Going down Sodom Way - A second sermon for ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 18: 20 - 32
Sodom and Gomorrah - the stuff of legend in the annals of Hellfire preaching. After all this is the Biblical story of God’s ferocious judgement on homosexuals. Indeed, our words sodomy and sodomite come from this very story.
But is it possible that we have misunderstood this story. For a moment let’s look back at the story? Let’s go back before the Scripture that we have heard this evening. For at the beginning of the 18th Chapter of Genesis, we find Abraham sat by his ten beside the oaks of Mamre. He looks up and finds before him three men. He doesn’t know them but being a Middle Eastern man, Abraham welcomes them into his home and provides them with water whilst Sarah cooks up a feast. This is the hospitality which will be in the mind of the writer of Hebrews when writing;
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
As hospitality is enjoyed by the three guests, Abraham and Sarah are rewarded with some good news. Old as they are, they will receive the blessing of a son from whom will come a mighty Kingdom. More than that, as a result of this
“All the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him.”
But now comes an ominous turn. Two of the guests who are identified as angels, set off for the town of Sodom whilst the third guest who is revealed as the Lord tells Abraham that he too will go to Sodom to see if it is as wretched a place as it has been reported as being.
Abraham will seek to persuade god to show mercy on the city. In part this will be because, he has a nephew, Lot, there but for now we will leave Abraham’s protestations to go on and see what happens in Sodom when the angels arrive.
The first thing that happens is that they encounter Abraham’s nephew Lot who is sitting at the gateway. Clearly a well brought up man, Lot offers the sort of hospitality that Abraham had offered back in Mamre. Like Abraham, Lot waters and feeds them. He overrules their objections to offer them accommodation for the night. So far, so good. But now the story takes a sharp turn for the worse. Before the guests have gone to bed, a crowd of men surround the house. They have but one thing on their mind. They want to rape these guests. A gangbang is what they have on their minds. What a contrast to the hospitality which Lot has shown!
Lot’s resistance to this knows no bounds. He shuts the doors and somewhat inexplicably offers his virgin daughters to the mob. I find no way of excusing this part of Lot’s conduct and indeed later he will find that his daughters are far from sweet when whilst living in a cave, they get him drunk and so become pregnant by their own father. .
But back to Sodom. Lot is now the object of the fury of the crowd. Listen to their words;
“This man came here as an alien, and he would play the judge. Now we will deal worse with you than with them.”
Oh yes, the mood is now very nasty indeed. Lot is learning that because he is a migrant, there are those who will always see him as a second class person. He has no option but to get out and fast. And so, he calls his wife his daughters and the men who were intending to marry his daughters and tells them that they need to escape. The would be sons in law think he is jesting and so they stay put. But Lot, his wife and his daughters, escape the city with the help of the two guests, who warn them to flee and not to look back. As Lot’s family take flight, disaster overtakes Sodom and Gomorrah with sulphur raining on them. And of course, we all know the story of Lot’s wife looking back and being turned into a pillar of salt.
What exactly happened to Sodom and Gomorrah is a subject for speculation. We do know that by the time of the final editing of Genesis, the leaders of Israel were in exile in Babylon. There they speculated as to why their fortunes had reached such a low. And as they did so, one school of thought that acquired influence was what was known as the “Deuteronomic” school of thought. These people took the view that when people were obedient they were blessed by God whilst when they were disobedient they were cursed by God. We see this influence particularly in the Deuteronomistic histories but also in parts of the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. To such people who felt that the plight of their time was a consequence of disobedience by the people, it would be reasonable to assume that a city of sin would receive punishment at the hands of God.
But wait! The dialogue between Abraham and God does not seem to end on a note that suggests imminent destruction. And we know that the two cities lie on a geological rift which extends from Turkey to East Africa. This rift contains extensive sulphur, bitumen deposits and oil springs. An argument that cannot surely be dismissed suggests that an earthquake with associated fires might have ignited these deposits and created an explosion with deadly consequences on these cities. Of course, this is not an open and shut argument but it merits consideration. Certainly, the alternative of wholesale slaughter leaves us with serious problems regarding the nature of God.
So what was the sin of Sodom? Frankly, I believe that the Scripture before us, offers no help in the debate on sexuality which seems to be going on within the Christian churches. There is all the difference in the world between the violence of rape and consensual sexual relationships. The seemingly unending debate on homosexuality will need to be based on other Scriptures than the story of Sodom.
I suggest that the story of Sodom rather than being related to Gay News is more relevant to Express Newspapers, the Daily Mail Group and News International. For the real issue seems to be based on hospitality and how we treat strangers from other places. The real sin of Sodom is that their welcome of those who came from outside, was devoid of any compassion whatsoever. More than that, foreigners who had come from outside were judging by the hostility shown by the citizens towards Lot, deprived of a right to challenge life denying orthodoxies. I ask you, do you not see echoes of such xenophobia in the way in which East Europeans, Asians, African and travellers are at times portrayed and treated in our country? And that is before we start to talk about people of other religions.
But hold it! An I concluding as I am our of a perverse agenda? Well, I remember being told many years ago that we should let Scripture interpret Scripture. And so I want to draw your attention to the ways that other Scriptures interpret the story of Sodom. Isaiah refers to Sodom in both the first and third chapters but in both cases, the reference is against a background of condemnation of injustices. Jeremiah in the twenty third chapter refers to Sodom but here it is in the context of a condemnation of the abuses of the Court prophets. As for the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel, Jerusalem is Sodom’s sister because of a similar disposition. Says Ezekiel, Sodom and her daughters “had pride, excess of food and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” Within the New Testament, the Second Letter of Peter speaks of Sodom as “an example of what is coming to the ungodly” without telling us what the sin of Sodom was. Meanwhile Jude makes mention of “sexual immorality” and going after other flesh, presumably that of angels. This text has reference to the misuse of sexuality but we have always known that rape is both sexually immoral and inhospitable. But to me the most convincing text is to be found in the tenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel where Jesus suggests that the places where the seventy two sent out on mission do not receive a welcome, face a future so bad that it “will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.”
In other words, the overriding Scriptural interpretation of the destruction of Sodom, is that the key issue is about welcoming of strangers. Oh, there are days when I wish that people would realise that the Bible has so much more to say about welcoming strangers and people from other lands than it has to say about our modern day obsession with sex. It really is time that we stopped using this story as an instrument of hatred and instead grab hold of the true message that we are called to be welcoming to those who are other than us. For in welcoming strangers we may be welcoming the very messengers of God.
And now having seen the liberating message of this story, just a moment on Abraham’s controversy with God. This dialogue is one which teaches us so much. Partly as a result of his nephew being in Sodom, Abraham urges God to save the city if a few righteous people can be found. As God acquiesces, Abraham keeps reducing the required number until eventually it goes down to a mere ten. I think there is a beauty in Abraham’s approach. He knows little of Sodom but he knows the value of human life and so he acts as a reminder to God to be merciful. In this, we are reminded that human lives matter so much. Today, we find it so easy to lump people into groups and so evade the issue of their humanity. Oh to rediscover the insight of Hannah Arendt who once said, “I don’t love groups. I can only love persons.” What a powerful corrective to our tendency to label people.
Not so long ago, I watched the occasional television programme, Sharia. On the panel was the Muslim gentleman who taught me about Islam for a year when we were in training. The issue of an Islamic nuclear bomb came up. He was dismissive of the notion. An Islamic bomb was he said, a contradiction in terms for such a weapon would be indiscriminate. After all the Quran says, “Anyone who kills a human being must be accounted to have killed all mankind.” It is as Mahatma Gandhi commented when asked for a reaction to the bomb that landed on Hiroshima, the atom bomb had “resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet to early to see.”
Abraham reminds us that for Christians, all human life is precious. Such an understanding impacts upon our attitude to weapons of mass destruction as well as upon a range of socio economic issues. But most importantly this evening, let us simply affirm the worth of all and the essential quality of mercy, a quality that we find honed to its fines level in Jesus Christ.
Going down Sodom Way offers us so many lessons as to what it means to be God’s people. They just aren’t the ones we might expect. But then, God’s love and way of inclusion has always surprised us.
May it go on doing so.
This sermon was preached on Sunday July 29th at Alverdiscott Methodist Church. The inspiration to tackle this subject was an infinitely superior sermon by Kim Fabricius.
Sodom and Gomorrah - the stuff of legend in the annals of Hellfire preaching. After all this is the Biblical story of God’s ferocious judgement on homosexuals. Indeed, our words sodomy and sodomite come from this very story.
But is it possible that we have misunderstood this story. For a moment let’s look back at the story? Let’s go back before the Scripture that we have heard this evening. For at the beginning of the 18th Chapter of Genesis, we find Abraham sat by his ten beside the oaks of Mamre. He looks up and finds before him three men. He doesn’t know them but being a Middle Eastern man, Abraham welcomes them into his home and provides them with water whilst Sarah cooks up a feast. This is the hospitality which will be in the mind of the writer of Hebrews when writing;
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
As hospitality is enjoyed by the three guests, Abraham and Sarah are rewarded with some good news. Old as they are, they will receive the blessing of a son from whom will come a mighty Kingdom. More than that, as a result of this
“All the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him.”
But now comes an ominous turn. Two of the guests who are identified as angels, set off for the town of Sodom whilst the third guest who is revealed as the Lord tells Abraham that he too will go to Sodom to see if it is as wretched a place as it has been reported as being.
Abraham will seek to persuade god to show mercy on the city. In part this will be because, he has a nephew, Lot, there but for now we will leave Abraham’s protestations to go on and see what happens in Sodom when the angels arrive.
The first thing that happens is that they encounter Abraham’s nephew Lot who is sitting at the gateway. Clearly a well brought up man, Lot offers the sort of hospitality that Abraham had offered back in Mamre. Like Abraham, Lot waters and feeds them. He overrules their objections to offer them accommodation for the night. So far, so good. But now the story takes a sharp turn for the worse. Before the guests have gone to bed, a crowd of men surround the house. They have but one thing on their mind. They want to rape these guests. A gangbang is what they have on their minds. What a contrast to the hospitality which Lot has shown!
Lot’s resistance to this knows no bounds. He shuts the doors and somewhat inexplicably offers his virgin daughters to the mob. I find no way of excusing this part of Lot’s conduct and indeed later he will find that his daughters are far from sweet when whilst living in a cave, they get him drunk and so become pregnant by their own father. .
But back to Sodom. Lot is now the object of the fury of the crowd. Listen to their words;
“This man came here as an alien, and he would play the judge. Now we will deal worse with you than with them.”
Oh yes, the mood is now very nasty indeed. Lot is learning that because he is a migrant, there are those who will always see him as a second class person. He has no option but to get out and fast. And so, he calls his wife his daughters and the men who were intending to marry his daughters and tells them that they need to escape. The would be sons in law think he is jesting and so they stay put. But Lot, his wife and his daughters, escape the city with the help of the two guests, who warn them to flee and not to look back. As Lot’s family take flight, disaster overtakes Sodom and Gomorrah with sulphur raining on them. And of course, we all know the story of Lot’s wife looking back and being turned into a pillar of salt.
What exactly happened to Sodom and Gomorrah is a subject for speculation. We do know that by the time of the final editing of Genesis, the leaders of Israel were in exile in Babylon. There they speculated as to why their fortunes had reached such a low. And as they did so, one school of thought that acquired influence was what was known as the “Deuteronomic” school of thought. These people took the view that when people were obedient they were blessed by God whilst when they were disobedient they were cursed by God. We see this influence particularly in the Deuteronomistic histories but also in parts of the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. To such people who felt that the plight of their time was a consequence of disobedience by the people, it would be reasonable to assume that a city of sin would receive punishment at the hands of God.
But wait! The dialogue between Abraham and God does not seem to end on a note that suggests imminent destruction. And we know that the two cities lie on a geological rift which extends from Turkey to East Africa. This rift contains extensive sulphur, bitumen deposits and oil springs. An argument that cannot surely be dismissed suggests that an earthquake with associated fires might have ignited these deposits and created an explosion with deadly consequences on these cities. Of course, this is not an open and shut argument but it merits consideration. Certainly, the alternative of wholesale slaughter leaves us with serious problems regarding the nature of God.
So what was the sin of Sodom? Frankly, I believe that the Scripture before us, offers no help in the debate on sexuality which seems to be going on within the Christian churches. There is all the difference in the world between the violence of rape and consensual sexual relationships. The seemingly unending debate on homosexuality will need to be based on other Scriptures than the story of Sodom.
I suggest that the story of Sodom rather than being related to Gay News is more relevant to Express Newspapers, the Daily Mail Group and News International. For the real issue seems to be based on hospitality and how we treat strangers from other places. The real sin of Sodom is that their welcome of those who came from outside, was devoid of any compassion whatsoever. More than that, foreigners who had come from outside were judging by the hostility shown by the citizens towards Lot, deprived of a right to challenge life denying orthodoxies. I ask you, do you not see echoes of such xenophobia in the way in which East Europeans, Asians, African and travellers are at times portrayed and treated in our country? And that is before we start to talk about people of other religions.
But hold it! An I concluding as I am our of a perverse agenda? Well, I remember being told many years ago that we should let Scripture interpret Scripture. And so I want to draw your attention to the ways that other Scriptures interpret the story of Sodom. Isaiah refers to Sodom in both the first and third chapters but in both cases, the reference is against a background of condemnation of injustices. Jeremiah in the twenty third chapter refers to Sodom but here it is in the context of a condemnation of the abuses of the Court prophets. As for the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel, Jerusalem is Sodom’s sister because of a similar disposition. Says Ezekiel, Sodom and her daughters “had pride, excess of food and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” Within the New Testament, the Second Letter of Peter speaks of Sodom as “an example of what is coming to the ungodly” without telling us what the sin of Sodom was. Meanwhile Jude makes mention of “sexual immorality” and going after other flesh, presumably that of angels. This text has reference to the misuse of sexuality but we have always known that rape is both sexually immoral and inhospitable. But to me the most convincing text is to be found in the tenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel where Jesus suggests that the places where the seventy two sent out on mission do not receive a welcome, face a future so bad that it “will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.”
In other words, the overriding Scriptural interpretation of the destruction of Sodom, is that the key issue is about welcoming of strangers. Oh, there are days when I wish that people would realise that the Bible has so much more to say about welcoming strangers and people from other lands than it has to say about our modern day obsession with sex. It really is time that we stopped using this story as an instrument of hatred and instead grab hold of the true message that we are called to be welcoming to those who are other than us. For in welcoming strangers we may be welcoming the very messengers of God.
And now having seen the liberating message of this story, just a moment on Abraham’s controversy with God. This dialogue is one which teaches us so much. Partly as a result of his nephew being in Sodom, Abraham urges God to save the city if a few righteous people can be found. As God acquiesces, Abraham keeps reducing the required number until eventually it goes down to a mere ten. I think there is a beauty in Abraham’s approach. He knows little of Sodom but he knows the value of human life and so he acts as a reminder to God to be merciful. In this, we are reminded that human lives matter so much. Today, we find it so easy to lump people into groups and so evade the issue of their humanity. Oh to rediscover the insight of Hannah Arendt who once said, “I don’t love groups. I can only love persons.” What a powerful corrective to our tendency to label people.
Not so long ago, I watched the occasional television programme, Sharia. On the panel was the Muslim gentleman who taught me about Islam for a year when we were in training. The issue of an Islamic nuclear bomb came up. He was dismissive of the notion. An Islamic bomb was he said, a contradiction in terms for such a weapon would be indiscriminate. After all the Quran says, “Anyone who kills a human being must be accounted to have killed all mankind.” It is as Mahatma Gandhi commented when asked for a reaction to the bomb that landed on Hiroshima, the atom bomb had “resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet to early to see.”
Abraham reminds us that for Christians, all human life is precious. Such an understanding impacts upon our attitude to weapons of mass destruction as well as upon a range of socio economic issues. But most importantly this evening, let us simply affirm the worth of all and the essential quality of mercy, a quality that we find honed to its fines level in Jesus Christ.
Going down Sodom Way offers us so many lessons as to what it means to be God’s people. They just aren’t the ones we might expect. But then, God’s love and way of inclusion has always surprised us.
May it go on doing so.
This sermon was preached on Sunday July 29th at Alverdiscott Methodist Church. The inspiration to tackle this subject was an infinitely superior sermon by Kim Fabricius.
2 Comments:
Sounds like thinly veiled 'Adam and Steve' - 'Amanda and Eve' gay rights promotion rather than a sermon.
No!
I do not give my views on that matter. This sermon is about the fact that we do not take scripture seriously enough as well being about the need for hospitality to those who are other!
That is Gospel.
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