Did Abraham give up too soon? Maybe. Whether he did or not isn't the point of the episode from Genesis. We should take a lesson from father Abraham's humility and boldness- the two are not polar opposites.
It's remiss not to point out that God saved humanity for the sake of one righteous person: Jesus Christ.
I know that writing about salvation so succinctly can, understandably, set off some theological alarm bells. Nonetheless, I am going to state it that way. The other day I was thinking about Penal Substitutionary Atonement. It seems to me that what people, rightly, object to in that phrase is the word "penal." After all, God did not create us, any of us, in order to damn or destroy us. Far from it. But the substitutionary aspect of the cross of Christ cannot be denied. How else would you explain this, written by Saint Paul: "But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us"? (Romans 5:8)
I think our reading from Colossians helps. By his cross, Jesus obliterated "the bond against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us." While not likely an authentically Pauline letter, Colossians, unlike certain parts of, say, Ephesians, is theologically quite Pauline. Our passage today indicates this by alluding to the Law. Paul's take on the Law is that the Law primarily exists to show us how we don't measure up. How we fail to love God and neighbor. How difficult it often is for me to even recognize who my neighbor is. Only one person met the measure of the Law: Jesus Christ. This was enough for God, whose name is mercy.
The Greek word translated in our Gospel reading as "wicked" is the plural form of πονηρός. πονηρός transliterated is poneros. Its primary meaning is something like to be pressed and harassed by toils and labors. While this word can be used to indicate evil, such a meaning, while not tangential exactly, is marginal- terciary. If not meant in the latter sense (i.e., evil), what Jesus is saying is that if you who are busy, burdened, weighed down by life, in a word, harried, "know how to give good gifts to your children," how much more is God, our Father, able and willing to give you, not just good things, but his very self in the person of the Holy Spirit, if you but ask? Here's the Good News: through Jesus Christ, God is for us and with us!
This is the second week in a row that our Gospel focuses not on the importance of prayer but its utter necessity. As Romano Guardini observed: prayer for a Christian is like breathing. His point is that if you stop breathing, you die. Note that Jesus here is not saying that God is like your magic genie, for whom your wish is his command. What you ask for matters. A popular evangelist once asserted that God hears and answers every prayer. According to his account, God's answers fall into three categories: Yes - No - Slow.
As Luke presents it, this teaching on prayer seems equivocal. What do I mean? With his illustration of the midnight visitor, he starts by talking about petitionary prayer- asking God for something, either for yourself or someone else. If you think about it, what Jesus says does not lack humor. If God won't grant your petition because he's favorably disposed toward you, he'll grant it on account of you persistently bugging him about it. This is not the only time in the Gospels Jesus makes this same point.
When praying for a specific intention, you must persist. In my experience, this persistence refines what you're praying for, helps you to clarify not only what you're asking God to do, but what your role is in what you bring before him. It may even help you simplify and really know what it is you seek, what it is you hope for. Circling back to Guardini's insistence on the vital necessity of prayer, "Spirit" means breath. Jesus urges us to ask the Father for life, real life.
Following his parable, Jesus concludes by teaching that what we should always want is more God. It's difficult to write something like that because it sounds so damn pious. But I mean it more in the sense of finding God in all things; all things. This is what it means to to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Along these lines, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, referring to Bach’s dedication of his Orgelbüchlein (“To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefited thereby”), said that what Bach wrote in dedicating his book is what he would like to say about his own philosophical work. This comes to close to what I mean by desiring more God.
For most of us, desiring more God means less self. Maybe I'm projecting, but it's easy to underestimate the difficulty of this trade-off.
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