It was a great delight to see Doug Harbo and his wife Pat! I was hoping their car would break down and they would be stuck here for a month, but it didn’t happen.
Doug asked what was on my mind these days. A book on marriage (complete) and a companion book on immigration (in process), to be published as a pair. But also: the punishments for inhospitality to immigrants in Scripture are extraordinarily severe! This is an incomplete thought. But Doug pressed a little, so I launched. He was startled that I was so interested in blood, and lost interest, at the fourth of five. So I’ll sketch it again here, and get to the fifth, which is the most interesting one.
This is an incomplete essay. To do this right, I need a much better understanding of sacrifice. And if I see a pattern in Scripture that recurs five times, I’m pretty sure I’m missing two. Still, here’s the incomplete thought.
#1. The pattern of hospitality emerges in Genesis. Abraham and then Lot welcome strangers, treating them as if they were from heaven – which is good, because they are. There are a dozen details in the story of Abraham at Mamre that recur in the story of Lot at Sodom; once you have seen the parallels, you cannot un-see them; and you too become convinced that the stories (Genesis 18 about Abraham, and then the next chapter, Genesis 19, about Lot) must be read together. Explored elsewhere. What I want to focus in here is that there was a violation of hospitality, and a punishment. Abraham and Lot welcome the strangers, but Lot’s neighbors don’t. They want to rape the strangers, and homosexual gang rape is about as inhospitable as you can get. The punishment is noteworthy: angels scatter their dust across the trackless desert. Crimes: inhospitality, attempted rape. Intended victim: two strangers. Perpetrators: whole community. Punishment: towns obliterated.
#3. The Sodom story is often smudged up, reduced to a lesson about same-sex activity. So it’s worthwhile looking at Genesis 18 and 19 together, but also looking at a relatively obscure story about events in Gibea (in the First Book of Kings, ch 19). The Gibea story starts out parallel to the Sodom story, but swerves away. Stranger stops in Gibea, accepts hospitality at a man’s house, neighbors gather for a homosexual gang rape, stranger pushes out his concubine instead, neighbors rape her instead, man lines up allies among the twelve tribes of Israel, explains what happened SKIPPING THE RAPE ATTEMPT and focusing on hospitality and murder, the Hebrews attack Gibea, are repulsed twice, then attack a third time and slaughter everyone in ten towns. Crime: inhospitality and murder. Victim: stranger (abused) and concubine (murdered). Perpetrators: whole community. Punishment: ten towns wiped out.
#2. Between these two, there’s another. The whole story of the Exodus, from beginning to end, contains interesting insights into hospitality. The story is not about God’s act, saving his people from slavery. But it’s noteworthy that Moses (and writers in the Mosaic tradition, writing in his name) repeatedly sum up the lessons from the experience in terms of hospitality: “Welcome strangers, because – remember! – you too once were a stranger in a strange land!” The Hebrews went down to Egypt, and were welcome while Joseph lived, then had trouble, including slavery and genocide. Forever after, the lesson is summed up in terms in hospitality: don’t be like an Egyptian, don’t do what they did, remember that you too once were a stranger. Crimes: inhospitality, slavery, genocide. Victims: the Hebrew people. Perpetrators: the Egyptians, especially the Pharaoh. Punishment: the destruction of the army at the Red Sea (after some warnings including the ten plagues, including the deaths of all the firstborn Egyptians).
#4. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel say that the Babylonian Exile was a punishment for the sins of the people of Israel. The first sin is idolatry, turning away from the covenant with the Lord. Other sins include injustice and oppression. But it matters to note that the lists of sins that bring on the Exile always include inhospitality to strangers. Crimes: idolatry, injustice, oppression, inhospitality. Victims: the poor, especially widows and orphans and strangers. The perpetrators: the Hebrew people. The punishment: the destruction of Jerusalem and the entire nation, and exile.
#5. [Probably should be #7, if I weren’t missing some things]. One aspect of the story of Jesus is radical inhospitality. In the beginning of the universe, there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; but when he came among his own people, they did not recognize him. He came as a stranger, and eventually his own people crucified him. Crimes: not just idolatry but also deicide, plus every sin ever, including prominently inhospitality. Victim: Jesus, Lord of the history and of the universe, Son of God, the Messiah. Perpetrators: all of us, including his chosen people and his chosen apostles who betrayed him. Punishment: the crucifixion – of the victim of the crimes.
Mind-boggling.