Genesis 15:1-6
Proper 14 (19) – Year C
The Sodom and Gomorah story still needs understanding in today's world where wedge issues abound. Folks take one little aspect of something and begin to drive it where it no longer belongs. The issue of strengthening our communities and nations by honoring the covenant of healthy relationships is one of those wedges that takes the story of attempted rape of angels (and how does one do that, particularly those busy dancing on the head of a pin?) and in turn limits all relationships to their genital component.
In so focusing on a tree we miss the forest of issues that include but are not limited to sex.
-- First, do no harm
-- Second, do good
-- Third, seek justice (that elusive and every changing GOD quality)
-- Fourth, rescue, defend, and advocate for any who are oppressed or denied their place in the community
[United Methodists may want to look at John Wesley's General Rules again. You will have a built in three-point sermon here. To see the relevant portion you will need to go to two links (no, I have no idea why the denominational website split the General Rules they way they did and failed to link them together - arrrgh!!!) "do no harm" and first part of "do good" and the rest of "do good" and the "ordinances/life-style of God".]
When Isaiah is heard we get to the point of Abrahamic righteousness - raising our eyes from seeing what we don't have to the possibilities on the distant horizon, just arriving, that will stream forth for eons. This obviously won't keep us from being afraid or getting some things wrong, but it does keep us focused on the forest of trees and the sky of stars so we don't get distracted by an obsession with one tree or one star.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/august2004.html
This pericope lies between the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah falling in bitumen pits and sulfurous rain falling upon those cities. It is a bright spot in a dark story. Even so it begins with Abram’s complaint about a descendent.
Would you be as persistent in getting through to Abram as G*D is reported? After a miraculous recovery of Lot and all, Abram seems to think he has room to bargain for a change in timing. He wants what he has been promised, now! What he gets is a gentle reminder of a starry promise.
Would you be as persistent as Abram in trying to get through to G*D that a promise deferred is a promise broken? A thousand years in G*D’s time is not a good measure for human needs. For what are you asking, yet again, to be fulfilled?
When our text begins, “After these things” we cannot simply proceed to look only here, but are required to see what has gone before. In this case we are dealing with the aftermath of war and its plunder. Abram has tithed/sacrificed on his takings to Melchizedek, presumed stand-in for G*D.
Imagine G*D satiated. G*D has had it up-to-here with what G*D had thought would be a good thing – sacrifice. Stop, already! The sacrificial system only leads to expectations of getting more – in this case Abram getting biological descendents.
There is no covering up who we are with the fanciest of offerings. When some cosmic bottom-line is measured, it won't be a matter of how much sacrificial blood is spilt – but how much evil was avoided and how much good was initiated.
If we are willing to make this shift, the good of the land will more than flow in to fill whatever good we have sent forth. If we are not willing to make this shift, that which we have not held back (evil) will be as garlic mustard, teasel, and emerald ash borer in the American mid-west - invasive and uncontrolled.
Time's up. Still trying to substitute something in place of seeking justice? Forget it, the argument is over, it's justice or nothing.
- - - - - - -
purell kimcare provon
were too late on the market
for Lady Macbeth and preemptive warriors
who wring bloodless bloody handsa next entrepreneurial opportunity
is not covering up what is already there
but a preventive cleansing
to keep purell from being needed in the first placepure-el calls forth a new desire
to be elseways than el has been
and in turn to have el’s images
transformed in our lifetime