Genesis 19:15-26
Rev. Shannon Jordan
July 14, 2024
Just before our passage this morning, Abraham and Sarah were visited by three men. Abraham
and Sarah showed them great hospitality. These men, two of whom seem to be angels and one
the LORD, told Abraham that they would have a child…and if you remember Sarah laughed
because she was really old.
After this, Abraham and the men walked along, and the LORD says to Abraham that the cries of
injustice are countless and sends the men who were with he and Abraham to Sodom to see if the
city is as evil as he thought.
Some of you may remember that this is where Abraham negotiates with God. Are you going to
destroy everyone? What if there are 50 innocents? 45? 20? 10? Great negotiating by Abraham to
save people. Abraham tells God it is injust to punish the innocent with the guilty.
Then men stay with Lot and all of the men of Sodom come to gang rape the angels, Lot tries to
dissuade them and offers in their place his unwed daughters. The men from Sodom then start
banging on the door of Lot’s house to break it down shouting that Lot was an immigrant and
didn’t matter. The messengers step in, blind the mob, and tell Lot to get his family out of town.
“Take your sons in law, sons, and daughters and go. God is about to destroy this place. The
LORD has found the cries of injustice so serious that the LORD sent us to destroy it.”
Lot went to tell his sons in law to get his daughters and leave—but they thought he was joking.
Our passage picks up the next morning and I am reading all of the verses 15-26.
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 favour 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 favour 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 sulphur 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.
Last week David titled his sermon Holding Out for Hero…and I had that song on my mind for a
week. I initially named this sermon Don’t Look Back…a Boston song because most of us, if not
all of us, have been taught that Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt as punishment for
looking back. However, my studies this week caused me to change it to Should I Stay or Should I
Go a Clash favorite because Lot’s indecision that delayed their departure causing his wife to be
too close to the destruction and she was consumed.
Lot didn’t leave Sodom when told to. The messengers seize Lot and pulled him outside of the
city and told them to flee for this hills. Don’t look back or you might be consumed. Think hot
lava. A volcanic eruption of some sort. Looking back will slow you down. We have all watched
movies where people are running from destruction to look back, causing them to slow down and
be caught by what was chasing them.
In reading several Jewish commentaries on this passage a few things popped out that were
different than what I learned in VBS. 1 They said that it was not that God turned her into a pillar
of salt because she looked back, but that she was behind Lot and Lot was so late to leave danger
when told, that he had lingered, that he had argued, that he was almost consumed by the fire and
brimstone—that because his wife was behind and slowed down to look at what was about to
overcome them, that she was consumed and all that was left was a petrified column of salt.
There are three words from this passage that really stuck with me.
But Lot lingered. Why didn’t he leave when he was told? Why did he stay?
Three people in the last week have asked me for resources on discerning the will of God. How
do we know what God wants us to do? One in particular said that it is easy when you know what
God wants, but other times it is harder.
I have to disagree. We often know the right thing to do—and we may or may not do it. We are
more like Lot than we want to be. Lot had messengers from God not only tell him, but grab his
arm and drag him out of the city. But he didn’t listen! He kept arguing!
We can do the same. We know we are to be generous, not selfish. We know not to lie or gossip
or bully. We know we are to not only be nice, but to love our neighbors AND our enemies. We
know we should live within our means so that we can be generous with others. Sometimes the
will of God is there but we ignore it. Lot is a perfect example of that. He had a messenger from
God come and TELL him what to do and he lingered!
Sometimes what we are to do is in scripture, but we don’t know scripture well enough to do it.
We don’t know what it says or what it means so we miss the boat. If we have never explored
what it means to be generous from a scriptural perspective, we can keep living selfish lives. If we
don’t realize scripture has a LOT to say about our priorities, we may set our priorities according
to what feels good or what is convenient or what culture tells us.
Lot is a great example of this. Genesis 13 says that when Abraham and Lot moved into the area
that they had so many herds that the land couldn’t support both families and that the workers
were arguing over it. Abraham comes to Lot and says that it isn’t right for there to be strife and
for Lot to choose the areas he wants and that Abraham will move his family and their
possessions and herds elsewhere. Lot sees that the plains of the Jordan are well watered and like
Egypt or the garden of God and chooses that. The passage says that Sodom and Gomorrah had
not yet been destroyed AND that the people in Sodom are wicked—great sinners against the
Lord. Lot in essence chooses the wicked for financial security. Abraham follows and trusts God.
Abraham knows the heart of God and has been able to align his life and choices with God. To be
clear, if you read the life of Abraham, you will see that is not at all always the truth. But it is
what he seems to be working towards.
One of the women who asked me about discernment specifically asked me for books she could
read on the topic. I had one written by a former co-worker of mine that is good and I
recommended that, but I also did a search to see what new things had come out. A new book has
come out called Reading the Signs of Daily Life: Discernment by Henri Nouwen. This was a
book put together after his death from his writings and his talks. It is really good. Nouwen
believed that “God is always speaking to us—individually and as the people of God—at different
times and in different ways: through dreams and visions, prophets and messengers, scripture and
tradition, experience and reason, nature and events. And that discernment is the spiritual
practice that accesses and seeks to understand what God is trying to say.” 2
Our jobs are to learn to listen to what God is saying, or to put it the way the book does in another
section, to “remember God” in our decision making.
When asked how I discern the will of God, what is my process, if God does not send an angel to
drag me from evil, I start with journalling about it. This helps me slow down and prayerfully
consider it. Like Nouwen describes, I check my life to see if there are any messengers that God
has sent that I have ignored.
Growing up I definitely felt a call of God on my life and in our tradition, that meant being a
missionary. I grew up in a house that often hosted missionaries and I loved the stories they told. I
had another missionary couple cross my path in early marriage and I thought wow, maybe I/we
should be missionaries. Some fairly simple discernment revealed that if God has wanted me to be
a missionary that God would not have had me marry John. John was clearly NOT called to be a
missionary. Fast forward several years and I started feeling the call to pastoral ministry—that
was much clearer in some ways because I WAS married to John and his sister is a PCUSA pastor
and my being a pastor and his supporting me in that was a good fit for us. We just need to pay
attention.
Prayer is a great way to discern the will of God. It gives us eyes to see God at work around us. If
I am praying for discernment in an area I am more aware of God speaking to me through my
daily life than if I weren’t. We pray for discernment regularly over time.
I was flipping through an old journal last week and in it in June of 2020 I jotted down that John
had had an interesting conversation with his boss and the possibility of us moving back to VA
was in the mix. We prayed on and off about that for months. Lots of conversations and looking at
different options. I knew I was not called to leave my Alabama church to go back to VA, as
much as we loved VA. Our son came over the holidays while we were still discerning, and he
brought up the possibility of John not continuing with that job and retiring early. More
conversations. More prayer. More discernment, and it became clear he was to quit. He did, and
two weeks after his last day of work, this position was posted.
Added to that, for me, sunsets at Lake Lure, especially on or around July 4 th are my most special
times. Holy Ground. On July 4 th , 2021, on the boathouse, we were taking photos right after the
sun had dipped behind the mountains. The skies were indeed declaring the glory of the LORD.
Holy Ground. Cathie Dodson, as chair of the search committee emailed me at the peak of the
sunset—and I had my phone with me AND I checked email—in the midst of a gorgeous sunset.
Even I don’t do that. I knew it was God.
Prayer, remembering God, discernment, gives us the lenses we need to discern God’s will. God
is speaking to us, can we hear? Are our lives quiet enough and open enough to hear? Are we too
busy? Are we spending too much time scrolling on our phones?
In addition to prayer, having people with whom we can talk about these things is important.
Spiritual directors, pastors, wise people in our lives, small groups, all can provide people God
can use to help us discern God’s will. Are you fostering relationships with people who you
would trust to join you in discernment?
Going back to the Nouwen idea…deciding to remember God in our lives is key for discernment.
It is structuring our lives for the best outcome. It is not doing like Lot did and deciding to stay in
the midst of evil for financial gain.
I saw a church sign on Friday that said “Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?” Am I
paying attention to God in deciding what I will do, or just going to God to get me out of trouble?
How serious am I, are you, how serious are we as a congregation, at discerning the will of God
and acting on it?
1 https://thelehrhaus.com/scholarship/lots-wife-was-never-salt-and-why-that-highlights-the-greatness-of-
abraham/
2 Discernment, Henri Nouwen, page vii.