(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on July 24, 2016, Proper 12)
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A Confession:
Prophetic Pain and Preacherly Painkillers
The prophets in the Bible, like Amos and Hosea, are like surgeons. Ultimately, they hope to heal the people of Israel. But to do so, they must put Israel under the knife. They must deliver a difficult message. The prophet’s words are like a scalpel, cutting open the people of Israel, digging out a disease. The prophet’s words cause a wound. They hurt.
It’s only natural that when we read the prophets, we feel the pain. And so the typical role of the preacher becomes one of supplying a painkiller. Sermons become shots of sedative.
I say all of this as a confession. The last two weeks, we read horrifying prophecies from Amos, who proclaimed doom to the people of Israel. Today, we read the prophecy of one of Amos’ contemporaries, Hosea, who also proclaims a painful experience. And my sermons, I’m afraid, are a bit like oxycodone or percocet. They inevitably try to alleviate the wound of the prophetic words.
And so this confession is also an invitation. Don’t rest easy in any tidy message I can conjure up. I invite you to reread these texts again on your own. Confront the pain of the prophet’s incisive words. They should not be easy. If a prophet’s words are easily understood and accepted, then they’re not cutting us as they should.
Prophetic Complements: Amos and Hosea
The last two weeks, we heard from the prophet Amos. Amos, remember, was a shepherd and farmer. We can imagine that he would have been a practical sort of man. He would have cared about getting things done. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, his prophecy projects a down-to-earth, knitty-gritty outlook on life. He characterizes the people’s sin as social injustice. “Hear this, you who trample the needy,” he shouts, “and bring to ruin the poor of the land” (Amos 8:4).
Hosea, on the other hand, strikes me as the perfect complement to Amos. Whereas Amos would be an outdoors sort of fellow, working with the animals, speaking common sense at the town gate, I would imagine that Hosea’s a bit bookish, that he has a poet’s heart. Whereas Amos cares about deeds, Hosea reflects on the inner heart where deeds are born. While Amos describes the sin of Israel as injustice, Hosea describes it as infidelity. For him, the people’s sin is a wayward heart.
Maybe the Story Is a Little Messier
Today’s scripture gives us a succinct and juicy summary of Hosea’s prophetic career. It all starts when God says to Hosea, “Go, marry a prostitute. Have some kids. Because Israel is playing the prostitute with me” (cf. Hos 1:2).
I must confess. I have my doubts about this account of Hosea’s prophetic career. Was it all that straightforward? Did Hosea just wake up one day and hear the voice of God as clearly as he heard the birds outside, saying, “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom?” (1:2)? I certainly wouldn’t want to say what God can or cannot do. But I cannot help but think that maybe the story is a little messier than this.[1]
I have come to appreciate just how real the stories of the Bible can be, how the stories of Abraham and King David and Ruth, the disciples and Peter and Paul, are somehow the stories of our own lives. And so part of me, at least, thinks that what happened to Hosea on that fateful day is something a lot like what happens to us. One day, Hosea invited a friend over for dinner—unsuspectingly, fatefully. That friend brought another friend, Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim. Hosea liked Gomer. Simple as that. They courted. Married. Had kids. Then things got complicated—as things tend to do. The details aren’t really that important. All that’s important is that Hosea one day learns of Gomer’s infidelity. And it tears him apart.
Everything suddenly becomes a mirror of his misery. Worst of all, his own children. When he looks into their eyes, he sees his wife, Gomer—which is to say, he sees his own rejection. He feels the bitterness of betrayal. He looks at one child and he asks himself, “Can I ever forgive her?” (cf. 1:6-7). He looks at another and asks, “Was I ever hers? Was she ever mine?” (cf. 1:9).
A Small Dose of Homiletic Hydrocodone
Okay. I think now’s the time for a small dose of homiletic hydrocodone, a brief comedic interlude away from the painful story of Hosea.
I have a good friend, Tim, who played soccer with me growing up. My dad was the coach for a number of years. And Tim gave my dad all sorts of grief. My dad had this habit of literally biting his tongue when he was unhappy…and Tim gave him reason to bite his tongue more than once. Not listening to instructions. Cracking jokes during serious speeches. He was our team clown, I suppose.
Anyway, I recently caught up with Tim, and he shared that he has started coaching a soccer team of his own. He complained, though, about the little goofballs on his team who kept interrupting practice. And then it hit him: “You know, I guess I was a little bit like that when I was a kid. Man, I must have drove your dad crazy!” Music to my dad’s ears.
The Echo of Experience:
Hosea’s and God’s Sorrow
We’ve all probably had realizations like this, where a new experience opens our heart to a more sympathetic understanding of the world. My friends who are new parents, for instance, suddenly reflect on the troubles they may have caused their parents. New teachers, I know, sometimes reflect on what kind of student they may have been. A new experience often enlarges the heart. It invites empathy for others who have shared that experience.
As painful as Hosea’s experience was, I think that somewhere within his heart it sparked a prophetic revelation. Somewhere amid the ashes of his experience, a profound prophetic sympathy was born for God.
In Hosea’s time, Israel was politically promiscuous. They would bat their eyes first in the direction of Assyria, then towards Egypt. In either case, Hosea said, their heart was misplaced. They were putting faith in the power or protection of other people, rather than in the God who had given them life.
Hosea empathizes with God. Somewhere in his prophetic heart, he realizes that his sorrow somehow echoes the sorrow of God.[2] Just as Hosea looks at his children and questions the possibility of forgiveness and reunion, so too he imagines God looking at Israel and, in a moment of anguish, saying, lo-ruhamah, “I will not have pity,” and lo-ammi, “You are not my people” (1:6-9). And just as Hosea must desire somewhere in the depths of his heart, forgiveness and reunion—even if these things never came about in his life—so too he senses a divine desire for these things. And in the end, in the last verse of today’s scripture, Hosea envisions God gathering Israel into God’s arms once more.
The Yes Inside a No:
The Gospel in a Nutshell
The difficulty in reading a prophecy like Hosea’s, a prophecy that is founded on such an intensely personal experience, is that if we ourselves haven’t shared that experience, then we risk missing out on the prophecy’s depth of feeling and its experiential truth.
But we need not have married a prostitute in ancient Israel to know something of what Hosea felt.
Some time back, I wrote these words about a very different sorrowful experience: “It is the most tender pain I know / to feel the yes inside a no.” Reading those words now, I wonder if Hosea didn’t feel something similar. What is sorrow, if not the yes inside a no, the hope for something that is missing? Is this not the sorrow of God that echoed in the sorrow of Hosea? Is this not the sorrow that we all feel? Haven’t we all felt the tender pain of the yes inside a no, where we have sensed a goodness that somehow endures within and beyond an inconsolable sadness?
Perhaps a close friend or family member passes away. Death says no to their life among us, but somewhere within that no there is a yes whispered in hope, a yes that affirms that even though they die, they will live (cf. John 11:25).
Perhaps we cannot see eye to eye with a friend, and a relationship is irreparably fractured or lost. Dispute says no to our friendship, but somewhere within that no there is a yes murmured that cannot help but bless the estranged friend, that cannot help but love him or her despite the irreconcilable differences.
I say all this not to reduce the heart of God to our own small hearts. There are certainly extensions of our sorrow that God does not share, like our petty quests for personal satisfaction or revenge. I say all this, rather, in the hope that it might enlarge our heart to the experience of God. If the prophecy of Hosea is any indication, then something of the sorrow that we feel in our personal tragedies is a holy echo of the heart of God. Something of what we feel points us toward the divine yes—the holy mysteries of forgiveness and love, peace and the justice of restoration.
This holy echo of the heart of God is what we see lived in the flesh of Jesus. Jesus felt the full brunt of the world’s “No,” and yet the gospel, the good news is that he persists in saying, “Yes.”
The “yes” inside a “no” is what Hosea felt in his relationship with Homer. It is what God felt in God’s relationship with Israel. It is the very life of Christ. It is the gospel in a nutshell: the good news that our sorrow echoes a divine sorrow, and that within that divine sorrow, echoes the forgiveness and love and peace that is redeeming all sorrow.
Prayer
Loving God,
Who takes on flesh,
Who shares our sorrows and joys—
Enlarge our hearts.
Help us to hear the holy echoes
Of your heart among ours,
Pointing us toward the way of Christ,
The way of the cross,
The yes that is redeeming every no.
Amen.
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[1] The inspiration for this imaginative interpretation comes from Abraham Heschel’s observation that Hosea’s experience would have meant little as a prophetic performance. From the outside, it would be little more than a public spectacle. Its prophetic meaning resides in its experiential truth. Hosea’s experience would have meant most to Hosea. Somewhere in his experience, he encountered a prophetic revelation, and from there were born his words to the people of Israel. Cf. Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Perennial, 2001), 47-75.
[2] Cf. Heschel, The Prophets, 69: “The event stirred and shocked the life of Hosea regardless of its effect upon public opinion. It concerned him personally at the deepest level and had a meaning of the highest significance for his own life. As time went by, Hosea became aware of the fact that his personal fate was a mirror of the divine pathos, that his sorrow echoed the sorrow of God.”
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