Several years ago, there were a couple of commercials on TV for a brand of aspirin. They centred on a family around the dinner table, with about twenty children, most of them adopted or foster teens. Living with that many would certainly give most of us a headache. Some of us might think those parents had a lot of compassion, but very little common sense. Sometimes, I think God is like that, too. I began to feel really close to God when I was the parent of three teenagers. Passages like this one, from Hosea, began to sing in me, and I developed quite a friendship with God. I did a lot more praying, mostly for patience, as I tried to emphasize the good things and overlook the difficult parts of raising adolescents.
I was a far from perfect parent. I lost my temper, I shouted. Sometimes, my kids were grounded. We had discussions that disintegrated into arguments; there were tears, and door slamming. At one point, my children came to me and said: “Mum, we are giving you an award.” “Oh”, I said, “that’s so sweet. What’s it for?” “Meanest mother in the province, possibly including Alberta.” I threw up my hands in despair, I shared frustrations with friends, and a few times I arranged to have one or another of my errant children live with someone else for a day or even a week. Every teen should have another place to go when things get rough. They need a break, as much as their parents do. As things began to smooth out, our house was sometimes the place for other kids to come and stay awhile. I made them call their parents and ask permission. I gave them the rules: No smoking, no alcohol, no drugs. Be in by 10 on school nights, and call if you are going to be later on the weekend. Help with the dishes and put your laundry in the hamper, not on the floor. Be on time for dinner. Don’t leave snack dishes in the sink or under the bed. Hang up towels in the bathroom. Change your own sheets. Kids always seem to follow the rules in someone else’s house. They may even eat spinach and liver when they are guests at someone else’s table. The young people we had staying with us for brief times were really very nice, underneath all that hair. I knew that some things got stretched a bit, but as my own children got older, I was able to look the other way more often. It was almost as if I had practiced on them, and got better as I went along. I wonder if God is like that too.
Today we have a reading from the Hebrew Scriptures in the book of Hosea, and it may be helpful to review some of the background of this prophet. We tend to think of Israel in modern terms: the state that we hear about on the news – please try to move away from the politics and violence of that area for now, and go back in time to the story for today. Originally, the land that was given to the wandering people after the Exodus became two kingdoms – Judah in the south, with Jerusalem as its capitol, and Israel in the north, with Samaria as the central city. That’s right – the Samaritans! When Moses led the people to the edge of Canaan - the land of milk and honey - it was already occupied, and the people there worshipped many gods.
The Hebrew people were forbidden to intermarry with the locals, because of different religious practices. Today, we have a whole book from a northern prophet, which describes the marriage of Hosea to a Canaanite woman, and the ups and down of family life. In reality, it’s a metaphor, a symbolic story of ordinary lives that reflects God’s relationship with humanity. The passages from Hosea are some of my favourite readings. Here is a God in conflict, confusion and anguish. Here is a God who has millions of teenagers, and not an aspirin in sight. Here is a God who gave humanity a beautiful world, and found that they were committed to disobedience. Here is a God who has cared for so many, and seen them turn away. God loved a chosen people, and led them out of slavery in Egypt, and then found them sacrificing to idols. God raised them with tenderness. Listen to a part of this passage again: Read vss. 3-4
What an image! A God who is gentle, who bends down and lifts us up, feeds us and caresses us. A God whose love for us is known from the very beginning of creation. Babies need contact, and we need to connect with them. They need our warmth and the beat of our hearts to know that they are with another human being. They need the touch, the smell, the sound of a voice.Hosea gives us a picture of a God who gently lifts up the child, so that it can nestle against God’s cheek, or place its little head under God’s chin. The instinct you have when a baby does that is to kiss its head and bless it. That’s what this God is like. This God gets a sore back from leaning over to help the toddler take its first steps. This God stays up all night with a cold cloth for its head when the child has a fever. This God binds children with cords of kindness and bands of love. And, like so many of us, the Kingdom of Israel – Ephraim - repays love with disobedience. Worse than leaving towels on the floor or dirty dishes in the sink. Worse than mouthing off, smoking, playing loud music or even wrecking the family car.
It seems as though the ancient kingdom of Israel is intent on taking that list of rules, that we call the Ten Commandments, and systematically disobeying every one of them, on purpose. Not out of ignorance, or inexperience, or a sense of adventure, but with malice. To hurt God, the loving parent, the nurturing, caring one. And God, in a holy confusion, is full of anger. “I give up” says God. “I can’t stand this anymore. They deserve to be punished. They can beg all they want, but I won’t listen. I’ve had it, up to here! I’ll send them back to Egypt, to slavery. I’ll send Assyria to annihilate them. There will be no peace, because they have set a course away from me.” It’s good to vent our anger, and apparently, even God needs to do this sometimes. And once we have yelled, and waved our arms around, and gotten stiff jaws from clenching them, we are finished. Most of the time, expressing our anger is enough. We calm down, and after a cup of tea, or a piece of chocolate, or a good night’s sleep, we see things from a different perspective, So does God, in this passage. After the sweet memories, after the anguish of betrayal, after the ranting and the raving, God takes another look.
Read vss. 8-9 This has got to be one of the most dramatic speeches in Scripture. It is so full of yearning that I get a lump in my throat whenever I read it. In it is contained all of God’s faithfulness; far beyond our own. God’s passionate love is revealed with overwhelming intensity. God holds nothing back here, but risks rejection, disobedience, derision and scorn, over and over again. Most of the prophetic literature in scripture reflects the themes of disobedience, anger and then amazing love. Why? Because God’s love is stronger than our disloyalty. God is God, the Creator and ultimate judge. And God has decided to love. God’s compassion overcomes wrath. God’s justice calls for punishment, for a harsh sentence in the light of the behaviour of the people. But God has decided to forgive. When we look at our world; at our family life, our community, and especially the global scene, we know that we have the power to destroy in great measure. We seem to be exhibiting all the behaviours of infants, toddlers, adolescents, who haven’t quite grown up yet. In our families, we sometimes resort to anger and punishment. We can’t ever have the patience of God in such great measure, and so we shout at one another, we threaten, we sometimes hit. It takes less time to send a child to its room than it does to really listen and sometimes change our own way of thinking. As the demands of our society crowd us, we spend less time working things out. Families are hard work, they take energy, they take emotional space.
And all the time we are being pulled away by work, careers, the needs of others, until there is no time for ourselves. In our communities, our nation, there is unholy confusion. There is criticism, accusation, nitpicking. What are we squabbling about? Mostly little things. Things that with a bit of understanding and cooperation, could be managed. Are we listening to one another, are we listening to God? Often, when there is a disaster the first reaction is: “Who was at fault?” That seems to be the most important question, the one that lasts the longest in the news. The people who are injured, or dead, the ones who have lost homes and giant pieces of their lives, get a brief mention; but the legal hassles go on and on. And the poor get poorer and the social programmes are never sufficient. We are going through difficult times, with shortages of personnel, products and patience. This is a time to hold out our hands in compassion and share together.
As for the rest of God’s world: it’s in a sorry mess. What can God feel, observing the dysfunctional governments all over the world, the conflicts brought about by tariffs and greed, the threats to our environment, the ever-increasing population of homeless people on our streets, the continuing violence in Ukraine, and of course, the denial and blame for the suffering and starvation, the unimaginable devastation in Gaza? If I were God, I might give up. “If you want to fight, go somewhere else. Out in the yard, across the street, but not in my house. Not in my world. It’s disgraceful. You have messed up your room - the whole earth - with garbage. You don’t take care of one another – my beloved people. Go away, I’m through with you.!” But then God says: “How can I give you up? I held you against my cheek, I carried you in my arms, I taught you to walk. I will not come in wrath.”
Friends, here is Good News. If God says this, then so can we, in our families, our church, our community, our world. In the face of anger and destruction, and the reality of terrible violence in some part of the world every moment, we too, can replace judgement with love, wrath with compassion. We may not do it as well as God does, but we must do it as best we can. We must remember what we have done –and not keep repeating such actions. When we disagree, we have choices. One of them is anger, sometimes it’s even justified. Another is cooperation and reconciliation. The reading from Hosea offers us a range of possibilities, and asks us to consider what God would do. Let us listen to the way of God, and be led by loving wisdom. Let us remember God’s faithfulness, and turn unholy confusion into the ways of healing and peace. I know school is out, but if you’ve heard me before, you know that I like to give homework assignments. Don’t worry, I am not back next week and I won’t check up on you! Because so many of us are feeling powerless right now as we watch the news, here are three things you might do to take control of your part in God’s world. Choose one, and know that you are part of the healing of the world:
Homework:
a. When you wake in the morning, ask God to get into your mind and your heart before you do.
b. Choose a relief agency, or, if you can afford it, two groups – one in your community, and one for the world - and contribute on a regular basis.
c. Participate in a community event this summer, or a church event during the year.