On Hospitality, Humility, and Community

Genesis 18:20-32

Luke 11:1-13

Good morning, friends. [A friend] was supposed to preach today, but she is on vacation and asked if I would be willing to switch. I of course agreed, not suspecting that my dear friend would ever trick me, such that it now falls to me to preach about Sodom and Gomorrah.

Of all of the so-called “clobber passages” of the Bible which are commonly used as proof texts to demonize LGBTQ+ persons—think of the holiness codes of Leviticus, Romans 1—the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah stands in unmatched notoriety. The story has been, and surely in more than one pulpit is being at this very moment, interpreted to justify violence and hate towards our queer siblings. So uncomfortable is this story that the framers of our lectionary elected to end our sojourn in Genesis this week, just prior to Sodom’s destruction, and skip ahead next week to the book of Ecclesiastes. So, today, we hear that Abraham’s pleads with God to save the innocent, God relents, we leave it at that—conveniently skipping over the fact that the Lord goes on to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah anyway, sparing only Lot and his family, but for Lot’s unfortunate wife who is turned into a pillar of salt.

To refresh you on the story which you will not hear being proclaimed next week: Abraham’s nephew Lot lives in Sodom. Some angels come to visit, and Lot insists that they stay in his house. When the locals get wind of the presence of these strangers visiting their city, they beat on Lot’s door and demand that Lot release the men, “so that we may know them” (presumably in the biblical sense). Out of deference to his guests Lot offers his daughters instead, but the men are insistent. The angels afflict the Sodomites with blindness and tell Lot and his family to escape because the Lord is going to destroy the city. Sodom and Gomorrah are incinerated.

According to the “clobber” interpretation, God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah because its residents are men who want to have sex with men, which is evil. The story is thus offered as proof that same-sex acts and relationships are sinful. Now, this interpretation is easy to follow, but it is wrong. This is not to say that the people who compiled Israel’s origin story into the book of Genesis were somehow pro-queer enlightened liberals. The evidence from the other passages does seem to indicate that ancient Israelites, and early Christians, did indeed reject same-sex acts and sought to distinguish themselves favorably compared to their neighbors by accusing the latter of practicing them. Even this observation should be understood in context: for instance, some biblical scholars think the Apostle Paul’s condemnation of same-sex acts is meant to distinguish Christians as morally upright in contrast to contemporary Greco-Roman societies which permitted sex between men and boys, and in which same-sex acts were often in the context of paid sex work or else forcible rape between masters and slaves, or conquering soldiers and their prisoners. But leaving those points aside, let’s accept for the sake of argument that the ancient Israelites and early Christians did not approve of same-sex sexual acts. Two problems nonetheless immediately present themselves with the “clobber” interpretation. The first, made famous in a litany delivered by fictional President Jed Bartlett in the first season of The West Wing, is that the holiness codes of Leviticus also stipulate that both men shall be put to death; it is further prohibited in Leviticus to trim your beard or round out the sides of your hair (19:27) and eat pigs and rabbits (11:4-7). The text stipulates that menstruating women are unclean for seven days and so is anyone who touches them or anything they sit on (15:19-24). Also, in Leviticus, having sex with your neighbor’s wife means both are to be put to death (20:10); but if a man has sex with his neighbor’s slave, the penalty is the sacrifice of a ram (19:20). So, if we take the prohibition of same-sex acts as morally normative, it follows that the rest of this more than two-thousand-year-old code is as well. Who’s the “cafeteria Christian” now?

But the second and more interesting problem is that the clobber interpretation misses the point of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. As [a friend] so helpfully said in his homily last week, the useful way of framing the question is this: “Why were these stories considered important?” What was the community trying to pass along to future generations in retelling the story? To answer that question we need to compare the reading last week to the reading we won’t hear next week. Last week’s reading has Abraham visited by foreigners, whom he and Sarah receive by offering them water, a meal and a seat in the shade. Ding Ding!!  Abraham and Sarah have done the right thing, and they are rewarded with the promise that Sarah will have a son and God will make their descendants as numerous as the stars. That story is immediately followed in the text by the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. When the same angel foreigners come to visit Sodom, the men attempt to gang rape them. EHHH [Buzzing sound]!!! They have done the wrong thing, and they are punished with fiery death and the destruction of their city. What was the Sodomites’ crime? It was not “being gay.” And anyway, we should point out that to equate “mutual loving intimacy between two consenting adults” with “gang rape” is a false and ridiculous move. This is not an apples-to-apples comparison. No, what biblical scholars tell us is that the crime of Sodom was its failure of hospitality. The point was, when foreigners come to visit you, do not be like the Sodomites and gang rape them. Instead, be like Abraham and welcome them kindly. If we really want a clobber passage, we need only look to the collective witness of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures in which this lesson is clobbered into readers’ heads again and again. “Do not mistreat the foreigner in your land, for you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.”

So the logical inference is this: When the foreigner comes to reside in our land, God’s people do not put on masks and fatigues and ambush them in the street. When the foreigner is residing in our land, we do not send them to be tortured in Salvadoran prisons or war-torn countries in which they have never set foot. We do not rip them out of the arms of their children who are screaming for their parents. When the foreigner resides in our land, we do not plant them in a swamp and threaten to feed them to the alligators. The point of the story, the reason why this story was considered important, was that we are supposed to be decent to one another. For as flawed and problematic as so many of the stories in Genesis so often are, they seem to find their way back to a key insight that all human creatures are precious and beloved of God and should be treated with reverence. Notice that Abraham in the reading for today even has to remind God of this! Even if there are ten innocent people in the city of Sodom—even if there are ten innocents among the two millions starving in Gaza—the God of Israel says, I will not destroy it. God’s promise to Abraham, to give him a land and descendants as numerous as the stars, need not be understood only as justification to take what we want and all others be damned. God’s blessing to Abraham, uttered in Genesis 12, chapter 3, concludes, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

I want to say something briefly about the gospel, because I think it also pairs nicely with the first reading, kudos to the lectionary framers today. If the Genesis story counsels readers to show hospitality and generosity to others, then the passage from Luke counsels readers to show a little humility when we need to ask for hospitality ourselves. When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, he says they are to ask God for their daily bread and for forgiveness. As difficult as it can be to be generous in helping others, it can sometimes be just as difficult to ask for a little help when we need it. We worry, I don’t want to burden them, I don’t want to look weak, I don’t want them to resent me, I don’t want to be in debt which I must then repay, I don’t want to be hurt if they reject my request. And in doing so, in refusing to make ourselves vulnerable, we close ourselves off from the gift of loving friendship. For to love always requires opening ourselves to the possibility of being hurt. It comes with the territory. Whether in love, friendship, or community, we can play it safe and wall ourselves off for self-protection, but in doing so we only ensure that we will end up isolated and alone. The question for us is, in that way, not that different from the question that faced ancient Israel and the ancient Christians, and that is, How are we going to live together? What kind of community do we want to have? The kindom of God is a place where people help each other. Do we want to live in a world where we help each other? I do. I want to live in a world where we keep each other safe, where we speak to one another with care, where we respond to challenges by finding ways to expand ourselves—like the dear departed poet Andrea Gibson, “in the end, I want my heart to be covered in stretch marks.” And I want to live in that world with you. Will you help me? Will you join me?