Lessons from Sodom and Gomorrah
This is our last week going through Genesis and we're looking at the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Those names used to be well known synonyms for depravity, but the story isn't as family these days. It's a harsh one to hear, but it has some important lessons for us.
Genesis 18: 16-33
Then the men left and went to a place where they could look down at Sodom, and Abraham went with them to send them on their way. 17 And the LORD said to himself, “I will not hide from Abraham what I am going to do. 18 His descendants will become a great and mighty nation, and through him I will bless all the nations.[b] 19 I have chosen him in order that he may command his sons and his descendants to obey me and to do what is right and just. If they do, I will do everything for him that I have promised.”
20 Then the LORD said to Abraham, “There are terrible accusations against Sodom and Gomorrah, and their sin is very great. 21 I must go down to find out whether or not the accusations which I have heard are true.”
22 Then the two men left and went on toward Sodom, but the LORD remained with Abraham. 23 Abraham approached the LORD and asked, “Are you really going to destroy the innocent with the guilty? 24 If there are fifty innocent people in the city, will you destroy the whole city? Won't you spare it in order to save the fifty? 25 Surely you won't kill the innocent with the guilty. That's impossible! You can't do that. If you did, the innocent would be punished along with the guilty. That is impossible. The judge of all the earth has to act justly.”
26 The LORD answered, “If I find fifty innocent people in Sodom, I will spare the whole city for their sake.”
27 Abraham spoke again: “Please forgive my boldness in continuing to speak to you, Lord. I am only a man and have no right to say anything. 28 But perhaps there will be only forty-five innocent people instead of fifty. Will you destroy the whole city because there are five too few?”
The LORD answered, “I will not destroy the city if I find forty-five innocent people.”
29 Abraham spoke again: “Perhaps there will be only forty.”
He replied, “I will not destroy it if there are forty.”
30 Abraham said, “Please don't be angry, Lord, but I must speak again. What if there are only thirty?”
He said, “I will not do it if I find thirty.”
31 Abraham said, “Please forgive my boldness in continuing to speak to you, Lord. Suppose that only twenty are found?”
He said, “I will not destroy the city if I find twenty.”
32 Abraham said, “Please don't be angry, Lord, and I will speak only once more. What if only ten are found?”
He said, “I will not destroy it if there are ten.” 33 After he had finished speaking with Abraham, the LORD went away, and Abraham returned home.
Between the two sections of our reading, the two angels/men go to Sodom and the behaviour of the citizens is such that it is clear there are not ten innocent people in the city. The angels try to save Abraham's nephew Lot and his family before the city is destroyed.
Genesis 19: 1, 12-29
When the two angels came to Sodom that evening, Lot was sitting at the city gate. As soon as he saw them, he got up and went to meet them.
The two men said to Lot, “If you have anyone else here—sons, daughters, sons-in-law, or any other relatives living in the city—get them out of here, 13 because we are going to destroy this place. The LORD has heard the terrible accusations against these people and has sent us to destroy Sodom.”
14 Then Lot went to the men that his daughters were going to marry, and said, “Hurry up and get out of here; the LORD is going to destroy this place.” But they thought he was joking.
15 At dawn the angels tried to make Lot hurry. “Quick!” they said. “Take your wife and your two daughters and get out, so that you will not lose your lives when the city is destroyed.” 16 Lot hesitated. The LORD, however, had pity on him; so the men took him, his wife, and his two daughters by the hand and led them out of the city. 17 Then one of the angels said, “Run for your lives! Don't look back and don't stop in the valley. Run to the hills, so that you won't be killed.”
18 But Lot answered, “No, please don't make us do that, sir. 19 You have done me a great favor and saved my life. But the hills are too far away; the disaster will overtake me, and I will die before I get there. 20 Do you see that little town? It is near enough. Let me go over there—you can see it is just a small place—and I will be safe.”
21 He answered, “All right, I agree. I won't destroy that town. 22 Hurry! Run! I can't do anything until you get there.”
Because Lot called it small, the town was named Zoar.
23 The sun was rising when Lot reached Zoar. 24 Suddenly the LORD rained burning sulfur on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah 25 and destroyed them and the whole valley, along with all the people there and everything that grew on the land. 26 But Lot's wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt.
27 Early the next morning Abraham hurried to the place where he had stood in the presence of the LORD. 28 He looked down at Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole valley and saw smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a huge furnace. 29 But when God destroyed the cities of the valley where Lot was living, he kept Abraham in mind and allowed Lot to escape to safety.
This is not a story that gets preached on much in the United Church, and you can't blame us, it's a really tough one to look at. On the surface, it seems to show God as very judgmental, after all, two whole cities are destroyed, but there is much more to it.
To begin with, God doesn't seem to really want to destroy the cities. After all, before making any decisions, God goes to talk to Abraham. And it seems that God is expecting Abraham to challenge the idea of destroying the cities, because before God even talks to Abraham, God comments on how through Abraham all nations of the earth shall be blessed, as if foreshadowing that Abraham will lean towards mercy for Sodom & Gomorrah.
Now I know stories like this, where God is shown in such a human manner, can be difficult for people, especially people who understand God as a force of love, as a source of strength and justice, rather than as a specific presence. But as I've said before, for these stories we have to try and see from the perspective of that culture, which was very different. For that culture, this story was radical because God actually listened to humans, God's sense of compassion and justice were so great that God was willing to listen to a human perspective.
Biblical scholar Dennis Bratcher says, “throughout this whole episode, from the early statement that Yahweh (God) needed to see directly what was happening in Sodom to the final bargaining session, we see a God who interacts, responds, and even discovers things anew.”
So the message to the Hebrew people was that God cared for them. Unlike other gods who destroyed indiscriminately at the slightest offense, Yahweh cared enough to listen and protect. Unfortunately in the end God couldn't find even 10 good people in Sodom & Gomorrah, only Lot and his family, so God decides the cities need to go. And yes, that is harsh, but again, in the eyes of that time, at least God tried to save the cities, it was their own actions that led to their destruction.
There are a lot of directions you could go with this story, but what kept coming back to me was this feeling that the situation with Sodom & Gomorrah was similar to the state of our world right now, particularly around climate change and economic justice. I know that mt sound like quite a reach, but bear with me.
We know we are destroying our planet through climate change and that we have to make major changes. Our present lifestyle is not sustainable for the planet. That's not up for discussion, at least not among most people.
We also know that our present lifestyle in North America and Europe is not sustainable from an economic justice point of view. We have most of the resources, most of the money. Eventually that's going to crash, one way or another. The planet is running out of resources, we can only grow so much food, poorer countries will rebel. Poorer people within our own rich countries will rebel, are starting to rebel, at the injustice and inequities.
We're a lot like Sodom & Gomorrah, bringing about our own destruction.
And I have this image of God looking at us and going, man if I could just get some of them to stop this destructive behaviour, to make some changes, I'm sure we could turn this around.
Abraham negotiating the number of righteous people needed to save Sodom & Gomorrah reminds me of scientists who tell world leaders they need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a particular amount by a particular date, then we pass that date with nothing done, and they try to re-calibrate so there is some hope even as realistically things get worse.
“Well,” the scientists say, “maybe if we reduce by a little less by a later date we can still reduce the damage.” Like God, they want this to work, want things to get better, but they are limited by the reality of the situation.
God could have saved Sodom & Gomorrah with ten good people. Ten was the smallest number for communal organization in later Israelite life. With ten, you could get things done as community.
What's our smallest number? How many people does it take to turn things around for our planet?
In the midst of Covid it's easy to forget about the environment, to forget about economic justice, but those issues go on.
I included the second part of the story of Sodom & Gomorrah, which isn't in the lectionary cycle of readings because I think it has parallels to today that are important. When it is time to leave the city, Lot doesn't want to go too far. “Not to the hills,” he begs, “can't we just go to that small city over there?” They are told not to look back, but Lot's wife can't resist turning to look back on her home, and she is turned into a pillar of salt.
I think we're a lot like that with climate change in particular. We don't want to “go up to the hills,” we don't want to give up our luxurious lifestyle, so like Lot, we try to make compromises.
“We need two vehicles, but one is a hybrid!”
“We need our big house, but we have a heat pump.”
“We need to fly to go on vacation, but we buy carbon offsets!”
All of these are good things to do, I'm not knocking them. But reality is, they aren't enough, are they.
Like Lot's wife, it's hard not to look back, reluctant to embrace a new way of living that will be harder, and when we look back instead of forward, we end up frozen, like a pillar of salt, unable to do much.
As odd as it may seem, I think there's some hope in this story. If there had been ten people, it would have been enough to save the cities. People there had a choice, just like we have a choice. It doesn't take a huge number to turn things around. That's the whole premise of Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom of God, a little bit of yeast can change that whole big batch of bread, that little mustard seed can fill up the field. Each leper touched, each tax collector treated with respect, was one more person to live out God's love and justice in the world.
I know this is an uncomfortable topic for us. But Jesus wasn't afraid of making people uncomfortable, and this is an uncomfortable story. It holds a mirror up to us, like it or not, a mirror that shows a planet on its way to destruction, just like Sodom & Gomorrah.
But it also shows us Abraham - who tried to negotiate with God by stirring God's sense of love, justice and compassion - and who went on to start three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all of which try to teach a way of living that involves love, justice and compassion. So there's a lot of hope, in this story, in our Bible, in our world.
I found an inspiring quote in an article on CNN, of all places! Journalist Ken Burns was talking about what happens after the American election, whatever the results. I think his words apply to our whole world and especially to people of faith.
“There is a great capacity for collective compassion, sacrifice and mobilization at the core of our very being. We are committed to learning and improving, and so we will. When we find our way through today's crises -- which will certainly not end on Election Day, nor when the calendar changes over to 2021 -- I hope we will discover on the other side new alliances and a clearer vision of who we are and who we want to be.”
Alliances and vision, those are key, aren't they. If we want to change our world and our future, then we need to work together, even with people we might not agree with, and we need to have a vision of what a different world could look like.
And that is a key part of our role as people of faith. We need to do the grunt work of using less resources, of moving away from fossil fuels, of living more simply, but just as importantly, we need to be the ones who help people to work together, who bring different groups together and help them focus on what they have in common. We have to be the ones who have faith in a vision of a different world and who aren't afraid to talk about it and encourage others to have faith.
It's all about choice. Sodom & Gomorrah had a choice, Lot had a choice, we have a choice, every day we make choices that impact the world around us.
So let's work together to make choices that can create a new future for our world. It's in our hands.