A Sermon preached at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
14 October 2018
Listen to the audio here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/incest-and-lots-daughters-who-do-you-think-you-are
On Monday evening this week,
I went to
the launch of a new book, entitled
‘Confronting
Religious Violence: A Counternarrative’
In this book, Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi,
talks about
the way in which, as humans,
we are
shaped by the stories we tell ourselves.
This is true both at an individual level,
and also at
a collective or communal level.
He says that,
‘We come to know who
we are
by discovering the story or stories
of which we are a part.’
This is because, he says, we are narrative creatures.
We respond
to, and are defined by, the stories that shape us.
Who we are in the present, for both good and bad,
is the
product of the stories that we have taken deep within ourselves.
And this is true for us both personally, and communally.
At a personal level, the stories of our families
will have a
huge effect on the kind of people we are.
And understanding the legacy of our family systems,
can be a
vital part of learning to understand who we are,
and why we
are the way we are.
I think that the dramatic rise in people taking the Ancestry
DNA test,
coupled
with the huge popularity of Genealogical research,
and TV
programmes such as ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’
speaks of a growing desire in our culture
for us to
construct personalised stories
that give
us meaning and identity.
A few weeks ago I got the results of my Ancestry DNA test.
It turns
out that I’m
18%
Norwegian,
23%
Irish or Scottish, and
59%
English or North-western European.
Apparently this is a very English profile.
And whilst
it may account for my hair and skin colour,
I
don’t think I can blame my Home Counties accent on my DNA.
I suspect my upbringing
in Kent has something to do with that.
And
I’ve never noticed any residual ability
to speak Viking or Glaswegian coming
through.
So whilst this is all very interesting,
it doesn’t
really tell me who am,
But I could, if I chose to, use the story of my DNA, or my
family tree research,
to
construct a narrative for me to live by:
So
I could use my DNA profile to become an English nationalist!
Or
not!!!
In
fact, part of me wondered whether being 23% Irish
and
having the middle name of Patrick
might
qualify me for an Irish passport in a post-Brexit world,
but
I think that’s wishful thinking.
There’s a wonderful video on the internet
of people
getting their DNA results
and
discovering that their genes don’t match their perception of their identity.[1]
So the English Nationalist rather delightfully discovers
that he’s mostly German,
and others
are similarly shocked by the way their stories of origin
are altered
by the story locked in their DNA.
And in a world of ever greater fragmentation,
where
nation states and federations are under threat,
the importance of the stories we tell ourselves about
ourselves
will become
ever more important to us.
At a communal level,
the
importance of stories for understanding religious violence
is that the way different religious communities relate to
each other
will be
determined by the stories they tell of themselves.
So whether I think God wants my tribe
to go to
war with a different tribe,
will be determined by the founding stories, the master narratives as they’re called,
that our
different tribes have been shaped by.
And often these master
narratives
are to do
with issues such as the ownership of the land,
If you want to understand the current tensions between
Israel and Palestine,
you need to
look long and hard at the founding stories of the two nations,
the
historic claim that each believes they have to the land,
and the way
they tell their ancient stories
to
justify and shape who they are
and
how they will act in the present day.
And this is nothing new.
In fact, in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible,
many of the
stories we encounter
would fit
in this category of master narratives.
The Ancient Near East was a land of tribes,
and it was
a land of tribal warfare,
as people
fought over property and trade routes.
Different tribes would come together in alliances,
and then
split apart again,
and their tribal stories, their master narratives,
would
amalgamate and fracture
to express
these changing affiliations.
And it’s in this context
that we
need to begin hearing stories such as our passage this morning
about Lot
and his daughters in the cave.
This is story that is preserved within the scriptures of
Israel,
who are, according
to their master narrative, the descendants of Jacob.
If we take a look at this genealogy of Jacob’s family,
we start to
get a picture of how they understood their relationship
to the
various other tribal groups in their area in the ancient world.
Here we see that Jacob, the father of the 12 tribes of
Israel
is the
brother of Esau, who is the ancestor of the Edomites.
He’s also cousin to the 12 sons of Ishamel,
and it’s
famously a ‘hairy bunch of Ishmaelites’
to
whom Jacob’s sons sell Joseph into slavery.
Jacob is also second cousin to Ammon and Moab,
who are the
founding patriarchs of the Ammonites and the Moabites,
Israel’s
ancient enemies.
And it’s the story of the origin of Ammon and Moab
that we
meet with the incestuous story
of Lot and
his daughters in the cave above Zoar.
So, at one level, this story is making a clear point:
which is
that the Ammonites and the Moabites are,
quite
literally, a bunch of bastards.
Although, of course, not so alienated
that one of
the books in the Hebrew Bible couldn’t be named after a Moabitess,
as
Ruth from Moab gets written back into the story of Israel
as
no less than one of the ancestors of their great mythic king David.
And here’s the complexity.
It’s not
clear-cut.
Enemies become friends, and friends become enemies,
tribal
alliances form, and they fail.
And the stories reflect this.
As John Rogerson put it:
‘One of the purposes of Genesis was to link these ancestors
together by means of genealogy and story and then to plot this unified story
onto a larger genealogical canvas. To call this ‘fiction’ is not to describe it
as deceit or fraud. Genealogies, for ancient Israel as for many other peoples,
were not a type of history: rather, they were the expression of a need to plot
existing social realities onto a chart that explained them in terms of a
comprehensive scheme.’ - John Rogerson.
And, of course, we need to remember that these stories
were not
written down at the time in the form we have them preserved.
There is a thousand or more years of oral traditioning
from
the time these stories are set
to the
point where they get preserved in the 6th-7th centuries
BC.
But is this all we can learn from this story,
that it’s a
master narrative to define the
Israelites as the true heirs of Abraham,
over
against the Moabites and the Ammonites?
I think there’s more to be gleaned.
If you were here a few weeks ago,
you might
have heard Luke preaching on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah,
and in his sermon he helpfully addressed
the way in
which this story has been incorrectly used
to condemn
homosexuality.
He reminded us that it is actually a story of the abuse of
hospitality,
and
challenged us to think about who our society abuses rather than welcomes.
During the course of his sermon, Luke noted
that there
are a number of highly problematic aspects
to
the story of Lot’s family in Sodom,
which were
beyond the scope of his sermon on that Sunday.
One of those problems is the way Lot treats his two
daughters,
and I want
us to come back to this story today as we pick up the narrative again.
Do you remember the setting?
Lot is at
home with his family in the city of Sodom,
when
two angels in disguise come to the door.
Lot insists
that they stay at his house,
and
gives them dinner.
But the men
of the city are unhappy with this act of hospitality to strangers,
and
want Lot to turn them out so they can be killed.
Lot refuses
- so far, so good.
But then he
makes a strange and horrific offer. He says,
‘I beg you, my brothers, do not
act so wickedly. Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me
bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these
men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.’ - Genesis 19.7-8
We’re not told what the daughters think of this offer,
or indeed what
their betrothed husbands-to-be who are also in the house think.
But in any case, the angels save the situation by striking
the mob blind,
and warn
Lot to take his family out of Sodom
to
avoid the coming destruction that God is going to bring on it
because
of its wickedness.
So Lot escapes, with his daughters,
but their
husbands-to-be ridicule his warning and choose to stay behind,
presumably
to be killed in the destruction of the city,
while his
wife looks back and becomes a pillar of salt.
And so we pick up the story in our reading,
with Lot
and his daughters alone in the cave,
convincing
themselves that they, and only they, are left.
The big threat here,
from
the point of view of the story’s role
in
the history of the Ancient Near East,
is that Lot
may die without descendants.
Being child-free in the ancient world was not a valid
lifestyle choice,
it was a
symptom of being cursed by God.
And entire
nations depend on his having two sons / grandsons.
And so the daughters get their father drunk two nights
running,
and one
after the other, they have sex with him,
and
conceive their two sons.
The interesting question to ask here,
is whether
they were right or wrong to do so?
Certainly, in most of the history of this text’s
interpretation,
they have
been criticised for initiating these two incestuous conceptions,
and the text is certainly at pains to show that Lot is so
drunk
that he is
absolved of any personal responsibility for things.
Although, I might note, he’s clearly not that drunk,
but anyway,
moving on…
The interesting thing is that, within the text itself,
the two
daughters are not actually criticised for their actions.
Any moral judgment on what happens in the cave
is very
much left for the reader to decide.
And whilst, clearly, from a contemporary perspective,
we would be
very clear in condemning incest,
and
sexual abuse of any kind.
From the perspective of the text,
things are
left rather ambiguous,
certainly
with regard to whether the daughters are condemned.
The first thing to note here, I think, is a number of key ways,
Lot’s
family is highly dysfunctional,
and the blame for that dysfunction
lies
squarely with Lot himself.
This wannabe Patriarch, the nephew of Abraham,
who was the
great patriarch of the Jewish people,
keeps
trying to behave in patriarchal ways, but failing.
Like his Uncle Abraham, he entertains angels unawares,
Like Uncle Abraham,
he offers to sacrifice his children.
But at every turn, it doesn’t work out for him.
He comes
across as needy, vicious, and vindictive.
Lot is not the hero of the Lot narrative,
he’s the
villain.
The family dynamics under Lot’s leadership
are,
frankly, horrific.
And there is something almost poetic
in the fact
that the father who offered his daughters
for
gang rape at the hands of the village mob
finds himself
ultimately rendered powerless
and
the victim himself of a sexual assault.
But my concern in all of these readings so far,
is that
they are very male-centric.
The unnamed daughters remain unnamed and unvoiced,
and their
actions are mere cyphers for the male stories
of
patriarchy, progeny, and inheritance.
I think we need to hear the voices of these two women, if we
are able,
speaking to
us through their silence and through their actions.
The biblical scholar Sandra Collins[2]
says that,
‘these are women of survival and
invention, as heinous and despicable as their actions might be.’ - Sandra
Collins
She suggests that we need to make the effort to read the
story
from the
point of view of the women, rather than the men,
and that when we do this
they move
from being archetypical evil women
who
sexually abuse their own father,
to become
women who are themselves the victims
of
sexual violence and constraint,
and whose
actions are acts of great courage in the face of great threat.
Does this make you feel uncomfortable, I wonder?
Are you
starting to question or undermine what I’m saying?
If so, then good,
because it
means that the invitation to hear the text differently is working,
and our
implicit assumptions about male power are being challenged.
Ask yourself, for a moment, what choice these women had?
In a world
where it was better to be dead than childless,
where
their father had threatened them with rape,
where
their husbands had been killed by God,
where,
as far as they knew,
the
only man left alive on the earth, was their own father.
What choice
did they have?
And who would condemn them?
Christian history is full of stories of women condemned for
sexual deviance,
as female
voices are silenced and male choices are privileged.
From the tradition of a male clergy,
to the
ongoing evangelical obsession with husbands as the head of their wives,
the church that bears Christs name has an appalling record
of female
subjugation and gender based violence.
This is not a problem that is ‘out there’.
It is a
problem that is ‘in here’.
The story we heard earlier of Jesus, and the murderous crowd
of men,
and the
woman caught in adultery,
has startling resonances with the story of the daughters of
Lot and their father:
yet another
powerless woman, once again at the mercy of men.
And we could write their story a thousand times in every
generation.
Lot’s
daughters continue to face impossible choices in our own time,
as
women have to figure out how to survive
in impossible situations,
with
impossible choices forced on them by powerful men.
Just last week I read in the Guardian the story of Nadia
Murad
the Iraqi
woman who was sold as an Isis sex slave,
who
has just won the Nobel peace prize
for
her campaigning against human trafficking.[3]
And the current President of the United States
is on
record as saying that his daughter is ‘hot’
and that if
she wasn’t his daughter,
he’d
probably be dating her.[4]
If the violence, misogyny, and objectification is ever to
end,
then we
have to change the story.
We have to hear, unflinchingly, the stories of the past,
and allow
the suppressed voices of the victims to speak.
We have to resist the temptation to scapegoat and condemn,
and we have
to learn to not rush to judgment.
Instead we have to allow these uncomfortable stories
to shape us
in ways that challenge our own assumptions
about power
and gender.
These stories are in our tradition for a reason,
and suppressing
them is not the answer.
As Jonathan Sacks rightly said,
‘We come to know who we are
by discovering the story or stories
of which we are a part.’
[1]
https://youtu.be/Fw7FhU-G1_Q
[2]
Collins, S L, Weapons Upon Her Body: The Female Heroic in the Hebrew Bible,
PhD, Pittsburg, 2009.
[3]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/06/nadia-murad-isis-sex-slave-nobel-peace-prize
[4]
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-ivanka-trump-creepiest-most-unsettling-comments-a-roundup-a7353876.html
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