the inhospitality of Sodom
Luke 10:1-11
Luke 10:1-12:
10 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way; I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ 6 And if a person of peace is there, your peace will rest on that person, but if not, it will return to you. 7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’ 12 I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.
Last Sunday marked the end of Pride Month in 2025. Pride this year felt a little more fraught that it has in the past, as our country seems to slide backwards towards a time when acceptance of LGBT people was less of a given, and discrimination was either legal or turned a blind eye in large swathes of the nation.
The progress towards acceptance of LGBT people that began in the 60s and 70s, and culminated in the Obergefell decision by the Supreme Court in 2015, was built around the idea of acceptance and inclusion of all people in the every day facts of life: marriage, yes, but also the right exist peacefully as they are in society. Hospitality, one might term it; the fact of finding one’s self welcomed in and made to feel at home in the hustle and bustle of American life. This is what the movement fought for, and despite the controversies over gender inclusive care and language since then, this hospitality is what is at risk of backslide today. Opponents of LGBT inclusion often frame their attacks as defending children or preserving religious freedom; but the on the ground effect often becomes the wholesale exclusion and ridicule of a class of human beings who are trying to live their lives as best they see fit.
I’m reflecting on this today because of that final line from this week’s Gospel reading: “I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.” Sodom and Gomorrah are often weaponized as an example of God explicitly and violently punishing homosexuality, due to the story of Lot in Genesis 19. Never mind that this is a relatively recent and novel understanding of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a reading undermined by, among others, the prophet Ezekiel and Jesus Christ himself (as we shall shortly see). Both of those texts make it clear that the sin of Sodom was not homosexuality, but was inhospitality towards strangers. As John Boswell noted in his magisterial Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality,:
A purely homosexual interpretation of this story is, however, relatively recent. None of the many Old Testament passages which refer to Sodom’s wickedness suggests any homosexual offenses, and the rise of homosexual associations can be traced to social trends and literature of a much later period.
I find it sadly ironic that a story that is meant to condemn inhospitality has been turned around to help build a culture inhospitable to LGBT people.
So why is Jesus bringing up Sodom here in Luke? This passage chronicles Jesus sending out 72 disciples ahead of him to towns and villages all over Palestine, with instructions to prepare the way for him as he journeyed towards Jerusalem. He gives them instructions on what to do in these towns, and ends by addressing the possibility that his disciples might encounter resistance or not be welcomed in some towns. In these towns, he tells them, say to them, “Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you.” Jesus is clearly talking about inhospitality here, and it is in that vein that he references Sodom.
His comment tracks the famous verse in Ezekiel 16:49, where the prophet claims, “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.” There is nothing there about homosexuality. The association of Sodom with such a topic is a much later accretion, foreign to the writers of the Hebrew Bible and its earliest Jewish interpreters. As Boswell notes, “Their refusal to see the account as a moral about homosexual behavior cannot be lightly disregarded, especially in the face of so little evidence to support a homosexual interpretation.” When it comes to a supposed condemnation of homosexuality in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, it is clear that there is no “there” there.
Hospitality is what the author of Genesis was concerned with, what Ezekiel was concerned with, what Jesus was concerned with, and by extension, what we should be concerned with. Our calling as Christians is to welcome the stranger, the needy, and the oppressed. The call of Scripture to practice radical hospitality, especially towards those rejected by the pious and the superior, should be central to our understanding of what it means to be a Christian. This means showing radical hospitality to immigrants, and the poor, and yes, even to LGBT people. To do otherwise is to be the one whose dirt Jesus is shaking off his shoes, and turning away from.