Prayer is a routine and vital ingredient of Jesus’ life. The Gospel record shows Jesus frequently going off to be alone in prayer. It also shows him frequently teaching the disciples how to pray. This Sunday’s Gospel has a few such teachings and includes Jesus’ simple yet profound and indeed revolutionary prayer to Abba.
Jesus’ revelation of God as Abba is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive. Abba effected a radical transformation in the way people were encouraged to image God. Abba was a new name and revealed a new intimate way of relating with God. Abba connotes love, sweetness, gentleness. (Abba does not translate as father or daddy.) Jesus’ revelation of loving Abba God nullifies and replaces any deities imagined as almighty father gods. Though such deities could play favorites, they were not intimate, they were distant. They were not loving, they were believed harsh, judgmental, and justified in inflicting suffering. Jesus’ revelation of Abba thus nullifies this Sunday’s first reading. It concerns Abraham and his almighty father god. Abraham argues with a distant paternal deity who threatens to inflict suffering. He is pleading with the deity to repent of the threat. The deity fits the image of a superior and distant judge with Abraham being a lowly supplicant begging for mercy. The relationship is thus not a match to how Jesus relates or to how Jesus reveals Abba relates. Abraham’s god is an old image of an old man-made deity. Humanity has no need of old images and old man-made deities. Believers of such old deities believe they can threaten suffering and inflict it. They claim to be justified in doing so and in forcing others to beg for their mercy. If these believers claim to be Christian, they would do well to give witness to Jesus’ relationship with Abba. The relationship is revealed as a prayerful, contemplative, and intimate relationship. Abba is not man-made but it is human-made. Abba is human-made because Abba, a loving, sweet, and gentle relationship, is the loving, sweet and gentle relationship needed among all human beings.
Jesus’ prayer encourages disciples to call on God’s loving and gentle Community of God to come, on earth as it is in heaven. His prayer also asks us to forgive one another, and remain courageous in the face of trials. Our need to forgive is urgent these days. The trials we face are many. The God to whom we give witness in this time will make all the difference in our getting through them together peacefully.
Prayer: Abba, I vow forgiveness and courage.
Question: If I believe in a God who makes people suffer for their sins why didn’t Jesus make people suffer for their sins?
July 28, 2013 – Gospel Luke 11:1-13 Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time