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| Andrei Rublev, Trinity, early 15th century |
Our modern western world view is incorrigibly individualistic. We tend to take it for granted that we’re rewarded individually for our personal achievements; and that we’re punished individually for whatever faults or crimes we commit. And it’s not supposed to go any further than that. With very few exceptions, for example, our legal system doesn’t punish whole families for the transgressions of one wayward family member.
The pre-modern view was different. Notions of collective guilt and collective punishment abounded. For example, if the political leaders of an ancient city committed some crime against neighboring cities, the whole city was considered liable. In wars in the Ancient Near Eastern and Classical worlds it was not unusual for the whole population of a city to be punished for the crimes of its leaders – with the men of military age put to the sword and the women and children sold into slavery.
This morning’s reading from Genesis presupposes something like this view of collective guilt with respect to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the narrative leading up to today’s reading, the patriarch Abraham entertains three mysterious strangers who turn out to be angels of the Lord – and in Christian tradition manifestations of the Holy Trinity as depicted in the famous Russian icon by Andrei Rublev.
After receiving Abraham’s hospitality, two of the three visitors make for the cities on the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet one of the three remains with Abraham and explains the Lord’s intentions. The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is very great; and their sin is very grave; so the messengers are going down to see whether the reports are true. Contrary to popular belief, the exact nature of the sin is never specified.
Realizing that the Lord intends to destroy the cities, Abraham assumes the posture of an intercessor. Will you indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? If you find as few as fifty righteous people in the city, will you not spare it? In the dialogue that follows, most commentators point out the humor in Abraham’s technique of haggling with the Lord – as if in a Middle-Eastern bazaar – to get him down to ten righteous persons as the number that will suffice to spare the city.
But two points in particular are worth noting about Abraham’s negotiation. First, Abraham perseveres in interceding for the city. In this sense, he exemplifies the sort of perseverance in prayer that our Lord commends in today’s Gospel.
Secondly, Abraham does not challenge the idea that the city’s fate should be determined collectively. He doesn’t say, “Why don’t you separate out the innocent from the guilty and punish only the guilty?” That would be more of a modern western individualist thought than Abraham is capable of thinking. But he does advocate an alternative approach. Rather than destroying the whole city because of its wicked majority, why not show mercy to the whole city because of its righteous minority? Instead of punishing the innocent on account of the guilty, why not spare the guilty on account of the innocent?
Significantly, the Lord agrees. As it happens, the messengers do not find even ten righteous persons; and the next day the Lord rains down fire and brimstone from heaven to blot out Sodom and Gomorrah from the face of the earth. But it’s not for want of Abraham’s trying to save them.
The theological principle illustrated by this story, albeit in a negative way, is that of the faithful remnant. In the subsequent history of Israel, God again and again spares his people and saves them from destruction not on account of the obedience and righteousness of the whole people, but rather on account of the faithfulness of the few who remain obedient to God’s teachings even when the majority go astray.
And the Catholic tradition discerns the same principle operating in the life of the Church. A basic principle of Catholic theology is that the Church is a spiritual organism, a collective personality. Contrary to what our Evangelical brethren like to say, then, our relationship with God takes place not individually, as a series of discrete relationships with Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior, but rather corporately, in and through the Body of Christ.
There is a sense, then, that when one of us sins, the rest of us are implicated by association in the guilt of that sin; and, conversely, that when one of us does what is right and just and holy, the rest of us are implicated by association in that goodness and holiness. This is part of what it means to say that we are members of the Body of Christ, and in Christ members of one another. As Saint Paul says in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.”
In the life of a parish community such as ours, not all of us fulfill our duties as well as perhaps we ought. But there is always a faithful remnant. Not everyone can come and help out at the Epiphany Soup Kitchen. Not everyone can come to the daily Mass. But the few who do are doing so on behalf of the rest of us. In a vicarious sense, they stand in for and represent the rest of the community.
This principle of parish life has two implications. First, we need to value the faithful remnant and be grateful for what they do on behalf of the rest of us. And second, we need to consider whether God is calling us to take on some part of the role of the faithful remnant by exercising a special ministry of worship, prayer, or service on behalf of our fellow parishioners. The point is that when we participate in the life of the Church in these ways, it’s not just about us and what we get out of it, for we’re acting on behalf of others and fulfilling the ministry of the parish as a whole. As Saint Paul says in his Letter to the Galatians, “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
In this respect, then, today’s reading from Genesis reflects a biblical and pre-modern world view that challenges our modern western individualism. As Christians, we are not individuals subsisting in splendid isolation but members of a spiritual organism, the Body of Christ. All that we do for good or ill affects all other members of the Body. And God calls each of us to make our own unique contribution to the Body’s health, growth, and well-being, both now and for eternity.
