Genesis 19:1-29
A gruesome story. But the way it is framed in the Scripture is terribly important. On its own the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is fertile ground for right wing shouting preachers who want to blame gays for all the ills of society and its impending collapse.
The demand at the door of Lot is most significant for the dilemma it sets up for Lot, the host. And that’s the main point here: “What are you doing to do, Lot, what are you going to do?” The first audience of this story will appreciate what a bind he is in. The repugnance of his offer of , “take the women instead,” isn’t so much a matter of taking women instead of men, as it is of taking people who belong in the house rather than his guests. We can’t appreciate the cultural significance of that, and that’s not even taking into account who these guests really are. I know, the story is still ugly but there it is. That then sets up the guests taking the matter in hand and rescuing Lot and his family. I get a sense of the miraculous in their deliverance from the city, given the press of the crowd that has been described.
As for the destruction, we should probably just take it at face value. There was either just a straightforward supernatural event we can’t possibly imagine, or a divinely caused seismic event with release of gases that was ignited somehow (lightning?). Let’s stay away from talk of aliens and nuclear blasts and the like.
If you take this story in isolation, and ignore verse 29, you could take it pretty much as a moralistic tale that says nothing more than God destroys bad people. God certainly does not tolerate violations of human dignity or generally dissipating behaviour. We do suffer consequences for sin. But he is also a God of grace. Verse 29 reminds us of the remarkable conversation recorded in chapter 28, which shows that while God is unchanging, he is not unmovable.
The times out of which this Scripture comes would not consider the destruction remarkable. What is actually quite stunning are the notes of grace interwoven in the ugliness. God through his-story is showing that the grace will win out.
Prayer:
Lord, help me part of a reversal that resists the world’s tendency to take down the innocent with the guilty. The Christ. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
pillar of salt...
i once heard many years ago someone offer that lot's wife wasn't punished for disobedience so much so as she was so grief stricken for her community, evil as it may have been, that becoming a pillar of salt is symbolic of her fixedness and tears.
Post a Comment