This week’s reading from the OT might
offend you, were you all fluent in Hebrew or Greek. As it is, with the NIV’s sanitizing, I still
saw more than a few squirms as our lector read this morning. Yes, I decided to continue our journey
through the minor prophets rather than spend all morning discussing the Lord’s
Prayer in Luke. I know, I know. Everyone here wanted to know why Jesus gave
us this prayer. Suffice it to say that
the prayer He gave us teaches us much about God, just like our reading from
Hosea. The big difference, of course, is
that everyone here has said the Lord’s Prayer so many times that we likely do
not pay attention to what we are praying.
Hosea has the virtue of being unfamiliar to us. That, and the language, might cause us to
pause and really listen.
Those with gentle ears might be shocked
that the Lord would command His prophet to take a prostitute for a wife, but
that is just what He does in the beginning of the book named after that prophet
on the receiving end of the command.
Scripture is uninterested in why Gomer is living the life of a
prostitute. There is no “she was really
a faithful woman reduced to that profession by the lack of support within the
godless society;” nor is there a condemnation of her actions as a determined
decision to act contrary to the torah
of God. Hosea is told to marry a
prostitute, and Gomer is the one chosen.
Now those of us who view the Bible and the
revealed characteristics of God from way above the text might be shocked that
God would tell His prophet to do this might well remember our Confirmation
classes. I remind you all, often weekly,
that God specializes in making the common holy.
One of our denominational strengths, I think, is our recognition of this
particular effort by God to make the common holy in our midst. I suppose the first sermon you all heard me
speak of this was about the women in Austin who had been chastised by pastors
and lay leaders for breastfeeding their infants in church. I have spoken how God can use us in check-out
lines at the store, on computer games, at work, and any number of other
places. More recently, you have heard me
remind us to be inviting to those strangers who show up at our doors playing
Pokemon and to consider learning to play it with your grandchildren or others
in your family. God often takes ordinary
“secular” moments, times, or events and causes them to be holy. So few of us spend time with that younger
generation that we despair of the legacy, at least spiritually and emotionally,
we might leave with them when we are gone.
Now, to simplify things, we have a special
language. For those of you visiting
today or for those who have never sat through a Newcomer’s class, and because
the laughter sounded as much nervous to my ears as ironic, that last statement
was made in a sarcasm voice or font. We
call this making the common holy sacramentalizing. Now, all you good Episcopalians should be
able to answer this question: what is a Sacrament? That’s right.
A Sacrament is an outward sign of an inward and spiritual grace. We Christians agree there are two,
right? Baptism and the Eucharist. It’s hard for any denomination to argue
against those two because Jesus said we were to do both: break this bread and drink this wine and baptize in the Name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
In typical Anglican vocabulary, we call those Dominical Sacraments,
because our Lord Jesus commanded them, and then we give each other wide
latitude in describing the other five sacraments or rites. You know them as marriage, unction,
confirmation, confession, and ordination.
Such was the fight a few hundred years ago that our Anglican founders
included an entire Article, #25 I think, on how the Sacraments relate to and
are to be used by the Church. Because we
associate God and the Church usually with good, we tend to think of the
Sacraments as good.
What is happening in Israel, though? Are the people keeping the torah? Are people loving God with all their heart,
mind, body, and soul? Are the people
loving their neighbors as themselves?
Well at least the kings are getting it correct, right? Oh, wait.
You know better. We have read
Samuel, Kings, and Amos since Easter.
Well, at least the priests are getting it correct, right? I see the head shakes. We talked about how the priest in Amos forgot
the holy place, Jezreel, was God’s and not the king’s and actually rebelled
against God’s identified prophet. So
what is going on here at the beginning of Hosea?
In truth, God is using an outward sign to
display the inner heart and lack of grace of His people. If it makes you feel better, we could call it
a negative sacrament. But God is using a
visible sign to make known what is in the heart of His people. Now His command to Hosea makes sense, doesn’t
it. Over and over, throughout the
entirety of Scripture, God reminds us that we are unfaithful to Him. The most common, though not the only, imagery
used is one of a marriage. In fact, the
next chapter of Hosea will pick up just on that image. God is the groom; the Church, you and me and
everyone who claims Him as Lord, is the Bride.
I see the nods of assent. Israel
is so far gone from Her Husband that she accepts the rich stealing from the
poor, the king leading Her away from God, rejects the prophets voice, and even
thinks that God will be unfaithful to His covenant and cause the Land to
disgorge them. Given the imagery of
marriage and unfaithfulness, God’s command makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?
Think of the discontinuity that must have,
or at least should have, been incarnated in the minds of Israel. Our most holy man is commanded to marry a
prostitute, a whore. Has God lost His
mind? What if I were unmarried, walked
into the sanctuary this morning and told you that God had commanded me to marry
a prostitute? A druggie? An infamous
criminal? How disturbed would you
be? Brian,
are you sure? Brian, do you know who she is?
What she has done? Maybe some
of you would ask such questions out of some concern for me, but most would ask
because of the scandal. We are not
alone. How do the Pharisees respond to
Jesus and His willingness to allow the woman to minister to Him? If He
were truly a prophet and knew who she was, He would never allow her to touch
Him. Right? That got them a good lecture on forgiveness. Wait, God is not done.
This is not a marriage of
convenience. Gomer will not be the
prophet’s wife in name only. She bears
Hosea a son. You know what that
means. That’s right. The prophet of God had sex with that former
prostitute. Given my experiences and
conversations with those who like to use prostitutes, such an idea may not
disgust or worry us as much as it should.
Despite the risk of STI’s, men routinely force the prostitutes to have
unprotected sex with them. A suggestion
of safe sex can result in a cuffing or beating for the prostitute. Yet here is Hosea, prophet of God, knowing
His wife, getting her pregnant with a son.
You all did not know you would need a shower after church today, did
you?
Even that event negatively sacramentalizes
the condition of the hearts of the people of Israel. The son is named Jezreel. We have spoken of Jezreel a bit this
summer. Who named the place? That’s right.
Jacob named it when he had the vision of the ladder to heaven way back
in Genesis. It should have been a
special place to Israel, right? The God
of Jacob granted him a vision in that very spot. What has happened since? Everyone remember the story of Naboth and
Ahab and Jezebel? How about the priest
trying to drive out Amos? Where was
that? Jezreel, the place of God. Soon, Jezreel will be the site of the
northern kingdom’s enslavement by the Assyrian empire. The place of God will be overrun by the
soldiers of Assyria, and ten of the twelve tribes will be carried off into
Exile. God instructing Amos to name his
son, his firstborn son, Jezreel should provoke Israel much like it would
provoke you if I had another child and told you that God said I should name him
or her Orlando, or Baton Rouge, or Baltimore, or Dallas, or Nice, or some other
such name. Yuck, huh?
God’s not done, not by a long shot. What happens next? That’s right, Gomer gets pregnant again and
bears a daughter. Who is the
father? Compare that description with
the description of the first child.
Notice anything missing? Could
Hosea be the father? Sure. Is Hosea named the father, though, as he was
of Jezreel? No. It’s ambiguous. Or is it?
Hosea has been invited into relationship with a prophet of God, much
like Israel has been invited into a relationship with God. Whether Gomer chose to be a prostitute or was
forced by circumstances, she should have thought of herself as “trading up” in
this marriage commanded by God, right?
But so should have Israel. Yet
Israel constantly chases after the Ba’als and other false gods of the ANE, even
though Yahweh had freed them and kept His promises to them. The question of parentage should resonate
with Israel. Who was the father of
Gomer’s second child? Who do the people
around us think is our God? Subtle,
right?
Not so subtle is the naming. God instructs Hosea to name the daughter
Lo-ruhamah, which means “not compassionate” or “not merciful.” God reminds Israel that He will no longer
have pity on the house of Israel or forgive them. Like with Amos, when He played on the words
of passing them by and the Passover, God is telling Israel His mercy is at an
end. That’s a scary thought. One of the worries of the time before the
Exodus was, and one of the worries during the Exile will be, whether the Covenant
of God was still in effect. Has God forsaken us? Has He quit on us? Did we drive Him completely away? Now, whenever the people think on the
prophet, they will be reminded that he was commanded to marry a prostitute and
named his children Jezreel and Lo-ruhamah, the latter of which might not even
be his own child. What is going on?
God is still not done. Again, Gomer conceives and bears a child that
may or may not be Hosea’s. Unlike
Jezreel, who was born to him, this third child is just conceived. This is another son. Again God gives the name to His prophet. Hosea names the child Lo-ammi, which means
“not my people.” We have no real way to
really get at the heart of this particular name, at least I don’t. Israel would worship God reminding themselves
of their relationship with God. He was their
God. They were His people. It was axiomatic to their existence. The Lord had sworn the covenant with
Abraham. The Lord had confirmed it
through Isaac and Jacob. The Lord had
provided Joseph in Egypt to preserve His people. The Lord had sent Moses to free His people from
Pharaoh. God had humiliated Pharaoh and
the Egyptian gods. God had punished
Israel for her disobedience and lack of faith at the Jordan. Eventually, God had given them the land,
given them great victories, and tormented those who hated Israel. By this time in Israel’s history, they think
they cannot be harmed. Were they to be
conquered, that means God would be conquered in the heavens. That could not happen, so they could live as
they wanted. We Christians would call
that cheap grace.
Imagine if we had to remove the whole “The
Lord be with you. And also with you.”
from our worship. How weird would it
sound to our ears? How would we ever get
meetings started or large pot lucks?
Those words signify to us a prayer is about to begin, worship is about
to begin. What if we were prevented from
such? What if God said “no more!”? How would we feel?
Now, every time Israel speaks of the
prophet and his family, they should be reminded of their spiritual harlotry and
its consequences. There goes Amos and Gomer with the kids. Who’s
acolyting in the Temple or synagogue today?
It’s either Not-My-people or Unmerciful, I forget which. Ouch.
Talk about cringing. Talk about
serving as a negative reminder of the inward and spiritual condition of
Israel. Whew. They should have been driven to sack cloth
and ashes. They should have seriously
worked on repentance. Unfortunately,
most ignored the warning incarnated before them. And the result in 722 BC or so was that they
were conquered. The ten tribes of the
Northern Kingdom were carried off into slavery and dispersed throughout the
Empire. God, indeed, no longer passed by
their sins. God, indeed, no longer showed
them mercy and protected them as His people.
It is no wonder then that Israel will be convinced during the Exile that
they have been abandoned by God. People
will wonder if God has abandoned them.
Curiously, had they listened to the words
of Hosea to begin with, they would have known He was still with them in the
Exile. Way down in the bottom of our
reading, in verse 10, Hosea speaks the promise of God. Despite the looming punishment, says God, the
number of the people Israel, the people of God, will be like the sand of the
sea. There will be too many to be
counted. And where people (read
Assyrians) will mock them and remind them that they are not God’s people,
Gentiles will say of them that they are “Children of the Living God.”
Where’s the Gospel in the passage? If Jesus is right, and all the Old Testament
is about Him, where is He in the passage?
Those of us sitting in church today falsely thinking that God in the OT
was far more wrathful in the NT should spend some time studying the Passion. Ask Jesus, the next time you are in prayer,
whether He thinks the Father took sin seriously? Whether He took sin seriously? Whether you were a harlot when it came to
following God and His instruction?
Whether you, and all of humanity beside you, needed Him to be merciful
so that we could live into the hope and promise of being His people? I see the squirming. I know.
We want to pretend we are so much better than Israel. We want to think that we really are His
people. We catch all His warnings, but
especially His obvious ones. We would
never make the same mistakes as Israel did.
Yet, look at us. Are we not struggling with issues common to
Jezreel? We claim America is Christian
or founded on Christian values, but what does the world see? We rattled off some of the violence of the
last month earlier. I guess we are sort
of Jezreel. I had some really good,
thoughtful, conversations about racism this week. Heck, I’m not sure I can answer even most of
the questions raised by people. And, in
a tip of the hat to a former Adventer, (oops.
Make that a grown up Adventer who lives elsewhere and now attends
another church), Percy Ballard, maybe we are not giving voice to the sadness we
should be expressing in the midst of such violence or racism or whatever evils.
At least we are not in the middle of a
division like the Northern and Southern kingdom, right? Dang it!
I forgot. The Republican
convention was last week; the Democratic is this week. At least the individual parties are unified,
even if they are dividing us. Why are
you all laughing? You’d think there are
internal protests or squabbling the way you all snorted.
Well, at least we are not under any threat
by any foreign nation or power, like Israel was with Assyria. Oh, wait, I forgot about ISIS and Al-Queda. All of us would sleep well if Iran got the
bomb. I’m sure we are all comfortable
with Russia’s recent military provocations.
I know we all sleep better knowing that China owns more and more of our
ever-growing debt. And who knows what in
the world is going on in North Korea?
At least our personal spheres are
unbothered, right? None of us worries
about provision. None of us are fighting
cancer or other diseases that threaten our very lives. At least it’s non-members in orbit of the
parish who are dealing with the traumas of horrific events in their lives, like
rapes, or muggings, or terrible accidents and not Adventers. At least we all have great relationships with
our families and friends and co-workers.
We don’t have those pesky problems caused by misunderstandings. And, let’s face it, we can see and hear God
with us in every event in our life. We
never wonder where He is. We never have
those crises of faith common to others.
When things go bad, which seldom happens, we know right where He is and
how He will redeem our situation.
Have I made my point? Do we have more in common, both personally
and corporately, with Israel in the 720’s-30’s BC than we would like to admit? I think so.
Fortunately for us, we live on this side of the work and person of
Jesus. Fortunately for us, we live on
this side of the Incarnation of God. We
know our need for repentance and our need for a Savior, and we know it was
provided by our merciful, loving God in the person of Jesus Christ. We know that Jesus has made it possible that
verse ten can be proclaimed of us, in spite of us and our shortcomings. To use the image of the next chapter of
Hosea, God will court us despite our adultery, despite our wantonness, despite
our “not deserving Him.” That God would
court us again, to use the next image of Hosea is not enough to capture the
promise given word by the prophet in this reading. Not only will we be courted, we will be given
the chance to become heirs.
Brothers and sisters, I know this has
seemed a dark sermon. If I discerned
well and spoke well this week, we have each been forced to examine our own
faithlessness, our own spiritual harlotry, and we have each had to face the
fact that we are no more deserving of His love and His grace and His mercy that
the audience that first heard Hosea’s words.
Had my sermon ended there and had God’s words in Hosea ended there, we
would truly be without hope. But now,
now brothers and sisters, all of us who proclaim Jesus as Lord and seek to live
as He commands us, are heirs. With that
adoption comes great benefit and great responsibility. Like our Lord before us, you and I are called
to die to self. We are called to quit
living for the things we once or the world currently values. Wealth?
We cannot take it with us.
Power? Again, it turns to dust
with these bodies, if not sooner.
Sex? As Meatloaf says, it is not
built to last. Drugs or alcohol? They assuage the pain only for a time and the
hangover, ugh! Whatever it is that we
value more than our Lord, we are called to give up. He is to be our treasure! He is to be that which we value above all
else! And it is He who will see to the
fact that we will be His eternally!
But we have a responsibility. We who love the Lord with everything must
also strive to love others into knowing and loving the Lord, too. It matters not whether we like them, admire
them, want to hang out with them, are repulsed by them, or want to run
screaming from them. We are called to
love them all into a relationship with the Lord who calls us His children. We are called to invite them to see Him in us
and the possibility of Him in them. Make
no mistake, my friends. This is incredibly
hard. But in a world full of Jezreel’s, Lo-ruhamah’s,
and Lo-ammi, no testimony, no witness, no act of love could be more
needed. We live in a dark world,
brothers and sisters. Every day it seems
we are driven a bit more into the darkness of the mid night. And in that bleakness, in that darkness, He
has called forth you, and you, and you, and me to show forth that candle that
is lit in our hearts, that the world might be drawn to the brilliance and glory
of the Groom who calls us all! We who
have lived through the Passion and darkness of the tomb are especially equipped
for this job. He has promised. We are all now, after all, children of the
living God!
Peace,
Brian†
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