do so? Was it for you a prayer?

I would like to begin this sermon series by suggesting that we listen for the permission we are given to pray to God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, even if that means confronting and questioning, and, on occasion, shouting. I would submit that the Bible gives us this permission. Especially when it comes to prayer, the scriptures do not say what we assume or expect.

There are many examples of prayer in the scriptures -- ninety-seven in the Old Testament alone, not counting the Psalms, which are a collection of prayers -- but even with all these examples there are few formulas for prayer. There is no particular posture for prayer -- how to sit, how to stand, how to hold our hands.
And while believers over the centuries have learned that prayer is a daily practice that empowers believing and trusting, that it is a good thing to pray at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day, at mealtimes, and as we begin our daily work -- the main message in the Bible about prayer is a word of freedom, a promise of wonderful grace-filled freedom in God's presence. It is a promise that we can pray with our whole selves; that we can come to God as a child comes to her parent, whom knows she knows loves her completely, so that she is safe in saying what she is thinking, what she is wondering about, what she is confused, troubled, and angry about. The prayers of the Bible have this stunning quality of freedom.

In them we learn about God, God's goodness. Yes, we ask for what we want, but we also come to God in prayer anticipating that we will receive what's best for us.
It may not be what we want, but it will be what we need.

So in our passage from Genesis, Abraham comes to God with a need. His need is for certainty -- certainty that the God who called him and his family from their homeland to be a new nation is not a God who punishes innocent people along with guilty people. He was especially concerned for his nephew, Lot, who lived with his family and flocks in Sodom, a lush garden of a land in the plain of the Jordan River. Sodom, of course, was known for its wickedness, and Abraham realized that the mysterious visitors who had just come to Mamre, to his dwelling place, were on their way to destroy it -- to level Sodom, is what the Hebrew words say.

Abraham could see the handwriting on the wall, so he appealed directly to God.
The first words out of his mouth sound Jed Bartlet's: Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? That was the way it worked with the gods of other lands and peoples, was Abraham's God the same? In effect, did guilty people mean more than innocent people? Was it just that places get destroyed because of bad people, and not spared because of good people? Was God a punishing God, or a saving God?

Abraham's language is fierce; it is toned down in most of our modern versions.
He begins with God like a man bargaining with a trader at a Middle Eastern bazaar: Suppose 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?
Far be it from you to do such a thing! Yet according to Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, the biblical Hebrew is better translated not Far be it from you, which sounds polite and respectful, but rather That is profane! Which is as confrontational as Jed Bartlet, if not more so! God, if you are holy and good, if that is your character, how can you do a thing that is so wrong? How can you be holy and at the same time lack any compassion for innocent people? That's not holy, that is profane!

We think: What nerve, to speak to God in this way! We half expect God to obliterate him then and there. He doesn't. Instead, the LORD agrees, If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.

Encouraged, Abraham comes back: How about for forty-five? Yes, God answers, I'll forgive the whole place for forty-five. Now sounding like an auctioneer -- only here leading the bidding backwards, Abraham pushes God to the limit: I've got forty-five, do I hear forty? I've got forty, do I hear thirty? God again at thirty righteous people, he won't destroy the city -- do I hear twenty? God at twenty, thank you; how about ten, I know this is ridiculous -- I'm probably pushing way too hard, not destroying all of Sodom for a family of ten -- but, Yes! God is agreeing to ten! Quick, before he changes his mind! Sold to the God of compassion!

Abraham's revelation was exactly this: his God was a compassionate God!
His assumption had been all wrong, that in a city where nearly the entire population was wicked, where there was maybe a half-a-block's worth of unselfish people, that God would not spare everyone because of them. Our question is, Would Abraham have known this if he hadn't asked God, if he hadn't prayed to God, if he hadn't confronted God? Do we know what we need to know about God if we don't ask? Do we know what we need to know about God if we don't seek and search and go beyond our assumptions about prayer? Do we know what we need to know about God if we hold back, if, when we are filled with questions and confusion and passion, we don't come before God and lay it all out before him?

Have you ever prayed to God at the top of your lungs? I remember being in a classroom at seminary when from an adjoining classroom I heard shouting -- we all did; our professor had to stop his lecture. What we heard wasn't just one person, it was a whole classroom; and what they were shouting, we realized, was the Lord's Prayer! I can honestly say I hadn't ever heard it hollered before (and I haven't heard it hollered since..). Later we learned that the New Testament professor in the next room wanted his students to say the prayer as if they believed it with their whole hearts -- that the Lord's Prayer wasn't to be repeated by rote and in a monotone, without feeling -- therefore they should shout it out as a way of discovering what really praying it felt like. It was an experiment in praying to a God who listens, as the scriptures say he does.

As Abraham discovered, this was a God who shattered stereotypes, a God filled with compassion, a God who accepted arguments and anger as well as humility and gratitude. This is our God!

What have you discovered about God when you have prayed at the top of your lungs? What have you discovered about prayer? Is prayer a "should", something your church says you ought to do to be a good Christian, or is prayer a gift, something your church says is a means of grace -- a way of receiving the grace and love God is waiting to give?

In those moments when you have prayed out loud because that was all you could do, and you could not and would not stop because you were convinced of your cause -- in those prayers, what did you learn about God and about yourself?

I love the way our Old Testament passage ends. It speaks volumes about what prayer does. After Abraham had wagered his way down to ten, that the entire city would be saved for a mere handful of righteous residents, after Abraham recognized through his prayer that God's compassion was as unlimited as it was unexpected, the scene concludes quietly: the LORD went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.

So we are startled to hear that it's the Lord who has been speaking to us all along, even when we think we're the ones starting the conversation! But like Abraham, after we pray, really pray -- bringing before God the petitions of our hearts and lives; bringing before God our prayers for other people, for those suffering injustice, for those who are broken and hurting and hanging on by a thread -- after we pray we also return to our place. We are ushered back into our life, our family, our friendships, our community, our calling, our work, our place where we can make a difference for righteousness, where we can do our part, however small, to save the world.

I wonder if we don't learn our most important lessons -- what our place in life is, what our purpose in life is -- from prayer.

The Gospels show Jesus time and again in prayer, depending on prayer, empowered by prayer, even on the cross he prayed. So the arithmetic of the scriptures continues to startle. Abraham's appeal to God ends with an impossibly small number, the number ten, for what Abraham discovers through his prayer is that God is compassionate -- more than any human could calculate, more than any human being could possibly expect. Yet the New Testament goes further still. The number that is equal to God's compassion is the number One, for it is the one and only Son of God who goes to the cross to prove that love -- not death, not evil, not sin, not failure, not fear -- but love is the promise of God, the life-giving word of God.

Prayer to us is like breathing.
So we listen as the Bible's own prayers stretch our knowledge and our willingness to breath God's word of life. We ask ourselves, If prayer is coming to God with our petitions and our lives, is it not also God coming to us with compassion, grace, and truth? Shouldn't we, then, with Abraham, open our hearts and say what it is we're wanting and wondering, even if it means closing the doors and shouting our prayer?

By the way, the episode of "The West Wing" doesn't end in the National Cathedral with Jed Bartlet getting the last word. The writers of the show got it right; they got God right. The last word of that particular season came in the Oval Office from an angel of the Lord, also known as Mrs. Landingham. It made sense that Jed Bartlet would hear God's reply to his angry prayer from her. God is creative in this way, using other voices. As viewers of the show we knew that Mrs. Landingham, typical New Englander that she was, never minced words, even with her boss. So in this final scene she tells him not to let his anger or his fear get the best of him. "God doesn't make cars crash and you know it," she tells the President. "Stop using me for an excuse."

An answer to prayer! Not what Jed Bartlet expected or wanted -- not an explanation of why bad things happen, but a reaffirmation of his calling. Like Abraham returning to his place, the President got the message. So the episode ends not with grieving but with Jed Bartlet getting up from his chair and going back to work.

Which is what happens when we receive God's compassion.