ISSL Reflection for September 1, 2019 – Genesis 19:1, 15-26, 29

I.
Over the next weeks I will be offering some thoughts for reflection on the Scriptures that follow the International Sunday School Lesson Cycle for 2019-2020.

I will not be concerned with offering historical background for the Scripture passage, though at times such background may help provoke my reflections and yours.  Neither will I aim to offer commentary on the passage, though certainly any attempt to reflect on the passages will lead to my “comments” and to yours.

Reflection – my hope is for us to read these passages, rest in them, and spend time with them so they soak into our spirits and we come to a place where we are not simply reading words on a page but listening for what the Spirit would have us hear.

I plan to put before us each Monday the Scripture passage for the next Sunday’s lesson and to offer a few beginning thoughts for consideration.

During the week you and I may add to those initial reflections and share with one another what we are hearing.

Does that sound like a project that interests you?

Let’s start.

II.
The editors for the lesson cycle offer as the theme first quarter’s lessons (September – November, 2019) “Responding to God’s Grace.”  The first lesson is taken from Genesis 19 and puts before us Lot and the end of his residency in Sodom. Given the number of times this account has been told and retold many of us probably already presume we know the account from beginning to end.  But before we fall back on our recollections about Lot, Lot’s wife, and Sodom, take a moment to let yourself enter the passage with the question in mind, “How does this account inform our understanding of how we respond or do not respond to God’s Grace?”

III.
Genesis 19:1, 15-26, 29  (New Revised Standard Version)

The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and bowed down with his face to the ground.

When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or else you will be consumed in the punishment of the city.” But he lingered; so the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and left him outside the city. When they had brought them outside, they said, “Flee for your life; do not look back or stop anywhere in the Plain; flee to the hills, or else you will be consumed.” And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords; your servant has found favor with you, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life; but I cannot flee to the hills, for fear the disaster will overtake me and I die. Look, that city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be saved!” He said to him, “Very well, I grant you this favor too, and will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken.  Hurry, escape there, for I can do nothing until you arrive there.” Therefore the city was called Zoar. The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar.

Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.  But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the Plain, God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had settled.

IV.

First question – did the verses selected here skip or leave out parts of the account you are very familiar with and expected to see repeated?  Does that bother you or are you comfortable with this presentation? If you are uncomfortable with the verses selected here, why do you think that is? 

And second, did this presentation of account bring out to you more clearly other aspects of the passage?  What are you noticing with this reading you have not noticed before?

V.

Let’s spend a few minutes with Lot and notice some of his reactions to and interactions with the two angelic visitors.

How does Lot respond when they first come to him?

What does his rising and his bowing “with the face to the ground”  suggest to you?  

“ … But he lingered … “  

Lot is told to get up and – as they say at home – “get a move on it!”  It seems to me that Lot has already showed respect for and deference to his visitors but now he shows them what?  Does he not believe what they tell him? Does he think there must be other ways of dealing with the situation he is in?  Or, is he so attached to his life in Sodom that he cannot leave the city?

What do you think?

Do we see grace here?  What do we make of Lot’s response to this offer of … life, grace … how do you name it?

VI.

When you cannot leave a place under your own power, sometimes others help you get up and get going.  That seems to be the case here.

He is told again to “Flee for your life … “ 

And what does Lot do?  “ … but I cannot flee to the hills, for fear the disaster will overtake me and I will die.”

Is he responding to “grace” with fear?  How is that possible? For him or for us?

And next he proposes an alternate plan – “Look, that city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one.  Let me escape there … and my life will be saved!”

So we have Lot bargaining with his protectors.  I wonder if we looked through Scripture for a while, who else might we find that bargains with God or with his messengers to get the outcome they want?

Then we hear that the angel will “grant you this favor too …”  And if that is not enough of a surprise, the angel says, “ … for I can do nothing until your arrive there.”

How is the angel hampered by Lot’s reactions, requests, and reluctance to “obey”?  At one point in the account the angel “seized” Lot and took him out of the city and yet at another the angel cannot act until Lot acts.  Who’s in charge here?  

VII.

So, is the story about “responding to God’s grace”?  

Does Lot respond whole-heartedly? Half-heartedly? Quickly?  Reluctantly? Fearfully?

Or is it about how Lot does not respond to God’s grace?

What holds back Lot from responding immediately?

And let’s not keep our eyes solely on Lot?  How about us?

When we are offered a grace-filled moment or opportunity do we immediately see what to do and do it?  What thoughts, commitments, pressures mute or delay our response.

From your perspective today, can you think of time in the past you should have responded differently to a graced moment?  Can you identify what got in the way of your accepting grace?

How might you respond next time?

Charles

{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}


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