In the name of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Last
Sunday, I preached a sermon on the topic of prayer, as the Gospel text
presented us with the Lord’s Prayer. But more than a handful of you asked me,
“What in the world was going on in that reading from Hosea?” I was planning to
preach on Hosea this week all along, but since there was so much interest last
Sunday, allow me to recap our reading from Hosea last week as a way of moving
into this week’s verses from that same book.
Hosea
was a prophet roughly at the time when Israel was conquered in the 8th
century BC. The people of Israel had turned away from the Lord and towards other gods. The whole
of the Hosea’s prophecy expresses God’s agony over this betrayal, while also
affirming God’s never-ending love towards the people, despite their sins. As so
last week, Hosea prophesied the words of the Lord
– “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom.” And
so Hosea did, marrying Gomer, who was about as faithful to Hosea as the people
were to God. And they had a few children with iconic names, such as Lo-ruhamah,
which means “not accepted” and Lo-ammi, which means “not my people.” The
narrative is an allegorical interpretation of the relationship between God and
Israel. God is a lover scorned who is essentially saying to the people, “Fine,
you want to go have fun with those other gods? Great! Let me know how that
works out for you. Let me know if they love you forever, let me know if they
save you when you are in distress.”
Just
as in a marriage covenant there are expectations of fidelity and mutual
affection, those expectations were a part of the covenant between God and
Israel. God is portrayed here as the rejected, broken-hearted, frustrated, but
always faithful spouse to Israel, who is portrayed as the affair-chasing, pleasure-seeking,
cheating spouse.
Hosea though isn’t
confined to use just one metaphor for describing this relationship between God
and God’s people. In today’s reading from Hosea, the metaphor is no longer that
of a faithful spouse and an unfaithful spouse, but that of a rebellious child
and a loving parent.
This
is one of the most tender passages in the entire Bible, and if we let it, it
will move our hearts. Sometimes you hear people, incorrectly, classify the Old
Testament as full of images of an angry, wrath-filled God. Anytime you hear
that, just remember this passage. I know it’s something that we’ve all heard
before, that God is like a loving father or a loving mother, but we don’t often
stop to actually dwell on the power of this image. Now, at the outset, I do
want to mention that no human metaphor is perfect when it comes to God. Perhaps
your relationship with your parents is strained. Perhaps you didn’t have loving
parents. Perhaps you don’t have a good relationship with your children. Perhaps
you don’t have children. Don’t dissect or work on the symbol of the
parent-child relationship, instead, let it work on you. The point of the
passage is God’s love and mercy, not the ideal parent-child relationship, so keep
that in mind.
There
is a widely accepted translation of the Bible in Jewish scholarship, and it
better captures some of the nuance of this passage. In that translation, God
says “I fell in love with Israel when he was a child” and “I have pampered
Ephraim.” When was the last time you allowed yourself to feel God’s tender love
for you?
But
we, like Israel, are not always receptive to this love. Hosea records “The more
I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals,
and offering incense to idols.” Parenting is hard. We only want what’s best for
our children, and yet, we have to let them find it on their own. I’m the father
of a toddler and an infant, but those of you with teenagers probably have a lot
more direct experience with rebellion than I do. Even thinking back to my
teenage years, I can only imagine how this passage must have resonated with my
parents. But it’s a phrase that we’ve all heard – there is nothing a child can
do to make the parent stop loving it. My daughters can disappoint me, they can
anger me, they can hurt me, they can disown me, they can even hate me, but that
wouldn’t change the fact that I am their father who loves them. Hosea is
showing us, through this metaphor of a parent, that this is how God is. The
children may wander, but God’s love remains. Even when we are stubborn,
defiant, and selfish, God seeks us out.
God
says “Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but
they did not know that I healed them.” Becoming a parent changed me in a lot of
ways, but one of those ways was to give me a much deeper understanding and
appreciation of what my parents did for me. That’s just the reality of being a
child, you have no idea of all the sacrifices that your parents make for you. You
don’t have a sense of how your parents shifted the plans for their life, or how
much money it costs, or how much of their soul they make vulnerable.
And
if this is true for human parents, how much truer it is for God. Just as Israel
didn’t know how God had to make space for them, or didn’t remember how God
brought them out of Egypt, or was unaware of the way that God was constantly
sustaining them and loving them, so too are we often unaware of all that we
should be thankful for. Our final hymn today will be “Tell out, my soul.” Pay
attention to the text of this great hymn, particularly the first verse: “Tell
out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord! Unnumbered blessings give my spirit
voice.” This is the reality of being a child, being the recipient of
“unnumbered blessings.” The ways in which God, like a parent, makes life
possible for us are unnumbered. And so we should always adopt a posture of
thankfulness and humility towards God, because God has done so much for us, and
we’ll never know about most of it.
The
thing that we see about God’s nature in this, and many other Biblical passage,
is God’s mercy. Sometimes you’ll find this word, which in Hebrew is hesed, translated as “loving-kindness”
or “steadfast love”. It is, perhaps, the most defining characteristic of God,
as it captures elements of God’s mercy, love, and steadfastness. This word is
used 255 times in the Old Testament, five times in Hosea, and 3 times in
today’s Psalm.
Verses
8 and 9 of the passage from Hosea show us the depths of this abiding and
merciful love. These verses give us a rare glimpse into God’s own
self-examination. God says “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you
over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like
Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I
will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am
God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.”
And
the answer is that God can’t. God cannot give up on Israel. God chooses not
wrath, but love. One theologian has said that “God cannot set aside his love
any more than he can set aside his divinity.” Now, at times we may see images
of God’s wrath. However, it is important to realize, while wrath may be what
God does, on occasion, that God is not wrathful, but rather is mercifully
loving. God says “my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my
fierce anger.” Love, not sin or anger, gets the last word.
And
God chooses love over wrath, not because all of a sudden Israel repented and
“got it,” but rather because God chooses mercy above all else. In Israel’s
history, there was a common cycle:
sin-punishment-forgiveness-sin-punishment-forgiveness. But God chooses to stop
that cycle once and for all by being the God who is defined by mercy, not by
wrath. Again, going to the metaphor of the parent. There are some times when
parents have to discipline their children, when they have to follow through on
consequences of the children’s actions, when they have to let the children
stumble and learn their own lessons. But this doesn’t make the parents
wrathful, unloving, or absent. God says “My heart recoils within me;” this
hurts God more than it does us, and any parent knows that truth. When love is
rooted in our heart, then immense disappointment and pain, and even righteous
anger, are possible. God is not the unmoved mover who never is hurt or changes,
that’s a stone idol. Instead, God is a living God who knows, truly, what it
means to love – both the joys and the sorrows that make love so lovely. How
might you receive this love and mercy into your life that breaks the cycles of
violence, retaliation, and self-doubt?
Last
week, Hosea captured how God is pained by our rejection, in the way that a
spouse is pained by an affair. This week, Hosea shows us how God is like a
parent, who loves us unconditionally and eternally, even when the child is
rebellious. Through Hosea, God says “I was to them like those who lift infants
to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.” God is the one who bends
down, coming to our level to care for us, and God is the one to lifts us up,
holding us near the very heart of God. This is what Jesus is all about – God
bending down to us, and lifting us up to God. God relentless pursues us as a
beloved child; will you allow God to catch you?
Take
this image from Hosea into your hearts, and carry it with you this week. When
it comes to God, if you see yourself as the unfaithful spouse, then let these
words from Hosea dwell within you: “And I will take you for my wife forever; I
will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love,
and in mercy.” And if you identify more with the rebellious child, hear God’s
words from the final chapter of Hosea: “I will heal their disloyalty; I will
love them freely.” When you forget God’s mercy and love for you, remember these
words from Hosea, which some scholars suggest is a summary of the entire book:
“I have been the Lord your God
ever since the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is
no savior.” Know that God holds you, and everyone else, tenderly in God’s
heart. In your prayers this week, thank God for that, and all the ways in which
God loves you that you are unaware of. The first verse of today’s Psalm says
“Give thanks to the Lord, for he
is good, and his mercy endures for ever.” May those words be your mantra this
week, and deep in your heart, may you know them to be true. Amen.
