Living in the City of God
Elvis and the Pillar of Salt
"and the Lord said, if I find fifty righteous within the City, then I will spare all
the place for their sakes" - Genesis 18.26
"Bright light city going to set my soul, going to set my soul on fire" - Viva Las Vegas
Just off the Strip in Las Vegas sits the Candlelight Wedding Chapel. It has a tall steeple with a cross on top and you can get married there for $199. After 4 AM, things slow down while the gamblers go to their hotels and the clean up crews get the city ready for another day of drinking and gambling. Around that time, a few old drunks try to wander into Candelight or huddle on the grounds. It gets cold at night in the desert.
Local rumor has it that one or two of the most severely alcoholic homeless folks
have spent their last minutes on earth in the back of the chapel probably so far gone that they don't even know where they are, waiting for the call to Eternity.. An El Greco-like sculpture of Christ, suffering and thin on the Cross, at the front of the chapel, witnesses their passing.
There is no other city like Las Vegas in the world. People come to drink, be entertained, get involved in sexual adventure, or gamble. Three million people come a year and the casinos take billions of dollars from them. Walking through the casinos at night there is a panorama of hookers, gamblers, drinkers and old people sitting at slot machines on casino floors the size of football fields.
One of the important questions that has faced Christianity since its beginning is how the demonic can exist in a world in which Jesus has lived, and where he has suffered and died to redeem mankind. Celsus, one of the great early critics of Christianity, put it as well as anyone. How could Christians have faith that the world was saved when all of the reasonable evidence around them showed otherwise, he asked. How could Christ be ruler of all and love mankind if evil
exists all around us?
Before the coming of Christ, the debate about God’s battle with evil was framed differently
In the Old Testament, evil was often dispatched efficiently, but the issue of how evil could coexist with good and how divine judgment would navigate between them was just as vexing and complex.
In Genesis 18.20, God reveals his awareness that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is "very grievous". At that point Abraham asks God a question that rings down through the history of Judaism and Christianity. "Wilts thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?" In other words, will there be no separation between the ways that the faithful and unfaithful be treated? And, this begins a dialogue between God and a human that is almost unprecedented in the Bible, as Abraham bargains for the lives of those in the condemned cities.
God sends two angels to Sodom, and they are greeted by one of the few righteous men of the city, Lot. When the local citizens become concerned about his heaven-sent visitors, he even offers his virgin daughters in an attempt to protect them. As angels of God, they needed no such protection and blinded the multitude surrounding Lot's house.
The next day, God destroyed both cities, leaving nothing. The odd coda to the story is that Lot's wife turned to look at the city as it was destroyed and perished herself, turned to a pillar of salt. This moment seems somehow disconnected from the rest of the story. But, much later in the Bible, Jesus would ask his disciples to "remember Lot's wife" -Luke 17.32. Why? Because, according to Jesus, the coming of the Son of Man would be like the end of the two ancient cities. Sudden and with swift judgment.
So, for looking back at her old life, even for an instant, Lot's wife receives the ultimate punishment. But why? In the world of the Old Testament, was one glance back worthy of such an extreme consequence? Perhaps, before the New Covenant, the answer is “yes”.
If, as Christians, we look at the world and see that we live in an era of widespread sin, war, and suffering, how are we to view those whose every waking hour is spent preying on weaknesses of others, or those who go to the places where they can be preyed upon, knowing the consequences? What about the times in our lives when we have preyed on our fellows or we have transgressed? What about simply standing by as a witness of these events? Was this the sin of Lot’s wife?
Down the road from Candlelight Wedding Chapel is the Graceland Chapel. You can get married by someone dressed up as Elvis. You can actually take your vows and live by them your whole life, in holy matrimony, even if someone impersonating an entertainer marries you. You can be devout and honorable your whole life, even if you get married in Las Vegas. You can perform a sacred act in the middle of the City of Sin, go home and do all the things that the
Bible and your faith tell you to do. You can number yourself one of the righteous who left Sodom.
But, is it enough? Or, do we risk the fate of Sodom, or even of Lot’s wife?
Perhaps, Luke tells us. "Thus shall it be on the day the Son of Man is revealed."
“Remember Lot’s wife.” “Whosoever shall save his life, shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life, shall preserve it”- Luke 17.30, 32-33. We see a shift from the Old Testament to the new. Abraham no longer bargains with God for the souls in the city. Jesus has made the bargain. “the blood of the covenant shed for many for the forgiveness of sins” – Matthew 26.28
Would God destroy a city? A wicked city? Would he spare no one? Perhaps the God of Genesis would. We would presume too much to say that God had "changed" by the time we encounter Him in the person of his Son in Luke. But, the covenant is different. "Whosoever seeks to save his life shall lose it". Lot's wife, perhaps. "Whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it."
Perhaps some poor soul, after a life of suffering and drinking, will die in a pew or within site of the cross on the steeple of the Candlelight Wedding Chapel tonight. He will not burn with the rest of the city before first light, because the city will not burn. The God of the New Covenant has offered the possibility of salvation for a dying man, and, perhaps, many others in the in Sodom.
Elvis and the Pillar of Salt
"and the Lord said, if I find fifty righteous within the City, then I will spare all
the place for their sakes" - Genesis 18.26
"Bright light city going to set my soul, going to set my soul on fire" - Viva Las Vegas
Just off the Strip in Las Vegas sits the Candlelight Wedding Chapel. It has a tall steeple with a cross on top and you can get married there for $199. After 4 AM, things slow down while the gamblers go to their hotels and the clean up crews get the city ready for another day of drinking and gambling. Around that time, a few old drunks try to wander into Candelight or huddle on the grounds. It gets cold at night in the desert.
Local rumor has it that one or two of the most severely alcoholic homeless folks
have spent their last minutes on earth in the back of the chapel probably so far gone that they don't even know where they are, waiting for the call to Eternity.. An El Greco-like sculpture of Christ, suffering and thin on the Cross, at the front of the chapel, witnesses their passing.
There is no other city like Las Vegas in the world. People come to drink, be entertained, get involved in sexual adventure, or gamble. Three million people come a year and the casinos take billions of dollars from them. Walking through the casinos at night there is a panorama of hookers, gamblers, drinkers and old people sitting at slot machines on casino floors the size of football fields.
One of the important questions that has faced Christianity since its beginning is how the demonic can exist in a world in which Jesus has lived, and where he has suffered and died to redeem mankind. Celsus, one of the great early critics of Christianity, put it as well as anyone. How could Christians have faith that the world was saved when all of the reasonable evidence around them showed otherwise, he asked. How could Christ be ruler of all and love mankind if evil
exists all around us?
Before the coming of Christ, the debate about God’s battle with evil was framed differently
In the Old Testament, evil was often dispatched efficiently, but the issue of how evil could coexist with good and how divine judgment would navigate between them was just as vexing and complex.
In Genesis 18.20, God reveals his awareness that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is "very grievous". At that point Abraham asks God a question that rings down through the history of Judaism and Christianity. "Wilts thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?" In other words, will there be no separation between the ways that the faithful and unfaithful be treated? And, this begins a dialogue between God and a human that is almost unprecedented in the Bible, as Abraham bargains for the lives of those in the condemned cities.
God sends two angels to Sodom, and they are greeted by one of the few righteous men of the city, Lot. When the local citizens become concerned about his heaven-sent visitors, he even offers his virgin daughters in an attempt to protect them. As angels of God, they needed no such protection and blinded the multitude surrounding Lot's house.
The next day, God destroyed both cities, leaving nothing. The odd coda to the story is that Lot's wife turned to look at the city as it was destroyed and perished herself, turned to a pillar of salt. This moment seems somehow disconnected from the rest of the story. But, much later in the Bible, Jesus would ask his disciples to "remember Lot's wife" -Luke 17.32. Why? Because, according to Jesus, the coming of the Son of Man would be like the end of the two ancient cities. Sudden and with swift judgment.
So, for looking back at her old life, even for an instant, Lot's wife receives the ultimate punishment. But why? In the world of the Old Testament, was one glance back worthy of such an extreme consequence? Perhaps, before the New Covenant, the answer is “yes”.
If, as Christians, we look at the world and see that we live in an era of widespread sin, war, and suffering, how are we to view those whose every waking hour is spent preying on weaknesses of others, or those who go to the places where they can be preyed upon, knowing the consequences? What about the times in our lives when we have preyed on our fellows or we have transgressed? What about simply standing by as a witness of these events? Was this the sin of Lot’s wife?
Down the road from Candlelight Wedding Chapel is the Graceland Chapel. You can get married by someone dressed up as Elvis. You can actually take your vows and live by them your whole life, in holy matrimony, even if someone impersonating an entertainer marries you. You can be devout and honorable your whole life, even if you get married in Las Vegas. You can perform a sacred act in the middle of the City of Sin, go home and do all the things that the
Bible and your faith tell you to do. You can number yourself one of the righteous who left Sodom.
But, is it enough? Or, do we risk the fate of Sodom, or even of Lot’s wife?
Perhaps, Luke tells us. "Thus shall it be on the day the Son of Man is revealed."
“Remember Lot’s wife.” “Whosoever shall save his life, shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life, shall preserve it”- Luke 17.30, 32-33. We see a shift from the Old Testament to the new. Abraham no longer bargains with God for the souls in the city. Jesus has made the bargain. “the blood of the covenant shed for many for the forgiveness of sins” – Matthew 26.28
Would God destroy a city? A wicked city? Would he spare no one? Perhaps the God of Genesis would. We would presume too much to say that God had "changed" by the time we encounter Him in the person of his Son in Luke. But, the covenant is different. "Whosoever seeks to save his life shall lose it". Lot's wife, perhaps. "Whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it."
Perhaps some poor soul, after a life of suffering and drinking, will die in a pew or within site of the cross on the steeple of the Candlelight Wedding Chapel tonight. He will not burn with the rest of the city before first light, because the city will not burn. The God of the New Covenant has offered the possibility of salvation for a dying man, and, perhaps, many others in the in Sodom.
posted by douglas mcintyre at 7:17 AM
0 comments
