As chapter 19 opens, I note a very very specific parallel with Abraham's encounter with the Angel Posse last chapter. Lot and the city of Sodom do not recognize the angels as such the way Abraham did, and the Lord himself does not appear. As I said yesterday, how people treat the angels here is representative of how people treat the Blessed Sacrament, God Himself. Lot, sitting in a public part of town with other prominent local men, does get up to greet the angels and offer them hospitality, but as normal, human guests. He's insistent, turning them aside from their mission, but then in a hurry, offering them unleavened bread (all he could whip up in as little hassle as possible). He does what he has to to offer these people acceptable deference, but he doesn't want to put himself out for it.
The town of Sodom's crime is shameful then, no matter what is foremost among them. It does seem clear that homosexual gang rape is the literal meaning of the text, and this is one of the texts we hold up to indicate the sinfulness of homosexual acts. These people were so deranged that the entire town comes to take part in this horrible act against what appeared to be a couple of random guys who just showed up in town. Sexual sin often gets out of hand as pleasure chases pleasure, and it always uses people as objects. The fact that everyone in town came to take part echoes Abraham's pleading on her behalf, hoping for mercy if even ten good men can be found there. Clearly not a single one can be found at all. Lot's made himself comfortable among these people, and it shows.
Lot tries to be "one of the bros" while simultaneously gamely attempting to stop the anger of the crowd from building. He, horribly, prioritizes hospitality toward strangers over his own daughters, indicating that the local culture had begun to determine his ideas of virtue and what is important. The crowd betrays him further, indicating that no matter how "in" he thinks he is, and no matter how he tries to fit with them, they will never fully accept him. It doesn't even matter that his kinsman Abraham freed them from the Mesopotamian kings. His relativism and affable attempts to accomodate them will never make him accepted. This striving sounds suspiciously like my life in high school and college, and probably would ring a bell with a lot of people. We have to understand that real virtues are absolutes, and that belonging to God is far far more fulfilling than lowering ourselves, blending ourselves in with a crowd that will never fully accept us.
Despite all his mistakes, Lot must in the end do something right that God can see, and must fundamentally want to be righteous. He is warned of the impending doom and told to get out. He doesn't quite believe this, and his sons in law (probably Sodomites) scoffed at the idea, but he is eventually dragged out by the hand. He is called to a new and righteous life, and the people who are holding him back are slowly stripped away. He is asked not to reconsider his old life, not to watch it burn, but his wife cannot seem to help it. His daughters are stripped away by a more glaring return to sin. As a result of a desperate and gross union with their father, two more enemies of the Hebrew people come to be, the Moabites and the Ammonites. Lot's journey out of Sodom is so like our journey out of sin...we want so badly to go back to it sometimes, or at least the excitement of living near it. We return to it out of sentimentality and out of desperation. We laugh at the thought of any sort of impending doom and thus sometimes refuse to make the trip. Those that persevere past all of these things come back to grace, back to God's friendship. God pleads with us to escape to the hills and so often we swear that we will die if we do. The more we try to isolate ourselves and make things harder for ourselves by trying to be righteous in the middle of sin, the more likely we are to fall into these traps.
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