The Innocent with the Guilty

And Abraham stepped forward and said, “Will you really wipe out the innocent with the guilty?” [Genesis 18:23].

For several thousand years or so, scholars, clergy, and laypeople alike have pondered the nature of God. We have wondered if God is strangely anthropomorphic on the one hand, or, as Karl Barth would so eloquently write during the 20th century, “wholly other.” Anthropomorphic evidence can be seen in God’s practice of walking and talking with the man and woman in the Garden [Genesis 2:8]. Other indications include God’s calling out to the first man, after he had eaten the forbidden fruit, “Where are you?” Genesis 2:10]—i.e., wouldn’t God already know? We see the same God, who could conjure up the cosmos from nothing, perform rather menial labor as a tailor, making clothes in the form of skins for the sinful couple [Genesis 3:22]. In last week’s alternate OT lesson [Genesis 18:1-10a], we saw a rather human-like God show up for supper at Abraham and Sarah’s tent. True, He did have two angels in tow.

Support for the “wholly other” description of God is more plentiful: e.g., the “first” Creation story [Genesis 1:1-2:4a]; God’s statement to Moses, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live” [Exodus 33:20]; and Job’s announcement, “The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power, …” [Job 37:23]. It seems we have a dilemma: Is God fully approachable, fully available, fully personal, or is God “wholly other.” The answer, of course, is “Yes.”

An uncomfortable tension can exist between the two divine natures. The tension is particularly magnified when we encounter troublesome life experiences in which an almighty, all-powerful, all-knowing God appears to allow—sometimes even to cause—tragedy and suffering.

This is the issue of theodicy, that $200 Divinity School word that speaks of our human efforts to justify, or at least understand, how it is that evil, cruelty, chaos, and tragedy can go on within a world that has been created by a “good” and loving God. This week’s OT reading [Genesis 18:20-32, Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year C], confronts us with theodicy. If God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah—in a subsequent chapter, He does, of course—will the destruction include those who are innocent of wrongdoing?

This week’s story follows the one I wrote about last week—the one in which God and two of His angels appear at Abraham and Sarah’s tent and are invited to rest, eat, and drink by the old, childless couple. God—the anthropomorphic deity—tells Abraham and Sarah that she will bear a son within one year. She laughs—at 90, who wouldn’t. That’s where last week’s lesson ended. The God of the impossible [Genesis 18:14] promises the impossible.

Having finished their meal, now refreshed, Yahweh and His angels get up, offer thanks to Abraham for his hospitality, look “out over Sodom” [18:16], and begin to head away from Abraham’s tents. Abraham, thinks to himself, “Where are my manners?” And so, he gets up as well and begins to walk with them.

This week’s lesson doesn’t begin until verse 20, leaving out and important anthropomorphic example. In this short interlude, we are allowed to eavesdrop on Yahweh’s thoughts, for Yahweh muses (to Himself) that He has a dilemma. “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” [Genesis 18:17, NIV].

You see, Yahweh has determined to go down to Sodom to see if things are as bad as He has heard they are (yet another anthropomorphism). And if, as Yahweh suspects—but apparently doesn’t know—the situation is intolerable, Yahweh has decided that He will destroy the entire city. The question for the moment: Should He tell Abraham about His plans?

After all, Yahweh explains to Himself, He and Abe are essentially partners. Through Abraham and Sarah, the entire world is to be blessed. Moreover, if, as Yahweh desires, His righteousness and justice are to be transmitted to the generations that will follow, that holy transmission must flow through Abraham. This, of course, begs the question: “What does Yahweh’s righteousness and justice look like?

Yahweh decides that He must share the bad news with Abraham. And when Yahweh does so, Abraham does a remarkable thing:

And Abraham stepped forward and said, “Will You really wipe out the innocent with the guilty?” [18:23].

Notice Abraham’s posture. He has not cowered in the face of the “wholly other.” He has stepped forward toward Yahweh. Moreover, he has dared to ask Yahweh a question about Yahweh’s morality, about Yahweh’s righteousness and justice. Abraham posits that there may be fifty innocent people within the city. Will Yahweh not spare the city for the sake of fifty righteous beings?

Abraham, already quite brazen, then ups the ante, “Far be it from You to do such a thing, to put to death the innocent with the guilty, making innocent and guilty the same …. Will not the Judge of all the earth do justice?” [18:25b]. How dare Abraham speak this way to the Almighty? All this is quite insubordinate. Should we all duck and cover?

Yahweh doesn’t strike down Abraham. Yahweh shows no anger, no irritation. Yahweh does what we don’t expect from the Almighty. He shows that He is willing to listen, to hear Abraham out. It is as if Yahweh encourages Abraham to ponder the ethical issues at stake here. How else is Abraham going to be able to transmit Yahweh’s righteousness and justice?

Well, you know how the story goes. Yahweh relents. If there are 50 innocents, He will not destroy Sodom. Further emboldened, Abe says, “Well, there might be only 45 innocents. What would you do then?”

Yahweh again relents. Abraham keeps the auction going and gets Yahweh down to 10 righteous souls. If there are even 10 in Sodom who are innocent, Yahweh will not destroy the city. A parenthetical note: Abraham’s motives are somewhat mixed. His nephew, Lot, and family have bought a condo in one of the new high rises near Sodom’s Performing Arts Center. If Yahweh goes nuclear on Sodom, then Lot and his family will be collateral damage.

Those who’ve read ahead know that Sodom and Gomorrah turn out to be every bit as terrible as Yahweh had “feared.” Lot and family, who, by the way, number less than ten, are all saved. Well, there is that unfortunate thing with Lot’s wife who looks back as the family flees.

This week’s text calls upon us to embrace the tension that exists between the two—and there may be many more than two—natures of God. There is the nature that not only allows, but encourages intimacy, that desires that we move forward toward Him, and that listens as we utter even harsh words in His direction. Jesus, after all, as He bore the weight of our sin on the Cross, uttered, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

And yet God’s “other” nature is altogether different. With this nature, God need not agree with our sense of duty or justice. Indeed, sometimes we must struggle with the radical nature of what it means for God to be God. To be sure, there are moments in Holy Scripture when we see a God who relents, even holds back, showing that He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Still God is God. “How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out” [Romans 11:33b].

In spite of His “tender” side, Yahweh will not bear the evil within Sodom and Gomorrah. Nor will He lightly bear it in Durham, Raleigh, Rock Hill, Charlotte, or Chicago. After all, neither Aaron nor Moses were allowed to enter into the Promised Land. He did not save Uriah the Hittite, from the treachery of King David. He cured the leprosy of Naaman, a general in the enemy’s army, but did not cure similar medical conditions in a number of Jews in the time of Elisha. He saved the infant, Jesus, and family from Herod, by arranging for their temporary relocation to Egypt. The “Holy Innocents,” the other Bethlehem boys born at about the same time as Jesus—those first Christian martyrs—were not similarly saved.

It seems that Yahweh welcomes inquiry into His standards, into His definitions of righteousness and justice. And so, rephrasing only slightly Abraham’s question to the “wholly other” Yahweh, we all might wonder:

God, will you allow the death of the innocent, instead of the guilty? Will you make the guilty and the innocent the same? [from Genesis 18:25].

God’s answer is a resounding “Yes!”, for that is exactly what God did on Calvary. The innocent died so that the guilty—that’s you and me—might live, and not only live, but live in blessed communion with the Holy Trinity.” Through the blood of Christ, we, the guilty, are made the same as our Lord. There’s no justice in that, of course, only Grace. In the end, Jesus, who taught in parables, becomes the ultimate parable, for God withholds Abraham’s son, Isaac …, but not His own.

Thanks be to God. From whom all blessings flow!