a sermon by David Roquemore
The Camp Hill Presbyterian Church
June 27, 2010
Hosea 1
I
Here we are in Hosea. For three Sundays we will sample his work and hear his message. To hear his message, we have to understand to whom he was talking and what the situation was. Thus a bit of background and history.
Hosea preaches in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Israel divided a generation after Solomon into the Northern Kingdom, usually called Israel, and the Southern Kingdom, called Judah. Israel lasted a few hundred years before being absorbed into the Assyrian Empire. Israel was defeated by the Assyrians in 722 BC. Hosea preaches about a decade before this. He warns the North that their faithlessness is going to be their doom. Judah maintained independence a while longer, until the Babylonian Empire, having conquered Assyria, took it into exile in 587 BC.
Israel had a king, Jeroboam II, who gets little attention in the Bible. There are a few verses in 2 Kings 14:23-29 that tell about him. He did two things: he expanded the kingdom almost to the ancient borders that King Solomon had held, and he did evil like his predecessor and namesake, Jeroboam I. So he was personally wicked, but managed to bring Israel into a time of prosperity and security. Then he died, in 746 BC. After his death, there were four kings in fourteen years, all assassinated. It was a time of great turmoil and uncertainty. There was political unrest and intrigue.
At the same time there was great luxury and a flourishing economy. We know about this as we read Hosea, and his contemporary, the harsh prophet Amos. We see that there was a wealthy ruling class and merchant class, sustained by a large and poor working class. The rich were very well-off, while the poor toiled just to eat.
Into this situation Hosea speaks. The book is divided into two sections, a story in chapters 1 – 3, and preaching in chapters 4 – 14. What separates Hosea from the other prophets is his story. As we heard, Hosea gets married, and his wife is not faithful. That becomes an analogy, a parable, for Israel’s relationship to God.
Hosea is told by God to take a wife who is unfaithful. The story is a little ambiguous. Some say Hosea’s wife became unfaithful, and so he used their relationship as an example. Others say she was a prostitute when he married her. Either way, her straying ways are used as an example. Hosea himself is pretty harsh with her, and in some places, this harsh language is used of God against Israel. So some readers see issues of abusive relationships laying behind this text. Whatever the real story is, we can be sure that women in Hosea’s time did not have the rights that they do today. It was not easy for Gomer, especially given the things that are reported about her.
What interests us is the analogy. God declares that Israel’s lack of faith is like a straying spouse. Israel has gone back on the promise and betrayed the trust that was there. Israel has failed to keep the covenant even though God has been good for so long.
After a long period of political expansion and peace, a period of economic growth and prosperity, times change. There is economic fear, and political instability. There are rapid changes in the government. People worry that the good times have ended, and that bad times are ahead. Is any of this sounding familiar?
Jeroboam II was apparently a great king, in world-historical terms. He expanded the kingdom and stimulated the economy. All was well. But the Bible dismisses him in a verse or two, saying that he walked in the ways of his ancestor, Jeroboam I. That is, he permitted the people to turn away from the Lord God and turn to the ways of the neighboring Canaanites, who worshiped the Baals. These were nature religions. These pagan people sought to appease the forces of nature and bring good crops through fertility rituals involving temple prostitutes and even the sacrifices of children. Over the years, Israel’s great temptation was to follow these practices instead of the law of God.
And so when the good times ended, as all good times do, and the hard times came, the people were not spiritually ready. They did not know how to trust in God. They were unfaithful, and the prophets come, proclaiming God’s judgment.
II
We run into a problem as we read the prophets and ask questions about ourselves. We have seen this before. Israel had a special and particular relationship with God. God makes promises to Israel. Should we take those promises to the “nation” and apply them to our nation? We are a very different country, with very different presuppositions, different attitudes, different assumptions, and a different culture. There is a danger that we take the language of Israel being God’s chosen, favored ones, apply it to our nation, and then succumb to a prideful arrogance. We simply have to keep in mind that we are no better than any other nation as far as these promises go. That is hard to hear. It goes against our assumptions.
This is not about partisan politics; it goes deeper than that. This is a critique, a question, to our culture. If politics is the grass, we are looking deep into the soil, to the bedrock. Politics is about how we live together in the polis, Greek for city. And what is God’s law about? How we live together? So you see, faith is very political, but the questions it asked go much deeper than partisan issues.
Hosea, and Amos also, condemns Israel for the tremendous economic disparity and injustice that they tolerate. The rich wallow in luxury while the poor are barely able to eat. This violates the law, says the prophet. This is not the life God has called them to live. And we can see that this raises questions for our lives, as well. Slavoj Zizek recently observed of those television shows that show us starving children and ask for a donation, their message is “don’t think, don’t politicize, forget about the true causes of their poverty, just act, contribute money, so that you will not have to think!” (Living in the End Times, p. 4) But we must think: we must realize the causes of poverty and hear the judgment of the prophet.
Hosea condemns Israel for the religious idolatry and spiritual unfaithfulness that the people practice. The idols lead to self-indulgence and worse, even to sexual sins like Gomer’s. The people indulge their desires in the name of faith. Well, to me that sounds familiar. Perhaps you are acquainted with the church movements and television preachers who say that God wants every one of us to be wealthy, and healthy, and beautiful. Thousands flock to those churches – -and why not? Isn’t that the message we’d all love to hear?
Until we look in the mirror. I look in the mirror and say, “who is that?” What happens when we are not healthy? When we are not wealthy? When – let’s face it – we aren’t all that beautiful? Does that mean God does not love us? There are tremendous problems with that theology. It is far too easy to decide that we are being faithful to God while indulging our desires.
But James, in the New Testament, reminds us that we are tempted by desire, “being lured and enticed by; then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:15) Indulging our desires leads to spiritual death.
Bernhard Anderson writes, of Hosea’s time, “People thronged to the templs, not to acknowledge gratefully their utter dependence on the God who brought them out of Egypt, but to ‘get something out of religion’ – harmony, security, prosperity, and peace.” (Understanding the Old Testament, p. 287)
That sounds a lot like our time, doesn’t it? We want those things too, especially as the world gets more uncertain, our old political paradigms of the cold war no longer explain things, our economy seems on the verge of deflating or even collapsing. We want God to make all things OK, and God’s word from the prophet suggests that God is not interested in helping, that these things are the consequences of our actions, the judgment for unfaithfulness.
As we heard, Gomer had children. God said name the first one Jezreel, for God would punish Israel as Jehu punished King Ahab and then Queen Jezebel at Jezreel (2 Kings 9:30ff). God says, name the second child “Not pitied” for the Lord will not pity those who are unfaithful. God says, name the third child, “Not mine” for Israel no longer belongs to the Lord, having run away chasing after idols. The judgment of God is a terrible thing.
III
This is all very difficult, isn’t it? We ask, “what are the unfaithfulnesses of our time?” and we find it easy enough to answer. But we find that we are a part of it no matter how much we strive not to be. We are complicit in a culture that hurts others? Of course, we cannot change the system, and so we must participate in it. To take a current example, as much as we might like to stop using oil, we can’t, unless we happen to work from home and live next door to the grocery store. And even then, the groceries come to us on trucks. We are a part of a system that we may not like, but can’t be avoided without great difficulty.
What can we do? I suggest three things. The first is, hang on as we read the rest of Hosea in the next two Sundays. There is finally hope offered. All is not lost. Hosea never gave up on Gomer. God never gave up on Israel.
The second is, let us think like or with the prophets. They offer us new ways to understand or to look at the world. They offer what some call “alternative construals of reality,” in which we seek to explain and understand and live by other rules. Perhaps you have seen a bumper sticker that says, “challenge the dominant paradigm”; that is what we are doing. And so we offer hope to those who are tempted to give up and say nothing matters. We keep doing our part, however small, in the face of sytemic evil, because it is the right thing to do. Hosea never gave up on Gomer. God never gave up on Israel.
The third is, as we read the prophets, we must remember that they are preparing the people for Jesus. Gomer the unfaithful one has children named Not Pitied and Not Mine. Another woman whom God saw as completely faithful gave birth to a son and named him Immanuel, God with us. In Jesus Christ God is with us, gives us grace to be faithful, to resist the temptations of our world, to do what is right and to live according to his word. Let us never give up hope, for nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
