Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum were cities situated by the sea of Galilee, rich and populous. Jesus taught and performed many miracles there. At Capernaum, there was the healing of the centurion’s servant, the paralyzed man and the raising of the ruler’s daughter from the dead. At Bethsaida, there was the feeding of the five thousand. Yet this multitude of people who heard with their own ears and saw with their own eyes, did not believe.

Jesus denounced them and compared them to two sets of ancient cities – Tyre and Sidon, Sodom and Gomorrah. Tyre and Sidon symbolized idolatory. Sodom and Gomorrah symbolized sexual immorality. These cities epitomized evil, perversion and wickedness of such great intensity that they had to be destroyed – Sodom and Gomorrah by fire; Tyre and Sidon declined in wealth and suffered commercial ruin.

But why such woes and condemnation over the seemingly normal towns of Galilee? They were not known nor had such reputation of notorious crime and atrocities – unlike Sodom, the word which has become synonymous with immorality, homosexuality and perversion; unlike Sidon, with her villainous and infamous Queen Jezebel who lured Ahab, king of Israel into idolatry and the worship of Baals and Ashtoreths. She personified wickedness. She exterminated the prophets of the Lord and even terrified Elijah to fear and to run for his life. Despite their ignoble pasts, these cities were apparently seen by Jesus as salvageable. For if the miracles were performed there said Jesus, they would have repented long ago unlike the Galileans.

What have the people of these three cities done to deserve such a severe rebuke? It was not what they have done but rather what they have not done in response to Jesus. What were they guilty of? “Perverse normality”, Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian and ethicist explained. Like normal people, they were not guilty of serious or heinous crimes. Their guilt was the perversity of disbelief. Is disbelief the worst sin in the world, much worse than idolatry and immorality? Is disbelief contemptible and condemnable? Why did Jesus judge so severely? This apparent contrast of sins is not to qualify one and disqualify another but to demonstrate the utter sinfulness of disbelief. The powerful miracles that Jesus performed should have produced repentance and faith, sadly, these Galileans remained indifferent to Jesus. May the Lord guard us from such unbelief too even as we see his work unfold in our lives, and in this world.