Genesis 18: 20-33 (links validated 7/3/22)
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Proper 12C (2019)
There is a clip from a Monty Python movie that has created a catch-phrase within my family, “Don’t you want to haggle?” The clip features a merchant and a buyer who is in a hurry to evade Roman soldiers. The buyer just wants to quickly buy a beard for a disguise, but the merchant wants to engage in the custom of “haggling”. It is a humorous scene, but the buyer’s life is at stake. In the Genesis 18 text there is a strange scene, set in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, where God and Abraham appear to be in a dialogue similar to two people in a marketplace haggling over the price of melons. The object of the haggle is the residents of Sodom, which include Abraham’s nephew, Lot and his family. Does Abraham actually have to engage in haggling with God for the lives of his family and the residents of Sodom? Does God have to be cajoled to act justly?...Meet the Sodomites
So, what is it that the people of Sodom have done? Even though the traditional answer remains popular, critical scholarship has shown that it doesn’t hold up. The Hebrew Bible seems to view the sin the Sodomites committed in terms of other ethical concerns than those of sexual morality. Beginning with the written and oral Torah, the answers offered include inhospitality, greed, theft, deception, disregard of the poor, inhumanity and mercilessness, but not homosexuality. One prominent passage is from the prophetic book of Ezekiel: “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. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.”...
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Illustrations (Proper 12C)(2004)
("May my life be woven, with the thread of prayer Studded with the knowledge, my Lord is always there When I rise up in the morning, or lay down at night May I be found faithful, though my prayers not become sight May my prayers be as breathing, a natural thing to do For no matter what I'm facing, my Lord will bring me through..." and others)