Mary and Martha of Bethany
July 29, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
Book of Common Prayer lectionary:
Genesis 18: 20-33 How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah
Psalm 138 Confitebor tibi
Colossians 2:6-15 In him the whole fulfness of diety dwells bodily
Luke 11:1-13 He was praying in a certain place
Revised Common Lectionary (trial use:)
Hosea 1:2-10 Go marry a whore
Psalm 85 Benedixisti, Domine
or
Genesis 18:20-32 see above
Psalm 138 see above
Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19) Do not let anyone disqualify you
Luke 11:1-13 see above
For someone who grew up as instinctively private, closeted and shy as I did, it was a surprise for me to find myself at a TV studio in Chicago in 1986, in one of the audiences for the "Oprah Winfrey Show", yelling out "Over here, Oprah" , like the importunate Friend at Midnight, until I got the attention of several million people when she and her cameras focused on me for a few minutes. The subject of the program that day was the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Bowers vs. Hardwick, on the state of Georgia's so-called sodomy statute, which provided prison sentences for unconventional sexual relations--oral or anal, non-missionary position sex--either with the same or the opposite sex, and whether licensed or not. As you know, the Supreme Court upheld the State of Georgia's right (and thereby any state's right) to invade our chambers to see if the law was being violated. Such laws used to be on the books in many states, and sometimes carried the death penalty, but over the years more enlightened legislatures repealed such repression. In Illinois, such laws were struck from the books with the introduction of the Model Penal Code of the American Bar Association in 1961, modelled on the Wolfenden Report to Parliament. I remember the joyous New Year's celebrations among friends in the lesbian and gay community who had helped to get the Code adopted. The sodomy laws are statutes leftover from church law in the middle ages, taken over by the British government, and then the U.S., for secular enforcement when they repudiated church rule over the secular State at the time of the protestant revolution. They survive from a revanchist understanding of human sexuality, no longer acceptable to people who honor human dignity and freedom, and who reject totem and taboo as guides to ethical behavior. Oscar Wilde, remember, was driven to harsh imprisonment in Reading Gaol at the end of the 19th century,for his homosexuality, and to an early grave, martyred by bigotry, in 1900. It amounted to capital punishemnt for him. But thanks to him, "the love that dare not speak its name" will not now shut up and stay closeted. Nevertheless, savage biblical hermeneutic, bloody from the iron maiden and the rack, still rules in yahoo churches. Gays are bashed and crucified on barbed wire fences in our own time. The Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church struggle to get rid of their kinship with Mormonism in homophobia.
The term 'sodomy' which is used for unconventional gender relations, comes by way of misinterpretation from the first pericope for this service. Your local Cro-Magnon preacher uses it, as does the Baptist bigot Jerry Falwell with his benign smile, and here are even a few in our own upscale pulpits who enjoy gay-bashing as a sacrament of their religion.
But it was not only the dingbat preachers like the ignorant yahoo Hiram Crawford, a disgrace to Black people, who were preaching damnation to "gaze an' lezbins" but his eminence grise, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, (R.I.P.) who exacerbated the situation in Chicago by his own inappropriate meddling. He failed once again to consult his own theologial advisers, or was strangely selective in deciding which ones he would harken to. I had a stimulating correspondence by mail with him on the matter, in which I identified his attitude as homophobic, which infuriated him. Years later he had to deal with the false accusation of a wacko seminarian that he had himself trysted with gays. I didn't bother to write Hiram Crawford, whom I doubt could have read my letter without a picture dictionary to explain the words. Mike Flannery's TV show phoned to ask me to appear opposite Homophobe Hiram on his show, and argue about Sodomy. I declined, heeding the warning that those who lie down with dogs will likely get up with fleas. My consenting to appear would only give him an undeserved publicity and dignity so I wouldn't go on a TV show where people yell at each other, like John McLaughlin's Sunday slaughter house (and he a former Jesuit!). Cameras invariably focus in on the raving, yelling, colorful crazies in the audience and avoid thoughtful discussion. TV is doomed to that sort of thing, just as situation comedies are doomed to canned laughter and serials about cops and robber are doomed to titillating violence, mayhem, horror, and death. When Oprah said then that apparently I did not take the Bible literally, I assured her that "No, but I take it seriously instead." Nowadays, fifteen years later, the Mayor, Richard II, proudly rides in the Gay Pride Week parade at the end of June, and the new Cardinal keeps his own Church's homophobia under his watered silk crimson wraps, 'though still denying Dignity to gay people.
In the eighteen chapter of the book Genesis Abraham has an argument with Yahweh, the god whom he has come to know and who is his friend. Yahweh comes to Abraham and remarks that there are two cities--Sodom and Gomorrah--near the Dead Sea, in the plain, and that these two cities have had an outcry raised against them, and Yahweh is considering a trip downstate to these cities to inspect them, to see if the outcry is justified. We are not told what it is that Sodom or Gomorrah actually did to raise the outcry to Yahweh, but Abraham tries to forestall the inspection tour, and to prevent Yahweh's destroying the cities. "Will you destroy the just along with the wicked?" he incredulously asks. "Suppose there are fifty righteous folks left there? Far be it from you, Yahweh my friend," says Abraham, "Far be it from you to destroy the whole city without saving the fifty righeous people left there. Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" And so Yahweh says, "Well, OK, for fifty just people, I'll spare the city." Abraham then begins to haggle, like a Bedouin merchant arguing with his Jewish customer--"Well, supposing I can't find exactly 50--would you believe 45?" And then, "How about 40?" And then, "Now don't get angry, Yahweh, but suppose I offered you thirty really good people?" and Yahweh says, "You've got a deal." Abraham persists, " How about just twenty?" And Yahweh says, "Í'm not hard to please, twenty will be OK.' Abraham quickly says, "Ten." And Yahweh says "Ten is good enough to start a synagogue--it's a minyan, so we'll go with ten." So they have a bargain.
Now Yahweh leaves Abraham's tent, where he had appeared as a trinityof young men, and where he received hospitality from Abraham and Sarah, remember. So they knew what hospitality is. The central point of that reading had been that in etertaining strangers and providing R&R for sojourners, pilgrims, and aliens, we may be receiving Yahweh and the angels. That's the point--hospitality for those who are different from us opens us to the visitation of the divine. Hospitality is essential to the rural summer of communal life, but can be dispensed with in the individualism which is the winter of cities.
Now the story continues--the visit to Sodom of the two angels (one of the angels doesn't come along)--which person of the Trinity dropped out we do not know. Our snippet ends before they get to the city of Sodom but it's all there in the nineteenth chapter, following our pericope for today. They get to Sodom, where they look up Abraham's nephew, whose name is Lot, and he shows them hospitality, asking them to spend the night at his house. Two young men, we are told they are, travelling together without families, without wives, girlfriends, or children, and they want to spend the night out on the town, in the square and in the streets, and Lot warns them instead to accept his offer of hospitality, and takes them home and makes a feast for them and feeds them. But ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY, the account says, young and old, surround the house and demand that the two angelic young men be brought out to them "that we may know them." So "All the People" are unrighteous, and the minyan of ten just persons can't be assembled. Now the Hebrew word here can mean sexual intercourse, or it can mean just plain acquaintance. We know that Adam "knew" his wife and "she conceived." But Lot got the picture pretty quickly and said, "No, you can't treat my guests so." Strangely, he offers them his two daughters instead. Now most of us would say that was carrying hospitality a bit too far, that in order to protect two guys who are travelling together from being "known" by everybody in town he would civilly offer the virgin daughters for ravishing. Well, Lot drags the visitors indoors and locks the gates. When the riotous population of the town tries to break in, Yahweh strikes them blind, and Lot and his family are led by the two angelic young men to safety in a neighboring town, Zoar, and then the volacno erupts, destroying the cities of the plain. Lot's wife looks back to watch the scenario, and is turned into a pillar of salt. And several thousand years of preaching on sexuality that might have instead listened to the prophets and the gospel was turned to ashes, and has been smouldering from Sodom ever since.
Well what we have here is a folk tale, I almost said with tongue in cheek a Fairy Tale. The two guys who came to visit Sodom were probably gay and out cruising. And they were representing Yahweh in this tale, remember. The men of Sodom, on the other hand, sound to us more like a prison full of sadistic donvicts from the set of OZ, topmen looking for angelic lads to punk in the cellblock. The origin of the story may have been to explain the desolation of the "cities of the plain." It is a panegyric against inhospitality, surely. But it has come to be associated with western civilization's hatred of gay sex--it took a long time to do so, for there was no such homophobic hermeneutic for centuries. Abraham, out in the country, showed hospitality--that you can expect of rural people--but stay away from cities, for there are no nomads there and city life is a bummer, as it were.
It is grotesque to use the word Sodomy for same-sex relations. When I came to Nicaragua, I was badly treated by a bishop here, who disagreed with my liberationist faith and politics, questioned my own bishop, FrankGriswold (now Presiding bishop) about my sexual orientation, complete with innuendos, and asked Frank to have me withdrawn from Nicaragua when I questioned the disposition of church funds. Frank did no such thing, and instead assisted my request for early retirement so that I could stay in Nicaragua and start using up my Church Pension reserve. The local "despota" (Greek for 'bishop') treated me inhospitably, and tried to have me fired as liaison officer to the Church here. I refused to be thus "sodomized" -- treated with inhospitality-- and instead founded a house of hospitality, Casa Ave Maria, where I have continued to have a wonderfully blessed ministry of visitation, hospitality, and service, for thirteen years, WBOC (without benefit of clergy). The clergy and people of Nicaragua are good friends, and I remain a priest in good standing of the diocese of Chicago and have learned to be an ecumenical Christian. I avoid the bishop like I avoid the anopheles or aedes aegyptus mosquitoes that vector malaria and dengué fever.
The Bible itself tells us what the sins of Sodom were--Ezekiel says it was pride, prosperity, callousness towards the poor (chapter 16, vss 48-50), Jeremiah (23:14, 49:18, 50:40) says Sodom and Gomorrah are guilty of lies, adultery, siding with the unjust. Isaiah accuses the towns of fake religion, worship divorced from justice-doing (1:10-17) and Jesus tells his disciples that communities which fail to hear the gospel from them will be treated like Sodom and Gomorrah, for failing to show hospitality to the evangel.
Paul warns us of false human traditions in his letter today, "See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ." Jesus came to liberate, not to enslave, to enlighten, not to intimidate. Totems and Taboos of all the dehumanizing laws, from Leviticus to the State of Georgia, Iraq, Iran, and all the ayatollah insanity, and the Opus Dei and the Promise Kepeers prejudices, have been annulled by Jesus Christ. "God has made us alive together with Christ, having forgiven us our trespases, having cancelled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross." Christ disarmed these principalities and powers, and made them a public example, triumphing over them. That's what we are called to do. That's what we are commissioned to preach. That's how we are invited to live our lives.
It is the right-wing anti-human spirit in Western society which is hateful, sodomitical, politically and religiously oppressive, and not what we have come to know as the Queer Nation of a gentle, loving people. Jesus says we should not ever give up in the struggle for meaning in all of this--that we should even be rude and insistent in our prayers and protest, that perhaps it is time that the just and fair and decent poeple began to rap on the doors, and demand bread at midnight, for everyone who asks receives, and everyone who knocks will find the door opened. Which responsible parent among you if your child asks for a fish,will give instead a snake? If your gay son or daughter asks for nourishment, for compassion and solidarity, will instead give a scorpion's bite? (Alas, a few perverted parents have done so.) If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts in this land of inhospitality and abuse of minorities, how much more will our heavenly Mother, our holy Father, give Holy, heavenly Spirit to us who ask, who struggle for Life?
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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