Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Third Sunday after Trinity (Trinity III, 6 July 2025). I am travelling to Oxford later today and staying there overnight in advance of an early-morning medical procedure tomorrow.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Matthew 10: 7-15 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 7 ‘As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” 8 Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. 9 Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, 10 no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for labourers deserve their food. 11 Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. 12 As you enter the house, greet it. 13 If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. 14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. 15 Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgement than for that town.’
Today’s Reflection:
The Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Matthew 10: 7-15) continues yesterday’s account of the commission and mission of the Twelve (Matthew 10: 1-7), as the Twelve are given their instructions for mission among the ‘lost sheep’: they are to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons; they are to give without expecting payment in return, travel lightly, be humble in accepting generosity, and to wish peace to all; and they are reminded of the dreadful consequences of hospitality not offered or hospitality spurned.
When I was discussing the particularly Greek concept of φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (philoxenia) in a blog posting last night (9 July 2025), I talked about a need to understand the sacrament of hospitality. But most of the discussions about sacramental hospitality are actually discussing to whom should we extend hospitality at the Eucharist rather than any potential sacramental understanding of generous hospitality itself.
The reference to Sodom and Gomorrah in today’s reading is a reminder of the story in Genesis 19, in which two angels are sent to destroy Sodom. Lot welcomes them into his home, but all the men of the town surround the house and demand that Lot surrender his visitors that they may ‘know’ them carnally (see Genesis 19: 5). Lot offers the mob his virgin daughters to ‘do to them as you please’, but they refuse and threaten to do worse to Lot.
In response, the angels strike the crowd blind, and tell Lot: ‘the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it’ (Genesis 19: 13).
The next morning, because Lot had lingered, the angels take Lot, Lot’s wife, and his two daughters by the hand and out of the city, and tell Lot to flee to the hills and not look back. Lot says that the hills are too far away and asks to go to Zoar instead. Sulphur and fire are then rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah, all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground (Genesis 19: 24-25). Lot and his daughters are saved, but his wife disregards the warning, looks back, and is turned into a pillar of salt.
‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ would become bywords for destruction and desolation (see Deuteronomy 29: 21-23). Other Biblical books initially attribute a variety of non-sexual sins to the inhabitants of Sodom. It is only much later that what came to be labelled ‘unnatural’ sex and homosexuality began to be included on these lists, and eventually homosexuality was interpreted as the primary sin of Sodom.
Sodom and Gomorrah, or the ‘cities of the plain’, were used historically and in modern discourse as metaphors for homosexuality, and are the origin of the English words sodomite, a pejorative term for male homosexuals, ‘sod’, a vulgar English slang term for male homosexuals, and sodomy, which is used in a legal context under the label crimes against nature to describe anal or oral sex (particularly homosexual) and bestiality.
The origin of the argument that sodomy was sinful is found in a contested reading of one word in the story. Citing Sodom and Gomorrah, Christian authorities began to label and condemn acts of sodomy as the worst of all sexual sins, and one of the worst crimes in general. For many centuries, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was used by the Church to justify criminalisation of sexual practices between men, and people labelled sodomites were often punished by execution.
To this day, the phrase ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’ remains a rallying call among some far-right groups in Northern Ireland.
However, since the mid 20th century, scholars in increasing numbers have seen the great sin of Sodom as the inhospitable treatment of guests. Much of the debate in modern interpretation of the greatest sin of Sodom, and whether the story concerns or condemns homosexuality, rests on interpreting the moment the mob from Sodom confronts Lot about his guests.
Today, many scholars dispute the interpretation that the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah involve homosexuality. They cite Ezekiel 16: 49-50 and interpret the sin as arrogance and lack of hospitality. As with Ezekiel, later prophetic reproaches of Sodom and Gomorrah do not condemn, implicate, or even mention homosexual conduct as the reason for the destruction of the city. Instead, they assign the blame to other sins, ranging from adultery, sexual violence and exploitation and dishonesty, to a lack of charity and an unwillingness to extend appropriate and generous hospitality.
If the obsession with equating gay sexuality with the sin of Sodom that is found among many evangelicals to this day was tempered even by true Biblical literalism and instead became widespread condemnation by those evangelicals, particularly in Trump’s America, of sexual violence and exploitation, dishonesty and an unwillingness to offer generous hospitality to the stranger, imagine what a different place the United States of America would be this day.
But, perhaps, I ought to conclude with a story retold this week that conveys how we can mis-hear and minterpret words because of our already determined cultural presuppositions and prejudices.
In its obituary of Lord (David) Lipsey, the journalist and Labour peer who died tragically earlier this week, the Guardian recalled on Tuesday how he had founded a newspaper at school in Bryanston and interviewed his future mentor, Anthony Crosland, then the Education Secretary and committed to abolishing public schools. The young interviewer reported Crosland saying prep schools were ‘stinking breeding grounds of sodomy’. Years later, Lipsey came across a Crosland speech and realised he had misheard the last word. It should have been ‘snobbery’.
Today’s Prayers (Thursday 10 July 2025):
The theme this week (6 to 12 July) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Following in the Footsteps of Saint Thomas.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from the Revd Mark Woodrow, USPG Bishop’s Nominee for St Edmundsbury and Ipswich and Parish Priest and Rural Dean in Suffolk.
The USPG prayer diary today (Thursday 10 July 2025) invites us to pray:
Loving God, we pray for churches across India. May they be strengthened amidst change, fill the gaps left by departing youth, and guide all who follow you into deeper trust.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
you have broken the tyranny of sin
and have sent the Spirit of your Son into our hearts
whereby we call you Father:
give us grace to dedicate our freedom to your service,
that we and all creation may be brought
to the glorious liberty of the children of God;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
O God, whose beauty is beyond our imagining
and whose power we cannot comprehend:
show us your glory as far as we can grasp it,
and shield us from knowing more than we can bear
until wemay look upon you without fear;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Additional Collect:
God our saviour,
look on this wounded world
in pity and in power;
hold us fast to your promises of peace
won for us by your Son,
our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Yesterday’s reflections
Continued tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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