Grace Episcopal Church, Newton The Rev. Nancy E. Gossling Hosea 1:2-10 Luke 11:1-13
Hosea accused his people of being unfaithful in both
their religious and political lives. They did not trust God and began to
worship any cultural god that promised them prosperity, good weather, and
fertility. (HCSB intro) They forgot about their God who had liberated them from
slavery and replaced their God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with the worship of
local deities or their royal rulers.
Living in a country of virtual anarchy, the Israelites
saw four of their kings assassinated within 14 years. After a foreign invasion
by Assyria (current day Iran), they were ruled by the king in Assyria. Imagine
Hosea living in Ukraine today. Imagine Hosea living in Israel or Gaza today.
Imagine Hosea living in our own country during the Civil War, or maybe even
today. Would Hosea accuse us of being unfaithful in our religious and political
lives? Would Hosea accuse us of looking for a cultural god or a human ruler to
be our savior?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words; and so
Hosea used the metaphor of whoredom, portraying God as the aggrieved husband of
a faithless wife. He believed that God had told him to marry a prostitute named
Gomer. “So Hosea, being a faithful man, did as he was told,” wrote Barbara
Brown Taylor. “He went down to the local brothel and asked to meet some of the
women who worked there.” (Gospel
Medicine, pp55-62)
“The madam was glad to oblige him, thinking she was
about to get herself a new customer, but when Hosea proposed to Gomer right
there in the perfumed parlor and Gomer said yes, the madam threw them both out
onto the street. (Back at home with Hosea) Gomer bore three children in short
order - two boys and a girl.” (Gospel
Medicine)
It was God who
told Hosea to name his children. The oldest boy was called Jezreel, which was
the name of the town where God had promised to put an end to Israel. The middle
child, who was a girl, was named Not Pitied, because God was saying that God
would no longer have pity on them nor forgive them. Finally, the baby boy got
the worst name of all: Not My People because God would no longer be their God. (Hosea 1:2-11)
While Gomer spent nights away from her family with
multiple partners, Hosea remained at home, faithfully cooking and cleaning, and
waiting for his unfaithful wife to come home. “Look, this is who you are,”
Hosea told the Israelites. “You are whores and adulterers, infidels who have
broken your covenant with God. And God is angry, roaring like a lion, begging
for God’s people to come home.” (Hosea
11)
Prophets are known to turn up the heat in the lives of
God’s people. They are known for presumably speaking the truth to power, in
faithful obedience to God’s call, no matter the cost to their personal lives. A
prophet will describe the realities of what he or she sees going on in the
people’s lives and encourage people to change their behavior. Like people who
stand at various parts of an elephant, prophets will see our world, our
problems, and our solutions differently, and yet they still point to the elephant
in the room! Unfortunately, the Israelites had repeatedly broken their promises
to God, and Hosea, among other major and minor prophets, was now calling them
out.
Infidelity
never starts with the physical aspects of love. We stop going to our meetings,
our churches, our synagogues, or our mosques. We start listening to the wrong
voices and believe in the wrong things. Our spirits start moving away from God,
and our God-centered world slowly becomes a self-centered world. Even in
theocracies and democracies too much ego means “easing God out" of our
lives. We become haters rather than lovers. We think violence is the answer;
and we forget that diplomacy involves persistence.
Our minds wander; and we begin to think we’ve made a
mistake, or that “they” are a mistake. There must be a better partner, a more
powerful king, a wiser president, a more pure and perfect union or nation, who
can save us from ourselves and be the answer to all our problems.
“Apparently, Gomer didn’t change her ways after
leaving the brothel and marrying Hosea. Time and time again she would leave the
house and go to other lovers who would make promises they couldn’t keep. Then
knowing the character of her husband, she would return home to him, sorry and
promising him that she would never be unfaithful to him again.” (Gospel Medicine) Like
people caught in the grip of an addiction, she couldn’t stay clean for very
long before her old behaviors crept back in. It was as if the Israelites had
begun going to the local bar looking for spirits rather than staying in their
Temple and remaining faithful to the Spirit of God.
“It had happened over and over again, until Gomer’s
heart was running on empty. He had entered into a covenant with her. He had
promised himself to her forever and it was a promise he meant to keep. What
would it take, to get her attention, to change her ways? Should he shake her
until she came to her senses? Should he lock her in her room? Or should he
divorce her and send her packing, before she had the chance to shame him
again?” asked Barbara Brown Taylor (Gospel
Medicine pp 56-7)
Hosea didn’t wallow in the self-pity of victimhood, however; nor did he
succumb to the temptation of domestic violence. Hosea went after Gomer not to
stalk her, or kill her, beat her or shame her, but rather Hosea brought her
back into his life to forgive her and love her once again. Grace may be free
but it’s not cheap.
Hosea claimed that God is different from our political
and religious leaders. Indeed, God is different from all of humanity, different
from every single one of us; for God is a god of divine compassion,
forgiveness, and unrelenting mercy. God will never let us go, despite our
infidelity; for our God is eternally faithful to God’s covenant, even to the
point of death upon the cross.
At the heart of Hosea’s preaching is a gospel message
of redeeming love. No matter what we do or what we have done, God will never
forsake us nor abandon us. In the end, God will not only seek us out in all the
wrong places but also bring us home and restore us to new life.
Hosea reminded the Israelites of what God had done for
them. “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.” (Hosea 13.4)
Fortunately for us God’s love is stubborn, persistent, and faithful, like the
friend who bangs on our door in the middle of the night asking for some loaves
of bread. Ask, search, knock and God will give us good things, St. Luke had
proclaimed.
According to Hosea, God seals the covenant once again
when God changes the names of Gomer’s children. Jezreel shall no longer mean
the place of destruction. It shall mean ‘God sows.’ Henceforth, Not Pitied
shall be known as ‘I will Have Pity’, and Not My People shall become ‘You Are
My People, Children of the Living God,’ prophesied Hosea.
Like the Israelites, in times of social, political, and economic instability, we may disavow our trust in the Lord. And yet, Hosea saw beyond the infidelity of the Israelites to the compassion of our God. In the end, he proclaimed that God would restore God’s people through a new covenant.
Centuries after Hosea, God sent God’s people a new
prophet, a new priest, and a new king who would govern God’s people and save
them; for Jesus stretched out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross so
that everyone might come within the reach of God’s saving embrace. And so
today, we pray once again, as Jesus taught us, “Forgive us of our sins, and do
not bring us to the time of trial.”
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