Over the last several weeks we’ve been talking about prophets in these Sunday morning sermons: Deborah, Jeremiah, Amos…Jana will continue the series later this month and today we come to Hosea.
I like the book of Hosea. When I first read Hosea, I was moved to discover that God cares about regular human struggles like raising children and getting your heart broken; Hosea talks about these things to show us just how much God understands us. That’s what we’ll talk about today. First though, let’s back up a bit…
Like other prophets, Hosea is definitely interested in public issues of his day, but his message is primarily a spiritual one, and not only that, but it arises out of a story that is deeply personal for him. It’s a story of grief and disappointment, through which Hosea comes to a greater awareness of God’s love, and trust, and fidelity.
Let’s start with the scripture lesson for this morning, and we’ll sort of back out of it to Hosea’s own story. The passage from chapter 11 is the word of God spoken through the mouthpiece of Hosea, God begins: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me…[though] it was I who taught [them] to walk…”
At first glance, perhaps this is, much of what we’ve come to expect from a prophet: social commentary about God’s people. Once again, they have fallen away from their covenant relationship with God, and the Prophet speaks in hopes of restoring that relationship from its brokenness. But notice the metaphor used in this particular example: what parent can read it closely without being deeply touched: When Israel was a child, I loved him… …I taught them to walk, I took them up in my arms, I fed them…but The more I called them, the more they went from me.”
Parenthood is such a mix of deep devotion and pure exhaustion, in so many different forms. When children are very young parenting is very physical, and tiring, while somehow at the same time, incredibly precious: feeding, holding, helping a child learn to walk…and getting no sleep along the way! As children grow, though, the physical demands of parenting give way to the different work of letting a child go and become independent. With a child’s increased independence and freedom come distance from parents and also choice. Along the way, young people make decisions that are sometimes bad and hurtful, and seem ungrateful toward the parents—the ones who once fed and held, and perhaps are still financing them: this increasingly independent, willful young person. The physical exhaustion of early parenting gives way to a lifetime of worry and stress. This totally relatable image is what Hosea has chosen to talk about God’s commitment to humanity. God wants to push us out of the nest, and prays that we will be ready to fly, and grieves when we struggle and fail, or when we distance ourselves and forget the God who has loved us so deeply. Being a parent is so hard, and the metaphor suggests that God understands.
The family metaphors don’t stop at parenting, for Hosea. Hosea tells us about another kind of grief and pain that comes with love, and this one is romantic. I wonder how many of you know what it’s like to fall deeply in love with the wrong person? Don’t worry, I’m not going to invite you to turn and share with your neighbor! But this too is a very frequent human experience: the heart wants what the heart wants, and sometimes, in search of love and companionship, we don’t choose the partners who are best for us. Sometimes those decisions end in divorce and are quite difficult and life changing; sometimes they are merely dating relationships that teach us some lessons on the way to something better, but even in those situations, there can be real pain along the way. Perhaps someone you fall for cheats on you or disrespects and demeans you. And yet it can be hard to see and escape these abuses, when we love someone, and want them to love us.
Hosea has a situation that fits into these categories; it’s a story of a spouse who gets hurt by love. In the first chapter of Hosea, we learn that Hosea hears the voice of God telling him to go and marry this woman named Gomer, who is going to be unfaithful to him. Scholars say the exact situation is not clear from the Hebrew text: Gomer may have been engaged in prostitution, or she may have simply been an unfaithful spouse, but what is clear is this basic storyline: that Hosea and Gomer marry, they have three children together, and then Gomer leaves Hosea for someone else.
Before going any further, we must pause and be cautious about modern comparisons when reading the Bible. This story comes from a very different place and time than our own, and the purpose of the Book of Hosea is not to offer us parenting or relationship advice…these are metaphors meant to grab our attention so it can tell us something about God… You can tell this when you look more closely at what happens with Hosea and Gomer’s three children: the names they are given are translated: “God sows,” (God has chosen and raised us as children) “Not pitied,” (God is not happy when the children go astray) and “Not my people.” (God is thinking about being done!). These are the names of the children Clearly, this personal story is a metaphor for the broken relationship between God and the people…;
So, this story is not here so that we should be take relationship advice from Hosea; instead we see here a metaphor that helps Hosea to learn something about God: God is steadfast and faithful in ways that human beings often are not.
But I must share this: when I was in seminary and trying to navigate the first years of young adulthood, I was amazed when I first learned this Bible story. Apparently, God wants so badly to be relatable and in relationship with us, that we have a Bible story about how deeply it hurts when you get your heart broken—something just about all of us will feel at one time or another. And out of that comes a beautiful lesson about God. Human beings are fickle, and flawed, and often cruel; but God’s love is not like that. God’s love is a love of covenant fidelity. God meets us in the midst of whatever brokenness we have experienced in life and helps us to find our way home. God can be relied upon. And if you’ve ever had your heart broken, God understands.
So we have these two stories Hosea tells, one about the trials of parenting, the other about heartbreak, and through them there might be plenty of lessons, but at least one seems to be that when you struggle with grief and loss, betrayal and disappointment, or just the pain and stress of growing up or growing old, God is there. God does not leave us in the times that are hard.
It’s a straightforward lesson: God can be trusted in hard times—but it’s easier said than done and takes some reminders, so here are some ways we can remember the fidelity of God’s love:
Sometimes the reminders of God’s love come through the religious or ritualized means you would expect, like baptism. Baptism, as we always say in the sacrament, is the moment of God claiming us as God’s own and declaring that we are loved. But it is not for a moment; it’s for a lifetime. Martin Luther once wrote that in the darkest and most difficult moments of his life, his way of praying was to simply repeat over and over again, “I am baptized…” to remind himself that even though human ways often fail in the world, God’s love never fails.
Sometimes the reminders of God’s love are more based in our stories and experiences. I wonder how many of you know a person of deep faith, someone who perhaps endured a great heartbreak, grief, loss or struggle, and if you ask them they’ll tell you a story…that in the midst of the hardest times of their life perhaps they did not know where God was or what God was up to, but that later, in time, and little by little, things began to get better, and a good life was restored, and looking back they were able to see that, though they did not know it, in the hardest times, God never left them.
And sometimes we have to fake it ‘til we make it, or another way of saying that is that sometimes we have to keep acting in ways that will bring us closer to God, and along the way, God’s love is discovered. That’s one of the things we do in church. Today we follow our worship service with another hands-on-mission event, and there are a lot of reasons we do this: practicing generosity, acting in the way of justice, feeding the hungry because Jesus said so. And sometimes, when we are lost and struggling in our own faith, continuing in simple acts of kindness can keep us close enough to God for now…until the day we are ready to rediscover God’s love poured out directly to us.
There are so many ways we fall away and grow distant from God throughout life. None of us are perfect partners or parents. But thank God, that like the perfect partner or parent, God understands, is caring and patient, and awaits our return when we come home in faith. God can be trusted. These are the lessons of the Prophet Hosea. Amen.