What if there are at least ten there?—
He replied, —For the sake of those ten, I will not destroy it.—
The world is ending, the world is ending!!!
We all picture the slightly off kilter person walking the streets of a large city. He cries out, the world is ending.
While much in today’s readings and gospel is focused on petitioning the Lord, there is an eschatological undercurrent.
Brothers and sisters,
Ponder Jesus statement in Mark 13:32-33,
“But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.—
Now I have no particular insight or clue, but what I would like us to focus on is God’s great graciousness.
Have you ever pondered God’s love, His gift of grace? Have you ever contemplated the way He enters our lives?
Abraham didn’t have to wonder. He knew that God was coming to look at Sodom and to bring judgment, terrible retribution for their sin. He knew that the end was near. Yet, he did a remarkable thing. He appealed to God’s grace. He appealed to God face-to-face.
What if there are fifty, forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, or even ten left? Would You still destroy them? Abraham asks.
God says, I will relent, even for ten.
Friends,
Think of God, on His throne of glory saying:
—their sin so grave,
that I must go down and see whether or not their actions
fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me.—
In simpler terms, ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing; I have to go check it out.’ Can you imagine God saying that now?
The cry against the world is so great I can see God doing that right now, shaking His head, needing to see it to believe it.
We have created war, poverty, disease, coldness toward our fellow man, a twisting of values to suit our likes and dislikes, our pride and our prejudice. We have a complete disregard for God’s call, for God’s way. We have a world of Sodom’s and Gomorrah’s.
Yet, God spares us His wrath. God holds back His anger. God does not send destruction, rather, He sent His Son, and He sends Him over and over again upon this altar.
Brothers and sisters,
When will God pull the switch?
In the Our Father we beg for it: —Thy kingdom come.—
I asked if you have ever pondered God’s love, His gift of grace; if you have ever contemplated the way He enters our lives?
God enters our lives in exactly this way —“ in love. He loves us so much that the end isn’t neigh — that the end will wait for us to actually perceive His love.
God waits, and in His gift of grace, received in so many ways, and most particularly through the Holy Sacraments, He call us to change our lives; to fall in love with Him completely.
When you love someone, you love them completely. You would sacrifice anything for them. Love is not an exercise in compromises, as pop psychologists and marriage counselors would have us believe. Rather, love is that complete and total self sacrifice, the immolation of self, to cast light and warmth on the other.
God gives us this kind of unconditional love. What He seeks is that we do the same for Him.
The end will come when our love and desire for Him is so great, neither heaven nor earth will stand in our way.
St. Paul tells us:
Brothers and sisters:
You were buried with him in baptism,
in which you were also raised with him
Baptism ties us to our beloved Lord. It makes us members of His body. It is our marriage vow to our one and only, our love. We die in Him, we are raised yet again in Him, and we live in Him.
When we pray, we must not rely on words alone. We are to talk to our love. We are to ask for our daily share of His life, the daily bread that brings eternal life. We are to ask that we not be subjected to the final test, confident that our Lord grants the time and grace needed so that we will conform ourselves to Him.
Jesus, who is one with the Father, knew us. He knows us. He knows we are wicked. Yet He says:
“If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the Father in heaven
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?—
How much more will God send down His grace, drawing us ever closer, asking for our love in return?
He does so every day. Each day we receive a measure of His grace. Each moment, but especially when we are tempted or weak, His love is there, prodding us to life in Him.
These readings and Gospel certainly tie it together. God is gracious to us, we need only to call upon Him. He will relent, we need only respond.
The world is certainly ending and we have an invitation to make it joyous. Even if there were only ten of us left, we have an invitation and the power of prayer. We are invited to love God, to lay our heads on His shoulder and to whisper to Him, I love you.