What Would I Do? 7-27-25
What Would I Do?
Col 2:6-15; Hosea 1:2-10
Col 2:6-15
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it. Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.
Hosea 1:2-10 – reading from the CEB
When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to him, “Go, marry a prostitute and have children of prostitution, for the people of the land commit great prostitution by deserting the Lord.” So Hosea went and took Gomer, Diblaim’s daughter, and she became pregnant and bore him a son. The Lord said to him, “Name him Jezreel; for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will destroy the kingdom of the house of Israel. On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the Jezreel Valley.” Gomer became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter. Then the Lord said to Hosea, “Name her No Compassion, because I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel or forgive them. But I will have compassion on the house of Judah. I, the Lord their God, will save them; I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by war, or by horses, or by horsemen.” When Gomer finished nursing No Compassion, she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. Then the Lord said, “Name him Not My People because you are not my people, and I am not your God.” Yet the number of the people of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it will be said to them, “Children of the living God.”
Prayer – Sometimes, O God, you ask impossible things of us. Sometimes those things are pretty simple like being kind, gracious and caring. Sometimes you ask us to go against everything we believe in, everything we stand for, everything we hope for. And that is when we are reminded of Hosea and his struggles and your faithfulness even when we don’t deserve it. Remind us yet again, O God, that you, your love and grace will always rule the day, even when we struggle – amen.
I’m not sure how I would have responded had I been Hosea. I more than likely would have said pretty much the same thing when my grandmother told me as a young teen that I would be a minister one day. My response to her, “Yeah, right,” which would have most likely been my response if God had said to me, “Go marry a prostitute and have lots of kids with her, Yeah, right.” And I have to say, this passage made me curious, and I wonder if you have ever asked yourself, what would I do?
But before we answer that question for ourselves, a little bit of context - Hosea was a prophet from the Northern kingdom of Israel whose ministry followed that of Amos, commencing around 750 BCE and continuing until just before the fall of Samaria, the capital of Israel in 721 BCE. Israel had enjoyed continuing prosperity and trade with surrounding nations. Such prosperity had contributed toward a downward spiral of injustice and immorality, and increasing reliance on military power. Religion and society continued to draw Israel’s people into the comforting thought that they could worship Yahweh but also pay homage to the Canaanite fertility gods, including Ba’al. Following the earlier Northern prophet Elijah, Hosea held to the prophetic word that loyalty to Yahweh was not to be divided.
The prophets in ancient Israel were a curious lot. They were drawn from every segment of society back then. They varied in their degrees of sophistication and eloquence. They varied, too, by how wildly the Lord God had them behave. Not all had to walk around buck naked and howl like a jackal, but Micah did. Not all engaged in imagery that was now and then decidedly pornographic, but Ezekiel did. But seldom was the prophetic task as personal, as intimate, as the commission given to Hosea. He had to marry a woman of low morals with a bad reputation and father children of unfaithfulness with this unfaithful woman. He had to build a family that he knew full well his wife would destroy by keeping up her former ways on the side.
Hosea is remarkable among the prophets in that his life becomes a metaphor of his people’s apostasy and God’s response. God either commands him to take a wife of ‘whoredom’ as the NRSV has it, or he finds himself in such a circumstance. The fact that he chose a prostitute for a wife or found that his wife had become adulterous served as a metaphor to show that the people had prostituted themselves with other gods. Hosea makes little distinction between the political and religious life of the people. They are interwoven, both deserving of judgment.
As if that isn’t problematic enough, the prophet is further commanded to have children with the woman, children that will then necessarily be “children of whoredom”, making them instant outcasts and pariahs in the community. YHWH has in effect made the divine spokesperson a cruel joke, an object of scorn and ridicule, husband of a notorious wanton, and father of three repulsive kids.
A “Focus on the Family” vignette this is not! Indeed, the drama of all this makes you wonder just how tortured Hosea’s home life really was. And then there are those three children whose very names are redolent of terrible things. Today it would be like naming your first son Watergate, your first daughter Homely, and your next son Terror. Can one think of three-more off-putting names than the ones God assigned for Hosea and Gomer’s children? The Israelite experiment appears to be over, and Hosea’s three children are living witnesses to its demise. And the question remains, what would I do if God commanded this of me?
I remember preaching a sermon from Hosea where I used the word “whore” out loud more than once and then proceeded to create a scenario where Hosea brings Gomer to his home to introduce her to his parents who naturally enquire after her occupation—gross horror and hilarity ensue. I am not at all proud of that sermon and will never use such an idea again. Still, it is this offensive literary conceit that points to the broken and restored relationship between YHWH and the people of Israel.
And whether or not this harshly offensive notion of the marriage between Hosea and Gomer is historical or symbolic only is in the end not really important. According to the author of the book of Hosea, Israel is doomed, its flirtation with the Baals and its consequent refusal to care for the poor and marginalized of society, as the remainder of the book catalogues in grim detail, have angered their God so much that that God appears ready to start over with another people who might actually perform the divine will. The metaphor is without doubt fantastically memorable, however repulsive it sounds in our ears.
The inside of Hosea’s home—and the interior of Hosea’s heart—must have been a tortured hell. But probably that was God’s intention all along. Because few of the prophetic books in the Old Testament display a kind of tortured drivenness better than Hosea. How Hosea felt mirrored how God felt. And so, this book bounces between abject statements of loathing and soaring statements of restoration; between damning words of judgment and lyric sentiments of hope. And so, very often these opposing sentiments are nestled side-by-side with each other. The one all but inevitably follows the other.
We see that even here in Hosea 1. Verses 10 and 11 are not exactly where you expected to end up in this chapter given everything that happened in verses 2-9. Yet suddenly and seemingly from out of nowhere, that most ancient of covenant images emerges: the sand on the seashore. In a flash we are transported back to Genesis 12, to all things Abraham, to that promise that God would build a covenant people that would ultimately outnumber the stars in the sky and yes, the sand on the seashore. No sooner does that more reassuring image get projected onto our mental screens, and we see a reversal of the terrible names Hosea had to give to this children: the Jezreel that was to be judged would one day exult; the No-People would become children of God again even as the Unlovable would be swaddled and engulfed in a divine love that would know no end and no boundaries.
Who could see this coming? Who? Well, perhaps anyone who really understands that Yahweh is finally a God whose number one characteristic is grace, is chesed, the lovingkindness celebrated in the Psalms again and again and again. No, that divine trait does not make God a softy. God is deathly serious about holiness (his own first of all but also that of his covenant people) even as God is deathly serious about justice among people and a healthy respect for creation. (Hosea 4 will make clear that among the things that God is angry about in Hosea’s day was the rape and pillage of the physical creation as Israel’s sins of injustice became so grievous that the land was being polluted and sullied as a result).
God could not and would not tolerate just anything. But for God these were roadblocks to his ultimate goal of being one with his people, not dead ends. They were obstacles to be surmounted, not a reason to give up on the whole project of the covenant made long ago with Abraham. Somehow, some way, God was going to be faithful even if it about killed him to do so (which ultimately it did, of course—cf. Good Friday, etc.).
Because that beating heart of compassion and love could not finally be stilled within the divine breast, you find passages like Hosea 1 and Hosea 11 in which God pivots from completely proper and understandable fury over sin and injustice to a tender statement of restoration and love after all. No, the situation as it stood with Israel was intolerable. It could not stand. As with Hosea’s wretched home life with Gomer and their children, so God could not put up with this tension and this pressure forever. Something had to give, as they say.
And something would ultimately give. There would be in the near-term great suffering for God’s people. The lyric words of hope and restoration would come to pass, but not lightly, not tritely, and not immediately. Actions have consequences that even God is not always able or interested in heading off when people so wantonly choose to pollute their lives and their hearts and their very environment with the stinking fruits of sin and evil. There could truly be no hope for even ultimate justice in the universe if every instance of smaller-time justice were thwarted as though the universe never operates on the principle of actions having consequences.
The great scholar Abraham Heschel did landmark work on the theme of divine anger. One of Heschel’s key points was that for the God of Israel, anger was never a constitutive characteristic or attribute. God was never just an angry deity. Anger was not a default setting. It was, at most, a reaction of love offended. But it’s the love that leads the way and it is the love—not any anger or fury or piece of retribution—that will have the last, good cosmic word. To that elegant and hope-filled fact, Hosea 1 bears most wonderful testimony.
I wrote this sermon this week in the midst of a chaotic season we are currently experiencing. From Alligator Alcatraz to ICE and immigration, to wonder about the Epstein files to wonder what will happen next. The immorality and injustice I observe reflects ancient Israel where it seemed to be an everyday occurrence. And I have to say that I wonder, I wonder what God is asking of me today, how far am I willing to go to follow God’s commands. Do I speak out individually or as a minister; do I attend resistance events; do I keep my mouth shut and stick with the status quo? I’m not sure if I have the courage of Hosea, to follow and allow my life to serve as a metaphor for all that is wrong in society, then and now. I’m not sure if I have the courage to do what Hosea did. And if I wonder what I would do, I wonder too, what you would do? That is the question we both are faced with today, tomorrow, next week and next year – what would I do – may God hold us with grace as we consider our choices just as God did with the ancients so long ago – thanks be to God – amen.