Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Genesis 19 tells us that the Lord “rained down sulfur” on Sodom after all the townspeople threatened God’s angels with rape, and that the next morning Abraham 
saw “smoke over the land rising like the smoke from a kiln.” This is the Old Testament God we all know, the one who provides quick punishment for those who break His commandments, who desire to violate and degrade others.
The Jesus we see in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 11 on the unrepentant towns isn’t the warm and fuzzy Son of God, the One who feeds people and cures them and shares beautiful, warm stories. This Jesus has a temper. This Jesus is angry, really angry at those who didn’t get it after having seen Him in the flesh.
How can towns that were less than impressed by Jesus fare worse on judgment day than a vile people who intended degradation and violence against strangers? The Sodomites didn’t recognize the angels for who they were, nor did those in the unrepentant towns recognize Jesus for who He was.
Perhaps the difference is that Jesus was right there in Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, doing mighty deeds. There’s no indication Jesus was subjected to persecution in them. It seems, rather, that they came, they saw… and they yawned and moved on.
Does apathy trump violence? That’s for God to decide. But Jesus’s words would lead us to believe that knowing about His goodness… and choosing to ignore it in the way we live sets us on a Judgment Day path fraught with more peril than those who don’t know the Lord. Not that they get a free pass, but that those of us who hear the Word have an obligation to live it.
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