Hospitality (Session 3)

Ezekiel 16:49–50 (ESV)

⁴⁹ Behold, 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. ⁵⁰ They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.

When thinking of hospitality, we have preconceived ideas and narratives. We often apply it to certain aspect of culture, and people within the culture. As we think about the concepts of hospitality this weekend, I hope we have found that hospitality is more than we once thought. It is a spiritual gift and discipline we should strengthen. It is the life or the competition we are participating in.

The thing about hospitality is that it is not exclusive Christian or even Hebrew cultures. It is not even exclusive to Abrahamic cultures, as concepts of hospitality are deep within the teachings of Islam as well. Hospitality was important to each of the ancient near east cultures.

There was a near universal rule for hospitality throughout the ancient near east because the world was a dangerous place, not only due to the evil lurking in the hearts of men, but also the various animals within the wilderness. It was always better to be inside than outside when night came.

When someone traveled to a different town it was expected that they visit a relative or a member of their extended family. This friend or relative would then provide lodging and a meal for them. We in the western world can relate to this idea. As a child if we went on vacation it was usually to visit my aunt in Colorado. Why? We had a place to stay. It was rare for us to stay in a hotel and when we did we knew that it would be a vacation to remember. This is still common today. But in ancient times there was really no other options. Few villages had public inns and if they did it was likely that any random stranger could be placed within the same space as you.

This style of travel lodging leaves travelers vulnerable to theft. How many of times have we returned home from a trip with less socks? How many kids in a locker room ended up with an extra piece of equipment in their bag? It might not be intentional, but it happens. The ancient world was a little different than our contemporary society. The concept of eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, which is found in scripture can also be found in the legal codes of Summer and Babylon. It is found in ancient Egypt and throughout Canaan. It is found there because there was a tendency for people to go to an extreme. If you thought the person sleeping in the room with you was guilty of theft, the response was usually swift and brutal.

So the cultures in the Mediterranean basin noticed this, they observed the behaviors and many of them saw something within society. When people visited, when they came into a community and stayed with trusted members of society those people would return. They would bring items to trade, and would take some of our goods with them in trade. Even the cultures that are not widely spoken of in scripture noticed this. This is why people outside the church can legitimately say that they can be moral without religion. There is a problem with that line of thinking though. Most if not all of those cultures had a religious ethos, and they expected a blessing from God when they participated in hospitality.

But what happens if the expected blessing does not happen?

What if the stranger was ill and brought a sickness with them?

What if that stranger came into the land and then shortly after they left an army came into the city?

We know what happens when these things occur. Not to long ago we heard reports of kung flu, wuu flu, or the china virus. Our history books were filled with articles about the Spanish flu. During the plague people of Jewish heritage were often looked upon with suspicion because they did not contract the Black Death as rapidly as the rest of the community, and our ancestors wanted answers for why.

What were those answers? Initially the conclusion was that the Jewish population was filled with witches and Satan worshipers, because they did not worship God as we did. So the people rose in righteous anger to rid the world of the demonic powers that had instigated the plague. World War II was not the first time the Jewish people experienced a genocide. The truth about the plague is that plenty of Jewish people became ill, but their infection rates were a bit lower, mainly because they did not have a religious opposition to cats. And where cats are there are less rats which is one of the accepted explanations of the spread of disease. The other reason is that many of the dietary and hygiene laws also helped.

The passage today is from Ezekiel. I tend to avoid this book of scripture when speaking publicly because this prophet did not use terminology that is socially acceptable. Yet he was regarded as a prophet of God. This should challenge us a little bit. It should challenge us to look beyond our traditions and to listen to deeper meaning, because sometimes truth comes from unlikely places. It should also encourage us to use discernment when we are hearing things. Does the brash speech speak actual truth or is it simply making us feel justified in our errant thinking.

Ezekiel was a prophet during the time of exile in Babylon, and he used the shocking language to grab the attention of the righteous people that lamented their condition. But Ezekiel did not use the language against the people outside his community, he used the most graphic and disgusting aspects of his language to speak about his own people. To show them that they were not as holy as they thought, he wanted them to know that they contributed to much of their current sorrows and he was not going to let them make some other group into a scapegoat.

Ezekiel has some good points, but he was vile in most of the book. That being said, I often laugh at a product that I used to stock when I worked in retail because there was this bread that was marketed by a christian company that was supposedly healthier than any other bread because the recipe was found in scripture. The recipe is from Ezekiel, and the grains used were to resemble trash and poverty and in the passage Ezekiel was supposed to roast the bread over a fire burning human excrement. Even Ezekiel thought that was too much so he instead used animal feces. As I was stocking the bread I would always laugh because I wondered if it was baked according to the original recipe.

Ezekiel was not just a foul mouth religious zealot. He was a trained priest, a priest that was acutely aware of human and spiritual interaction. And he was given a vision of God’s throne. This is one of the reasons his writings was preserved for us for so long. He saw a vision of the almighty’s throne, he was accepted into that great cloud of witnesses few experienced this side of life.

In today’s passage he says, “Behold, 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. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them.”

Our traditional understanding of the abomination of Sodom is pretty firmly established. But what is interesting is that Ezekiel in all of his vulgarity does not mention what we think when discussing Sodom. He says that their sin was pride and lack of hospitality. This has always caused me to pause a bit. And I wanted to know why there was such wide gap between the accepted understanding I learned and the way Ezekiel taught at his time.

Hospitality in ancient times was serious business. A host was expected to provide for their guest’s every need. And this is seen in the response of Lot in the story of Sodom’s judgment. We today think Lot was crazy to send his daughters out into the crowd, but in the cultures surrounding the ancient near East this was part of hospitality. It always struck me as weird why the Torah had a law against a man remarrying his ex wife after she had been married to another man. I thought it was a pretty petty law. But then I began to read about the hospitality practices of many of the various ancient near east cultures. It was common for a man to divorce his wife for a night, have her marry the guest, and that man divorce her prior to leaving. This is appalling. It also explains a great deal of information to some other laws in scripture. Why Israel needed a written divorce, why they must conduct tests to prove adulterous acts prior to judgement. And why Jesus got so upset at the Pharisees about their teachings on divorce. It is to place limits on the extent of hospitality, and to protect women. Lot was an outsider and he was trying to provide hospitality to the city of Sodom. He was trying to extend a offering of peace. And it opposed everything God stood for, and it even compromised Lot’s expressed faith.

What was happening in Sodom was extremely vile. It is something that should not happen in any civilization. And you will be surprised with why I say this. They were turning the rules of hospitality upside down. They came to Lot with demands. He was an outsider that had made a home among them. He was contributing to their society and they were making demands of him that they were not making for any native born member of that society. And when the visitors arrived, they were demanding of them the same. The aspect we often focus on was not for mutual enjoyment. Everything within it was about power and control over the lives of any outsider that had a desire to live among them. It was a degrading, dehumanizing, ritual to ensure that anyone outside of the ruling majority knew their place.

But that is not the only aspect of hospitality abuse found in Sodom. The men wanted the angels. Why would they want these beings? This is where pride comes into play. What was the sin when the tower of Babel was constructed? What was the sin during the days of Noah? What was the sin in the Garden? They all have a similar theme, the theme of wanting the power of God.

There are similarities between many ancient cultures, and there are differences. Many cultures have flood stories very similar to those found in scripture. Some within academia have concluded that these similarities prove that scripture basically plagiarized. To me this just proves that scripture was given to people that lived among other people. And many of these people had similar experiences. And several of the cultures as a whole had flood stories because maybe something dramatic happened that affected all the people in that area.

I know I am going down an squirrel track. But what I am suggesting is Sodom in their wealth, in their prosperity, self indulgent society. They saw these angels and they knew that there was something different about them, and they wanted the power over them. They wanted to extract every ounce of power they could from these, what they would call gods. So that they could use that power and influence over their enemies. They wanted to make giants and men of renown so that they could become gods on earth.

This is the story we hear from many ancient empires. Pharaoh was the son of the gods. Gilgamesh was regarded as a son of god. Rome’s emperor was seen as the offspring of a god. Sodom wanted to make a son of god so that they could rise up above the others and take their place among the rulers of the earth. This is not a story of human relations it is a story of pride and selfish ambition. It is a story of abuse and injustice. It is a story of the powers of this world seeking to lift themselves up above all others and to become their own gods. The story of Sodom is a story of the exploitation of the vulnerable within a society.

Ezekiel used this story to tell the people of Israel, we had a chance. We knew what the upside down view of hospitality would lead to. We were once slaves in Egypt and God had delivered us from their bondage and lead us to the land of promise. We were once slaves and God had told us to take care of the widow and the orphans, to treat the foreigners among us as if they were members of our own nation. And we did not listen. Instead we looked to Sodom, “As I live, declares the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done.” (Ez 16:48)

We are no better than the worst expression of humanity, is what Ezekiel means. We exploited the marginalized because we could and we did it with gladness. They turned their back on the teachings of God, as stated in Exodus 22, “You shall not wrong the sojourner or oppress him, fo you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and you wives shall become widows and you children fatherless.” I could continue reading from that chapter but I think I have said enough.

Hospitality is the method God sanctified for his kingdoms work. It is found from the very beginning of scripture and extends to the end. How well humanity does hospitality as individuals and as cultures, according to the prophets, is how God will judge the nations. Egypt fell because they exploited Israel. Sodom fell. Tyre fell. Assyria fell. Babylon fell. Persia fell. Greece fell. Rome fell. I could continue the list of empires Each one had a cycle of prosperity where hospitality was look upon as something honorable, and each turned away for that as they became self indulgent, prideful and haughty. They thought they were great instead of seeing themselves as humans living together. Hospitality is not just a gift it is the goal, it is our mission. “Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”