Remember Sodom and Gomorrah? Yeah, so did other people (ie, folx who wrote parts of the Bible).
The entire point of Genesis 19 is that the people of God are called to receive the outcast and the outsiders, not create them.
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The Ancient Value on Hospitality
In the ancient world if you wanted to highlight the egregious nature of a particular group of people, one way you might do so would be to describe how they treated outsiders.
Conversely, if you wanted to highlight the virtue of a particular tribe/village/etc, one way you might do so would be to emphasize their caring posture towards the outsiders.
The Greeks eventually called this posture xenia, which roughly translated means, “guest friendship.”
Or, in our modern vernacular, hospitality.
Put all together, then, it’s no understatement to say that in the ancient world the more wicked or debased your group was, the more inhospitable you were.
Whereas, the greater you demonstrated hospitality to the foreigner among you, the more you would be described as virtuous, morally upright, and good.
I realize this might sound odd to us modern folk. Sure, we think good-hospitality is laudable, and we might bristle or get annoyed when treated inhospitably. But our conception of “hospitality,” I would argue, is related-to but also miles-away-from how it was practiced and how it was experienced several thousands years ago.
For us it more or less boils down to making sure people get enough to eat when they come to our house, or have clean linens if they’re staying the night. But for the ancient world, it went much, muuuuuch deeper than that. It was often times a life-or-death thing. To care for the outsider was to ensure they could live to see another day.
Stories to Illustrate Hospitality
In fact, we have surviving manuscripts of ancient stories passed down from generation to generation that illustrate what I’m talking about.
Here’s one such ancient story.
Two foreigners arrive late one night to a town whose reputation for wickedness is well-known. The foreigners receive shelter and provisions at one home in particular, highlighting the stark contrast between the host and the rest of the wicked town. The two foreigners reveal to their hospitable hosts that they have come that night on a divine mission to destroy the town. However, due to the generous hospitality shown them, the two foreigners want to save their hosts and urge them to leave town immediately, not looking back as they go. When the escaping family crosses the borders of town they glance behind them and witness the utter destruction of the entire city and all the wicked occupants therein.
Recognize that story?
Though it sounds like the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (from Genesis 19), it is actually the story of Baucis and Philemon as told by the Roman poet, Ovid, in his masterpiece, Metamorphoses. The two foreigners were Zeus and Hermes who disguised themselves as ordinary peasants and were rejected by the wicked people in the town—but received by Baucis and Philemon.
The two hosts in this story represented the epitome of showing hospitality in the ancient world. As the embodiment of this pious posture, their story showcased one of the ancient world’s most cherished virtues.
If you want to pause and go read Genesis 19 and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction, you’ll note the similarities between it and Metamorphoses. This is not coincidence. As mentioned, these are simply two (of likely more) stories/myths/legends that ancient cultures told and re-told as ways to carry the torch of xenia.
The newly liberated Hebrew people, fresh out of the chains of Pharaoh’s Egypt, were following Moses toward a promised land. Those 40 years in the wilderness were the formative decades for this relatively new-ish tribe, and they were determined to do things differently. As Leviticus 18 points out, they were committed to live holy (set apart), distinct from the Egyptians from whence they came, and from the Canaanites (who inhabited the land they were intending to conquer). The overarching goal form them was to live in such a way that showed the world that YHWH was the most holy, most high, bestest-of-the-best gods.
One major way they could do that?
Be the most hospitable people in the world.
Now, it quickly gets confusing and complicated and convoluted when you hold up on one hand this calling to hospitality, while on the other hand you know that what’s coming is an utter wiping out of the Canaanites. How Israel could’ve held that tension is beyond me.
But the bigger point I’m making here is that the story found in Genesis 19, where servants of God were sent to the notoriously wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to confirm if they were indeed as evil as had been reported, was Israel’s version of Metamorphoses. Using the classic conventions of this illustrate-the-value-of-hospitality narrative, combined with characters from their own heritage (Abraham, Lot, etc), Israel baked into their history a divine calling toward hospitality, as well as a divine warning against inhospitality.
(Mis)Using Genesis 19 as a Clobber Passage
Of course, this is not how many people in the church today understand the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, is it?
No, unfortunately Genesis 19 has become one of the six “Clobber Passages” (aka, the verses in the Bible historically misused to justify discrimination against gay people).
Why has it been misused like this? Well, a proper answer to that deserves much more space, but in short you could put it like this: because the men of Sodom surrounded Lot’s house and demanded that he turn over the two outsiders to them so that they could force themselves (sexually) upon the strangers.
From that (misunderstood) detail has emerged the conclusion that God destroyed these ancient cities over the sin of “homosexuality.”
What a tragedy. What an awful, awful take away from this story.
Look, I don’t have time or space here to get in to it all (but there’s good news! Keep reading and you’ll see…), but for now I just want to point out that we actually don’t even have to work that hard to interpret and understand this story!
Because four other characters/writers/people from the Bible have done that work for us.
The prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Jesus himself all are on record as to why Sodom and Gomorrah sucked so bad.
Failure to do what is right, seek justice, or defend the oppressed. -Isaiah
Adulterers, liars, and misuse of power. -Jeremiah
Arrogant, and refused to use their resources to help those in need. -Ezekiel
Rejecting people and failing to show hospitality. -Jesus
I’ll wrap with these closing words from my chapter on Sodom and Gomorrah in UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality
What if we learned from our misuse of this Clobber Passage and instead took to heart the real message of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah? Historically this passage has been seen as evidence for a God who opposes homosexuality so ardently that God would destroy entire cities as a result. It has been a story used to separate the LGBTQ community from the rest of the flock, to keep them as outsiders. And yet, when understood properly, the entire point of Genesis 19 is that the people of God are called to be people who receive the outcast and the outsiders, not create them.
What if this story became a rallying point for calling the Church back to the importance of hospitality? Of greeting people who are outside, embracing them, and leading them inside for nourishment and rest?
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Pass it on.
It’s always been strange to me why people think this refers to God’s wrath against gay people. It says all the men of the city young and old came out to Lot’s house. Do readers believe every man in the city was GAY?? A city of nothing but gay men! The meaning obviously was speaking of something concerning the general population not a minority group of people. It wasn’t addressing gay people at all.
Utter rubbish