Genesis 18:20-32
Proper 12 (17) – Year C
This portion of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is as close as we get to an important issue of sexuality in common usage. It would be good to expand this to the whole story and to the subsequent scriptural interpretations that focus on inhospitability.
The Sodom and Gomorrah 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 G*D 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 – Do no harm, Do good, Stay in love with G*D (Bishop Job’s popularization).]
When Isaiah’s voice is added here 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 or one sexual orientation.
What group of people would you love to see wiped away? Does it bear on your political life? religious life? economic life? love life? Presumably their demise will elevate your understanding to the normative.
You may be convinced that there aren’t even two people, much less ten, in said group that are worth anything. It may even be that when you really step back and look, there’s not a one from whom you would withhold wrath. Genocide is mine, saith the Lord.
Yet, and what a wonderful word that is, “Yet”, even from such a derided and defeated people will come a reversal – that which was deemed of no value, becomes, in the words of a popular commercial, “priceless”.
This pushes on us. Even as we experience poisonous ancestors we yet anticipate a time beyond our continual testing of one another. In that anticipation we find again the opportunity to lift our curse and to provide a blessing
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/july2004.html
How great is the outcry! How great the sin! The inhospitability! The injustice! How tempting to pull it all up, even if it take any elseway opportunity with it.
How important it is to remember Gomer, as well as Hosea, and their children who become more than their beginning! In so doing we hear G*D engaging G*D with an internal dialogue between discontent and promise.
We hear echoes of G*D’s self-reflection through the vehicle of Abraham – “Shall I go into Sodom and know her children as my own? Is pity and adoption my hallmark, or not? If one of my own goes astray, will I take out my loss on others?”
It is so tempting to have our fantasy – you are not mine! – cemented, Cain-like, for all time. It is so blessed to have this same fantasy redeemed in real life.
- - - - - - -
it takes two to whore around
whether that be macro
with G*D and Sodom
or micro
any two Gomers and Hoseasthen we freeze-frame a moment
and name it abomination
not you
not mine
not anyforgetting a first word
is not a last word
yes, you
yes, me
yes, allso look again
in your bag of tricks
for not only the old
familiar approbation
but a new beginning