This morning we are reading the account of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19. Of course, the names of these cities have become synonymous with sin and wickedness of all kinds and God’s ultimate fiery judgment. Even today, some cities are described as modern Sodom’s and when they experience disasters some attribute that to their sinfulness. For instance, you may remember Franklin Graham’s words on why Katrina struck New Orleans:
At a speech in Virginia, he said, “This is one wicked city, OK? It’s known for Mardi Gras, for Satan worship. It’s known for sex perversion. It’s known for every type of drugs and alcohol and the orgies and all of these things that go on down there in New Orleans. Reverend Graham continued, “There’s been a black spiritual cloud over New Orleans for years. They believe God is going to use that storm to bring revival.”
Others have identified Las Vegas, actually called Sin City, as our own Sodom:
One resident pastor likened it to the city of Pergamum in the book of Revelation:
During John’s time it was believed by the people that Satan’s throne actually existed in Pergamum and it seems Christ is confirming this belief. The city was surrounded by a society that was non-Christian and its values, standards and lack of morals permeated the population. Satan can be in only one place and in Revelation we are told he can be in a human body. But he has an efficient organization of millions of fallen angels and demons that are against Christianity and the world. They are everywhere. Las Vegas, like Pergamum, can be the most difficult place for a Christian to live because of the tremendous Satanic and sinful influences. Las Vegas, as in Pergamum, many Christians have stayed true and faithful to the teachings of Christ. However, Las Vegas like Pergamum, believers can be easily deceived. Christians believe they can co-exist with the world and believe that living as the world does is acceptable.
Some polls have identified others as Hollywood, Berkeley, California, and Washington, D.C. According to a study by the American Bible Society the two most godless and least Bible-minded cities in America are Providence, R.I and Bedford Mass. Who would have guessed that?
Paul is probably thinking of Sodom and Gomorrah in his letter to the Romans when he wrote:
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
We could stop here and for many people they would think the sin of the people of Sodom was homosexuality. In fact, the crime of sodomy is named after this city and one convicted of it would have been labeled a Sodomite for the balance of their lives – as was Oscar Wilde, the Irish poet and playwright who spent two years in prison for the crime of sodomy. But there is far more to the sins of Sodom than homosexuality. In fact, in Ezekiel 16, their sin is not attached to homosexuality at all. “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”
Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
If these were crimes then we would be overrun with sodomites. Almost all of us would carry that label.
Maybe Paul was thinking of Rome itself or the city of Corinth that was notorious for its own list of sins and corruption.
All through history there have been cities and particular areas of cities like Amsterdam, Paris, London, New York, San Francisco described at times in their lives as Sodom and Gomorrah. It seems the evil it had perfected was not eliminated but became a virus that spread across the world. Cities are marvelous places but they also contain some of the worst and most concentrated examples of sin in the world.
However, it seems none of them have become synonymous with wickedness in the same way as Sodom and Gomorrah. They are the gold standard for depravity and the ultimate destructive effects of sin in a society.
It is not their sin or their fate that I want to look at this morning. It is the intercession of Abraham in Chapter 18.
We assume he was bargaining with the Lord because his nephew Lot was living there. I’m not sure that is the whole picture. Yes, Lot and his family were now established citizens of Sodom but why would Abraham be interested in an entire city and not just ask for his own family to be spared? In fact, why would Abraham resist God’s own judgment on such wickedness? I would think he would consider it well-deserved and as we used to say they were only getting their “comeuppance.” Are you familiar with the word “schadenfreude”? It describes the feeling we have when someone we despise gets what is coming to them. It is finding joy in their misfortune or the well-deserved fall from the pedestal. I am more than familiar with it as insidious and life killing as it is. As well, there are many examples in the Bible that would put Abraham in good company with kings and prophets praying that evil men and nations would be judged harshly by a righteous God. After all, what is the value of judgment if it is not handed out to those who deserve it? Why would Abraham be an exception? Why would he argue for mercy for those who deserve no mercy?
As well, why did Abraham get away with questioning God’s own sense of justice. “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” You remember Jonah’s experience with resisting God’s desire to see Nineveh repent. You remember God’s response to Job’s cry of innocence:
“Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me…
Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself?
Do you have an arm like God’s,
and can your voice thunder like his?
Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor,
and clothe yourself in honor and majesty.
Unleash the fury of your wrath,
look at all who are proud and bring them low,
look at all who are proud and humble them,
crush the wicked where they stand.
Bury them all in the dust together;
shroud their faces in the grave
Then I myself will admit to you
that your own right hand can save you.”
How did Paul respond when people questioned God’s treatment of Pharoah?
For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?
God has his own sense of justice whether it is to save – like Nineveh – or to destroy – like Sodom and Pharoah. Who are we to argue or bargain?
But Abraham and later Moses and then ultimately Jesus are our examples of figures who intercede not only for good people but for wicked and undeserving people. Instead of rejoicing in their fate they risk their own lives in pleading to God for those who fully deserve destruction.
Moses in Numbers 14:19
“In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.”
Jesus upon entering Jerusalem speaks about how he weeps over them in spite of what they have done to those who came before him.
At his crucifixion he says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.”
All of this goes back to Abraham interceding for a totally wicked city. A city where truly none are righteous – no not one. There was no good argument for God’s listening to Abraham’s bargaining.
As Baptists we talk a great deal about the priesthood of all believers and too often we take that to mean we are all free to interpret Scripture the way we choose. We have no creeds and call no man father. We do not need anyone to go before God for us as we can approach the throne ourselves with no other priest. But, in emphasizing personal agency and freedom as much as we have we have neglected the real work of the priesthood of believers and that is to intercede for others – even wicked and depraved others. Yes, we do not need a priest to speak to God for us but we have also overlooked the responsibility we have as priests. We are to be intercessors in the world.
This is more than responding glibly to a request for prayer. It is obviously more than saying our thoughts and prayers are with the people in Ukraine or those who have experienced a natural disaster through no fault of their own. It is understanding the role you play as a priest in the lives of other people. No, you cannot be a priest to the whole world but you do have a parish of your own when you think about it. You do have people whom you can tend and to whom you can pay attention.
For me, that is the remarkable part of the story of Sodom. It is the example of Abraham challenging God’s sense of justice at his own peril to plead for wicked people. It is not shrugging his shoulders and accepting the fate of people who deserve everything that is coming to them and does eventually. It is having such a relationship with an Almighty God that would give him the freedom and even sense of responsibility to do this. For me, it is almost beyond belief that he would take such a risk and do this for these people and yet when God tells him to sacrifice his own son there are no prayers on his part for God to spare him. There is nothing but silence between the time God speaks and he leaves the next morning for Mt. Moriah. How can that be? It is beyond me that he pleads more for those who deserve destruction than for the preservation of his own son and the promise God has given. This is faith of a different kind. It is not just the faith to believe in what God has promised but the faith that includes pleading for the wicked.
Of course, Scripture is full of those who pray for others but that does not always mean those prayers are answered. There are many answered but you could say that even the final prayer of Jesus has yet to be answered. Look at John 17
“I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.
“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.’
Thousands of years later and look at where we are. Have we become one? Have we been brought to complete unity? Does the world know that Jesus was sent into the world because of the love that we show for each other?
Hardly..but we don’t stop praying for unity. We don’t stop praying what Jesus himself prayed and continues to pray. That we would be as one.
I may have told you before about my own practice of intercessory prayer. It began with offering to pray for one person seriously and not just adding them to a series of quick pauses on a longer list. I even put their name on a lamp that I turned on and off every day. It was an easy way to remember to pray or as Paul says to simply mention them to God. The number of commitments grew over time and now there are names on every lamp I turn on and off in the house. But here is what has changed. In the beginning I had a very specific prayer for them. “Heal their cancer. Bring back their wayward child. Carry them through this divorce.” I was not only praying but waiting on God to answer the prayer in a way I could celebrate or feel some sense of accomplishment. I wanted to see a change or a result. I wanted to experience the power of prayer by my definition. But now I simply pray for them. It is almost like laying my hand on their head one person at a time as I move through the house as a priest would do. It is not a prayer for a specific answer but a simple prayer and blessing on each of them. It is true what Paul said about the Holy Spirit. We do come to the point – and it is a good thing for me – that we do not know what to pray for but we depend on the Spirit to do the work of application. For me that has become the power of prayer.
I admit I do not have any wicked people, sodomites or cities fit for destruction for whom I pray. I know I should plead for them as well but I only have my little congregation and while that changes from time to time as any congregation does it is enough for me to know that I can intercede.