The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Proper 12C
One of the greatest mistakes one can make is to read the comments section of a social media post. Terrible mistake, and yet if we’re on social media at all, we fall for it again and again. We see the news article, click on the comments, and our eyeballs are flooded with stuff designed to keep our attention. We see comments dripping with ignorance, dripping with contempt and hate, and then we cheer on the commenters who say what we want to say back. We might even post something of our own, and then spend the rest of the day seeing if anyone responded to our witty and insightful comment.
It’s a great way to ruin a day. We know we shouldn’t do it, but the anger and disgust are awfully addicting. We know that many of those comments are from people just wanting to say terrible things for the fun of it, and we know that many other comments are just from bot accounts programmed to say whatever it takes to get us angry and focused on them.
This all suggests there is something in human nature that easily gets addicted to anger and disgust. We can call it many things: righteous indignation or contempt, for example. But we get hooked on it. There’s almost a pathological need to find someone to blame, someone who is subhuman that we can direct all this anger and disgust toward.
We shouldn’t be surprised when it happens in our interpretations of Scripture, either. As a gay man, my ears twitch when I hear the name of that ancient city, Sodom. The interpretation of the sin of Sodom has been very narrow over many centuries, and it’s not what the Bible claims is the sin of Sodom. As the prophet Ezekiel writes, “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.” (Ezekiel 16:49-50). Notice what supposed sin Ezekiel didn’t list; and yet that is what centuries of interpretation have focused on.
Why? Why would the focus be on one specific behavior, and not on what Ezekiel lists: pride, excess of food, prosperous ease, and indifference toward the poor and needy? I wonder if it was a need to have someone to blame, someone that could be made to be an “other”, something else, something less human, even. Selfishness, wealth, indifference, those never elicit moral panics. Those are far too universal to get moral panics; that would require looking inward at ourselves. No, far easier to have someone else get all the blame.
So we see this blend of anger and disgust, this contempt show up in how we’ve read the Bible, in how we interact with others online, and we see it in our politics, too. Watch for the words that label someone as “less than human” – that they’re filthy and gross, that they have disease, that they’re criminals, that they’re subhuman. Everything that’s wrong is because of them, we hear. Get rid of them all, we hear. No discernment, no due process, no dignity.
This line of rhetoric digs a hook right into that weak spot of our hearts where contempt overrides our compassion. It’s an easy worldview, little thinking involved. It’s all because of someone else, not because the game is rigged. It’s an easy solution, and all it takes is getting rid of the problem.
And so we give into it. It’s easy. One group says all the problems are because of immigrants, legal, and otherwise. One group says all the problems are because of fabulous people like me. One group blames our Jewish friends, one group blames our Muslim friends, and one group blames everyone who isn’t straight, white, conservative evangelical Christian. Isn’t it easy when you can find someone to blame? And one group says it’s because of uneducated, redneck “hillbillies” in dirty, rundown, rural trailer parks who’ll “learn the hard way” when their welfare gets cut by the people those “hillbillies” helped elect.
That last description probably brought a particular image to your mind. It probably brought to mind a picture of someone who’s filthy, who’s got a criminal past, who’s a moocher, who’s unhealthy, someone who elicits disgust. We’re all capable of that contempt. It just happens that poverty is an easy target. I imagine that people in Sodom with all their wealth and ease and indifference toward poverty were more than happy to indulge in some contempt for the poor themselves.
When I think of people on welfare, on food stamps, on Medicaid, on unemployment, I think of friends of mine who grew up in poor families that depended on that assistance. I think of friends of mine who have struggled with severe trauma and the substance use issues that followed. I think of people I’ve worked with in counseling who being on Medicaid is the first time they’ve been able to get professional help for their physical and mental health as an adult. I think of the folks who come to food truck or the community meal who want to stretch their support a little more.
And I set those people against the image in my mind that pops up of the “welfare cheat.” Do I love the first group more, the people we help, or is my contempt for the second group so strong it overrides the love for the first group? And I know some who would fall in that second group – some of my relatives would fit in that group. Would I, in my desire to get rid of the second group, also sweep away the first?
Enter Abraham. That’s the question Abraham asks us. That’s the question Abraham asks God. Abraham is so bold he negotiates God down – suppose there were fifty righteous, what if there were only forty-five… forty … only thirty … only twenty … only ten. The sin of Sodom is its prosperous ease, its wealth and indifference … but suppose there are ten people in that great city who do actually care about the poor and who share their wealth and live simply and pay their laborers well… if there were only ten people in the city who understood and did what was right, would you spare the whole city?
Abraham is not a fool. He knows what goes on in that city. Remember, his relative Lot is there. Abraham is not naïve. And Abraham does not plead with God for Lot’s sake – he doesn’t say, “Hey, could you get him and his family out first? Then go ahead with your vengeance.” No, Abraham puts the unknown righteous people at the heart of his plea. Err on the side of mercy, not vengeance. Err on the side of hope for the handful of righteous rather than erring on the side of contempt for the “other.”
That this is Abraham speaking is astounding. This isn’t God chastising someone for being vengeful – this is the flesh-and-blood human Abraham asking God to be merciful. Abraham in this moment speaks to what we humans could be – what we should be – in looking for righteousness and mercy instead of indulging in contemptuous anger and vengeful disgust. Abraham speaks to us down the millennia: Suppose there are ten righteous, compassionate welfare recipients – would you take away their support and their healthcare to punish the rest? Would your love for the “deserving” be overruled by your contempt for the “undeserving”? Which will you let define you: love, or contempt? The saying isn’t, “They’ll know we are Christians by our contempt.”
And before anyone brings up what ends up happening to Sodom and Gomorrah, let me add this: the angels save Lot’s family, and Lot and his family do not turn out to be morally upright people, either. Read Genesis 19. And notice, too, that the little city of Zoar is spared because Lot doesn’t think he can make it to the hills to get away from the catastrophe. So as we face a world in which contempt is addicting and ever-present, will we choose the way of Abraham? Will we choose to look for opportunities to show kindness and to encourage growth and change for the better … or are we too addicted to contempt to change our ways? Amen.