It's Not About What You Think It's About

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Genesis 19:1-26. Trigger warning for victims of sexual assault and/or sexual abuse.

Last week I said that the early stories in Genesis were etiological stories, that is stories that explain why things are the way they are, but then we transition to the stories of Abraham which begin the story of the people called the Israelites, which are very different. Well, that’s not really a hard and fast rule, because today’s passage is also an origin story. As we heard in the introduction, we are told that the land occupied by Lot had been extremely fertile, it actually says it was like Egypt, but now it’s a waste land, with high temperatures, where little grows, where there are tar pits, it smells like Sulphur and then there are pillars of salt, so what made it that way. Well the story from chapter 19 would seem to answer that question. It’s uninhabitable, it sounds almost as bad as Phoenix, because God destroyed the area raining it with fire and Sulphur, and of course Lot’s wife looked back and was turned into salt, and so this story explains all of that and so we can move on and be done right? I wish it were that easy, but what I can say is that this story is not about homosexuality, which is the most common interpretation, at least for the last 1000 years, but before we get into that, we do have to take a step back.

Lot and Abraham originally travel together to the Promised Land, but as they accumulate possessions, they eventually go their separate ways because their underlings are fighting. As we heard, Lot goes to the cities of the plain, which were Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zoboiim and Bela, sometimes called Baor, and they had been vassals to King Chedorlaomer but then they rebel for some reason. So, King Chedorlaomer gathers some other kings together and they attack and defeat the five cities, taking all their possessions. And while some people fled, we are told that Lot was taken into captivity. When Abraham finds out about this, he goes off and defeats the other kings and returns Lot and his possessions, and the possession of everyone else as well.

Covenant

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Genesis 17:1-22. I missed several weeks due to illness and then vacation, so we skipped over several Genesis stories.

The book of Genesis can be broken into two different types of stories. First, and the way it begins, are with etiological stories, or stories of origin. These are stories that seek to explain why things are the way there are, and these have sometimes been called the primeval stories, or also the myth stories. But, myth here not understood the way we understand the word myth, meaning false and therefore not true. But that’s a modern understanding. Instead, we should see myths as stories that are fundamentally true, even if they aren’t factually true, and thus you can have multiple creation stories that tell different stories and yet contain fundamental truths about God and about the world and about us. And then we move into what are sometimes called the saga stories, or better the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs, beginning with the father and mother of the faith, who begin their journey known as Abram and Sarai. And they also serve as the transition, as we are told that Abram is a descendent of Shem, who was one of the sons of Noah. And so we transition from universal stories, to particular story about the the beginning of the people who will become known as the Israelites although we are not quite there yet.

And so we are introduced to this man as being a descendent of Noah, through his son Shem, although he is many generations later, but God speaks to Abram and tells him to leave his family and his homeland and go to a land that God will show to him, and God will make his name famous and bless him, and through him the world itself will be blessed. And the surprising thing is, Abram leaves. That was just not something that was really done. There is safety and protection in familial ties, and in the land you know and inhabit, and protection in the local gods that you worship, that don’t travel, but live where the people live. And so although we aren’t told anything about Abram before this, including whether he knows anything about this God who talks to him, Abram packs up all his possessions, including, we are told, the people he owns, that is slaves, along with his nephew Lot, and they leave and go to the land which, as we are told, was occupied by the Canaanites.