Sixth Sunday after Trinity 2022 Hosea

 

Sermon not preached in person, due to having Covid-19

What is the Bible for? Not for accepting, nor rejecting, but for engaging with, wrestling with, in community. And, often, for reaching pragmatic compromises over ideological purity, and finding strength to live those compromises.

One of the Old Testament passages set for this coming Sunday is the profoundly disturbing Hosea 1:2-10. Hosea’s story begins just as the northern kingdom of Israel is about to plunge into a relentless spiral of assassinations and coups that will only come to an end with invasion by a neighbouring superpower and total destruction. Against this backdrop, God (Yahweh) instructs Hosea to marry an adulterous wife and raise children born of adultery. Moreover, Hosea is instructed to name their firstborn son Jezreel, after the site of a bloodthirsty coup, the root of the unravelling to come. Gomer has two further children—it is implied that Hosea is not their biological father, or at least, cannot know for certain that he is—and he is instructed to call her daughter No Mercy and the younger son Not My People.

Here we are presented with a man whom subsequent generations will acknowledge as a prophet, convinced that Yahweh has instructed him to undermine at least two of the Ten Words, the Constitution of the People whom Yahweh had delivered out of their servitude to the Egyptians. For how can one uphold the commandment ‘You shall not commit adultery’ while taking, and taking back, an adulterous wife? And how can one uphold the commandment ‘Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long on the soil that the Lord your God has given you’ while burdening your children with such painful, literally godforsaken names (by extension, identities)? Though perhaps the point is that the Commandments have already been thoroughly abandoned, and the people are about to be uprooted from the soil in which they were planted.

This passage is disturbing for so many reasons, for so many people. Neither Gomer nor her children have a voice, and their existence, whether historical or parabolic, has been used—unacceptably—to justify all manner of abuse against women and children. Paradoxically, there are many men who have been cheated on, raising children a paternity test would not identify as theirs. Some are in deeply dysfunctional relationships, while others are doing a fantastic job, doing their best to provide stability, enabling fresh starts and new possibilities. Is it possible to love after betrayal? To forgive? Is such a stance commendable or weak?

Then, again, there are pertinent questions concerning the breakdown of a society and the detrimental impact on its children, the loss of opportunity, of hope—and whether hope, once lost, can be restored? There are questions concerning which episodes in our history we choose to memorialise (or which celebrities we name children after)? The role of mercy in a society without mercy? The commitments necessary to hold together as a people, and how we might agree on them, how far they can be abandoned before a society collapses, the limits of inclusion?

There are questions concerning God, what God is like, and whether God can be trusted? Whether God is good, or a harmful presence (or absence) in our lives? And the same questions can be asked of human beings. How do we live together—whether at the level of intimate relationships, or as a society—when people don’t intervene as we would like, or act in ways we do not like? Are we able to enter-into one another’s deepest, darkest, pain and shame? Is that what makes us truly human (in the likeness of God?), or does our refusal to do this (denying our own shame, while exposing the shame of others) make us less-than human?

This text is not an abstract text. It was a story told into a context, and it remains a story read aloud in countless other contexts, at personal, local, regional, and global levels. If it were less disturbing, we would likely have abandoned it long ago. And what we make of it will have to vary, from context to context, as we make space to see our lives brought into focus, and, for Christians, to ask, where do we see Jesus: the king whose throne of peace God has established for ever; the Compassion of God, embodied; the One in whom a new people of God are constituted? Where will we meet Jesus?

As we wrestle with the text, let us be gentle with one another, honouring each other’s scars and aching limbs. Lord, have mercy.