A sermon by David A. Roquemore
The Camp Hill Presbyterian Church
July 11, 2010
Hosea 11:1-9
For two week we have perused Hosea’s prophecies. We read the stern judgment of God for the unfaithfulness in Israel’s public life. We read the call of God for allegiance to God alone, and not to lesser powers. We begin to wonder if this Hosea is all about bad news. We begin to wonder where the grace and mercy of God might be.
Hosea 11 is an answer – listen to the poignant, pleading voice of God. In the first four verses, God remembers how he loves Israel:
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. 2The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. 3Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. 4I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.
Israel is God’s beloved child! God called Israel out of Egypt. With the prophet Moses at their head, the people marched out of Egypt, following the call of God to the Promised Land. They were delivered from slavery, from death at the Red Sea. All along the way, God has cared for and shepherded his people. “Out of Egypt I have called my son” is quoted by Matthew as he tells how Joseph and Mary bring Jesus back from Egypt, having escaped to hide from King Herod.
God says, cries out really, that he was the one who taught Israel to walk. What a touching and familiar image! Like a parent patiently teaching a toddler, God cared for Israel. Now, Israel is a rebellious teenager, walking away from God as fast as he can. God taught Israel to talk, to speak the language of faith, and now Israel can do nothing but sass the Lord God. “The more I called them, the more they went from me” – sounds like my dog. Sounds like a lot of children. It even sounds like us.
Well, we know how it is with these minor prophets by now. They hold nothing back. Verses 5 – 7:
5They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. 6The sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests, and devours because of their schemes. 7My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call, but he does not raise them up at all.
God’s people can call out all they want; he no longer listens. He is fed up. He has had enough. If they want to go back to Egypt, so be it. If they want to follow other gods, so be it. They don’t want God for a king? Fine, they can have the Assyrians! Violence will consume their cities. And God will not respond to their call.
That’s more like it! That’s the judgment we are accustomed to hearing. God is not putting up with these people and their disobedience. They have been running after other gods, pursuing the desires of their own hearts, trusting in other powers to save them, pledging their allegiance to the wrong leaders.
But wait! Does God care? Does God still care?
8How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. 9I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.
“How can I give you up,” God cries, and you can hear the anguish of the parent who loves the wayward child no matter what. The very thought of punishing Israel makes God’s heart recoil! God’s compassion grows warm and tender. He will not execute his fierce anger. The Hebrew verbs are vivid: the verb for anger comes from a word that refers to snorting, the way a horse might breath. Think of the classic cartoon of a bull preparing to charge – that heavy breathing, that is anger. Yet the word for that warm tender compassion comes from the word for a woman’s womb: where a child is conceived and nurtured and grows, safe and cared for. That is how God longs to treat Israel. That is how God feels about his child, his son. That is how God longs to treat us.
You might think we would pair this passage with the parable Jesus tells of the prodigal son, how the Father cannot reject the son even after being rejected. But the lectionary for today is the Good Samaritan. Not as clear, but there is a connection. The son who runs away God will not reject but always ever is calling, calling to return home. And here in our gospel lesson, Jesus makes it clear that the one who is praised, the one who is approved, is the rejected one. The Samaritan is the one everyone hates. The illegal alien. The enemy. And yet he is the one who obeys God’s call for compassion for the neighbor. Jesus says it is his action that matters. The good and the faithful, the righteous ones, who pass by the wounded man, are judged by Jesus because their deeds do not match their professions of faith. God desires not just righteous words, but righteous lives – a thing Hosea has said over and over.
So, God deeply desires us to live righteous lives, and God deeply desires to be in relationship to us. And of course, the two go together. When we know God, we are drawn to righteous living. When God calls us out of the Egypt – wherever Egypt might happen to be on the map of your life – God gives us the power – grace we call it – to make that journey. To follow. To be faithful. And when we fall down, because little ones learning to walk fall a lot! – then the grace of God in Jesus Christ is there to lift us up and get us going again! That is the good news.
And so we share it. That is part of this righteous living. We share it this week in two ways: with Vacation Bible School and with Mission At The Eastward. VBS starts tomorrow; we will be helping a lot of chldren learn to walk, teaching them the gospel day by day. God calls, and in some cases, speaks through us. God will teach these little ones to walk in his way by our example and teaching. That is quite a responsibility, and those who are here doing it need your prayers each morning.
Then on Saturday, the MATE group departs for a week in Western Maine doing whatever people need done at their houses. How does fixing a step witness to God’s care? It is not so much the what as the that. What we do is not so important as that we are there doing it. We will be there in the name of Christ, and seek to proclaim to people in all kinds of ways that God does love them. Pray for us as we work at MATE – for our safety, that the work we do will be well-done (I have this dream about a certain porch we built.), and that we are able to demonstrate righteous living and communicate Christ’s love to people.
Does God care? Of course God does. God cares more deeply than we can ever imagine. God’s care and love is deeper than we know. Yes, God is holy and so judges sin. But the word of judgment in these prophets, though it is a stern warning, is not the last word. The last word is God’s undending love, for Israel, for his Son, for us through his Son.
Take comfort, have hope, live in the light of God’s righteous love! Amen.
