Lent Day 7: The Sin of Sodom

Scripture (2 Peter 2:4-21) can be found here.

"The Fall of Rebellious Angels"
Fran Floris (1544)
Cathedral of Antwerp.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Here's how it goes;

God sent the sinful angels to hell.

God saved Noah & family, but drowned the world.

God turned Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, because of.....

Here's where we have a problem. It's a big one. The writer of this (most scholars don't think it's Peter) has a thoroughly un-Jewish interpretation of the Sodom and Gomorrah story. This writer believes the cities were destroyed by God because of illicit sex. Looking at the Greek original, this passage uses words such as "dissolute ones," "wantonness," "flesh-following," "lust," and "defiling."

The words I don't see, and which I would expect to see, are more like "violent," "brutal," "marauding."

The writer of this passage apparently believes that the sin of Sodom is same-sex sexual activity. This is an incorrect interpretation: the sin of Sodom is inhospitality.

Hospitality is a primary moral and cultural absolute in the Biblical world. Hospitality is to be offered to all, including enemies. To violate the laws of hospitality is to upend a tradition so powerful, it rocks the foundations of society.

In the passage in question (Genesis 19), two messengers/ angels are traveling from a meeting with Sarah and Abraham to Sodom. In Sodom, Lot offers them hospitality, but the men of the city come to the door, demanding that Lot serve up the strangers so that they may "know" them. (Lot offers his two unmarried daughters to the mob. The story offers this as an example of hospitality to the strangers, an extraordinary attempt to protect his quests. Obviously, to you and me, it's abhorrent and shocking.) Ezekiel attributes the attempted rape by the mob to serious local character flaws, including the refusal of Sodom to help those in need. Travelers/ strangers/ aliens fall into this category of the needy.

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. ~ Ezekiel 16:49

In the ancient world, rape was a tool of warfare, and it was an act of violence; if men raped other men, it was a particular form of humiliation (due to cultural judgements of active,"male" versus passive "female" roles in sexual intercourse). In other words, it was much as it is today. Rape--whether of a man or a woman-- is not a sexual crime. Rape is not an expression of sexuality. It's an expression of brutality. God condemned Sodom because of an attempted gang rape of God's messengers/ angels.

On its way to make a point about God's execution of justice, the writer of 2 Peter goes in the same direction as other New Testament writers, using Sodom as an example of aberrant sexual behavior.  Rape is aberrant behavior, alright-- but to make it about sexuality is to fully misunderstand the crime. In this case, it is to misunderstand exactly what God's judgement means. God judges those who do not help those in need, and travelers/ aliens/ refugees are mentioned over and over again in the bible, in exactly this context.

Lent Day 6: Nervous Laughter, Part I

Scripture passages can be found here (Zechariah 3:1-10, for today) and here (2 Peter 2:4-21, for tomorrow). Hold on to your hats!

When I finished the last verse of this morning's passages, I mumbled, "Wow, talk about deep cuts." I mumbled this aloud, to myself, as there was no one else there (though there may be a squirrel lurking in the attic just above where I read in the morning...). Deep cuts, as in, less frequently heard tracks from albums. As in, I bet myself a nickel that neither of these texts was in the lectionary, because, boy howdy, I'da remembered them. I won. They're not there.

The prophet Zechariah is a post-exilic truth-teller, whose great concern is the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and the re-establishment there of prayer and worship, under the authority of the priesthood. This is a bittersweet time in the history of God's covenant people. The exile is over, and the people-- those who have survived, and the new generations that have arisen-- are returning to Jerusalem. And there is joy about the rebuilding of the Temple, though it is not and will never be the Temple of Solomon. That loss remains a permanent scar on the communal psyche.

This passage from Zechariah (which is attributed to the prophet, but...???) involves the high priest Joshua and an angel and Satan. Now, because this is the Hebrew Scriptures, Satan isn't The Devil, as Christians have learned to think of him; here, he's a member of the heavenly court whose job it is to make sure mortals are as moral as they try to appear. In Hebrew, it's Ha Satan, which means, literally, The Tempter, or The Tester, or The Accuser. (A little like that guy Jesus ran into in the wilderness.)

And now that it's afternoon and I've refreshed my memory about all this (ahem), the scene as it unfolds makes a little more sense. But at 6:45 this morning, it was kind of like...

Joshua, the High Priest.* Note the turban.

OK, there's a priest named Joshua (vaguely familiar). But his clothes are dirty? And we're gonna take them off.. ok, I guess. They're stand-ins for guilt. IT'S A METAPHOR.

But then, even in my early morning stupor, there was something oddly moving about "Let them put a clean turban on his head." And suddenly, to me, Joshua was every homeless man I've seen on the streets of the city, filthy clothes, rotting teeth, who had a mother who loved him and a job after the army for which he wore a jacket and tie. And even in my semi-conscious state, I could envision this man, realizing he had another chance after it had seemed as if that was someone else's life, an existence he could only dimly remember. And the gravity of his office is engraved on some kind of stone (jewel?), and it represents his promise that, yes, yes, we can make this our home again, yes, I promise to walk in God's ways and keep these requirements, and is it true? That all of us are welcome here, and we will, truly, live, each one, under their vine and fig tree (or, in their little apartment), in peace, unafraid?



* Image: From "Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum," published by Guillaume Rouille (1518?-1589). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Lent Day 5: The Fierce Protection of a Motherly God

Scripture, Psalm 17, can be found here...

I'll begin with my favorite quote from John Calvin-- in fact, probably the only thing I can even reasonably paraphrase from his prodigious body of work. But I don't have to paraphrase it here; I can quote directly. About the book of Psalms, he wrote:

I have been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately, “An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul;” for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror.*

The more I allow the psalms to soak into my heart, my psyche, the more I agree with Calvin.

Psalm 17 is an exquisite expression of fear combined with, and finally conquered by, trust. The NRSV titles it "A Prayer for Deliverance from Persecutors," and as the psalm unfolds, we take in images of pursuit, tracking down, surrounding. These are combined with descriptions of assaults on character, lies spread by pitiless hearts and arrogant speech.

It isn't just iron age kings who have to go through these things. I have friends...

One image from this psalm calls to me, and it's an image I first learned, not by hearing or reading scripture, but from my mother's mouth.

"You are the apple of my eye," she said.

As a child I understood this to mean something like, "You are sweet," or "You are sweet to look at." I knew it was said in love and tenderness. But it was a confusing thing to hear; it didn't really make sense (especially to a kid who probably hadn't yet taken to apples).

Here, we read it in the context of pursuit, and paired with another (illuminating) image:

Guard me as the apple of your eye; 
hide me in the shadow of your wings. ~ Ps. 17:8 

The Hebrew of the first part of the verse reads, literally, "Keep/ guard me as the apple/pupil, daughter of the eye."

In his commentary (17:7-9), Calvin notes that the eye is the tenderest part of the body. To guard someone in this way, then, is to protect them as you would protect your own most vulnerable parts.
And, it's fascinating to me (since I first heard this phrase as a mother's expression of love) that "daughter" is used here, hidden in the Hebrew-- does that mean the daughter is one's greatest vulnerability, and therefore most fervently to be protected? The image is paired with an explicitly motherly image--the mother bird's instinctive use of her wings to cover, hide, and protect her young.

For me, this psalm of David, most likely associated with one of the many battles in which he found himself, before and after becoming king, also speaks of mothers and daughters, and, in the best cases, the deep trust the daughter has that her mother will protect her in every possible way.

Because it is a psalm, it is a promise, even to those of us whose parents failed to live up to our needs or hopes, that God is steadfast and present, loving and protecting.

The love of God will not disappoint us.


*John Calvin, "The Author's Preface," Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. 1.

Lent Day 4: Broken Spirits

Continuing with Exodus 6:1-13, which can be found here...

The second thing I discovered--or rediscovered-- in this passage is a description of Moses conveying God's promise of release to the Israelites, but their inability to believe or trust in that promise.

"Moses told this [i.e., God's plan and promise for rescue] to the Israelites; but they would not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery." ~Exodus 6:9

Following Stephen's shrill denunciation of Israel's unfaithfulness in Thursday's Acts passage, this came as balm to my soul.

Of course, they didn't / couldn't believe. Their spirits were broken. Their hearts were broken. All they knew was the cruelty of slavery.

In this year that marks the four hundredth anniversary of slaves arriving in what was then called "the new world," the territory that would become the United States, Americans have a vivid picture of how long it takes communities to recover from the brokenness of spirit slavery creates-- especially if the slavers never, truly, let go their view of the slaves as irredeemably "other." Especially if the forces of racial supremacy cling to the notion that, in being made to end the practice of slavery, their
"rights" were denied. Especially if, in addition to clinging to the notion that the enslaved peoples were innately inferior, those who claim racial supremacy continue to be a force to create systems of oppression and inequality, and then blame the peoples they continue to oppress for the brokenness of their communities.

The brokenness flows from generation to generation, though the resilience of peoples who have been oppressed cannot be underestimated. Despite the continuing systems of oppression, those who have been oppressed continue to flourish and to distinguish themselves in every scholarly field, in every technological enterprise, in every art and science, in every kind of political endeavor, and as leaders who inspire both greatness and goodness. The scriptural narrative recognizes this, and gives it voice. It also promises the accompaniment of God along the stony path from broken spirit to freedom and abundant life.

Lent Day 3: The Genderqueer Names of God

Scripture (Exodus 6:1-13) can be found here.

Yesterday, we read a New Testament deacon's account of the call of Moses; today we go to the source, the book of Exodus, and read as God lays out more detail for the ways in which God will rescue the Israelites from slavery.

God begins by establishing relationship:

“I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as "God Almighty," but by my name ‘The LORD’ I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they resided as aliens." ~Exodus 6:2b-5

The "Tetragrammaton"-- Four letters, the Unspeakable Name

God reminds Moses of God's name: the LORD. When we read LORD in the Hebrew Scriptures (in small caps, which is not a feature available here, but you can see it at the link at Bible Gateway), we are reading four letters revealed to Moses as God's name: they translate, roughly, to YHWH. They are a Hebrew word, which means "I am who am," or "I am who I am," or "I will be who I will be." This is the name God revealed at that burning bush, and in Jewish tradition it is so holy as to be unpronounceable. It is so holy, that a Hebrew word meaning "Lord" (in the medieval, lord of the manor sense, or the sense of someone of higher social status than most everyone else) is substituted when passages containing the four letters are read aloud.

It is so holy, that Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative), the seminary located across the street from the seminary I attended, had a room into which were placed all written versions of the name when the papers or books that contained them were being discarded. It is so holy, you cannot even throw away or recycle a piece of paper on which it is written in the usual way.

But God also reminds Moses of the name "God Almighty," which, footnotes will tell you, "is the traditional rendering of the Hebrew El Shaddai." El Shaddai literally means either "God of the Mountains" or "God with Breasts/ Breasted God." *

El Shaddai is a name that insinuates female function, if not gender; while YHWH is a name that is traditionally understood (and certainly pronouned) to have male gender.

It would seem that God takes on genderqueer naming in scripture. This is hidden to anyone who doesn't hear or read the original Hebrew and understand it. This, we might infer, has been carefully hidden.

I'll address the second discover in tomorrow's post.
~ ~ ~

* Though I had learned the meaning of El Shaddai while studying Hebrew in seminary, I was grateful to the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney for affirming this reading of the name during my study leave this winter.

Lent Day 2: Words of a Witness

Scripture (Acts 7:30-34) can be found here...

* A word about the selection of passages I'm writing about through Lent, below.

This morning we are plunked down in the middle of the famous "speech" of Stephen before the council of High Priests. First, some background.

Stephen was one of the first deacons chosen by the early church; he was one of the "Hellenists" (aka, Greeks/ Gentiles) chosen to remedy unfair food distribution to widows, based, alas, on ethnic/ religious background. (After a utopian beginning to the Acts of the Apostles, the people of the church start to settle into old, socially determined patterns of prejudice.) Stephen is immediately heaped with praise ("a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit"), and seen to perform "wonders. and signs among the people." Before long, he is arrested and brought before the council. In his defense, he makes a long and detailed speech, recounting the history of God's covenant people, beginning with Abraham.

So, picture this: This gentile guy is trying to school the descendants of Aaron on Jewish history. And his focus, I'm sorry to say, is one of those things that raises concerns about anti-Semitism in the New Testament. According to the Jewish Annotated New Testament, Stephen's speech highlights the disobedience of the Israelites. The Hebrew Scriptures do this too, of course (see: pretty much all the prophets), but they do so in the context of God's steadfast love and continued faithfulness to God's covenant people. Stephen's overall narrative seems to highlight the ways in which people can be called by God, but disbelieved/ persecuted by God's people. Like Jesus. Like Stephen.

When we catch up with him today, Stephen has gotten as far as the call of Moses, which he summarizes succinctly. Forty years after Moses had to vamoose out of Egypt because he killed a guy (a harsh taskmaster who was abusing Hebrew slaves), God's messenger appears to him in the wilderness, in the flame of a burning bush.

"Burning Bush/ Tree of Life" quilt; made by Janet Rutkowski

Moses is amazed. He stops. He turns aside to look at it.

God identifies Godself as the God of Moses' ancestors.

God tells Moses to remove his sandals, as he is standing on holy ground.

God tells Moses: God has heard the cries of the oppressed Israelites, and has come to bring rescue.

God tells Moses: "Come, now, I will send you to Egypt."

I want to say this about Stephen: He paid attention when learning his catechism. Yes, he has heard and interprets some things through his own outsider (non-Jewish) lens, which sometimes means he leans heavily on what sounds like anti-Jewish bias, which is a problem to be examined by Jesus-followers of any age.

But he has made the story his own. He tells the story of Moses' call simply, reverently, and with awe of his own, because he understands that ours is a God who sometimes appears in unexpected places and at unexpected times. Ours is a God who both calls us to follow today, where we are and as we are, but who also roots us in story. This story. Our story. Our is a God who yet may appear to us in burning shrubbery, and that is both fantastical and, actually, true. Stephen has made God's story his story, and he tells it with gusto. In the end, it gets him killed.

Stephen gives witness to all God has done-- before him, and through him, and into a future he will participate in as the first named martyr in the New Testament. "Martyr" is a Greek word that simply means, witness. Today, Stephen's witness reminds us that God called Moses, and God called him, and God calls you and  God calls me-- every day, in new and unexpected ways.


* About those scripture passages:  A new Presbyterian Church (USA) Book of Common Worship was released in 2018, and it is a fantastic resource for so many reasons (including a new, inclusive marriage liturgy). One of the big surprises for me was the option of a new (to me) Daily Lectionary that is tied to the Sunday readings. In the previous edition, the Daily Lectionary was a two-year cycle and was not connected in any way to the Sunday Revised Common Lectionary, a three-year cycle. 

This year I am reading (and using for these reflections) the new three-year, RCL Daily Lectionary option, which is designed to bridge the Sunday readings-- to keep us in themes that are connected to where the RCL takes us, Sunday to Sunday. 

Ash Wednesday

Full scripture text can be found here.

For those of us reading from the Revised Common Lectionary, this passage from Joel is on offer every single Ash Wednesday. It begins with an alarming note:

Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! 
      Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, 
for the day of the Lord is coming, 
      it is near— a day of darkness and gloom, 
      a day of clouds and thick darkness! ~ Joel 2:1-2a

If it sounds frightening, that's because it is supposed to frighten. The part we skip-- verses 3 through 11-- describe the onslaught of an army... of locusts. Their work is described in the kind of detail that makes first world readers squirm. Think back to that time you discovered black ants marching through your kitchen and multiply it by a quadrillion, and you get the picture. Add to this that the context tells us this is an intentional assault, at the very least allowed by God, and you begin to understand the dismay and horror facing the original audience for the prophet.

But, as is so often the case in scripture-- yes, in the Hebrew scriptures, as well as in the Christian testament-- there is an escape clause.

Yet even now, says the Lord,
    return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
    rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God,
    for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
    and relents from punishing.  ~Joel 2:12-13

God suddenly appears like Felicity Huffman's character, Lynette Scavo, in "Desperate Housewives," trying to discipline her twin sons (for whom the word "hellion" seems to have been coined). (For those of you who never basked in the joys of watching this particular show, the early years of "DH" depict Lynette, who really was made to be a CEO, in a role in which she is uneasy: at home with four children). In one episode we see the boys, who have just done some new dreadful thing, sitting at a table, and Lynette is scowling down at them. She has laid out before them implements of "torture"-- a hairbrush, a spatula, even a good, old-fashioned, "hickory switch." Lynette begins to tell the boys what is going to happen to them, in frightening detail. They begin to cry and beg for mercy. The mother responds:

Too late. You STOLE. And then you LIED. Even worse, you made me look bad in front of Mrs. McCluskey, who you know is Mommy's sworn enemy." So, she says, “Pick your poison.” gesturing to the aforementioned instruments of torture: "How about a belt? It's a classic." She runs through the rest of the choices, as the boys continue to wail that they don't want to be spanked. Lynnette reminds them that "thieves get spanked, that's just the way it works." 

Unless! Unless they swear never to steal again and write Mrs. McCluskey a nice letter of apology. And the scene plays out exactly as the viewer expects. No spanking. No punishment (unless you count a letter of apology as punishment...which...maybe.)

The Scavo twins have already done exactly what God has asked the people to do: to return with all their hearts... or, at least, with weeping and mourning. Here is the unvarnished truth: Lynette doesn't want to spank her sons. God doesn't want to send a plague of crop-killers. What Lynette wants, I am guessing, is pretty much what God wants: Relationship. Respect. Acknowledgement of who has the power and the authority.

But above all that? And more crucially important than all that? Love.

In this Ash Wednesday text, we are asked... really, we are begged... to return to the Lord, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. For those convinced there is a difference between the God of the Hebrew Scriptures and the God shown in Jesus-- this description of God shows up again and again in the Old Testament. This is who God IS. Someone who wants us to rend our hearts sufficiently to create an opening for God-- what Teresa of Avila called, an "interior castle" (el castillo interior), a place where, not only might the Holy One dwell, but where we might actually encounter God.

Lent asks us to create that space by certain practices. First, we take on the sign of the ashes, a mark of the "frailty and uncertainty of human life," and a sign of the penitence of a particular community. This part is important: Lent is a practice taken up in community. We have one another for support. This is never, ever a solo flight.

Then, we are invited to

"observe a holy Lent
by self-examination and penitence,
by prayer and fasting,
by works of love,
and by reading and meditating on the Word of God."

For most of us, taking on one or two of these will make a significant, God-shaped "dent" in our lives. Getting up a little earlier to do that reading and meditation, or carving out time in the evening for prayer. To take on all of them would require a fairly radical re-ordering of most of our lives.

It is possible that is exactly what we need to do.

Praying, for all of us, a holy Lent, and an encounter with God in our own interior castles.