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Making Christmas Specials: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Posted by on Monday, November 30th, 2015 in Minister

St. Andrew's Stars Episode:

Hespeler, 29 November, 205 © Scott McAndless – 1st Advent
1 Corinthians 12:12-26, Psalm 133, Matthew 20:24-28
A
baby is born in a cave, a baby who is different from every other child who has ever been seen. And his parents look on him in wonder, not comprehending just how unique their son will be, not understanding how he will grow up to be the saviour of all his kind. That is the classic Christmas story isn’t it? That’s what it’s all about.
      What? Oh, I’m not talking about that baby. For lots of people Christmas has very little to do with hisbirth. You misunderstand me. The baby I’m talking about was actually a fawn. And the parents who wondered at his birth were named Donn er and Mrs. Donner. The cave was just an ordinary reindeer cave. That’s the birth I’m talking about. It is a birth that says Christmas to a lot of people because it is the opening scene of the classic Christmas special, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and, for them, Christmas cannot really begin until they have seen that special.
      Now, I know I could look at that as a negative thing. I could stand here and go on and on about how awful it is that a lot of kids seem to grow up today being a lot more familiar with the story of the birwe tell on Christmas is a lot better than the story of any reindeer, no matter what colour his nose is.
th of Rudolph than they are with the story of the birth of that other baby. Of course, that’s true. And of course I know that the story that
      But, of course, it is Christmas time and I don’t want to get all negative about Christmas traditions that people love. And besides, the Rudolph Christmas Special tells a great story – a story that, as far as I am concerned, contains a great deal of truth. And not just any truth either. I find a great deal of gospel truth in this story. It is a great illustration of some key Biblical ideas; ones that we need to take to heart particularly at this time of year.
      The story, in case you’re among the seven people in Canada who haven’t seen it, is all about misfits – people who don’t fit in because they are different. Rudolph is a misfit because, of a physical deformity – a big bright shiny red nose. The other main character is Hermey, an elf who doesn’t fit in with the other elves at the North Pole because he doesn’t like the lifestyle. He hates making toys, he doesn’t like singing and all the other things that the elves do. Hermey only wants to be a dentist and nobody can get behind the idea of an elf dentist.
      But Rudolph and Hermey aren’t the only misfits. They run off and end up at a place called the Island of Misfit Toys, the place where all the toys that are unwanted by girls and boys end up. Most of these toys have been rejected because they are different too – like a Jack-in-the-Box named Charlie, a bird that can’t fly but only swims, a train with square wheels and a cowboy who rides an ostrich. So that is what the story is all about – about people who are different and don’t fit because of it. And that is exactly why the story has endured as long as it has. It connects with people because everybody has felt like a misfit at some point in their life or, if they haven’t, they have known someone who was a misfit. Everyone wonders, at some point or another, what to do with someone who doesn’t fit in. And when you’re the person who doesn’t fit in, that can be a very painful question.
      It was also, apparently, a very important question for the early Christian Church – maybe especially the church in the city of Corinth. First of all, it was a church that was made up almost entirely of misfits to start with. They were people who were looked down on and despised by just about everyone they met. Many of them were devalued and despised because they were poor or because they were slaves. They were also all rejected by general society because they had rejected the pagan religion – the worship of the ancient gods. This meant that they could not participate in the activities of an ordinary civic life because they all took place in the temples of and under the patronage of the various gods. They just didn’t belong in the general society but they found a home and a sense of belonging in the life of the church. In Jesus they found someone who loved and accepted them despite all of that.
      So that is one part of the answer to the question of what you do with the misfits – you find them a place where they belong and people who accept them for who they are. But that, in itself, is not quite a good enough answer. In the Rudolph special, there actually are a couple of characters who do accept Rudolph as he is. His mother, in particular, makes the decision to simply overlook the nose – to pretend it’s not there. And Clarice, a young doe, befriends Rudolph and doesn’t hold his nose against him. And obviously that measure of acceptance helps Rudolph. (In fact, when Clarice tells him she thinks he’s cute, it makes him fly higher than all the other young reindeer.)
      But it is not a complete answer. Despite these exceptions, the main message that Rudolph gets in the first part of the special is that if he wants to be valued and loved, what he needs to do is blend in with everyone else. He needs to stop being a misfit. And so it is that Rudolph’s father, Donner, covers over Rudolph’s bright red nose with brown mud. That muddy cover is the symbol of the pressure that is present, in any group, for people to conform to the norms of that group.
      In a way, it is only natural. Whenever people get together or work together they just feel more comfortable to be alongside people who are like them. So there is a natural tendency to pressure people who look different or act different to change themselves to fit in with the majority. Even more important, the majority also sets the standards for advancement. It decides what you need to do or how you need to be in order to gain honour, prestige and glory. If you’re part of a reindeer team, I suppose that would mean that those who fly fastest or highest would have the most honour while those who distract everyone else with their bright shiny noses would only be put down.
      Even a society of misfits can end up doing the very same thing. That’s what happened in the group of misfits that was in the church in Corinth. There were some people in the church who had this ability, in the Spirit, of speaking in strange languages. It was, to be sure, a pretty impressive thing to be able to do. And so everyone started to look up to them – to think of them as more spiritual people. Everyone else wanted to be like them and some actually managed to do it.
      But this strange speaking was not something that everyone could do. It was a spiritual gift that came from the Holy Spirit. And it didn’t take long for everyone in the church to start treating those who couldn’tdo it as misfits – as a lower class of Christians. It’s pretty bad when you think about it. They were doing to these people exactly what the general society around them had done to them – treating people who were different as less valuable. Isn’t human nature grand sometimes!
      And so the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians to set them straight. He told them that the Christian church, being made up of misfits as it was, had to behave better than other groups. It had to find a way not merely to tolerate those who were different but to discover how truly valuable they were. That’s what that passage we read this morning is all about. Paul is trying to tell them that the people in the church, who don’t do this funny speaking thing, but who do have other things that they are good at, are not any less valuable than the others. His message is that each one contributes in his or her own way and that when we all do that, the church will be strong.
      Now, that sounds like a pretty simple and straightforward idea. When Paul compares the church to a body, for example, and says that each part has its own strengths and contributes in its own way we all nod our heads. When he says, that a body could not function if every part were an eye or if every part were an ear, we all say, “Yes, that makes sense.” But, when it comes to practically living together with peace and understanding and working together to reach common goals, that can be a different story.
      That’s why I think a story like the one in the Rudolph special can be so helpful for us. It can become a kind of parable for us. Because the Rudolph story isn’t just a story of acceptance, it is a story of value and true contribution. At the end of the story, as we all know, Rudolph doesn’t just find acceptance in the reindeer herd in spite of his deformity. His deformity actually saves everyone by making it possible for Santa to navigate in the fog. What is different and unique about Rudolph actually turns out to be absolutely essential to everyone. In addition, Hermey also saves everyone from an attack by an abominable snowman by pulling out the monster’s teeth and proves that even elves need dentists.
      And that is what is so hard for us to understand in the church. That is why we need such a simple illustration as what we find in this story to get it through to us. That is what the church is about too. The church is a society of misfits. But it is not that, in the church, we are all just tolerated in spite of our own little problems and idiosyncrasies. It is not that we smile to people’s faces but then, when they turn their backs, we roll our eyes or say bad things about them. That might be good enough for a workplace situation or some other casual relationship, but it is not good enough for the church. Here we love them and value them for who they are.
      Now I know that that is something that doesn’t always come easily. Sometimes there is something about another person that just rubs you the wrong way or drives you crazy. But in the church, this society of misfits, we learn that God made our brothers and sisters as they are for a reason. That God put something special in each sister and brother that allows them to contribute in a way that no one else can. And I know that you may not always see that at first, but you can take it on faith. You can believe that the God who created them was able to put something valuable in them. And from that attitude of faith you will, in time, come to see what that special thing is.
      But the other side of that is even more powerful. Being part of the church – of this society of misfits – means that you come to see that value in yourself. You begin to see that you are loved and valued by your God and by your fellow misfits, not merely in spite of your little personal quirks and faults, but precisely because you are the person that those things made you. This too is an attitude of faith. It is the belief that the God who made you doesn’t make junk and that even in the things that have gone wrong for you God can have a plan for good.
      The love that you can experience in God and in God’s representatives is not a grudging love – a love in spite of who you are. It is a full whole-hearted love for who you are. That doesn’t mean that you cannot strive and work to become even better than you are – to become the best that you can be – but it does mean that, wherever you are on that journey right now, you can move forward in confidence that you are loved and valued. And that is something that can make your heart fly as high as one of Santa’s reindeer.

      

Sermon Video:

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Christmas Armistice

Posted by on Monday, November 23rd, 2015 in Minister

It is the end of November and we all know what that means: it is time for War.
                Yes, every year at this time of year we are reminded that we are supposed to be at war. It is called the War on Christmas and we are apparently all conscripted as foot soldiers.
                The first shots of this year’s battle have already been fired. The skirmish was fought over the holiday season cups at Starbucks. A few Christians took offence because the plain red and green cups being filled by the iconic café this year don’t have any explicit Christmasy words or symbols on them. But we all recognize that that is only the beginning and there will be many more fights to come. What will be next? Will we have to take offence at someone who says Happy Holidays? Will we need to be appalled by a lack of mangers in public squares? Where will it end?
                I’ve got to say that in this particular war, I am pretty much ready to declare myself a conscientious objector. I’m not sure I want to fight it anymore – at least, not if it is a battle between the Christian idea of Christmas and our secular society’s idea of Christmas.
                The fact of the matter is that I love both Christmases. I love the church’s Christmas with our focus of the story of the birth of the messiah, the candles, the sacred carols and prayers for peace on earth and good will to all. But I also love the secular Christmas that surrounds us with its lights and colourful decorations, the Christmas songs and the hustle and bustle of the malls. I will admit that I do get very tired of the materialism that seems evident everywhere you look, but I am not entirely certain whether the extreme consumerism belongs to the sacred or secular side of Christmas. After all, so many of the battles seem to be fought over what greetings are given to shoppers in stores.
                I also happen to love the fact that I live in a multicultural society where people celebrate both Christmas and other religious and cultural festivals at this time of the year. There is a wonderful richness amid such diversity.
                And so I really don’t want to think about what happens at this time of year as a war. I’d like to call for an armistice from our point of view at least.
                And so this is what I’m going to do. Rather than going to the Bible first, this year I’m going to start my Advent sermons with the sacred texts of the secular Christmas. When I was growing up, there were four canonical Christmas stories that we had to hear every year. They were: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch stole Christmas. When I was growing up at least, Christmas just wasn’t Christmas unless you gathered together with your family and tuned your television to the CBC for every single one of these classic stories. So I am going to explore the meaning behind these classic stories.
                This is not something that I would normally do. I have not been trained to seek inspiration in the secular stories of society but exclusively in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. I have long found that they are all I need. But somehow I am not too worried. Yes, there are perhaps some stories that are told by the world around us that we need to be wary of – that might lead us down a wrong path. But my sense is that we may just discover that, even if the people who wrote these great Christmas stories set out to be completely secular and to avoid all mention of the gospel Christmas story, there is something that would not allow them to stray too far from the ultimate Christmas message. My expectation is that there is a lot of truth—gospel truth—in these stories and I am going to find that they lead me back to Bible before I’m done.
                And, perhaps by finding the gospel truth in these secular Christmas stories, we might find a way to bring peace between warring factions at this most blessed time of the year.
                Wishing you:
               
                              Peace on Earth, Good Will to All!


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Script Out Passages: Script Out Principles

Posted by on Sunday, November 22nd, 2015 in Minister

Hespeler, 22 November, 2015 © Scott McAndless
2 Timothy 3:10-17, Romans 1:26-32, Psalm 19:7-14
T
oday we come to the end of what I think is the longest series of sermons that I have ever preached. Since the beginning of September we have been looking at what I call the Script Out passages of the Bible – passages that we love to hate and often wish weren’t there in the Bible at all. I’m going to confess that I am kind of glad to bring this series to a close on this, the last Sunday in the church year. It can be a little bit difficult to spend all that time focusing on Bible passages that you don’t really like. Next week, the first week in Advent, I am going to be very happy to turn to some more traditional themes of the Christian gospel.
      But I hope that you have picked up that, even if it is hard, I do think this kind of work is important. If we are people who believe in the Bible and take this book seriously, we have to be willing to invest the energy to struggle with those parts of the book that may make us feel uncomfortable or that we just plain don’t like. You cannot pick and choose which passages to follow.
      But even more important than that, I think that we need a better general understanding of how we can approach this book that we say is so important to us. One of the reasons why I felt I had to tackle the Script Out passages of the Bible was because I was hoping to develop some basic principles that we could use to apply whenever we come across passages that challenge us or give us trouble because this
is just something that is going to keep happening and we may even find that, as times goes by, there will be more passages that we stumble over for various reasons.
      A perfect example is a request that comes to us this year from the highest governing body of our denomination: the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. The General Assembly has asked the congregations and sessions of our church to discuss and get back to them on a somewhat thorny social issue of our time. They want us to talk about how we include (or perhaps fail to include) LGBT people in the church. Just to be clear, LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. So it is simply a reference to a group of people who for various reasons, don’t quite fit into what might be called the traditional approach to how to live out sexuality.
      This has been a discussion that I and many people have resisted not because it is unimportant but because it seems likely to be divisive. No matter what answers we come up with, we will almost certainly not all agree. And if we tend to avoid the discussion, we are also going to avoid the passages in the Bible that have anything to say on the subject.
      But the reality is that, if we are going to be Christians who take the Bible seriously, we have to grapple with what the Bible says even if the discussion is uncomfortable. There are only a few passages that speak directly to these questions and I want to look at how we are going to approach them. I don’t mean to do this in order to tell you how you need to understand these passages or what you ought to think about the question in general. I just want to offer you some helpful approaches to keep in mind.
      But before we look at any particular passages, I want to start with some basic Biblical assumptions. You have heard the argument made (seriously by some, ridiculed by others) that the Bible does not support same-sex marriage because, and I quote, “It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” There is actually a valid point in that, at least when you understand what it is saying, and we need to take it seriously.
      What it is saying is that there is a certain assumption about what is normal or common in human relationships and specifically about the relationship between men and women in the Bible. This isn’t just something that we see in the creation story but an assumption that runs through much of Scripture, that the male/female relationship in marriage is normative and that it is the kind of relationship, from the perspective of Biblical society, that everyone is simply expected to engage in. And of course that was true. Everyone in Biblical times was expected to participate in so-called traditional marriage.
      Of course, what they called traditional marriage (as we saw a couple of weeks ago) was a little bit different from what we are used to. It included things like arranged marriages that had nothing to do with love, polygamy, female slavery and concubinage, rape victims who were forced to marry their rapists and all kinds of other things that we would never find acceptable. But there was an expectation that, one way or another, everyone would fit into the basic male/female marriage relationship somewhere and that was really whether they wanted to or not and whether they desired that kind of relationship or not.
      So it is true that the Bible takes male/female marriage relationships for granted and, indeed, as the basic foundation of society. And I see absolutely no problem with that. Even today, such relationships represent the norm in the sense that it is the kind of relationship that the majority of people will fit into in one way or another. What’s more, such relationships are very good and even foundational to society as a whole.
      But just because the Bible only sees one kind of relationship and calls that relationship good, that doesn’t mean that it is the only kind of relationship possible or the only one that can be good. I mean, just because the Bible assumes that everyone wears tunics and sandals doesn’t mean that such a mode of dress is the only one that anyone should wear today. Sandals and tunics being good doesn’t mean that a suit and tie is necessarily bad.
      One of the principles that we discovered during our discussions over the last few weeks had to do with something called proof texts. Proof texts are short Biblical texts that clearly lay out some Biblical policy. We saw, for example, that there are a few verses that, in former times, were regularly used to defend the practice of slavery. But the fact that there were a few verses in the Bible that clearly declared that slavery was an acceptable practice did not stop many Christians from using the Bible to argue against it. They discovered that, despite those few proof texts and despite the fact that the Bible took the institution of slavery for granted throughout the whole text, the overwhelming narrative of the Bible was about a God who was committed to bringing his people freedom from slavery and all oppression and that that story was more important than a few proof texts.
      Does that principle apply to the discussion of the place of LGBT people within the church? It is true that there are a few verses that are clear proof texts against homosexuality – six verses by most people’s count. Their meaning is not really open to a great deal of interpretation though we can look at them. Does the existence of those proof texts (assuming we are correctly understanding them) mean that any sort of conversation about how to include LGBT people is already over – that there’s nothing more to say?
      Well, I would say, given where we stand on slavery, we cannot possibly say that. We can never say that a proof text is the end of a conversation. Of course, that doesn’t answer the question of what the overall narrative of the scriptures is. Is it one of including outsiders or is it one of judgment of people who don’t fit in. That is another discussion and one that you need to decide on for yourself as you read the Bible.
      Now, turning to those so-called proof texts, the clearest one is found in Leviticus chapter 20: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.” It is, like many proof texts, a passage that doesn’t seem to leave much room for interpretation and many would point to it as the clearest Biblical rejection of LGBT people.
      But here again, another of our Script Out principles does apply. Way back when we started this series and looked at the Biblical prohibition against people getting tattoos, we noted that that law really doesn’t apply to today because it was part of a particular law code that was intended to set the people of Israel apart from their neighbours by forcing them to have a distinct culture.
      And when we looked at that ancient law against tattooing, I made this note: “We have to be consistent. If we don’t worry about one verse that we don’t like for a good reason, but then find another verse that we maybe do like that has a lot in common from the verse we rejected, be can’t just choose to dump one and keep the other. We have to think it all through critically.”
      The law against tattooing and the law against men lying with men are only one chapter apart in the Book of Leviticus. The two laws have a great deal in common and seem to have the intention of setting the people of Israel apart from their neighbours culturally. The tattooing law seems to reject the funerary practice of the Israelite’s neighbours and the law against men lying with men is likely rejecting the cultic prostitution practices of their neighbours but neither one is really reacting to cultural practices that are part of the world today. This leaves the question of whether either one really applies today at all open.
      There are only a few passages in the New Testament that touch on the question at hand. There is nothing at all in the Gospels. Jesus himself never said anything on the subject, possibly because the issue just never came up for him. At the very least, this seems to indicate that the matter wasn’t really a big concern for him. We have said before, in connection with some of the other Script Out passages, that Christian doctrine teaches us that God’s ultimate revelation of Godself to the world is not in a book like the Bible but is to be found in the living person of Jesus the Christ. Jesus’ lack of attention to this issue may be an indication of where it lies on God’s priorities. Something to keep in mind.
      The issue does come up in the letters of the New Testament: in Romans, in 1 Corinthians, in 1 Timothy and in Jude. We don’t have the time to go through those passages one by one now. People have certainly differed down through the centuries over exactly what they mean. And I am not going to tell you what you ought to do with them. You are smart people. You have seen some of the various principles that I have been talking about that help us to deal with those parts of the Bible that we don’t like or that we often avoid. I would like you to encourage you to apply them for yourself. We will also offer an opportunity in the New Year to study these passages and the larger issues in discussion.
      But I want to be clear here – I’m not trying to tell you what you should think of these passages. I’m trusting you to come to your own conclusions and understandings. I do expect that, though we will agree on some things, we will not agree about it all. But I think that is okay. In the history of the church it has happened too often that a majority (or sometimes a powerful minority) have imposed their thinking or their Biblical interpretations on everyone else. It is past time for that to stop.
      I don’t know exactly where this whole discussion will lead us in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. My hope and prayer, though, is that we find a way to create an environment where everyone feels the freedom to act according to their understanding and convictions and where we can respect the understandings and convictions of each other.
      In the Second Letter to Timothy, we are told that “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” If we really believe that – that all scripture (both the parts that we like and the parts that we don’t like) are given to us by God for our good, we will not be afraid to struggle with the scriptures, to question them and find some way to embrace them. What is at stake in these discussions and in other difficult discussions that may come is that we are a people who take all scriptures as a gift of God – sometimes especially the parts that we struggle with.

      

Passages referred to in the sermon:
Leviticus 18:22, 29; 20:13
Romans 1:26-27
1 Corinthians 6:9;
1 Timothy 1:10;
Jude 7.

Script Out principles:
  • Be consistent. You can’t just pick and choose which verses you like. Apply the same critical thinking to them all.
  • Pay attention to what is actually being said.
  • God never intended for us to turn our minds off and just take our moral truths from proof texts. You must never take your eyes off of the overall narrative of scripture.
  • God knew that the Bible would always be limited by the humans who transmitted it. So God chose to reveal himself in a way that could not be corrupted by human transmission. God revealed himself in a person: in Jesus the Christ. The living revelation of God in Christ always comes first.
  • Is this God’s final word on this subject or does the Bible have more to say elsewhere?
  • Understand the intentions of the people who first used this story.
  • Understand what the underlying assumptions are.
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Hope Clothing needs your help!

Posted by on Thursday, November 19th, 2015 in News

On Thursday, December 3rd our Hope Clothing Coordinator would like to hand out care packages to all of the men & women clients of Hope Clothing and the Cambridge Self Help Foodbank.  Won't you please help us?  Pictured below is a sample of what will be contained in a woman's pack.  If you could contribute one of these bags (and perhaps a toonie to help with the cost of the nice bags) it would be very much appreciated.  You may drop off these bags at Hope Clothing or to the office weekdays, 9:00 am - 3:00 pm or on Sunday mornings  Thank you for helping make Christmas a little easier for those in our community who need a llittle extra help.


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A Day in the Life, November 2015

Posted by on Tuesday, November 17th, 2015 in News



This song, adapted from the Beatles' classic, was performed this past Sunday by Corey Cotter Linforth. Thank you to Corey for sharing your passion for a better world with us:

I heard the news today, oh boy
About a city torn apart again
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I've heard this song before

They shot them inside Bataclan
They didn't notice that the times have changed
A crowd of people opened doors
Faces never seen before
Everybody is so sure that we should go to war

I read the news today, oh boy
Beirut reeling from the acts of war
A crowd of people turned away
It didn't stir our hearts
They don't look like us
They'd love to make us see

Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat, made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs to get some air
Somebody spoke and I couldn't breath

Ahhh....

I saw the news today, oh boy
A child face down in the sand
And though he was so very small
We have to count them all
Now we know we don't have enough to share
“We'd love to take you in, but...”

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A Sneak Peak

Posted by on Tuesday, November 17th, 2015 in News

St. Andrew's STARS recorded the annual Christmas STARS to be presented on 
Sunday, December 13th at 10:00 am.

Here's a quick peak!

Frosty the Snowman appeared for the recording of the STARS.

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A BIG thank you!

Posted by on Monday, November 16th, 2015 in News

We would like to say a very BIG thank you to the Cambridge & North Dumfries Community Fund
& the D. H. Falle Family Foundation Fund
for supporting Hope Clothing!


Community support for Hope Clothing is very much appreciated and enables us to continue to reach out to members of our community who need some extra help making their budget stretch. We provide clothing for the entire family.

Hope Clothing is open:
Tuesdays: 12 noon - 3:00 pm
Wednesdays: 9:30 am - 1:00 pm
Thursdays: 11:00 am - 2:00 pm



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Script Out Passages: Lessons from Sodom and Gomorrah

Posted by on Sunday, November 15th, 2015 in Minister



Hespeler, 15 November, 2015 © Scott McAndless
Genesis 19:1-13, Matthew 10:5-15, Isaiah 1:9-18
I
n late August, 2005, as we all remember, a powerful hurricane named Katrina made landfall on the southern coast of Louisiana. Katrina did a whole lot of damage, but no place was hit harder than the City of New Orleans. Many who surveyed the damage at the time gave the opinion that a great American city had simply been wiped off of the map. It was positively apocalyptic.
      As always happens in the face of that kind of tragedy, there was a great deal of soul searching and people asking why. Why did this happen? And there were lots of answers that were offered. Climate change and weather, the failure of the levees was blamed on the army corps of engineers, the failings of disaster assistance were blamed on the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But by far the clearest answer to the whyquestion was given by a Christian evangelist by the name of John Hagee. Hagee declared that the cause of the disaster was obvious. It was God’s judgement. In particular, he stated, it had happened because some sort of Gay Pride parade had been planned in the French Quarter of the city. The hurricane had been sent by God to stop it.
      And what was the proof that Hagee offered for his explanation. He pointed to an announcement of such a parade that apparently was not really known to anybody else and appeared in no major newspapers. And he pointed to the Book of Genesis and the story of the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. That, as far as he was concerned, was proof enough.
      Lots of people disagreed with him, of course. But everyone knew exactly what he was talking about. It has long been taken for granted by many that the meaning of that story is perfectly clear and that the Bible clearly says that God destroyed those two cities on purpose and that he did it specifically because of homosexuality. Because of that association, the story has become a rather uncomfortable story for many of us which means that we tend to ignore it and not think about it too mu
ch and that is not a good thing. It is a powerful and deeply meaningful story and it is a shame to lose that power and leave it in the hands of those who would use it to advance their own agendas.
      It is a story about consequences and it is important to talk about the consequences of our actions and choices. But in the hands of people like Hagee, only a small minority of people is singled out for blame – only they have to be responsible for their actions. Is that how the Bible really intended for us to read this story?
      The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is mentioned often in the Scriptures and is generally held up in the Bible as an example of the kind of consequences we may have to deal with if we make bad choices. As such, the story is applied to many different situations. One excellent example is a passage in the book of the prophet Ezekiel. The prophet is criticizing the city of Jerusalem and does so by saying that it is like a sister to the doomed city of Sodom. “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom:” he says, “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.” (Ezekiel 16:49-50)
      So clearly, as far as Ezekiel was concerned, Sodom’s problems were about how food was shared and about the growing gaps between the rich and the poor. And it was also clear to him that Sodom’s problems were not unique to Sodom and certainly not to some sort of minority in the city that they tolerated. He is warning the people of Jerusalem that they are like Sodom. That suggests to me that any interpretation of this story that limits its application to other people, to people not like us, is just not going to be good enough.
      The only real indication of what was wrong in Sodom that is given in the Book of Genesis is the way that the city treats a couple of angelic visitors. They arrive as strangers in the city and seem to be fully intent on spending the night sleeping in the town square. But one citizen, a man named Lot, doesn’t want them to do that and insists that they come to his house to stay instead.
      In ancient Mediterranean society, it was generally believed that, if a stranger appeared at your door or in your village, you had a moral obligation to offer them a place to stay. It was a divineobligation and there were many stories told in many different religions about people who welcomed strangers and discovered, to their surprise, that they were actually hosting gods or other heavenly beings. There are stories like that in the Bible too and this story of Lot and the angels is one such story (though this one certainly has a less happy ending than some of the others).
      So Lot takes the strangers home as his guests. As their host he owes them certain things under the hospitality laws of that time and place. Above all he owes them protection and security – he must protect them with his own life if necessary. This part quickly becomes very important because the men of the town soon hear of the strangers among them and gather to attack them.
      The threat that these men pose to the strangers is the source of the connection that has historically been made between this story and things like gay pride parades. The men of Sodom come to Lot’s door and say, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.”
      That doesn’t sound too bad. “We just want to get to know them.” But you need to realize that that verb, to know, had a very particular meaning in ancient Hebrew. It meant to know someone reallyintimately. It was, in fact, a term that was commonly used for sexual relations.
      So, no, when these men ask to “know” the guests in Lot’s house, it is no idle or innocent request. They are seeking to rape them. Because they are men and the angels they want to rape are male, that is where the whole association with homosexuality came from. But you do need to understand that the kind of rape that is threatened in this passage doesn’t actually have anything to do with sexual desire.
      We have come to understand that rape in general is not a crime of sexual desire but rather a crime of power, violence and domination. Not everyone realizes this, but men usually do not rape women because they are driven mad with sexual desire but rather because they want to impose dominance or power over them. So really, any discussion about rape is quite separate from any discussion about consensual sex.
      But this story is not even just about common rape. When a large group of people overpower a few weaker victims (either of the same sex or the opposite sex), that is called gang rape. And gang rape is and has long been a terrible feature of life in this world. It is particularly common in times of war and, as such, it has been extensively studied by historians and sociologists. They conclude that this kind of rape, in particular, is primarily a tactic – and sometimes a conscious military tactic – of domination, intimidation, dehumanization and control. It very clearly doesn’t have anything to do with sexual desire and those who participate in it do so entirely without reference to their own sexual orientation.
      And I think that is quite clearly what these men of Sodom are doing – they are seeking to dominate these strangers who have come to Lot’s house. They are, of course, quite despicable, abominable and immoral to seek to do this and deserve all sorts of condemnation for it (as do all rapists and gang rapists).
      But their intended actions in this story do not tell us anything about what we would refer to today as their “sexual orientation.” Indeed, the concept of sexual orientation is a very modern one that would not have made any sense to ancient people. And while you could very well use this story to criticize people for engaging in rape or gang rape, this story doesn’t really have anything at all to say (either positive or negative) about adults who engage consensually in sex.
      That is why I say that people who use this passage to lay the blame for Katrina or for any other disaster or misfortune at the feet of people because of their orientation or because of anything they engage in consensually are totally misusing the passage. In fact, to use this passage to challenge anyone but ourselves as readers of this passage is a very unbiblical reading. The prophet Ezekiel used the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to challenge the Jews of his own time to think about how the people of Jerusalem, his own people, failed to take care of the weakest and poorest people among them – that is how the Bible teaches us to use this passage.
      I also find the ways that Jesus used the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to be rather informative. I went looking through the gospels and was kind of surprised at how often Jesus did bring the story up. But, as often as he brought it up, it was never about singling out some group who were different from his own group. It was always about what was wrong with the entire generation.
      The passage that we read from the Gospel of Matthew this morning is a great example. It comes as Jesus is sending his disciples out to the various towns and villages of Galilee and he has been careful to send them out in pretty much the same condition as the two angels arrived in Sodom, as poor beggars who arrive with nothing – no gold, or silver, or copper, no bag, or change of clothes, or sandals, or staff.
      He is sending them out to share the good news and to bring healing and hope to the people, but he is also sending them out as a test of the whole generation. As they arrive, poor strangers in these Galilean towns, how they are received will reveal the true nature of the generation. If they are received as honoured guests according to the laws of hospitality that is a sign that the kingdom of God has indeed drawn near. If however they are received without hospitality, it will be a sign that this generation has reentered the evil age of Sodom: “it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”
      That is how we need to be using this story. It is meant to help us look at the society of which we are part. In particular, it is supposed to help us look critically at how we personally contribute to how our society treats outsiders, people who don’t fit into our neat little notions of what is acceptable and not acceptable. And it is especially about how we treat the poor and the strangers.
      It is a shame that, because this particular story of Sodom and Gomorrah makes us feel uncomfortable, that we have been unwilling to give it our attention. By failing to deal with the story we have essentially left it to those who are only too happy to use it to advance their own agenda and attack whichever particular groups they have wanted to.
      In the extreme case, this is the kind of thinking that makes religious terrorists (such as those who claim responsibility for Friday’s attacks in Paris) feel that they are justified – that they are God’s hand of judgement against the immorality of a city or a nation. The whole world sees today the disgusting place such thinking leads us to.
      The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is not about whatever annoys us about other people. It is about what we need to do to welcome and give a place to those who we may struggle with because they are different from us. If this story isn’t doing that for you, you might just be reading it wrong.

      
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