Proper 26, Year C | Isaiah 1:10-18 | Luke 19:1-10
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
October 30, 2022
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord…” – Isaiah 1:18a[1]
This morning we’ve heard a striking contrast between a prophet’s poetic indictment and a “sinner’s” simple proclamation. Diving right into Isaiah this morning, know that if anyone ever addresses you as the rulers and people of Sodom and Gomorrah, you can expect trouble. For those unfamiliar with that story, Sodom and Gomorrah were neighboring city-states near the Dead Sea that flourished roughly 4,000 years ago during the days of Abraham. Due to the wickedness of the people, God utterly wiped out the cities and the surrounding area by raining fire and brimstone on them, rescuing only Abraham’s nephew Lot and his immediate family from the destruction.
There are a couple things we need to note about the passage, the first of which is that Isaiah isn’t actually addressing either of those two cities or their inhabitants. Sodom and Gomorrah had disappeared well over a thousand years before Isaiah lived, and that means we need to figure out who the prophet was actually talking to. If we step back one verse before our passage, we learn that Isaiah is addressing the kingdom of Judah.
At this point in history, Judah is basically the last of the good guys—the only people on the face of the earth still loyal to the Lord God. Out of all Israel, they alone had maintained David’s dynasty. They alone still worshipped at Solomon’s Temple. They alone served the Lord in all the ways Moses prescribed. They kept all the feasts. They maintained the sacrifices. The rest of Israel—generally known as either Samaria or the Northern Kingdom— had long ago rejected anything having to do with Jerusalem and its royalty or worship, and at this point in time it was either about to fall under a brutal siege by foreign powers or may already have been exiled and forever lost to history.
So Judah felt pretty good about themselves. They were under pressure from the Northern Kingdom’s collapse, but they were still doing okay. Clearly, their loyalty was paying off. God continued to protect them. They were the most righteous and favored nation on the face of the earth—“a city on a hill:” God’s people and God’s sole treasure. Yet Isaiah, one of the greatest prophets in history, looks around himself and sees only Sodom and Gomorrah.
That leaves us with some questions: what exactly was the problem with Sodom and Gomorrah? What could have been so horribly wicked that it would cause God to destroy them in the first place? Why, untold generations later, were they not only seared into the collective memory of the Ancient Near East but remain a byword even today?
Since the late Middle Ages, Western culture has maintained a tradition of associating those cities and their names with either gay sex or acts of sexual violence, both of which appear to be conflated in the original tale. And that’s what modern preachers like to deride as “the sin of Sodom.” However, the best way to interpret the Bible is through what the Bible says about itself, and the Hebrew Prophets have a very different understanding of the evils of those two towns.
Going in reverse chronological order, Ezekiel (also talking to Judah) gives the clearest statement: “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.”[2] Jeremiah’s assessment a few decades earlier includes sexual activity, as does the much later and generally overlooked New Testament letter from Jude, but it isn’t the kind our culture associates with related terminology. Jeremiah’s complaint is that even the prophets of Jerusalem “commit adultery and walk in lies; they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from wickedness.”[3]
The third defining reference comes from our passage today, where Isaiah connects Sodom and Gomorrah with appearing righteous—properly maintaining the imagery and fulfilling the actions of worshipping God—while “your hands are full of blood,”[4] a metaphor best explained by its cure: “cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, [and] plead for the widow.”[5]
So while the Hebrew Bible’s explanation of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah does include some measure of sexual misconduct (adultery, to be specific—and even that’s metaphorical in context), it lays the vast majority of its weight on what we would describe as issues of justice and equality.
Fast forward about 700 years, and Luke shows us Jesus pressing his way through the crowded streets of Jericho shortly before his Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. Last week[6] we talked about the predominant view of tax collectors in the 1st Century: everyone thought of them as traitors and liars and cheats. None were trustworthy, and no decent person would spend any more time with one than they absolutely had to. But Zacchaeus wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill tax collector—he was the head of the area’s tax collectors. So people likely assumed he was the worst of the bunch: the most traitorous, the most conniving—the most wicked. And that ancient sentiment still tends to influence how we read this story, to the point of introducing a glaring mistranslation into our text.
It’s easy to read Zacchaeus and Jesus’ exchange as transactional: Jesus says, “I’m going to your house.” Zacchaeus repents on the spot, breaking[7] the tax-collectors’ stereotype by promising to pay back all the people he cheated. And then Jesus essentially rewards him, saying, “Today salvation has come to this house.”[8] We read it as a simple ABC. A: Person meets Jesus. B: Person turns life around. C: Person “gets saved.” But that isn’t necessarily what the text itself says.
The issue comes in how we interpret Zacchaeus’ response to Jesus. Our translation reads, “half of my possessions…I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”[9] The problem here is that there’s no “will” to be found in what Zacchaeus says. He’s speaking in present tense, not future: “half…my possessions I give to the poor…if I have defrauded anyone…I pay back four times as much.” Losing that one little word raises a huge question for us: is Zacchaeus announcing his intention to change, as we assume, or is he simply explaining his standard practices? Will he take action, or has he been taking action all along?
Based on the verb form, I lean toward the second explanation. Everyone has been assuming Zacchaeus is a morally bad person—the worst of the worst. But it turns out that if people would only look past their own prejudices, they’d find that he’s not only extremely generous but impeccably honest. Using our terminology from the last two weeks,[10] if we look at how his life lines up with God’s instruction and desires, Zacchaeus might have been the most “justified” person in town!
So the Lectionary has given us “godly” Judah standing beside the most reviled person in town. One keeps up appearances, saying all the right words and doing all the right things and maintaining just the right customs, but behind the façade, they’re just as wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah. The other upsets all expectations by not only having been among the best of us but behaving in genuine humility and righteousness all along. And just like Jesus’ parable last week, one “went down to his home justified rather than the other.”[11]
The easiest lesson to take from all this is, “don’t judge a book by its cover.” That isn’t bad advice, but if we exclusively focus our attention that route, I think we might be missing what Isaiah and Luke are really be trying to say. The point of the Bible isn’t for us to point fingers or judge or critique others’ character. Instead, the Bible should lead us into self-evaluation, opening our eyes to consider life honestly, allowing us to face the reality of who we are right now and consider where our choices and actions are taking us.
It might be that you’re like Zacchaeus, quietly following God in the pathways of love, compassion, and truth. Maybe others can see it, or maybe they assume the worst about you. But that doesn’t really matter. Someone else’s opinion isn’t your responsibility. So hard as it may be, let God sort all that out while you keep following Christ and unveiling the Reign of the Heavens.
More problematic is if you discover yourself to be more like Judah, living into the legacy of Sodom and Gomorrah by adopting the attitudes of Empire with its habits of lying to itself regarding its own injustice and greed. It can be scary to face a truth like that, but if you find yourself there, know that you don’t have to stay. You don’t have to keep walking that path. Now is the time to change. Now is the time to realign yourself and begin to follow God in truth, not just appearance. Now is the opportunity to
“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.”[12]
Then, having taken action and begun walking this new route, “hear the Word of God to”[13] “[you] who do truly and earnestly repent…of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbors, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in [God’s] holy ways,”[14]:
“Come now, let us argue it out,
says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.”[15]
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] Ezekiel 16:49
[3] Jeremiah 23:14
[4] Isaiah 1:15e
[5] Isaiah 1:16d-17
[6] http://www.slouchingdog.com/sermons/year-c-october-23-2022-proper25
[7] Yet at the same time entrenching.
[8] Luke 19:9
[9] Luke 19:8
[10] See http://www.slouchingdog.com/sermons/year-c-october-16-2022-proper24 and http://www.slouchingdog.com/sermons/year-c-october-23-2022-proper25
[11] Luke 18:14a
[12] Isaiah 1:16-17
[13] Book of Common Prayer, pg. 332: introduction to the Comfortable Words
[14] Book of Common Prayer, pg. 330: the call to Confession
[15] Isaiah 1:18