The Real Sin of Sodom -- A Sermon

Below you will find opening lines of a simply powerful sermon by Kim Fabricius, a pastor in Swansea in Wales, on the real sin of Sodom. It is the best piece on Sodom I've ever read and it should blow you away. So read, consider, and I'd love to hear back from you.

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Cities don’t get a very good press in the Bible. The garden of Eden is the biblical paradigm of peace, order, and well-being. The first biblical city was founded by the fratricide Cain (Genesis 4:17), and ever afterwards cities are suspect for their rebelliousness and defiance of God - and none more so than the city of Sodom. Sodom is synonymous with sin, and I don’t need to spell it out, we all know what the sin is, now don’t we? And here in Luke 10:12, our Lord himself joins the homophobic chorus. Of a town that rejects the gospel message, Jesus says, “on Judgement Day God will show more mercy to Sodom than to that town!” Unbelievers and faggots - they either turn or burn - it’s in the Bible.

Or is it? Is the sin of Sodom, enshrined as it is in our collective consciousness, and encoded in our common discourse, is it what we always take it to be, take it to be what we assume Jesus took it to be? Shall we take the line: “Don’t bother me with the evidence, I’ve already made up my mind”? Or shall we not rather turn to the Bible, look at the evidence, and see what it actually is? Of course I have you at a disadvantage here: I already know how this sermon is going to turn out. So let me warn you: not only is the conventional interpretation of Sodom so wrong as to suggest that it could only be held by the blindest of the prejudiced - that’s not my main concern here; no, my main concern is to discover what the real sin of Sodom was. And a hint: readers of the Daily Mail are in for an ironic and unwelcome surprise.

Let’s start with Genesis 19. On second thought, let’s not. For the story actually begins back in Genesis 18. It begins with the visit of three mysterious strangers to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre. Abraham welcomes them to his home, has Sarah bake and cook for them, fetches a fatted calf and serves the veal himself. He is the very model of hospitality, and he is rewarded for his virtue by the promise that old Sarah will yet bear him a son. Two of the three visitors then make their way to Sodom; the one who remains, now identified as the Lord, then tells Abraham that he too will go to Sodom to see if the city is as wicked as its reputation.

To continue reading, click here.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I think if one reads my responses you can see that downgrading the sins of Sodom to "inhospitality" neglects the truth of what truly was the problem of Sodom which is way beyond just "inhospitality". There were so many sins that to point out just one does a disservice to what Sodom's real problem. Also, there wasn't even 10 righteous out of hundreds of thousands of people in Sodom and Gomorrah. When one does a word study on righteousness in God's Word one can truly understand the problem of Sodom and Gomorrah. "inhospitality"? yes that was a sin but the shear number of sins and level of degree were such that God knew that any revelation from God to them they would reject to the point of God's judgement. DH
Anonymous said…
I read Jude and 2 Peter 2 from the same responses to the site and it appears that Kim and it appears yourself can't conclude what you do in light of these additional scriptures. dh

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