Sunday, June 10, 2018
Be ambitious. Don’t fear embarrassment. Make messes.
Jump into the unknown. We only have
one life to live.
I agree with all these meme-worthy
sentiments. I say, live the way my high
school football coach told us to play defense, with reckless abandon. Try new things. Go new places. This life is the only one we get.
However, that idea that we have but
one life to live means more than just make the most of opportunities. It is also true that we cannot separate our
life into fragments.
Bill is a lawyer, a golfer, a deacon
and Sunday school teacher, and the father of a middle schooler. On Sunday, he teaches his class the New
Testament, the book of James, chapter 5, verse 12. “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be
‘no.’ For 45 minutes he solemnly extols
the virtues of honesty and integrity. On Monday, he goes to trial where he
knowingly violates the ethical standards he swore a vow to uphold. Win the
case at all costs! That’s how he justifies his actions.
On Tuesday night at home, he verbally harangues
his 8th grade son when he hears the boy tell an off-color joke. In his Thursday golf league, he tells the same
joke to the 3 other attorneys in his foursome, and they stand on the fourth tee
box, doubled over laughing.
In all those places, Bill is
Bill. There’s no separating lawyer-Bill
from golfer-Bill from Bill-the-dad from Deacon-Bill. Nor can we break up our lives. We only have one life. We don’t act the same way in all relationships. But we are who we are. There’s no leaving the religious me at home
tonight so I can go out drinking and doing all the destructive things that come
after too much alcohol. If I get sloppy
drunk, all that I have said I believe about God in more sober moments still
holds. Theology professor Michael
Fishbane writes, “We are not one kind of person when we walk the earth feeling
hunger or love, and then an entirely different sort when we listen to music or
talk about [God]. We are always one and
the same.”[i]
When we talk about God, we speak of
the boundaries of our existence.
Venturing beyond God is impossible and even nonsensical. There is nowhere that God is not. Our God-thoughts and God-talk, our theology,
sets our reality.
Everyone here made the effort to get
out of bed on a Sunday morning and come to this building. Along the way if someone asked, “What you
doing?” You’d say, I’m going to
church.” We’re here because we chose to
be here, so we all probably believe in God or are at least open to the
idea. Many are even filled with
passionate desire to worship God. The
Old Testament prophet Hosea would applaud such zeal for the Lord. Hosea would also watch us closely after church,
on Monday and Tuesday, on Friday night; Hosea wants to see if the songs we sing
and the prayers we pray influence the words we speak and the things we do when
we’re not here.
Hosea was a prophet at a time when
the ancient Jewish people had been divided into two separate nations. The North was made up of the descendants of
10 of the 12 sons of Jacob whom we meet in Genesis 25-35. Whenever you hear the phrase ‘the 12 tribes
of Israel,’ it’s a reference to the descendants of Jacob’s 12 sons. The nation was one people under the first
three Kings, Saul, David, and Solomon.
Their stories can be found in the Old Testament books 1 and 2 Samuel,
and also the first 11 chapters of 1 Kings.
In 1 Kings 12, the son of the deceased King Solomon, Rehoboam, alienates
the 10 northern tribes, so they separate and crown Jeroboam as their king.
This event begins the period of the
split kingdoms of the Jewish people with the north referred to as Israel and
the south as Judah. The stories of both
kingdoms are intermingled in the Bible books 1 and 2 Kings. The Northern Kingdom is lost to history when
they are defeated by the Assyrian empire in 722 BC. The Assyrians take of many of the Israelite people
into exile and then force intermarriage with other peoples they relocate to
Israel. The descendants of these
intermarriages are the Samaritans who figure so prominently in the stories of
Jesus in the Gospels.
Thus the history of the Israelite
monarchy is told from 1 Samuel through 2 Kings, essentially the years 1020 BC
to 586 BC. That period of history is
seen from another angle in the books of the prophets, especially Isaiah,
Jeremiah, and Hosea. Hosea, who worked
in the Northern Kingdom, spoke and wrote the word of God from roughly 780-730BC. His writing is not to recount history but
rather to reveal God’s truth in light of that history. He wrestled with a terrible burden.
Hosea was visited by God’s Spirit in
a way that is unique to Biblical prophets.
The prophets mentioned in the Bible reveal the heart of God. Even though the world different in our day
than in Hosea’s, the heart of God still beats.
People today rebel against God in some of the same ways. Hosea’s burden
was he could see it all – God’s holiness and the people’s rebellion. What Hosea had to say in the 8th
century BC speaks in the 21st century AD.
He jumps right to it. God gives Hosea an absurd instruction. “Take for yourself a wife of whoredom.” Marry a prostitute and have children with
her. Parents wants their sons to marry women of virtue and good character. Parents want their daughters to marry men who
are gentle, trustworthy, and faithful. I
can’t recall anyone I have heard say, “Man, I hope my boy finds a lady of the
night when he grows up.” No one says
that.
Everyone involved in the exchange that happens
in prostitution is broken. Life has led
that woman to think that her best or maybe only option is to sell her body. That man paying the money needs deep
meaningful connection. But he doesn’t
know how to find it. So instead, he pays
money for sex without relationship, without intimacy. Prostitution is sad. And evil.
Everyone involved in it is deeply wounded. God told Hosea, marry a prostitute and have
kids with her.
Hosea’s first work as a prophet was to enter a
marriage none of us would ever consider.
However, for Hosea, it is a prophetic act. He is enacting what Israel has been doing for
decades. Marry a wife “of whoredom,”
because “the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord” (v.2b). The land – the Northern Kingdom – Israel is
compared to a man who leaves his wife and goes to a prostitute. The Israelites have worshipped other Gods. That’s idolatry – turning away from the true
God to worship stone idols. Adultery is a
having sex with someone other your spouse.
In God’s view, to worship anyone or anything other than him is spiritual
adultery.
And we do it all the time. We cut God out of the picture and give our
allegiance and our hearts to things: political movements; relationships;
favorite past-times or hobbies; sometimes addictions. Some people put their children in the place
that belongs to God. God wants us to
love our families. It is commanded in
the Bible. But we are not to worship our
children. They are not the
ultimate. God is.
The Israelites of Hosea’s day obeyed some of the
religious practices prescribed in the Law of Moses, spelled out in in Exodus
and Leviticus. They certainly believed
in God. But they also worship local
Canaanite deities and Egyptian gods. God
was about as happy with this as you would be with your spouse sleeping with
someone else and then coming home and acting like everything was fine.
God told Hosea to live out the situation in
his own life. Marry a prostitute. Name the first son you and she will have ‘Jezreel.’ This name means “God sows” or “God plants
seed.” The second child, a daughter,
will be Lo-ruhamah, which means “Not pitied.”
When Assyria comes to destroy Israel, God’s going to let it happen. And when the Israelites cry out for salvation
the way they did when they were slaves in Egypt in the days of Moses, God will
show no pity. The third child of Hosea
and his wife, the prostitute Gomer, will be a son called Lo-ammi. That translates “not my people.”
God sends Hosea into a marriage he would not
have chosen and tells him what his children’s names will be. Those names tell us that God plants
destruction. When that destruction comes
and the people are defeated and exiled, God will not be sorry.
How do we suppose God feels about lawyer Bill
who plays the good Bible teacher at church, but when Sunday ends, he becomes
the unethical lawyer who beats competitors that naively play by the rules? By week’s end, Deacon Bill, Christian Bill,
has chastised his son and then repeated his son’s lewd speech, laughing all the
while.
It’s just an example. Maybe the preacher is making too much out of
something that’s not a big deal, a mountain out of mole hill. Preachers tend to do that. I wonder if Hosea’s critics dismissed him as
being a holier-than-thou loud mouth who made a lot of noise over nothing. How do we suppose God feels when the choices
we make and the words we speak as we live our lives Monday-Friday fail to match
up to the faith we proclaim on Sunday?
The book of Hosea is about an integrated
life. Who we are in our faith, who we
are in the world – it is all a part of us.
The prophet asserts that God is truly furious when we try to carve our
lives into segments.
Now, you and I, each one of us chose to come
to church and sing and pray and smile and hug and meet God and feel joy. I bet no one came seeking the God who forces
his best people into doomed marriages as a way of expressing his divine
anger. We didn’t come to hear God tell
us, “I have no pity for you and you are not people.”
And we know that God’s not like that. Two weeks ago, we heard the Gospel of John
say, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever
believes in him should not become exiles in Assyria, but rather might have
eternal life in the Kingdom of God.”
Every week we hear the Gospel: in Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God has
come near. He went to the cross for the
sins of the world and in his resurrection, death is defeated. When we give our lives to Him, we have
everlasting life.
We know God is not vengeful. God is not as weird as He seems in the
opening of Hosea. Hosea knew this
too. Hosea’s terrible burden is he could
see the sins of the people more clearly than they could. He could see God’s absolute fury when the
people could not.
Hosea’s glorious privilege was he was allowed
to see the heart of God.
Beginning in verse 7, we see a pattern that
will be repeated in this book. It is as
if God vents the divine anger, but then suddenly remembers that he is God and
God is love. “You name that 2nd
child ‘no pity.’” But then, verse 7, “I will have pity on the house of Judah,
and I will save them.”
“You name that 3rd child
‘Lo-ruhamah.’ They are not my people.”
Then verse 10 says, “The people of Israel will be like the sand of the
sea.” God made the promise to Abraham (Genesis
22:17). His descendants would outnumber
the grains of sand on the shore. Hosea 1:11 says, “The people of Judah and the
people of Israel shall be gathered together … and shall take possession of the
land.”
In 722 Israel went into exile in Assyria, with
the only trace of the original people being the Samaritans. In 586, the people of Judah went into exile
in Babylon. Before either of these events,
the prophet promises God will reunite his people. That’s the heart of God we see in Hosea.
By the time of Jesus, the Jews who made up
Israel had disdain for their Samaritan cousins.
Yet, in both Luke and John, Jesus has moments in which it is clear that
the salvation he brings is for these biracial people. Jesus did not just come for Judah and
Israel. Jesus is the Savior in
Samaria. Maybe that’s one way the
promise of reunification in Hosea 1:11 is fulfilled.
In fact, in Jesus, all nations are drawn
together into one family, united in the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. We who know him as our savior
are tasked to announce his salvation to the world. We are not prophets with the authority and
vision of Hosea. But, we are
heralds. We are the announcers and the
messengers. We live our lives as people
of faith – in all the places of our lives.
And in those places we invite the people we know into the salvation
Jesus gives.
The same God who called his people to live
integrated lives in Hosea’s day calls us to one life today; a life of
consistent, contagious faith. May we
live the one life we have to the glory of God, in Jesus’ name.
AMEN
[i]
Michael Fishbane (2008), Sacred
Attunement: A Jewish Theology, The University of Chicago Press (Chicago),
p.13.
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