Where do we go from Here?

The Way Forward, 6-2-2020

            Many years ago I was discipling someone.  I gave her a Bible and told her about Jesus.  When I saw her several weeks later, she was excited.  Proudly, she told me she put that Bible under her pillow every night.  She had not read a page.  But she was growing in Christ because she slept on it each night.

            If all we do is sleep with the Bible, it is useless (and probably makes the pillow lumpy).  The Bible is also useless as photo op, useless as a truth-totem in court.  A teller of boldfaced lies, will tell those lies after swearing on a Bible.  The Bible is not a totem, a prop, or an accessory. 

The Bible is God’s living word, God’s message to the world conveyed through law, prophecy, creation narratives, chronicles of kings, Gospels, poetry, and letters. 

In America, we’ve exceeded 100,000 COVID-19 related deaths.  We’ve watched in horror as defenseless African Americans have been killed by law enforcement officers.  Know their names: Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd.  Expressing outrage at the evil of structural injustice, advocates for justice have protested, peacefully. 

Opportunists have hijacked peaceful protests turning them into lawless outbursts nationwide.     Our president has not by addressed the systemic injustice that leads to unarmed, surrendered suspects being strangled.  Instead, he has threatened deadly force and has insulted governors across the country. 

What’s the way forward from here?  For Christians it is to take the Bible out from under the pillow and out of the photo ops.  To recognize the force of God’s word, the Bible must be opened, must be read.  Three passages stand out to me. 

First, Acts 16:1-3, Paul’s recruitment of young Timothy to his missionary team.  Timothy is one of many biracial people in the Bible, with a Jewish Christian mom and Pagan Greek dad.  The Jerusalem Council determined Gentile believers need not be circumcised (Acts 15).  However, Paul recognizes that in order to gain a hearing with Jewish audiences, Jews on his team should be circumcised.  So, he circumcised Timothy. 

That’s not a small thing without the availability of anesthesia.  But Timothy accepted extreme discomfort to become a more effective witness.  He thought it was worth it to sacrifice in an unpleasant way.  He wanted Jews would listen when he preached and consider Jesus.  He did it for the good of others.

How much are we doing for the good of others?  If you’re white, how much thought have you given to the way black people have been humiliated in our country’s history.  The video image of Derek Chauvin holding George Floyd’s down is dehumanizing.  Black people have put up with that kind of treatment for 500-600 years.  Derek Chauvin’s commitment is to protect and serve.  Maybe he felt he needed to subdue Mr. Floyd.  He went murderously beyond that.  White Christians, we have to empathize with the pain our black brothers and sisters have experienced.  We have to think, speak, and act for the good of others.  Paul and Timothy set the tone for this self-giving attitude with Timothy’s circumcision.

Next, we then turn to 1 Corinthians 9:21-23, where Paul says,

²¹ To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. ²² To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. ²³ I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

Identity politics is a conversation stopper.  If I think you are assailing my identity as a white man or as someone who cares about justice, I’ll rush to defend myself as I forget common sense. I’ll ignore the teachings of Jesus.  In defense of my preciously held identity, I might even denigrate you, without thought for the consequences.  Of course, you’re as human as I am, so you’ll take the same tack.  Defending myself, I’ll put you down; you, in turn, will defend yourself and your preciously held identity, and put me down. 

How did Paul defend his identity?  He didn’t.  Wait, what?  Don’t you trot Philippians 3:4-6 out to me, claiming Paul was as much committed to identity politics as anyone else.  What does he say in verse 7?  “Whatever gains I had I count as loss because of Christ?”  Who is saying that today?  Who is saying, whatever I have accomplished is rubbish (Phil. 3:8) because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord? Are our leaders saying anything like this?  I don’t hear it.  When see elected officials, I see posturing, self-promotion, defensiveness, and photo ops.  Paul calls that kind of behavior trash.  He will be whatever he has to be to help you know Jesus.  His concern is your soul, not his identity. 

Christians, our calling is to love our neighbors.  My fellow white Christians, if our black and brown neighbors feel distressed by economic disadvantage, disproportionate suffering, and distrust of public institutions, we need to stand with them in empathetic solidarity.  If they feel we are indifferent to their pain, why would they care what we have to say about Jesus? Like Paul we count our own identities as “loss” for the sake of knowing Christ and helping others know him. 

How is a white Christian standing with a black brother in the face of prejudice something I actually do for God?  How is a rejection of white supremacist conditions is an act of love for Jesus? Consider his words in Matthew 25:40.   He says to the righteous whom he has invited to inherit the kingdom (25:34) that they are blessed in this way because they cared for the least in his kingdom (v.40); and, in caring for the least, we care for Jesus.

I am not saying black and brown persons are “less than” white Christians any more than I would say the hungry or the stranger are “less than” anyone else.  The way our society is structured, some people are inherently advantaged.  Others have to struggle.  When the advantaged give up privilege and help their struggling neighbors, it is as if they are doing it for Jesus.  God notices.

God also notices when the advantaged ignore those who struggle.  When we turn a blind eye on the pain around us, Jesus says, “Depart from me” (25:41).  Why?  We ignored Jesus in his time of need.  “When did we do that,” the privileged ask.  Jesus answers, “Whenever you failed to care for the least of these. 

Don’t stand, posing for pictures holding your Bible.  Sit down, open it, and read it.  Don’t self-righteously decry violent protests.  Empathize with people who are in such pain, the only way they know to express it is through loud, over-the-top activism.  They’re trying to get the attention of a country they feel is ignoring them.  Did you hear me advocate burning buildings or smashing windows or attacking anyone?  No, you did not.  I did not say any of that is ok. 

But, I read the Bible and I see where God’s sympathy lies.  He’s with everyone who is broken.  When someone starts a fire as a part of a protest, it’s because they’re in pain.  Jesus cares about their pain.  We, his people, show our care for him by the way we care for people in pain and the way we work for justice and harmony. 

If you would like to respond to anything you’ve read here, I heartily invite you to share stories of how you’ve reacted to people in pain, and stories of what you’ve done to make the world a safer, more just place as you stand with those Jesus is standing with. 

Where We Can Agree (Mark 12:28-34)

            One political group identifies with the man in power.  No matter how foolish he acts, these supporters will stand by his side.  They ignore his boorish behavior as they prop him up claiming he’s best hope for the nation.  They don’t really believe that.  In truth, they plan on sponging off his riches and privilege.  They want to advance themselves by walking in his shadow.  We’ll call them the brownnosers. 

            The brownnosers’ rivals are a group that’s committed to the letter of the law.  They are fully convinced that their interpretation is the only valid one.  They exert power over common people as they wield the law like a sword.  At their word, one is vindicated or condemned.   And everyone listens to them because they seem to know so much. We’ll call them the legalists. 

            The legalists and brownnosers definitely do not like each other.  They constantly clash in public verbal sparring matches.  However, the legalists are at odds with another group, a second rival.  This group holds the seats of power in the ruling body. They actually possess legislative authority.   We can refer to them as congress.  Some of those in congress have loose association with some of the brownnosers.  The actually despise the brownnosers, but are willing to use them, if it maintains their privileged position.

            I’ve tried to be coy, but you are too smart for that.  You can see right through my veiled references.  I’ve mentioned three groups that in different ways hold the people of the nation under heel with their misuse and abuse of power.  Three governing bodies vying with one another, sometimes entering dubious alliances, other times openly attacking each other; we all know exactly who I am talking about.  It is the first century in Jerusalem and I have just described the Pharisees as legalists, the Herodians, sycophantic members of the puppet King Herod’s court, as brownnosers, and the Sadducees who controlled the temple as the congress.

            These power groups had to wrangle under the oppressive eye of Rome the way today’s politicians have to deal with the inevitability of Election Day.  Powerless powerbrokers, they elevated themselves at the expensive of the common person.  And then Jesus broke onto scene with something neither they nor the Romans had anticipated.  He told the truth!  He was real.  He revealed what was real about them.  And this one truth-telling man exposed and disoriented those who had previously thought of themselves as untouchable.

            Follow Mark, the master story teller.  Imagining the scene, I picture this section being read in the home of some Christian in Ephesus 88AD.  A group of Christ-followers is gathered, 30 people.  It is a rich Christian’s home, big enough to host the church in that sector.  Among those 30 there to glorify God in the name of Jesus are the poor, the travelers, the weary and beaten.  They have been harassed by local politicians and constables. They’ve been intimidated by Roman legionnaires.  They’ve been kicked out of the synagogue for insisting that Messianic expectations have been realized in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  They know that to follow him is to be a people abused by society’s powerholders. 

            They come to an Ephesian church maybe hosted by an aged Timothy.  He’s invited an old friend to share a good word: John Mark.  He’s well known having apprenticed under Barnabas and Peter, and near the end having reconciled with and then worked alongside Paul.  We recognize names like Timothy and Mark as being among the younger set of disciples we meet in Acts and Paul’s letters.  But this particular Sabbath Day, it is 50 years past the resurrection.  These men we remember being young are now the last vestiges of the original generation of Jesus-followers.  Where has Mark been?

            With a gleam in his eye he begins reading what he’s been working on – his version of the good news; this is Mark’s Gospel.  By chapter 12, those 30 believers in the Ephesian house church are with him.  He pits the Pharisees in public confrontations with Jesus and the crowd cheers Jesus as he demonstrates wisdom, defeating their tyranny with a Gospel of freedom, overcoming their abusive theology with his Gospel of love and grace.

            Mark has Jesus deflecting all the rhetorical and legal assaults the Pharisees can muster. Defeated, they do something they would never do.  They conspire with the Herodians!  “They sent to [Jesus] some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him” (12:13).  Jesus meets their absurd scenario and in Mark’s abrupt prose we read, “They were utterly amazed” (12:17).  That’s Mark 12:13-17 if you want to read it later yourself.

            The Sadducees, perceiving themselves to possess a vastly superior intellect to the parochial Pharisees and pompous Herodians, take their turn at Jesus.  They tell an improbable parable about a woman who marries 7 brothers.  They want to disprove resurrection.  All they accomplish is the proof that Jesus is much more adroit than them.  You can read this encounter in Mark 12:18-27.

             The rhythm is easy to pick up. All the corrupt parties of Jerusalem politics have been thrown into an unwelcome alliance in a joint effort to put the village rabbi from Galilee back in his place.  A shot comes at Jesus from one corner, he swats it back byspeaking the bold truth of God.  Another shot comes from over here and Jesus is ready.  Their deceptions won’t slow him down in his determination to reveal God’s salvation to all who come to him genuinely seeking God.

            In the midst of this, Mark throws a curveball we need to see.  Within corrupt political structures whether the systems of 1^st century Jerusalem or 21^st century American politics, there are people who honestly want to serve.  Of the Republicans and Democrats hoping to win this Tuesday, some are truly good men and women.  Maybe you don’t vote for them because you disagree with their views on a certain issue, but you don’t have demonize them.  It’s OK to disagree with civility. 

            Mark writes in verse 28 that a scribe approached Jesus.  Most of the scribes in the temple were probably Sadducees.  This Sadducee watched Jesus go at it with Herodians, Pharisees and other Sadducees to the delight of the crowd.  But this one was annoyed.  He could see that the cheering crowd had no more interest in truth than the corrupt politicians bickering with Jesus.  These people cheering Jesus today would be jeering him as he hung from the cross just a few days later. 

But this man had a real question.  From one thinker to another, “Teacher, which commandment is first?”  If we want to live in right relationship with God and with our fellow human beings, if we want to honor God in our lives, where do we start?  Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”  People think Jesus invented that statement.  He was quoting law they all knew. 

He doesn’t stop though.  He then quotes Leviticus 19:18.  This comes right from the middle of the holiness code, a law they all knew. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Mark’s audience in that Ephesian church pastored by Timothy has been laughing along with Mark and Timothy as they all hear Mark tell of Jesus’ flourishes in overcoming the assaults hurled at him by Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians.  But they notice the change in Mark’s tone when he gets to this part.  Jesus never won arguments for the sake of winning arguments.  He didn’t want to defeat people. He wanted to enlighten people with truth so they could see their own sins and thus see their need for God.  Seeing their need for God they would then discover the path to God was the way paved by Jesus.

A hush falls over Mark’s audience as they hear him tell of this scribe, a Sadducee who is beginning to open his heart to Jesus.  We might describe the man as a Washington insider.  Mark holds before us the story of this insider stepping onto the path of discipleship through a thinker’s conversation about theology and faith. 

“You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and beside him there is no other;’ and ‘to love him with all the heart, and all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ – this is more important than all whole burnt offering and sacrifices” (12:33).  Astounding!  A scribe who worked in Jerusalem just said that relationships of love mattered more than temple ceremony.  Where did scribes work?  At the temple.  Who did scribes work with?  Priests!  He’s beginning to see that salvation doesn’t come in what happens in the temple.  Salvation comes when someone meets God in Jesus and responds in faith.  It can be a beggar or the most powerful of lawyers; a wealthy merchant, or a blue collar worker struggling to pay his bills.  Mark shows that in Christ we each come with the same need for grace, love, and forgiveness. 

Jesus did not bat this inquiring scribe away as he had the Herodians and Sadducees in the previous episodes.  Instead, in this instance, Jesus wins.  His victories are marked by the conversion of our hearts to God’s way of life.  God’s way of life is love.  “You are not far from the kingdom of God,” Jesus told that scribe.   He absolutely had to turn away from the temple and turn to Jesus.  And he did that. 

Then Mark writes, “After that, no one dared ask any [more] questions.”  Mark glanced around at the faces of the house-church members huddled in Ephesus.  He had made his point.  Those late first century Christ-followers needed to love the Legionnaires who intimidated them and the local constables who harassed them, and the synagogue leader who rejected and expelled them.  When they looked to Jesus and loved God, they could all agree on that.

We can too.  So many issues cause us to argue with each other, even our brothers and sisters in church; we argue, then we demonize the other side; then we divide the world into “us” and “them.”  This hateful bipolar way of seeing is one philosophy trying to win the day – this Election Day and in this moment in history.  Some arguments are fun: Pepsi or Coke?  Cats or dogs?  Apple or PC?  Tar Heels or Blue Devils?  Some arguments are more deeply divisive.  Do we welcome refugees or secure our borders with the military?  Can gay people get married in the church?  Can we own guns and defend ourselves or are we supposed to turn the other cheek? 

The demonic monster of political corruption wants us to turn on each other by forcing us to divide into camps based on these and other issues.  Mark promises we don’t have to fall for that.  We can be united in Christ.  Our starting point, and this is absolute, is loving God and loving each other.  This is something we can all agree on.  My neighbor is the person God puts in my path and I am called to love him as much as God showed love for me in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Mark’s audience understood that the love of God revealed in Jesus is the remedy for the ills that divide people in society.  They would take that Gospel he wrote and left with them.  Centuries before the printing press, they would preserve it, by hand copy it, translate it, and live by it.  Why?  They knew this writing was Spirit-inspired.  This was word of God.  This was life. 

I think we know it too.  We reproduce Mark’s Gospel when we respond to the corruption and fearmongering around us with a commitment to love and Godly hospitality.  As Election Day approaches, may we do that this week.  May we go out in love, determined to love people in such a way that they see their own deep need for Jesus.

AMEN

“The Lord Watches over Strangers” (Psalm 146)

            The caravan!  The president of the most powerful nation on earth, the United States of America, mobilizes 5,200 soldiers to … our border.  Why station combat-ready troops at the border?  Who’s threatening to invade?  Poor Honduran and Mexican migrant farmers and migrant workers fleeing political oppression and debilitating unemployment.  Many in our country, the U.S.A., see these who want to come have some of the freedom we hold and have not earned but enjoy by virtue of birth, secured by our European ancestors’ invasion and conquest, and they call these immigrants “illegals,” or “foreigners,” or “strangers.” 

Many of the Americans who affix such negative labels to those in the ‘caravan’ would call themselves ‘Christians,’ evangelical Christians.  From the Greek root, ‘evangelical’ means one who spreads good news.  ‘Christian’ literally means ‘little Christ.’  Evangelical Christians among all the branches of Christian faith most ardently claim to live Biblically.  So these Americans wanting to abide by the dictates of scripture and to spread good news to the ‘least of these’ (Matthew 25:40) and to walk in the footsteps of Christ support the move to block the poor, the hungry, the homeless at the border of the land of the free and the home of the brave? 

Confronting weary, desperate refugees families with a show of military force doesn’t seem very brave or Christi.  What have we become?

The Bible’s got something for those refugees and migrants, and the Bible’s got something for powerful political leaders who refuse to welcome or help them.  Psalm 146:9, “The Lord watches over strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he will bring to ruin.”  Bible-reading, Bible-obeying, good news-telling, little Christ evangelicals, read this Psalm carefully, slowly, over and over (and Matthew 25:31-46 while you’re at it).

See the God this Psalm describes.  He is the one to trust, not princes (meaning earthly political leaders, whether monarchs, oligarchs, prime ministers, or presidents – 146:3).  We trust God.  “Happy are those whose help is God” (v.5).  He is creator of the universe (v.6).  A lot of evangelicals agree with this as they reject evolutionary biology and in the process willfully ignore the established conventions of science.  Evangelicals ignore science, blissfully declare belief in a creator, and then miss that the very same verse that asserts creation, Psalm 146:7, depicts God as giver of justice for the oppressed. 

Those in the ‘caravan’ were severely persecuted in their home countries.  They have had to use everything they have to travel harsh roads to finally arrive at the country that in the past has said “send me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door” (see the statue of liberty)!”  After their harrowing flight and exhausting journey, these people, the oppressed of Psalm 146, the ones God watches over, are met at Liberty’s door by Liberty’s army pointing Guns and tanks at them. 

What has happened to America?  What have we become?  And how in the name of the Holy God can any evangelical anywhere support such inhospitable policies?  Psalm 146:8-9.  “The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.  The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous.  The Lord watches over strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow.”  Read these inspired, inerrant words again and again and again until they sink in.  In the news story dominating headlines, the story of the ‘caravan,’ and our nation’s furrowed-brow-response, God is on the side of the weary immigrants seeking safety and opportunity. 

Aren’t evangelicals supposed to be on the side God is on?

It sounds as if I have been beating up on evangelicals.  Nope.  I have been doing what evangelicals do because I am one.  I have turned to the Bible, specifically Matthew 25:31-36 and Psalm 146 (see also Isaiah 58:6; 61:1-2 & Luke 4:18-21 where Jesus said that in his coming the passages from Isaiah had come to fulfillment).  Like any evangelical, I want to be a Bible-reading, Bible-obeying, good news-telling Christ follower.  That is literally what an evangelical is. 

I have not beat up on evangelicals here.  I have renounced media that falsely depicts evangelical Christianity, and I renounce those who claim to be evangelical and then try to define it by political party affiliation and issues-based self-identification.  True evangelical Christianity takes its cues from scripture, and scripture defines God as being opposed to those in power and in support of those oppressed and afflicted.  This is who the God of the Bible is.  If this is who you trust, the Psalm says you’ll be happy.  If you’re opposed to welcoming the haggard poor in the caravan, you’re opposed to the God of the Bible.  That’s a faith statement, not a political one.

Fumbling Pride

In the sermons this summer, we have been looking at the 8^th century BC prophet Hosea to hear the Word of the Lord.  However, last week, we took a break from Hosea to read 1 Timothy as we ordained new elders and thought about church leadership.

            Today, as we return to the fiery words of the prophet, a lonely voice for God amid a society turned away from God, I want to briefly think back to 1 Timothy and the idea of church.  The church is a family, and hopefully we are engaged participants in the life of this family. 

The church goers I have seen who receive the greatest blessing from church are those who develop deep, lifelong friendships with the people they worship alongside each Sunday.  In those relationships, we grow as disciples.  We serve together, giving our very best in terms of time, talent, and energy to the life of the church. 

As we serve in the church, we locate our lives within the church.  And we see each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.  In the church, we realize we are not of the world around us.  The church is not just one more institution in a society full of institutions competing individuals’ time and loyalty.  The church is the body of Christ in the world.  In the church, we know, we’re bound for and bound to the Kingdom of God. 

We’re not cut-off.  We stay fully engaged in the world, showing people love and grace.  We know we are sent by God to announce his rescue mission.  Jesus is the Savior.  The church is the gathering of his disciples.

In the 8^th century BC, the nation of Israel was meant to be a gathering of God worshipers.  The world would look to Israel, see God’s holiness, repent of sin, and come to Israel seeking God.  The problem is when the world looked to Israel, God’s holiness was not seen.  Israel lived as just one more kingdom vying for power, forming ill-fated alliances, and rising and falling based upon the deaths of common people who gave their lives on behalf of monarchs who didn’t want to dirty their own hands.

They went through the motions of worship, and at the same time, they aligned with nations that were utterly opposed to the ways of God.  It happens in our day and time too.  Famous pastors and supposedly Christian leaders align themselves with political figures who show open disregard for the ethics found in scripture.  Pastors today find themselves praised not for their forceful proclamation of the stories in the Bible, but for their words about this candidate or that one.  Many high profile Christians today have forfeited their witness as badly as kings and priests did in Hosea’s day.  Many churches today fail as courageous witnesses when their “gospel” is eerily similar to the platform of either of America’s major political parties.

We who are in Christ are called to be something else.  We are to be a light on the hill shining on something the world hasn’t seen – the city of God, a city unlike any on earth.  Israel was called to be holy.  So are we.  In Israel’s constant flirtation with other religions, in her exploitation of the needy, and in her repeated acts of fornication she was profane and she fumbled her responsibility to point the world to God. 

What does God think when His people try so hard to be worldly instead of faithful?  The opening of chapter 4 sets the table for God’s response: “Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel, for the Lord has an indictment against [you].”  Hosea then develops this theme of indictment. 

Chapter 5, verse 5: “Israel’s pride testifies against him.”  

Pride.  Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”  Most Americans claim to be Christian and most Christians says they believe what the Bible says.  If we believe it – Hosea 5:5 & Proverbs 16:18 – then we need to be careful about pride!  And yet pride in our country is expected of all Americans.  If you aren’t proud and don’t tear up during the National Anthem, you aren’t patriotic enough! 

But we say we believe the Bible and Hosea and Proverbs, two Biblical books, say pride indicts us and leads to destruction!  How do we reconcile this?

We feel the need to insist how much better America is than other places and other peoples, even when we haven’t visited other places and don’t know other peoples.  “They wish they were like us,” we say. “They wish they were here.”  Maybe some in other countries do; certainly not all.  What if we celebrated that America is strong and we love our country.  Would that be enough?  Do we have to puff out our chests and insist that “America is the most powerful nation in the world”? 

Is that so important? In the days of the Hosea, Assyria was the most powerful nation, and they were not in step with God’s vision for creation.  In the days of Jesus, the most powerful nation was Rome, and Rome glorified itself, not God.  I love America.  Every citizen should.  We should all contribute to the thriving of all people in America.  But Jesus, not America, should define us.  I pray for America to be blessed and God to be glorified.    

Of 8^th century BC Israel, Hosea said, “with their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him; he has withdrawn from them” (5:6).  Why?  God never turns back an earnest seeker.  Why would Hosea say God rejected Israel?  The people had circumcised bodies.  They sacrificed animals. They performed all the religious rites.  However, their hearts were indifferent to God.  They used God for their own purposes.  We are to submit our purposes to God’s will and then live by God’s command.  We are to be of use to God, not vice versa.

Hosea 5:7 says that because the people dealt faithlessly with God, they bore illegitimate children.  What came from that faithless society was something other than the holiness God intends for us, God’s image bearers.  We also yield unholy, ungodly fruit when we live for our own desires without regard for God. 

Upon reading Hosea 5:7, “they have broken faith with the Lord … they have begotten alien children,” each one of us has to ask, ‘Have I broken faith with the Lord?’  ‘Is my life producing God’s holiness?’  Or, is my life profane?  This goes beyond morality.  A lot of people who have very little to do with Jesus live what appear to be moral lives.  But they are not lives submitted to Christ. 

The Apostle Paul captured this tension well in Galatians.  There he contrasts what our lives produce when we are motived by our own appetites and cravings verses what comes out of our lives when the Holy Spirit pours through us.  Galatians 5:

¹⁶ Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. ¹⁷ For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. ¹⁹ Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, ²⁰ idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, ²¹ envy,^[e] drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

²² By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. ²⁴ And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵ If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.

Apart from God, our lives issues forth profane words, ideas, and relationships, all utterly cut off from the holiness God commands for us.  God doesn’t like it.  God is more invested in us than we in Him.  The pain God experiences when we reject Him is greater than the hurt we feel apart from Him.  Hosea reveals how God reacts to our disobedience and disregard of Him. This is chapter 5, verses 12-14.

¹² Therefore I am like maggots to Ephraim,
    and like rottenness to the house of Judah.
¹³ When Ephraim saw his sickness,
    and Judah his wound,
then Ephraim went to Assyria,
    and sent to the great king.^[a]
But he is not able to cure you
    or heal your wound.
¹⁴ For I will be like a lion to Ephraim,
    and like a young lion to the house of Judah.
I myself will tear and go away;
    I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.

When you got up to come to church this morning, did you expect to hear God say, “I am like maggots and rottenness?”  Maggots swarm over piles of putrid, stinking mess.  God swarms the person who dares abandon him and turns away from him.  This nasty imagery is unappetizing, but to say less would dilute the message of the prophet. God is disgusted when people reject Him and His call, and Hosea wants his readers to feel that disgust.  God loves us.  When we swat that love back at God with the strength of a tennis pro’s forehand, God doesn’t go away.  God stays.  And then, we reek with the stench of God-rejecters. 

Hosea then shifts images, from maggots to the lion.  “I will tear,” God says.  God will ravage the faithless congregation that plays at worshiping Him all the while trying to please the culture around it.  Like prey in the wilderness, God chews us up when we turn from him.

We are to live within our American culture.  But, in that culture, we are to be salt, seasoning the culture with the flavor of Heaven.  Where our culture expects cutthroat competition, we are to offer cooperation with an eye toward the thriving of everyone.  Where our culture calls for vengeance in disputes, whether verbal or violent, as people of heaven we give forgiveness and mercy.  Where our culture exalts the mighty and powerful, we are to, as Colossians 3 says, “clothe [ourselves] with “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and love” (v.12, 14).

Those values differ greatly from the bravado and power-posturing so valued in our culture.  Compassion.  Kindness.  Humility.  Meekness.  Love.  We can’t aspire to live out these ideas unless we are filled with the Spirit of the risen Christ.  Oriented toward our culture we are turned away from God, and God ruins us and rips us apart. 

Hosea casts God in an active role – causing rot, tearing us in pieces; But, I think the best way to receive Hosea’s words, especially in light of all we know about Jesus, is as imagery.  We rip ourselves apart trying to divide our loyalty between personal success, political stances, and Jesus, and other things. 

The final verse of Hosea 5 sums up our situation.  God says

I will return again to my place
    until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face.
    In their distress they will beg my favor

All the ways Hosea displays the anger of God lead to the point where we come begging God for another chance.  And here’s the good news!  God gives that second chance, every time.

We are the church family.  We recognize the devastating effects of our sins.  Like Israel in Hosea’s day, we come to God on our knees.  There’s no pride, only humble confession.  When we see how bad life is apart from God and how far our sins have moved us away from God, then we turn to Him and ask forgiveness.  He gives it in abundance, gently, in love. We plead for a second change.  He gives it, over and over.  As we see in the life of Jesus, the core of the Gospel and over and over in the words of the prophet Hosea, God takes us back in love, cleans us up, and sets us up once again to live in joy as His people. 

Decide what you want. Pray for the world.  Pray for the nation.   Pray for your town.  Pray for your church.  Pray for your own life.  Set your mind and heart on the love God has for you. 

AMEN