Hosea and Gomer—A Sermon About the Love of God
When my friends and I used to sit around and talk about women (and the chasing of them), I used to say that I was looking for somebody with three "G"s. I wanted somebody who was Genuine, Gentle, and Godly. (Kelly and I have often debated whether I have in fact gotten my wish list—I generally think she has a more gentle side than she recognizes herself.) There were two others aspects that, if pressed, I would have admitted pursuing. One is "Gorgeous", although I might not have confessed that because it doesn't sound too spiritual.The final element—and if I'm honest, this was at times the most important element of all—was that I was looking, quite simply, for a woman who would love me. For a while Kelly wasn't sure about that, and eventually, this was not just a peripheral issue, but THE issue. If she did in fact love me, we'd get married. If not, we were probably done. I knew I loved her, but if it didn't go both ways, I just wasn't willing to go any further.I suppose that isn't that uncommon. If you peel back the surface of what we all chase in relationships, it comes to this: we want somebody to love us. We just want to love someone and be loved back. All the world's tragedy and comedy comes down to this.And so we can only come to Hosea's story with bewilderment. While Hosea's marriage to Gomer was introduced in the first chapter, there it is essentially the context for the children and their prophetic names, in an account told by a third person narrator—"this is what happened to Hosea". In chapter 3, it takes center stage, in a first person account. This is Hosea saying, "This is my story." The first verse is enough for us to start with: "The Lord said to me again, Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods..."God invites Hosea to dive into God's own heart by entering into a relationship which he knows will be unreciprocal. God wants Hosea to love someone—not just marry them, but love them!—in the knowledge that his love will not be returned.You ever been there? Maybe not on purpose, but have you ever found yourself completely in love with someone that just wasn't that into you?That is simply one of the most painful things that can happen to humans—and it happens to most of us at some time or another.What is amazing is that God experiences this in his own heart. This is the most fundamental story we tell about God and his relationship with humans—God loves us, knowing that we often won't love him back. Indeed, this isn't accidental, but God created us with this precise possibility. God created us to live in community with him, but also created us with the possibility that we could choose to walk away from him. We often say that God did this so that our love would be of a certain kind—love freely given is the only kind that really matters, after all. I suppose there is a good bit of truth in that, but I think that this Hosea story reveals a deeper truth.The metaphor here works not because Gomer is going to love Hosea in a particularly powerful way after her faithlessness, although that is a possibility. Gomer's love simply isn't the point. It's all about Hosea's love—which of course means that it's all about God's love. See, God doesn't just give us freedom only for the sake of making sure that our love is free and thus particularly powerful. Even more, our freedom works to show us the incredible power of God's own love. God's love is a powerful "even though" sort of love that loves despite going unreturned. God loves even when repeatedly rejected.And yet, God's love always pursues us. God relentlessly chases us, desiring to draw us into relationship with him. God desires for us to respond to him, to freely come and join him. His desire in this text is that Israel would—eventually—come to love him, that eventually Israel would seek God out and join him. He desires the same of us, that as Ephesians says, we may have the power to comprehend the breadth, length, height and depth of God's love for us, and that perceiving that we may be live in the fullness of God, firmly rooted in his love. Radically, we might even take this further. Not only does he desire that we realize his love and return it to him, but God's vision for his people is that we join him in loving the world. Jesus roots his command that we love our enemies in exactly this, that this is how God loves the world. He knows it is different than how the world thinks about love—that's his point!
"You have heard it said, 'you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your father in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect." (Mt 5:43-48)
God loves even when his love is unreturned, and Jesus calls us to learn to love in exactly this way. Do we have the audacity to mimic God's love in our own lives—can we learn to love those who simply do not and will not love us back? Can we stop using our love simply as a tool to gain love back for ourselves? Once, God called the prophet Hosea to put his love—God's love— on display by loving someone who would not love him back—now he calls the church to do the same. We are called to be "Hoseas." Despite the knowledge that it will often be unreturned, we are called to love all—even our enemies. We do it in the hope that such love might communicate the unbelievable, relentless love of God—in the hope that even our enemies may be redeemed by God. And yet, even as we hope for their redemption, we are called to love regardless whether it ever has that effect or not. We are called to become like God, to break away from the limited nature of our natural way of loving. We are called to become, by the working of God's own spirit, capable of loving with God's own love.Thus the story of Hosea is a story of the gospel, that God loves us furiously. But that gospel is never for us alone. As soon as we grasp its meaning for ourselves, we are drawn into living it out for the world around us. We love with God's own love, for the sake of God's own glory. Amen.
Reversal—A Sermon on Hosea 2
Hosea the prophet lives in a time of false security, when his nation manipulates politics to acquire a sense of independent security, and manipulates religion in an attempt to acquire economic stability. Their political/military life and their worship both lead them away from dependence on God, from faith. For both of these he speaks words of judgment, fiery words which call Israel (and now, the church) to see her sin for what it is, and to learn true repentance.We normally think of repentance as being about the past. We avoid it because we think it means a reliving of our worst mistakes, but nothing could be further than the truth. In repentance we confess and name our sin—not as a way of reliving it, but as a way of moving away from it. Repentance is about freedom from the past. Repentance is a consequence of hope. It grows out of two convictions about the future, convictions which Hosea leads us into by sharing God's mind with us.First, God owns the future. God declares the future through Hosea, not because he has some secret power of prediction, but because the future consists of the actions of God. God does not predict sports scores or the playing cards of a magician's trick, but is simply stating what he intends to do, with the knowledge that he can and will in fact do these things. While humans have plenty to say about what will happen in the mean time, the future—the ultimate future—will be as God wills. And so, God can declare that Israel will be exposed, that they will be stripped of all that they hold dear, that they will be confronted by the futility of their quests for power, security, and independence from him—not because it's a magical prediction, but because God himself will act to do these things. "I will strip her naked...I will expose her as in the day she was born...I will make her like a wilderness...I will turn her into a parched land...I will kill her with thirst...I will hedge up her way with thorns and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths...I will take back my grain, my wine, my wool and my flax...I will uncover her shame...I will put an end to her celebrations...I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees..." God can make these announcements because they are his actions. God is free and powerful to act in whatever way he wills. God owns the future.Second, God wants us to share his future. Hosea's word is ultimately one of invitation—God intensely desires for Israel to join him in the future. All of the judgments issued are for this purpose, and point toward the day of its completion, the day when Israel is restored to God. God acts to provoke a repentant response in Israel, so that she will come to freely love him and live in a covenant with God marked by peace, righteousness, justice, love, mercy, and faithfulness.What's remarkable about Hosea is the kind of language that God uses to describe his passionate desire for Israel to have a part in this future. God won't force Israel into repentance, but he will do almost anything else. Besides the prophetic word of warning, God flirts with Israel, gives her gifts, tries taking them away, exposes her other loves as frauds, finally draws her back out into the wilderness—like a husband who takes his wife back to the site of their honeymoon. He speaks softly to her, whispering, "we can just start over."His goal is the day when she responds with repentance, when she sees that he alone truly does own the future and yet offers her a place in it. His goal is a day of dramatic reversal, when all the pronouncements of judgment find their fulfillment—which is not to say, the destruction they foretell. No, Hosea's warnings only find their fulfillment in the repentance they are meant to provoke, whether or not that occurs before or after the impending calamity. His goal is the day when Israel responds with repentance, and all that is wrong can be made right.Hosea plays off of the warnings of chapter 1 to describe he dramatic reversal, flipping each name from its message or warning to one of hope. The stigma of bloodshed that brought about the name "Jezreel" will be replaced by the word's linguistic meaning—"God sows"—and God will plant the people in the land, establishing her with peace and abundance from his own hand, not as a result of her political or religious manipulation. To those whom he gave the name, "no mercy", he will now have mercy, and to those whom he called "not my people", he will again say, "you are my people." The renaming is completed, not by a word from God, but one from the people, as they finally and dramatically will say, "you are my God." God paints the picture of this future, seeking to inspire hope in Israel—for where hope lives, repentance is possible.Repentance happens in the lives of those who understand that God owns the future, and who believe they have a place in God's future. Reading Hosea now, some 2700 years later, and reading it on the other side of Jesus, we know that God has taken a dramatic step to bring about this future. While we wait for the final scene to begin, God has invited us to share in his future...now!God declares that his rule will be over all the earth, and in repentance we begin to live in that future now; we join God now, leaving the past behind and orienting ourselves by a future that redeems the present.And so it is that within these words of warning there is also a seed of hope, the promise of God's willingness to honor repentance, his burning desire to take back what belongs to him and make right what has been broken. I urge you to heed the warning that the future belongs to God, to take on the hope that he has a place for you within it, and to let it that hope bring forth the repentance by which God may enact his reversal.
Location in Hosea
Read through Hosea a few times, and you'll soon pick up on how frequently Hosea's prophecies are rooted in particular places. There are about 34 references to 20 different places in the book—a fairly dense concentration for a book of only 14 chapters! Some of them are familiar because of references in other biblical books, but others are fairly obscure to us, and we can only guess to their import by looking at the kinds of things Hosea has to say about them.What's interesting to me is the effect of rooting these poetic poems, which could be simply abstractions, in the concrete world of these specific places. Often that means the poem is bound to a narrative, or even a set of narratives, that comes with the location. All of this works throughout Hosea to give the book a sharp historical focus and feel, even if the specific force is lost on us as readers separated by a great distance. What's important is to pick up on the sense of place in the poetry. When you read the book as a whole, and get beyond the strange archaic place names, the continuing cadence of places helps pull the poetry out of the sky, planting it firmly on the earth.Here's a list of all the places that show up in Hosea, with some brief references to what makes some of them significant. This list doesn't include Israel, Ephraim, Judah, Assyria, or Egypt, since they are all significant enough either as places or players in the drama that I want to give them their own space.Jezreel and the Valley of Jezreel (Hosea 1:4, 5, 11, 2:22) This is perhaps one of the easier places to identify in the book, and its mention is by no means incidental. Indeed, God's instruction for Hosea to name his firstborn "Jezreel" signals the significance of the place for Hosea's message. Unfortunately, although it's easy to see that it is significant, it's not nearly as easy to see precisely why it's significant. The principle text is probably the explanation given for the name. The NRSV translates the key part of Hosea 1:4 like this: "for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel." Another rendering might be "in a little while I will apply the blood of Jezreel to the house of Jehu..." That more literal translation is only helpful in that it shows a little bit if the ambiguity in this text. It could mean that the same sort of violence that took place at Jezreel in the time of Jehu (2 Kings 9-10) is about to be reenacted—another Jezreel is coming. I think o this interpretation as being something along the lines of "you came to power by the sword, and you'll now lose power by the sword." Or, what seems more natural to me, it could mean that the violence of Jehu is about to be paid for by his descendants. This reading is, of course, more problematic since Jehu clearly acted by divine authorization. Perhaps he went beyond God's instructions? Or, perhaps the texts here are simply in tension.The Valley of Achor (Hosea 2:15) The Valley of Achor isn't very prominent in the Old Testament except in Joshua 7. "Achor" means "trouble", and the story in Joshua is when Achan brings "trouble" for the people after taking silver dedicated to God (for destruction) from Jericho. Hosea playfully reverses the name.Gilgal (Hosea 4:15, 9:15 12:11) has a little bit of a longer history. Hosea's references could both refer to the tradition of God reluctantly allowing the people to have a king at Gilgal (1 Samual 10-11), or simply to worship at the shrine there. Bethel (Hosea 10:15, 12:4) or Beth-aven (Hosea 4:15, 5:8 10:5, 8 ) is an official shrine in Northern kingdom, created by Jeroboam as the kingdom divided (1 Kings 12). Only having the one temple in Judah would have subverted the northern kingdom's independence for which Jeroboam was fighting. Supposedly devoted to worship of Yahweh (1 Kings 12), the shrine is often the target of prophetic scorn. Hosea's mocking nickname, "Beth-aven (house of trouble)" shows he does not really consider the shrine "Beth-el (house of God)."Mizpah (Hosea 5:1), Tabor (Hosea 5:1), Shittim (Hosea 5:2) All seem to be simply mentioned because of idolatrous worship.Gibeah (Hosea 5:8, 9:9 10:9) and Ramah (Hosea 5:8) are situated in Benjamin, placing them on the fringe of the southern kingdom, between Jerusalem and the armies of the North. Gibeah is the site of a crazy episode in Judges 19-21.Benjamin (Hosea 5:8) is a small tribe that became a part of the southern kingdom. It was on the northern border of the southern kingdom, though, and thus at the center of conflict.Adam (Hosea 6:7) seems to be a location unknown to us in the rest of the canon (or archaeologically). Of course, some take this to be the "Adam" of Genesis rather than a place, but I tend to think of it in terms of a place here.Gilead (Hosea 6:8 12:11) Shechem (Hosea 6:9) The references to these cities in chapter six perhaps regard political assassination (2 Kings 15:25).Samaria (Hosea 8:6 13:16) Is the capital of the northern kingdom, and also a site of a shrine for worship.Peor (Hosea 9:10) Shrine. (At this point, you're getting the idea.)Admah and Zeboiim (Hosea 11:8) seem to be simply cities that would evoke a memory of tragedy.Aram (13:12), or Syria, is the nation to the Northeast of Israel. During Hosea's time period it was an ally against Assyria and Judah. (The conflict born out of this alliance is known as the "Syrio-ephraimatic war"Lebanon (Hosea 14:5, 6, 7), the nation to the north of Israel along the coast, is often referenced in the Old Testament for the sake of its trees and lush landscape.
Names—A Sermon on Hosea 1
At the market, a man picks vegetables, tying to decide between the vegetables. He thumps a melon, scans the cucumbers, and inspects the onions. He notices a cute little girl playing with her brother near his basket and smiles at them. He turns to their parents who are standing nearby and, in the chatty way that people sometimes talk at the market, asks a normal question: "Your kids are beautiful. What are their names?"The parents expression darkens—the mother turns away, finding something else to do. The father's eyes narrow, and he steps closer. Pointing straight at the little girl, he says, "We call her 'unloved'. Unloved." Not knowing how to respond, the man shuffles his feet a bit, and finally says, "And the boy?""Not mine.""Oh, I'm sorry, I thought...""No, that's his name. His name is 'not-mine.' "Hosea is a shocking story. It does not allow for passive bland reading, and I assure you it does not consist of passive, bland writing. It opens with the story of Hosea's family—a family whose very existence could not but shock literally everyone who met them. The book of Hosea consists mostly prophetic poetry. Not the poetry which many of us have in mind—the dry tedious metered verses we labored to understand as school kids. This is the kind of poetry that Walter Brueggemann describes as "shattering, evocative speech that breaks fixed conclusions and presses us always toward new, dangerous, imaginative possibilities." (Finally Comes the Poet, 6) Hosea is full of wrecking-ball language, the kind that comes to destroy the peace of the present for the sake of the future.The book opens with a narrative, but the story is just as disturbing as the poetry that follows. In fact, we might think of the story as a setting for three brief, super dense poems—the names of the children. After all, even within the story, it's the word—the word from the Lord—that really matters.So in what was already a weird marriage (more on that when we get to chapter 3), three children are born, and given names that are extremely disturbing.It starts off with a son, who Hosea is told to name Jezreel. Hosea is prophesying during the reign of Jeroboam II, somewhere in the middle of the eighth century BC, in the northern Kingdom that we normally just call Israel. In the southern kingdom, which we call Judah, there had been stable dynasty for over two hundred years—the descendants of David. But in the north it had never really been like that. It was a country born out of rebellion, and which had seen it's share over the years. One of the most vicious upheavals had been at the hands of Jeroboam's grandfather Jehu. Granted, the dynasty in power before then (you remember Ahab and Jezebel, right?) had it coming, but when Jehu took up the sword to seize the throne he went above and beyond The site where all this went down was the city "Jezreel". So Hosea names his firstborn son after the site of a famous bloodbath, with a finger pointed straight at the king. "It's your turn, Jeroboam. The same violence that began your family's reign will soon put it too an end. It's time for another Jezreel."While the historical specificity of the name "jezreel" may protect us from the cold challenge the word contains, our own reactions intensify with the name of the second child. I mean, seriously, who would name a child "unloved"? The second child's name—"Lo-Ruhamah"—means exactly that.In 1920 a young woman named Josephine Dickenson worked hard to be the best housewife she could be, spending a lot of time on that one task of getting supper ready for her husband, Earle, before he got home from his job as a cotton buyer. Unfortunately, she was a little accident prone, and was constantly nicking her fingers with knives and getting little burns. Earle's first job when he got home was usually to help her dress the wounds. Finally he decided to come up with a way to make it possible for her to do this by herself before he got home, by rolling out a long strip of adhesive tape and placing little squares of cotton at intervals, so that she could just cut off a piece, wrap it on her fingers, and keep going. After that proved to be a great solution, he took his idea to his employer, Johnson & Johnson, and so was born the "band-aid". Sales didn't go too well at first, but WWII picked things up, as did the company's brilliant move in 1951 to start making band-aids with cartoon characters on them. After all, what kid can resist a sticker that comes with compassion?Part of my role as "daddy" is "band-aid dispenser." Now sure, there are times when I just kiss the supposed boo-boo and try to convince the child that it's not that big of a deal, but sometimes, when a kid is just absolutely certain that the wound is a matter of life and death, the best thing to do is to get the band-aid on and give some hugs and kisses, right?And that's just the small stuff. How many of us would refuse to give care to a child—any child, not even our own—if we went outside in this very moment and found one gravely injured? Who among us would just shake our heads and walk away? Who can refuse compassion to a child?That's why the second name is so shocking. "Lo-Ruhamah." The prophetic word means "uncared-for", "unpitied". God, who has always acted with mercy, pity, compassion for Israel since the day he heard their groaning in Egypt, will do so no more.That sense is intensified with the third name, "Lo-Ammi", or "not my people." Israel's fundamental identity was the covenant people of God, whom God had specially chosen, and called as his people. God's covenant was summed up in the phrase "You shall be my people, and I shall be your God." Now that is reversed—the very identity of the nation is reversed!—and God declares, "you are not my people." This prophetic word disowns the people.That is intensified by a fourth name here, one that is somewhat masked by the translation. In Hosea 1:9 most of the translations read something like "For you are not my people and I am not your God." That's not a bad translation, but it masks some of the punch. What the second part of that sentence says is kind of awkward in Hebrew, but literally reads, "And I am not 'I am' to you." God takes back his own name! God doesn't just put these odd names on the children, but changes his own name here, revokes the name which he had revealed to Moses at the burning bush. This is the ultimate message of the names—the world you live in is about to be undone. Everything from the seeming security of your monarchy to the relationship you have with God, even the very name which you know God by—all of it is undone by your sin. All of it is coming apart.The names provoke us. Why? What's the big deal? Why all the fuss? The names shock us. The question, "Who would ever name their kid that?" gets our attention so that God can look us in the eyes and speak to us about how serious sin is.And yet, even within these names and their word of judgement there is the seed of grace. Hosea will speak to the people of a repentance that can change the future, so that "Not my people can once again be called simply, "my people", and "unloved" will be called simply "loved". Hosea will offer a word of eventual reversal, when what is wrong will be made right. But don't read ahead to all of that, not just yet anyways. First, let this word of judgment break into your world, and ask yourself, "What is it in my life that needs to be undone." That word of redemption can only be heard once we hear the word of judgment and digest its reality. So today, we'll let that seed of grace wait for its time, and hear this single important word from the Lord—to walk away from him means death. Digest that reality.And then, the God who changes reality can act.
Historical Background of Hosea—Baal and Idolatry
The second major background factor that we need to grasp somewhat to read Hosea well is the worship of the Canaanite god Baal(s). (The first is the Assyrian crisis, discussed here.) The name "Baal" shows up seven times in Hosea (2:8, 2:13, 2:16, 2:17, 9:10, 11:2, 13:1); four of those instances are in chapter 2. Besides these explicit references, the worship of such gods is a prominent theme in Hosea, and it would be well for anyone reading the book to have some sort of an idea of what is going on."Baal" was something of a general name for a variety of deities, some of which were conceptualized as being particularly localized, some of which were seen as more general gods in the polytheistic mindset of ancient Canaan. How the various religious shines serving deities known as Baals should be identified as a consistent religious movement is something of an open question (at least in my mind).
Scholars gained substantial knowledge of Baal in the archaeological site of Ugarit, which was a Canaanite city northwest of Israel up until around 1200 BC. At the site were, among many other finds, documents from the Baal cults themselves—documents which were much more sympathetic to the god and its worshippers than were the Bible and its prophets! As should be obvious even reading the Bible, the religious landscape in ancient Israel contained devotees of other gods besides Yahweh, and often a syncretistic outlook which sought to incorporate the Lord into a wider pantheon.Basically, (severe oversimplification ahead) Baal was the god who ensured that the land yielded its crops. Baal was the rain/storm god, the god of the fertile land. Baal and his female counterpart(s) were worshiped in a cyclical patter following the seasons of the year. By ritual and sacrifice, worshippers sought to ensure that Baal would bring the rains necessary to grow crops—it was all about making sure they had food to eat.There has been a good bit of speculation and thought of how some of the rituals associated with Baal and his female counterpart Asherah contained an explicit sexual element. As a symbol of fertility, worship at the various shrines may have included some sort of sexual ritual. In the ancient worldview accompanying such religion, the sympathetic practice of a "magical" sexual rite may have been parallel with nature, particularly the fertilization of the earth (Asherah) by the rain (Baal). The rituals were a way of manipulating the gods, thereby manipulating nature. Baal worship was all about using ritual to control the forces of nature and get what you want. We should note at this point that commonly worship of the Lord devolves into the same thing. Hosea seems to observe such in his own day, and rails against that just as much as he does explicit worship as Baal. Worshipping Yahweh as though he were Baal is just as bad as worshipping Baal himself. Thus, the material against idolatry in Hosea actually fits well with the themes related to Israel's attempts to provide itself security in the face of the the threat from the rising Assyrian empire. Both are about the illusion of control—one the manipulation of politics to attain security, the other the manipulation of religion to attain abundance.Neither is acceptable to the Yahweh of Hosea.
Historical Background of Hosea—Assyria
Over the next month I'll be working through Hosea in sermons and some blog posts. The short book of powerful prophetic poetry (accompanied by two brief narrative sections), cannot be read in strict isolation. It contains virtually no historical context, and without at least some knowledge of the setting the prophetic words are almost impossible to consider rightly. There are at least two elements which need to be briefly described and grasped on some level before Hosea can really come to life for us. First, we must get a sense of the rise of the Assyrian empire, and how Israel responded to that rise, which is the subject of this post. Secondly, we must consider the nature of the Baal worship that Hosea so sharply criticizes. While other historical and cultural factors certainly add color to our reading of Hosea, these two simply cannot be ignored if we are to grasp the essence of the book's message. On the bright side, if you get these two down a little bit, Hosea is going to make enough sense to you for you to absorb some of its raw and powerful poetic punch.
The resurgence and expansion of the Assyrian empire in the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries BCE dominated the geo-political world of the Ancient Near East. In what historians refer to as the Neo-Assyrian period, a succession of ambitious and capable rulers built an empire capable of efficiently expanding through vicious military campaigns. Israel, located to the south-West of Assyria, would become Assyrian prey early on, paying tribute first of all in 841 BCE during the reign of Israel's king Jehu.Paying tribute essentially meant that the nation was formally submitting to the authority of the Assyrian emperor. By paying up, the smaller nation became a "vassal" to Assyria, or fell under Assyrian protection (think of a Godfather scenario if it helps you). Of course, the primary protection offered was from Assyria itself. Assyria was either your best ally or your worst nightmare. In order to avoid the Assyrian onslaught, neighboring kings such as Israel's were forced to make massive payments. As a result, the nations were constantly balancing the burden of making the tribute verses the temptation to rebel and seek security elsewhere.
For the Northern Kingdom of Israel, Jehu in 841 was to pay the tribute Assyria demanded, but it seems that at some point soon after Israel slipped away for nearly a hundred years without paying up. Tiglath-Pilezer (Pul in the Bible) reasserted the empire's dominance by collecting tribute from Israel during the reign of Menahem, sometime around 742 BC.Each time a new ruler came to either nation, the opportunity arose for Israel to rethink the relationship with Assyria. Further, the rising and falling of Egyptian power during that same time frame appeared at times to provide an alternative to Assyrian allegiance. There was a substantial ongoing rivalry between the Egyptian and Assyrian rulers, and Israel was sandwiched pretty squarely between the two. Depending on what they thought were their best interests, the rulers of Israel sometimes used Assyria as a shield against Egypt, and sometimes flirted with Egypt as an ally against Assyria. The result of all that was that for the last 120 years of its existence, ancient Israel vacillated between accepting and living under Assyrian rule and rebelling against it. Eventually Assyria got tired of the games and in a couple of different stages wiped Israel off the map.Hosea was active as a prophet over the 25 years or so of this process, from about 750-722 BC. That was an extremely fluid period of time for Israel politically, with seven different kings sitting on the throne of during that period of time. Four of those were assassinated, and the throne of Assyria also changed hands three different times. This was in no way a period of political stability.Hosea begins his prophetic period during a time of relative stability during the reign of Jeroboam II, which ended with his death around 746 BC, a year after Tiglath-Pileser III rose to power in Assyria. Jeroboam's son Zachariah took the throne, but within six months was assassinated by Shallum, who briefly took the throne before being assassinated himself within a month by one of the army's generals who didn't accept his claim to the throne. Menahem, who took the throne from Shallum, soon began paying tribute to Assyria, to the tune of some 37 tons of silver. He ruled for about ten years before dying and being succeeded by his son, Pekahiah. Pekaniah ruled for two years before Pekah murdered him and took the throne. Pekah, apparently supposing that the tribute being paid was too high, allied himself with Rezin, king of Damascus to the north, to try and rebel against Assyria and throw off the tribute. They attempted to force Judah's king Ahaz to join their rebellion, sparking what we call the Syrio-Ephraimatic war between Israel/Syria and Judah. Ahaz, however, appealed to Tiglath-Pileser in Assyria, and the Assyrians sometime in 733/732 invaded Syria, sacking Damascus and capturing Rezin, as well as taking major portions of land away from Israel. In the midst of this crisis, Hoshea assassinated Pekah, seized the throne, and reestablished the tribute to Assyria, effectively getting the Assyrians off Israel's back. After Tiglath-Pileser's death in 727, and the ascension of his son Shamaneser V to the throne, King Hoshea seems to have believed that the time was right for revolt again, perhaps because the country had regained some military capability after the 732 disaster. This deadly miscalculation brought the Assyrian army again to Israel, and although Shalmaneser himself died while besieging Samaria, Sargon II completed the job. Thousands were taken into exile, and the northern kingdom of Israel was no more. All of this is wound into the prophetic poems of Hosea. Israel is sometimes cozying up to the Assyrian Emperor, and at other times believing that they will be strong enough on their own to resist the powerful empire, or that with the help of Egypt or another ally they might achieve security. Hosea provides a theological interpretation of this developing crisis, and the word which he provides from the Lord here offers instruction to any who suppose their own means of security to be sufficient. While later posts and sermons can unpack some of those more theological thoughts, I might make one general note here.In Hosea's view, the world in which we can make ourselves completely safe through political manipulation, military power, or financial accumulation does not exist. As much as we want to believe that is the world we live in, ultimately, it is an illusion. Part of Hosea's prophetic role was to proclaim that the things Israel counted on for security could not protect them from God's judgment.
Hospitality and Restoration: Elisha and the Shunammite Woman
There's an incredible saga hidden in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible that deserves more attention. It begins in 2 Kings 4, and then shows up again in 2 Kings 8. Maybe the whole bit would get more air time if it had a better title, but for now lack of one it's called the story of the Shunammite woman. What a mouthful.The Cracker Barrel of the Ancient Near EastShunem was a small town just off of a major international roadway, known as the Via Maris. The Via Maris was a major trade route in the Ancient Near East, going from Egypt through Israel up to Damascas (Syria), where it then connected with other routes to Assyria or Babylon. This was a major pipeline for trade in the ANE, and the people who lived along the route had a chance to profit by the travelers and live in a wider world due to the trade potential. To help you get your bearings, we're talking about a place a good bit north of Samaria, just north of Jezreel (about five miles). You might remember that in Jezreel there was a royal residence—one that was the site of some infamous moments in the sagas of Ahab and his descendants. (Naboth's vineyard was around Jezreel.) So this town, Shunem, was in a region that we know the prophets were active, but it's away from Elisha's home base in Samaria. We don't really know where he was going while he was passing through Shunem, but it makes a lot of sense that he needed somewhere to land when he was in this region. This saga that begins in 1 Kings 4 really revolves around this woman who notices the traveling Elisha, and shows him hospitality by giving him some food. Elisha makes a habit of stopping in whenever he travels that way, and over time she recognizes that he is a holy man. The woman and her husband build a small room on their house for Elisha to stay in when he passes through, and he becomes a regular guest in their home. Hospitality RepaidElisha wants to repay the hospitality, and so he (in an odd, indirect way, I think) asks her how he can repay the favor. Perhaps his royal connections can help them? She responds that she and her husband don't really need anything more than what they have, they are self-sufficient. Elisha continues to ask his servant what should be done, though, and Gehazi (the servant) responds by pointing out that she didn't have any sons, and that her husband was old.Elisha calls her in again, and tells her that in the next year, she would have a son. She wasn't fishing for this offer, and had really become resigned to not having a son, and responds almost angrily. "No my Lord, oh man of God. Do not lie to your servant." She doesn't want false hope or empty promises. Things were fine how they were already—no need to interfere, thank you very much. But, things turn out just the way Elisha had said, and that seems like a pretty good ending to a classic miracle story. But, the story goes on.The child grows up, and one day goes to his dad who is working as a harvester, and while he's there he cries out because his head hurts. His dad has him taken to his mother, and the kids sits on her lap until noon, when he dies. So, she takes his body, and she takes it up to Elisha's guest room, and lays it on the bed, and then takes off to go see Elisha. She confronts him bitterly, "Did I ask my lord for a son? Did I not say, 'Do not deceive me?'"Resurrection, Elisha StyleElisha sends his servant to go quickly intervene, by placing Elisha's staff on the corpse. Almost as if she knows that's not enough, the woman insists that Elisha himself go, and so he does, and finds that indeed the attempt to resurrect by proxy didn't work. So, Elisha himself goes into the room where the body is—his room. Reading the account, you get the sense that this is a miracle Elisha really has to work for. He prays, lays himself on the body in a sort of weird CPR, and then he gets up and paces around for a while. He goes up and does it again, and the boy sneezes seven times and comes back to life. Weird story, but in the end Elisha gives the boy back to his mother.The persistence in the story, both of Elisha and the woman, gives me a real feeling of urgency. The story fills with tension, because you get the sense that Elisha has really gotten in over his head, that he's messing with things that are almost outside of his authority, and he might not be able to pull it off. Is Elisha (and by extension, the Lord) just messing with the woman? The stakes are so high, the woman feels betrayed, and Elisha can't give up on making things right. He seems to be insistent here on taking the role God has given him past the limits. Elisha is far from an impersonal passive prophet in this episode, he is deeply invested in this family.RestorationA final episode of the Shunammite saga pops up in 2 Kings 8. The woman had gotten a tip from Elisha about a famine that would last seven years, and so she takes her whole family and they leave. Seven years later, they come back, although her lands have been taken over—perhaps by the land-grabbing royal family! She makes her way to the king to appeal for her lands back, and when she gets there she happens to walk in while Gehazi is telling the amazing story of her son's death and resurrection! The king is so astonished that he immediately orders the woman's lands restored to her, along with anything that's been grown on the land while the family has been away. The way this saga becomes woven into the narrative of the royal family in this last episode is fascinating to me. It's almost like the king realizes here that he had been unknowingly oppressing someone who had been remarkably blessed by the Lord, and he too realizes that he might be in over his head—the power dynamics get flipped because she has an unseen but powerful ally.The whole beautiful story is full of hope, faith, persistence, and hospitality. It's got crazy twists as the woman's fortunes rise with Elisha's coming, and blessing of a baby, then fall when the boy dies. They rise again with the boy's resurrection, then fall when the famine comes. The famine passes away, but the family has lost everything they have, until they are finally restored in an act of surprising justice. Altogether, the story is something of a vignette of life between the people, the prophet, and the king. I don't know that it's easy to boil it down into "the story means THIS:_______", but it seems to me to be a tale of how one woman gets wrapped up in the prophet's life with the Lord, and how that contrasts with her interactions with the king. The story makes me want to be careful about taking advantage of people. It makes me want to be careful about making promises to people, particularly on God's behalf. It makes me want to work hard to make things right for people, and it gives me hope that hospitality can bring some great, if messy, blessings.Practice Hospitality. It's one of the ways God heals the world.
The Call - A Sermon from Exodus 3
(This is part two of the Exodus Sermon Series. The Sermon audio for the series is here.)
Today, we move in our series on Exodus to a well known section, the appearance of God to Moses in a burning bush.Exodus opens with the birth of Moses, and the stories of his early life are full of promise, perhaps even destiny. His mother defies her oppressors in the act of saving his life. She claims the opportunity to raise as her own, but shrewdly creates the opportunity for him to live and learn as part of the Egyptian aristocracy. Early on he rejects the safety of his social situation to identify with his oppressed people. He interjects himself to fight injustice against them and between them, but is forced to flee when his own people reject his authority and reveal his vigilante actions.As our story this week opens, Moses has been living in Midian as a fugitive from a crime committed forty years ago in Egypt. He’s started a new family, gotten a new job, a new life. He still lives in a measure of fear, fear that his past will catch up with him. Instead, in this story, Moses is forced not to confront his past, but his future.Here, at the burning bush, God beckons Moses to join him in an outlandish mission. God shares his own mind with Moses, the Lord reveals his plans and vision of the future, and even his very name.It is profound that God's identity is revealed in this story of calling. It is in the context of this story, where God calls Moses to join him in plan of redemption and deliverance, that the Lord reveals his personal name. It is when God acts that we discover what he is to be called, who he is. This is a story about identity.But it’s not just the Lord whose identity is revealed in this story. This is the definitive story in the life of Moses, the moment in which his identity must forever be determined. It is the most important question he will ever face: how will he respond to the call of God? From this moment on, his life will not be defined by the promise of his early life, his status as a fugitive or failed advocate for justice. His role as a shepherd or even his identity as son, husband, or father will ultimately take a backseat to what is decided this day, this confrontation with a God who demands his future. Whether or not he obeys God’s call will determine Moses’ identity forever. Much depends on this encounter.In chapter 3, God reveals to Moses what God is going to do. The conversation between Moses and God begins with God making this announcement (Ex. 3:7-8):“I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Caananites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”God reveals to Moses what God is going to. There is no doubt who is taking action here. The Exodus will be God-powered. The exodus is not to be an act of Moses' strength or will, but God's. God declares, "I have come down to deliver them." Of course, it must be this way. Who else but God could stand against Pharaoh? Who else but God could command the powers that are to definitively defeat the armies of Egypt? Moses had already tried his own at bringing justice, years ago, and failed.Perhaps it is for this very reason that it is so surprising that God immediately follows his declaration that "I have come down" with the stunning bid to Moses in verse 10, "Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt." The God-powered Exodus depends on Moses.It is a demonstration of Gods power, but God freely chooses to invite Moses to participate. God makes Moses what he could not become on his own, a deliverer, a force of justice and redemption. The Lord chooses to act through Moses. It's an incredible affirmation, but not an unusual one. Lord chooses to act through Moses, just like later he will choose to act through Joshua, Gideon, David, Saul, Elijah, Peter, James, Paul, Epaphras and Timothy. Just like he chooses to act through you and me. "But, wait a minute," you say. "Isn't that stretching things a bit? After all, this is Moses we're talking about here. Don't you think the call of Moses is a different deal, an exceptional occasion? Perhaps, but you have to realize:The call of Moses is not the call of Moses.Confused? Fair enough. But think about it: is it just Moses that is called here to participate in God's plans? Aaron, too, but that's the easy one. After all, he's the one God tells Moses to take with him when he makes his demands to Pharaoh. But is he the only one?What about in the elders of Israel? Here at the burning bush, in 3:18, notice that Moses isn't going straight to Pharaoh, but to these elders, and then they're all going to go together to meet with Pharaoh. What about Joshua, who becomes Moses' assistant and successor? What about Hur, who along with Aaron holds up Moses' hands while Joshua fights the Amalekites in Chapter 17? What about those are selected as judges over the people in Chapter 18? What about Bezalel or Oholiab, who end up being in charge of the craftsmanship of the tabernacle, or the Levites who are charged with taking care of it? What about the scores of men and women who contribute to building the Tabernacle, or the entire nation that gave generously for the project?Moses is just the first domino. He's the one God speaks to first, but the call of Moses is not just the call of Moses.The call of Moses is the call of all Israel. And so it often is with us. Somebody begins to hear and act on the word of God, begins to respond to their calling, and sometimes it turns out that others join in and discover their own calling there as well. [The following is very congregation-specific. As part of encouraging that process, we want to have a forum to have some of those conversations, so onJuly 18 we're going to have an event called "Outreach Sunday". The whole idea behind it is the recognition that Your calling may not be just for you. Here's how it's going to work. After class on that Sunday, we're going to gather for a potluck in the gym. Around the gym, we're going to set up some booths, tables where people can share in some of the ways they've become involved in outreach ministries, and perhaps share some opportunities for you to come alongside and join them in that effort. I'm very excited about the possibilities of what can happen when we dedicate this time to listening to the ways God has already started to move us into action here at Cedar Lane.Here's what we need to pull this thing off:We need people willing to share their calling and their food. We need people willing to pay attention.Paying attention is really critical to this event, and truthfully, it’s critical to our episode with Moses as well. ]In the version of this story that is in most of our heads, I think this whole thing starts when God’s booming voice calls out, “Moses, Moses”. However, notice how particular the text is in how the story actually unfolds in 3:2-4.“And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here am I.” Often I wonder, what would have happen if Moses had just turned the other way. I wonder if this was the first time it had been there, or if maybe the bush had been in these familiar grazing grounds for a long time, but this was the time Moses finally got up the courage to check in out. Doesn’t it seem like the Lord waits for him to investigate t before speaking to him in a clear voice?But what if Moses had just said, “Whoa, that’s scary!” and hurried back home, or “This bush makes me feel uncomfortable.” What if Moses said, “I’m not comfortable with the difference between this bush’s culture and mine?” Okay, that last one’s unlikely — for Moses.But for us, I think we come up with all kinds of reasons to turn away from burning bushes, those places where if we stopped and looked for a moment, we would easily hear the voice of God calling us to serve. The truth is, our world, our community, is full of burning bushes, waiting to be recognized. But we have to learn to pay attention to burning bushes. This sermon started with the concept of Identity. This is a story that reveals god to be an acting God, a calling God. It is the episode that brings Moses into the action, forever shaping his identity. It can do the same to us, if we listen.
Cry Out - A Sermon from Exodus 2:23-25
(This is the first in the Exodus Sermon series. The audio for the entire series is here.)Israel was indeed a nation born of promises. It was an entire nation that traced its lineage back to one man, Abraham, a man who had received an outlandish set of promises from God.At the beginning of Exodus, though, it seems as though those promises were merely empty words. We find Israel, who had been promised Canaan as a homeland, living as slaves in Egypt. How they got there was simple enough to explain. A long time ago there was a famine in Canaan, and the only place to get food was in Egypt, so, to Egypt they went. They stayed there until the famine passed, and went it did they decided they liked it well enough, and stuck around. Why not, right? They were comfortable, they were provided for, and after a few decades, they were as at home in Egypt as they had ever been in Canaan anyways.Eventually, though, they fell prey to the fears of the powerful in Egypt. To prevent them from becoming a threat, a Pharaoh enslaved them, using them to build his own wealth and power. And so, their not-homeland became a home of oppression for them, one in which they lived without dignity, humanity, or possibility. Even Moses, the man who is to be God's instrument of deliverance, sees no other way. He is willing to fight the injustice himself, and he does but, he is quickly forced to recognize that he is no match for the injustice his kinsmen face, and he flees. While in exile, he starts a family and gives his child a most telling name, Gershom, saying that this name was because "I have been a sojourner in a foreign land."Do you see what's off key there? Doesn't it sound like Moses has bought into his current situation as an exile from his real home, which he seems to think is back in Egypt. See, that's part of the problem. Israel was too at home in Egypt. It becomes clearer and clearer as the story goes on that while Israel didn't really want to be slaves, they also didn't want to leave Egypt. They really don't even understand how extensive, how radical, God's deliverance would be. His actions in the Exodus would completely redeem and redefine Israel.The Exodus is a story of complete and utter redemption, God's way. It is the story of how God responded to the cries of his people, how he called out an unlikely leader to help him utterly defeat the forces that were against his people. It's a story of how The same God who collides with the powers of Egypt brings his people into covenant with himself, for the sake of living in community with him. It is a rich story, and over the next five weeks we're going to see how this remarkable story of redemption can redefine us, just as it did Israel.[Let us pray together.] During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel-and God knew.-Exodus 2:23-25This is the true beginning of the Exodus story. While it seems clear enough that God was behind the earlier story of Moses' birth, the text makes it abundantly clear that it is the crying out of Israel that triggers the Exodus event. In the next chapter, Moses is twice told that God is acting because he has heard the cry of Israel. Later on, in chapter six, after being initially rebuffed by Pharaoh, Moses is told again, "I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel, whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant."Israel had become too at home in Egypt, and had disregarded their identity as people to whom God had made incredible promises. They had become complacent, had fallen asleep. But when their suffering became unbearable, when they could no longer stomach the status quo, they cried out to God. And while it may be that they really didn't know exactly what they were asking for, the simple act of their crying out to God provoked the Lord to action. It signals to the Lord a crack in their complacency, a readiness for redemption. Their cry means that they are stirring from their slumber. Crying out is waking up.It means waking up to all the things around us that shouldn't be tolerable, but have become so. It means waking up to our own sins, to our own limitations. It means realizing that we are not at home in Egypt, that things aren't just fine, that things must change.As we begin this journey together, I want to simply ask you to cry out to God with me. Let us cry out to God that, even though we don't yet know what needs to change around and within us, we are indeed desperate for his intervention, and we rely on his redemption. Let us cry out, not just in this moment, but habitually, as we continually encourage each other to abandon the things that would enslave us, to prepare ourselves for God's redemption and redefinition. Let us be a people that cries out to God. Let us be a community that is always waking up.We can do this, because crying out doesn't require much of us. It doesn't require us to be courageous or wise, pure or particularly holy. We don't have to be smart, or eloquent. Crying out only requires one thing of us, honesty. Our cry to God, just like Israel's, flows from an honest assessment of who we are before God. It requires us to be hints about our flaws and weaknesses, about our limits and sins. When we cry out we confess ourselves, we confess who we are and what we cannot do on our own. And so, it requires us to be honest with ourselves as we speak to the one who already knows the truth about us anyway.We may take that honest cry to God, knowing that we cry out to a listening God. Exodus affirms that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a God of action, who responds to the cries of his children.And lest we think that God only hears the cries of his people, that he only acts here because it is actually Israel, let me share with you another passage, Isaiah 19. Isaiah will not allow us to think about God’s listening ear in exclusive terms. Like Jonah, Isaiah blows open the limits of God’s attention and care. Speaking of Egypt, Isaiah writes, “When they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and deliver them.” The Lord will hear and respond to the cries of even the enemies of the Lord’s people, the original oppressors themselves, the Egyptians! Don’t be afraid that you are too far gone, to distant from God, that he can’t or won’t hear your cry to him. The Lord is a listening God, and is ready to respond, even to Egypt, even to you and me.One more thing. Everything I've said before assumes that when we read the story, we identify most with the part played by Israel. But what if, in reality, we actually are best represented by the Egyptians? Maybe not Pharaoh, or even actual slave drivers, but just run of the mill Egyptians. Innocent of direct oppression, they are complicit with the system, and destined for the same destruction as Pharaoh. What if we, who are used to being on the top of the world's power structures, are more like these Egyptians than we are God's oppressed people?It's a horrible, offensive thought, isn't it? But the more I think of it, there is really only one way to be sure. If we don't want to be like the Egyptians, we have to learn to be like God. And this story gives us a clear picture of one important way to become more godly.If we want to be like God, we have to learn to listen like God. We have to be willing to stop and hear the voices of hurting people, the voices of people who cry out against all the things which oppress them, to the things that enslave them. The God we serve is an attentive God. This texts affirms that God does in fact hear, he does in fact care, and he does respond! This simple fundamental fact is one of the first places we must meet God if we truly wish to be a people like him, who model our lives after him. We know we have to listen to God, but have we not learned to listen like God? We must hear people, give attention to people, be willing to respond to the needs of people. We must work to hear what he hears.And so, let us all cry out to God. Let us cry out for our own redemption. Let us cry out on behalf of those around us who need redemption, and let us cry out that we may have open ears to the cries of those suffering around us. Amen.(Please feel free to comment, or see this note about sermon manuscripts)