Every Thursday morning I meet with a group of pastors for some devotional time and discussion. A few weeks ago, the pastor leading us brought us into a discussion about “dancing” with Christ and how we should allow God to lead us. While it started as a metaphorical example, it eventually turned into a talk about the very real concept of dancing. A number of the pastors there are in their 50′s and 60′s and many of them told us that they, to this day, have an internal issue with being in situations where they are called upon to dance.
One even said that he felt weird dancing with his daughter at her wedding. It was just something they were taught growing up. It was something beat into them.
“Don’t smoke, cuss or chew or go with girls who do” was the motto. (Now I’m not saying those are the kind of girls I like to go with but those are the kind of girls I like to go with.)
It struck me as interesting that while I am of a generation that got to hear about the evils of dancing (it wasn’t that long ago that Baylor finally officially had dances instead of “foot functions”), the people I went to seminary with who are a good 10 years younger than I am would think this discussion about dancing was arcane.
Well, they wouldn’t have used the term arcane. They would have tilted their heads and said, “You people are old. We don’t worry about that.”
They weren’t brought up with this mindset about dancing being one of our pet sins. But that is what it is… a pet sin.
For some, it’s dancing. For others, smoking. It’s a sin that we can look at and say, “See! Look at those pagans. We aren’t them!”

That leads us to our passage today. To Genesis 19 and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
We tell stories from the Bible. There are lots of them but we really like to tell this one.
Because this story is all about one of our pet sins.

This story teaches us all about those evil homosexuals and when we pull out Romans 1:27 and add it to this, well, shoot, it’s plain to see that being gay is downright the worst sin of all sins.
We see that it was a great and wonderful thing that God rooted them out for it and destroyed them.

But what if the story wasn’t about that? What if it didn’t mean that to the people reading it? What if that wasn’t what the person who wrote it wanted us to get out of it?

See, I had this version of that story pushed on me my entire life. But I read something one day. I read the book of Ezekiel. Sure, Ol’ Zeke was a crazy man but he had some good stuff to say. And one of the things he tells us is why Sodom was destroyed.
In Ch.16, Ezekiel makes it pretty clear that they met their end because they were arrogant. They were overfed. They were unconcerned and haughty. They didn’t help the poor and needy.

I swear I never heard that explanation in any Sunday school growing up.

Because it’s easier to point to the “evil gays” and be thankful that we aren’t them. It’s a whole lot harder to read the actual explanation of the event because that might hit closer to home.
We like to focus on one thing that happened in that town but pass over the other things. What makes it really funny is that Zeke tells us that Sodom wasn’t half as bad as Jerusalem was during his time. He actually has the audacity to tell us that it will be easier on the children of Sodom in the end than on the people of Jerusalem because the Israelites had been worse. Much, much worse.

All of this wrapped up in the concept of hospitality.

The Old Testament meaning of that word is a little different than what it means today. This isn’t about who can serve the best tea or how fancy your napkins are.
Hospitality represented who you were to your community. How you treated each other, especially the foreigner and the outsider was a reflection of who your entire family was. We think it atrocious that Lot would want to hand over his daughters to the mob instead of the strangers but that is what hospitality meant to them in that culture. It would bring less shame on his house to have his daughters abused than to give over the foreigners.

This was Sodom’s shame. They cared so little for others that nothing was out of bounds for them. They cared so little for how they represented their community, their families, their God, that they would mistreat anyone for any reason as long as it benefited them in the moment.

This idea of hospitality focused on the whole of the people because, as we have seen often now, it was for the people of God because it directly reflected on God.

Compare that to our culture and how Christianity has embraced it.

We embrace folk religion. We say things to each other like “God helps those who help themselves”. Which not only isn’t in the Bible but is pretty much the opposite of who God helps.

This idea is not “social justice”. This is not an example of the empire of man taking and giving to whomever it wants. This is not a forced redistribution of wealth.
What makes this godly and important is the fact that it is volunteer, it is from the heart to God and his creation.

Take care of those who are poor and needy, not just physically but also spiritually.

Praise those who give out of their poverty.
Emulate those who practice humility.
Comfort the afflicted.

Don’t fall back on pet sins as an excuse to miss out on what truly matters in this world.

Keep it up even if the world tells you differently.

I love my sister. In fact, if you let me talk for any time at all, you’ll find out that she’s actually my hero. She is the strongest, most dedicated person I have ever known.
But growing up, we didn’t get along all that well. I won’t say that I disliked her but I certainly didn’t like her. I can’t tell you how many times she would run into my room or the backyard, knock over all my Star Wars guys and run out of the room.
And I would chase her. So when she would get to mom, she would tell mom that I was chasing her and I was hitting her. Well, mom would shelter the little princess and tell me something about being the older child and how I should treat my sister better.
I might be remembering this wrong but I’m pretty sure that while my mom was saying this, Mari was sticking her tongue out at me from behind my mom’s back.

I hated that. I made me so mad. I had done nothing wrong and here was this little brat ruining my fun and then getting me into trouble for it. I wanted to rip the New Kids posters from her wall. I wanted to tear the heads off her Barbie dolls. I wanted to kill her.
Thankfully I didn’t kill her because I actually like her now. And she only sometimes knocks over my Star Wars guys.

Since then, I have grown up a little. I’ve learned that retaliating, even when I am justified, doesn’t really do much good in the world. I’ve learned the being right and doing right aren’t always the same thing.
Last week, we talked about Isaiah’s view of how the Fulfilled Kingdom of God will look. We saw that there will be no more war, no more weapons. We saw that it is a place where God judges and we saw that we are given a light to walk that path here on earth.

In Romans 12, we find Paul taking up the same idea. He tells us not to repay evil with evil.

So what is evil to us? Can I get back at my sister for what she did to me? After all, she started it!
Can I take your eye if you have taken mine first? Can I take your life if you have taken one first? Can I support the destruction of a nation if they were the ones who did it first?

Maybe it depends on whether or not we like that nation.
Or whose eye was first taken.
Or whose life was first ended.

And when Paul tells us that that we shouldn’t avenge ourselves, that we shouldn’t take revenge… well, come on.. he didn’t mean “never”. That doesn’t make any sense. That’s crazy talk. I mean, leaving it up to God to take vengeance, that doesn’t look like any kind of world we live in. Right?

Which leads me to wonder how much of our culture’s values we have laid over the top of these verses. How much our society’s idea of good and evil do we interpret these verses through? How often do we see these verses through the eyes of the empire?
And if it’s ok to lay on our culture’s values, is it ok to lay over the top of these verses some other culture’s values? Or just the culture we have grown up in and agree with?

And what is easier for you… is this teaching of Paul easier to apply on a small scale, on something personal rather than global. Are you quicker to “forgive and not repay” if it is an evil perpetrated on you personally rather than if it’s on a large group of people or a nation?

Maybe it’s easier for you if it not personal. Maybe when it’s personal, it feels almost impossible to forgive and not repay. I wonder if Paul thought there was a difference between the two.

I think a lot of it comes back again and again to this question…
Do we really believe in the Kingdom of God in the here and now?

In reality, is it just easier to separate our present lives from the kingdom to come? After all, if you’re going heaven anyways, what’s the difference?

And yet it seems that in living out these verses, we are walking in the light of Lord down the path of the established kingdom. And now we have both Isaiah and Paul extolling us to do just that.

A little earlier, Paul tells us to hate what is evil. We are not to make excuses for wrong, we are to forgive it.
We are not to forget about the beatings a husband gives us wife and pretend that it didn’t happen but we are to still wish the better for him. For them both.
And that is why forgiveness and peace can’t exist without justice.

And it does get tricky here because too often we want to play off one extreme or the other. But we are told to live our lives in humility. “To not be wise in our own estimation.” Because Vengeance is the Lord’s. Because he is the only one wise enough to rightly handle it.

For our part, we are told to overcome evil with good. And since we are told to do it, I have to believe it is possible though the world we live in would tell us differently.

The first thing to realize is that we cannot overcome evil with good by simply ignoring it.
We cannot overcome evil with good intentions or well wishes.
No relationship has ever been mended, no violence averted, no hungry stomach filled through platitudes and storybook love.

This must be an active good. It must be us searching out the places good needs to be and giving our lives over to it. Because we are not in our position for privilege but for purpose.

Some would tell you that purpose is… distasteful. Even the people of God tell us that sometimes.
Paul reaches into his scriptures, into Proverbs, and tells us that if we do indeed have this searching, active good that we will heap burning coals upon the other person’s head.

And I can’t tell you how many times I have heard something like this…
Those coals will burn the other person and make them feel ashamed for what they did. Or worse, that those coals mirror the burning they will feel in hell.

But when I think of hot coals in the Bible, I think of Isaiah. When he was called, an angel came to him and placed a red hot coal on his lips and he was forgiven. He was forgiven through that act.

So it seems to me that these coals are not for shame, they are not there to mock, they certainly aren’t there to send people to hell quicker. They are there to forgive.

“And in doing so, you will heap burning coals of forgiveness upon their heads.”

I think this is hard for us to hear and do because we don’t start out following the instructions given in verse 12. We don’t like to be patient in suffering. And we aren’t always great at persisting in prayer.

But we can be. We can be a people who are ardent in spirit, a people who do rejoice in hope, a people who love without hypocrisy. We are the body of the one who showed us how.

Maybe being right and doing right are the same thing after all. It just depends on whose definition of “right” we use.