The Sin of Sodom

If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. - Matthew 10:14-15

When Jesus speaks of Sodom and Gomorrah, he doesn’t talk about sex. He talks about welcome. The fact that those cities didn’t welcome people (or angels!) was a HUGE deal to God. It was part of the fabric of the ancient world to welcome people into your town and into your home, and the absence of welcome (and the presence of aggression instead) led to the ruin of those two cities.

These days hospitality is not assumed anymore - it’s not nearly the cultural value that it used to be. But for all the times Sodom and Gomorrah get mentioned, perhaps it’s time to reassign the meaning of that passage in the Old Testament (in Genesis 19) to the virtue (or lack thereof) of hospitality. What if we started taking hospitality more seriously these days?

Pray today for a single opportunity to welcome someone - into your home, into a conversation, into a friendship, into the spot in line ahead of you, or some other way. Pay attention to your heart in that moment. What is God up to in you in that moment?