Spare Us, Good Lord!

Like everyone, we can each look over the experiences of our lives and get a sense of who we are. We are bundles of thoughts and attitudes, actions, and verbal exchanges. Well, we are more than just that; God knows just who we are. We are always slanted in our assessment of ourselves. And God is beyond our comprehension.

What we come to know as we mature spiritually is that only God is God, and we are not. We learn that God must be able to hold together things of reality that feel in conflict with us. We can conceive of the concept of justice, but it is hard for us to plug it perfectly into life situations. We can conceive of the concept of mercy, but there too, we are not able to make applications in life circumstances. We imagine that only God can hold together both justice and mercy without them canceling out one another.

We come on Sunday to a very unusual story in the Book of Genesis about Abraham, and an inquiry he has with God about punishment and the suspension of punishment. It seems that Abraham has learned about God’s decision to destroy the whole population of Sodom and Gomorrah for their enormous and serious sin. Abraham is cognizant that as a human being he is in no position to negotiate with the Almighty about the execution of divine justice, nor to suggest the opportunity for mercy, and yet, he approaches God:

The Lord said to Abraham, "How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! …Then Abraham came near and said, "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 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, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" And the Lord said, "If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake." …Then he said, "Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there." He answered, "For the sake of ten I will not destroy it." (Genesis18:20, 23-26, 32)

Reading the entire section of the story we learn that Abraham speaks in stages, in a bargaining exchange with God. Starting with a question about whether the punishment will be exacted if there are fifty righteous citizens, then ratcheting down to forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, and finally the hypothetical of the presence of ten righteous people. One wonders if Abraham is trying to find the number that will match the size of Lot’s family, for Lot is Abraham’s nephew, who lives in the doomed city.

All this odd negotiation did not result in the sparing of the population. We learn of the Lord’s compassion for Lot’s family, instructing him to flee to Zoar. Just as Lot arrived at Zoar the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the heavens. (Genesis 19:24) God had that plan for sparing Lot out of mercy, not because it was deserved due to righteousness. God’s ways are surely mysterious.

The miracle in this narrative is that God engages Abraham in the first place over things that only God can understand: namely, how justice and mercy fit together case by case. It is an unfathomable gift that God leans in close to hear our requests.