A Sermon Based Upon Hosea 1: 1-11
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Sunday, June 15th,
2014
One of the most popular nursery rhymes
we learned as children was:
“Humpty
Dumpty sat on a wall; Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All
the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty
together again.”
One of our favorite sing-along
games was “London Bridge”:
“London Bridge is falling down, falling
down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down, My fair
lady!”
Or it was the
other one: “Ring around the rosy a
pocketful of posies, "Ashes,
Ashes" We all fall down!
Some those songs we were rather morbid
for children, don’t you think? It is thought
that “Humpty Dumpty” was the code
name for a canon placed on a wall at St. Mary’s cathedral during the English
Civil War just before 1650. “London Bridge” was sung as far back as
the middle ages, perhaps because of the difficulty of building a bridge across
the river Thames. It is believed by
some that the game-song, “Ring around
the Rosy” goes back to the horrible death and dying during the great plague
of Europe. But no matter the exact
origin, these songs all speak to the ‘breakable’ ‘fragile’ nature of life. These
are the harsh, hard realities of life that children must face and come to grips
with, if they want to become functioning adults. Things break.
People break. Life falls
apart. You can fail. Very often, if not much too often, the things
that fall apart can never be put back together, ever again.
As we speak of things irreparable,
we’re talking about much more than Grandmother’s favorite antique lamp. Relationships, our most precious human
commodity, can become so fragile that they may be lost in one wrong move. For example, when you hear the name Anthony
Weiner, I bet the first thing that comes to mind is not his political skills,
nor his faithfulness as a husband. And all
you have to do is broadcast someone’s misconduct, whether deserved or not, and
their career and reputation can be completely destroyed. To quote the Berenstein Bears children’s
book, "Trust is something you cannot
put back together once it is broken."
Marriage is one of the foundational
areas of human relationships that is becoming more difficult to justify in our
untrusting world. When I lived in an
apartment building in eastern Germany, my 4 year old daughter often played with
our neighbor’s four year old son, Max. Max’s father was a surgeon and his mother was
a biology teacher. We got to know each
other through our children and once during small talk I asked Max’s father how
long he and his wife had been married. “Oh, we’re not married”, he
responded. “Well you sure look married,”,
I answered. When I inquired the
reason two people much in love with two sons weren’t married, the answer was shocking: “We’re
not married because everyone who gets married ends up divorced. We’ve decided not to marry and to try to
stay together.”
You know how the traditional vows go, "I, John, take you, Mary, to be my
wife, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, 'til death us do
part." According to
the National Center for Health Statistics, more than eight
people per every thousand make that promise each year; and four to six people
in every thousand break it through divorce.
Was Max’s father right? Is it
better to live without making promises to each other rather than to end up breaking
the ones we make? Apparently many people
think so, and for good reasons, not bad ones, cohabitation has become the new
normal.
BROKEN
LIVES
The fragile nature of human
relationships makes Hosea seem very personal. In a rather strange turn of events, God tells
the prophet to go "Go, take for
yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom” (Hos 1:2 NRS). Why is God writing the story of the prophet’s
life in such a heart-breaking way? Hosea tells
that he must marry such a person, because the story of his life is also story of
God’s own life.
There all
kinds of undesirable, unwise, or simply stupid Hosea makes, that I would never recommend. Even if you did marry a person who’s
character is questionable, I would most definitely suggest you should wait to
have children. But Hosea not goes out
and marries a woman who would not be a good mother, he brings children into the
world with her. Worst of all, he says
God told him to have these children because God already had names picked out. Prophetically they are to be named: Jezreel, meaning "cast away"),
Lo-ruhamah ("not loved, or
pitied"), and Lo-ammi ("not
my people"). Fleming Rutledge has
laughingly suggested to would be very strange when the mother took the children
to the market, to hear the mother say, “Not loved, put those (apples) back!” Who would dare give a child names like
this? Who would marry a prostitute whom
you know to be unfaithful? And who would
dare marry a woman named “Gomer”?
When
you read through this prophecy, nothing God tells Hosea to do makes any good sense
at all. What Hosea does only makes sense to God,
because this is how God sees his own people, as his being his own ‘wife of
whoredom’. Why do people, even God’s
people do some of the very ‘stupid things’ that even some of the smartest
people do? Why does a very smart Bill
Clinton have an Affair with intern Monika Lewisky? Why does an Anthony Weiner from New York or a
Mark Sanford from South Carolina, throw their political careers and
relationships away? What made a “Bernie
Madoff” make off with other people’s money, even though he was already
rich? And why would not a few Catholic
Priests or even a beloved football coach in Pennsylvania, or even a whole
school administration, look other way when harm was being done to vulnerable
young children? The people in our day are
just as stupid and senseless as God’s command for Hosea to do a such a very
stupid thing. God is not trying to set precedent, but God
wants to make a point. As Hosea says
later, My people, “Ephraim, is like a dove, silly and without sense.” As the movie character Forest Gumps mothers
said: “STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES”. No matter whose people you are, even if you
are God’s people, if you live, act and do stupid things, you are stupid.
What
were the stupid things God’s people were doing, that made them look as stupid
and senseless as anyone else? Images
of the broken lives of God’s people are scattered throughout Hosea’s
prophecy. Their lives had become
self-destructive in that their ‘lack of knowledge of God’ lead to lives of ‘swearing, lying, killing, stealing and
committing adultery’. This is why ‘the land mourns’, he says (4: 1,
2). “My people (says the LORD) are
destroyed, for a lack of knowledge.”
(4:6). You can name our own
children the children of Columbine, Sandy Hook, or Virginia Tech; and they all die
for a lack the same knowledge. It is a
‘knowledge’ that no only kills our ability to know but kills us as our society
self-destructs. We live in a time, not
unlike Hosea’s, when people intentionally sow evil deeds to the ‘wind’ and think
they can avoid ‘reaping the whirlwind” (8.7).
But how can we avoid such destruction when the primary altars we build
today are more like ‘altars to sin’ rather than altars to our salvation
(8.11).
Aren’t
the sins of the world also the sins of the church? Harold Warlick, who used to be chaplain of
the University at High Point, tells of a church congregation in Vermont who was
having difficulty with some of their preacher’s sermons. He had lambasted the lack of racial equality,
the high property taxes, the insensitivity of merchants, and the lack of caring
among families. This was just too
negative and too much, so an ad hoc committee was formed to quickly tell the
Preacher what he was doing wrong. The
chair began, “Preacher, we are a little worried about the effect of your
preaching on our congregation. When you
rail against materialism, the bandkers and the merchants are
uncomfortable. When you talk against the
television preachers, many of our elder are hurt, for they send money to
support them. And when you start talking
about family values, many of our people
have to make long commutes to work and have little time for anything else. Most of all, you make us feel bad about being
white and wealthy. Can’t you find
something else to preach about?
Totally
exasperated, the preacher asked, “Well, what is it that you want me to preach
about?” From the back of the room came a
clear voice: “Why don’t you preach about the communists?” “But we don’t have any communists in our
town, nor even in Vermont,” the preacher answered. “Exactly.
Preach about them!” (“The Human Condition In Biblical
Perspective”, Harold C. Warlick,
p. 42).
Hosea
is preaching about his own people and God’s own people. He’s preaching about how things really were,
and why people should pay attention to how they are living, what they are doing
wrong, as well as, what they should be doing right. Can anyone preach on the kinds of things
people really need to know, instead of preaching what people want to hear? Up in Kentucky, recently, some Baptist
churches calculated that if you give away 60 guns you can grow your church by
over 600 people (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/gun-giveaways-kentucky-baptist-churches-lure-men-christ-article-1.1710291.). Why not give away guns and have hunting
parties at church, if it works? Isn’t
it more fun to preach what people want to hear?
Isn’t it better to get a church fired up about what’s wrong with the
world, with the Muslims, with the gays, or with the atheists, than what needs
to change in our own lives? As the people said in Hosea’s day, “The prophet is a fool, the man of the
spirit is mad…..” (9.7). The prophet
is the one who needs to change his sermon topics, not we and our ways.
BROKEN LOVE
We
could make a long list of Israel’s specific sins, or we could try to figure out
our own, but the problem is that still won’t connect. As Hosea writes: “Were I to write…my laws by ten thousands, they would be regarded as a
strange thing….” (8.12). Instead of looking at each other and trying
to figure out what we are doing to create the world we know, we still won’t have a clue because the things
we are doing seem to right to us. Our
broken lives can only be understood when we understand it as broken love.
I have
had couples in my office for counseling and most often they come to me after
things get so bad they can’t be fixed.
But when we still try, most couples will hit a snag over small little
things, not the big ones. They get hook on
whether or not the husband or wife is doing is fair share around the house, or
whether the other is spending too much money, or working too late at night, or
whether either can hear what the other is saying. When it gets down to these significant, but
small things, the problem is normally not what they are doing wrong, but what they
are now missing. They stumble over all
the little things that they can’t fix, because what is really broken is their
love for each other. When love is still
in a relationship, almost anything can be worked on and corrected. Weren’t we all stupid when we got married, but
we were so much in love? But when love
is loss, absent, or non-existent, even the smallest things, like socks left on
the floor, or dishes left in the sink, whether to have shared or separate bank
accounts, can become landmines that blow up in everyone’s face and make life
unbearable. It all becomes unbearable
when love is lost.
The
same was true for God’s people. It was not
simply the ‘sins’ or failures that were destroying Israel’s relationship with
God, but it Israel’s loss of love and
the lack a living, caring relationship was destroying their lives. Listen to how Hosea diagnoses the real
problem: “Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit has increased the more
altars he built; as his country improved he improved his pillars. Their heart is false…..” (10.2).
“The land commits great whoredom…” (1.2). “She said,
“I will go after my lovers…..” (2.7).
The
story of Hosea’s broken marriage is the story of Israel’s broken relationship
with God. Israel has lost her love for
God. God does not at all want to give
up on Israel, but Israel has alrady given up on God. While God is saying, “How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O Israel?” (10.8), we learn from Hosea how
God still feels for Israel. But what does Israel still feel for
God? Nothing! “My people
are bent on turning away from me….” “I
am the LORD your GOD…..It was I who delivered
you. It was I who knew you in the wilderness. It was I who fed you and made you full. But now
that you are “filled and your heart
lifted up, you forgot me….” (13: 4-6).
“When Israel was a child, I loved him, out of Egypt I called my
son. (But) the more I called them, the
more they went from me...(11: 1-2).
BROKEN LOYALITY
Again,
the story of Hosea’s broken love life is nothing less than the story of God’s
broken love life. This broken love is a broken loyalty for which
there is no immediate cure. No matter
how much Hosea cares for, pursues, or tries to bring Gomer back, she keeps wandering
off. She does not love Hosea. Perhaps she cannot love Hosea because, as she
now is, she cannot be loyal to only him.
This is also the “story” of how God’s people keep wandering away, no
matter what God does to try to bring them back.
The people’s lives are broken, because their love for God is broken, and
their love is broken, because they have no loyalty, no trust, no faith, and no
commitment to the God who still loves them.
A life that
is full flows out of loving relationships.
Loving relationships flow out of trusting relationships where loyalty
and faithfulness to each other is most important. Broken love is always due to broken loyalty. Years ago, a pastor friend of mine I went
through seminary with was divorced from his wife. It was heartbreaking. I asked him what had happen. He said she committed verbal adultery. What is that?
I asked. He told me that she kept
meeting with a man in a restaurant and they talked to each other for hours at a
time. They became soul mates. When he confronted her, she told him their
marriage was over. When he asked whether or not there was someone
else, her shocking answer was that there had always been someone else, for their
marriage had been over for many years.
He had never had time for her. He
had never made her the center of his world.
He had never talked only to her.
He had not included her in his life.
Love was gone a long time ago, because loyalty to each other had been non-existent.
In
Israel’s case, as it was with my pastor friend, Israel had not only gone after
other lovers (2.5), but God says his ‘controversy
with his people’ is that there is “no
faithfulness, no kindness, and no knowledge of God in the land.”
(4.17). God’s people are no longer
joined to God, but they are ‘joined to
idols” and they have ‘turned to Ba’al’ (7.14) as they have
broken ‘their covenant (loyalty) and transgressed God’s law’
(8.1). It’s not that the marriage was over, it’s as
if there was only a wedding and never was a marriage at all.
There is
no soap opera or romance novel more dramatic than what Hosea wrote, and it is
very surprising how all this ends. Israel’s life is broken. Israel love for God has been lost. Israel has been disloyal to the God who
remained loyal to them. The divorce
will be enforced (Jeremiah 3.8), but it is not final. Even as early as the opening lines, God still
holds out hope: "In the place where
it was said to them, 'you are not my people,' it shall be said to them,
'Children of the living God' " (v. 10). Even
when Israel rejects and wanders away, God is determined to “allure her, bringing her into the
wilderness and speaking tenderly to her….I will betroth (remarry)
her in righteousness and justice, in
steadfast love, and in mercy. I will betroth (her) to me in faithfulness,
and (she) will know the LORD. (2.14,
19). Beyond all the betrayal and the
heartache is God’s undying commitment "to
love, honor, and cherish" his people, even when that love has been
scorned and abused.
Where
does such amazing love and grace come from?
It only comes from the heart of a God who forgives and loves
unconditionally. The God who will take
the fall for sin on the cross. The ‘brokeness’ nor divorce will never be final as long as
one person has the desire of ‘steadfast
love’. “I desire steadfast love” God says. Will Israel reciprocate? Will Israel return? Some did.
Others didn’t. God still calls: “Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God….
Accept that which is good…. I will
heal. I will love you freely….. You shall return and dwell under my shadow,
and you shall flourish as a garden and blossom as a vine….Whoever is wise, let
them understand…. Whoever is discerning
let him know the ways of the LORD are right… The upright walk in them, but
transgressors stumble in them.” (14:
9). Which one are you? Only love knows.
Amen.
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