The Whore, the Prophet, and Our Loving God

O, those crazy prophets of old. They not only spoke God’s truth to people who would never hear it, but they were also inclined to “act out” God’s message in their own lives. Ezekiel, for instance, was not only transported by the Spirit to a valley of dry bones, but he also laid on his side for 430 days to symbolize the years Israel and Judah had sinned. Isaiah wandered around Jerusalem for three years, naked or almost naked, to signify the sinful condition of the people. Jeremiah stuck his unclean underwear into a cleft near the Euphrates and retrieved them days later, only to discover that, like the people, they were soiled and rotted beyond repair. Yes, it’s true- prophets did odd things to make a point for God, but none of them did anything more unusual than the Hosea did. Have you ever read the book that bears Hosea’s name? Well, if you haven’t, let me warn you that it is challenging, beginning with chapter 1. To live out Israel’s infidelity in his own life; to show that God displeasure with people who love one God on Sundays and another god on Mondays; to make it clear that God’s people had provoked His jealousy by chasing after gods of money, wealth, pleasure, power, and self… Hosea was told to marry a whore, or a temple prostitute, or a promiscuous woman, depending on your interpretation. He is also told to have children with her, even though her background and her behavior would have showered him with shame in those days. So, Hosea married Gomer and she did have three children, though they may not all have been Hosea’s.

Gomer gave birth to Jezreel, whose name means “God sows/scatters, to a girl named "Lo-Ruhamah,” which means “not loved,” and to another son, named “Lo-Ammi,” which means “not my people.” "God scatters," "not loved," and "not my people"- these were the three kids who were trying to get by with a promiscuous mom named Gomer and a radical prophet named Hosea.  Hosea had a dysfunctional family for sure. He was carrying a burden for the Lord, no doubt, and Gomer was struggling with who knows what demons. The kids must have felt as unwelcome as their names suggested and it's very hard to feel good for anyone in the family. But chapter 2 is worse. Indeed, it's almost unreadable for a boy (like me) who witnessed a whole lot of domestic violence. Whether we see it as righteous punishment in a patriarchal and shame-based society, or as the consequences of her own sins, chapter 2 is about punishment in which a righteous man teaches a sinful woman a thing a two about obedience. Since the woman thinks that her lovers who make her lifestyle possible, her husband, her baal, her master... strips her naked and withholds food. He shames her and abuses her until she comes to her senses. Then, when she understands her man, God orders Hosea to go and buy her back- to forgive her, even though she had been unfaithful… which he did for 15 shekels of silver and 11/2 homers of grain,

Taking her back at all was a great act of reconciliation- unheard of for an adulterous woman- but after that, from chapters 4-10, Hosea’s words do little to cheer up anyone’s spirits. They are harsh and threatening to a people who have forgotten that they belong to God, but in my view chapter 11 saves the day. When I was in seminary, I was taught to find and preach the good news in every sermon, and the good news in Hosea is this: despite our sins, God will never give up on us! “When Israel was a child,” God says, “I loved him.” I cared for him. I taught him to walk. I patched up his wounds. I lifted him to my cheek, and I taught him the way in which he should go. My boy ran away from me, it is true, but I will never give up on him because our relationship is based on my steadfast love, not my son’s, and besides, I am a God who created my people out of love. I gave them hearts that will never rest until they rest in me. I created them for a loving relationship with me. I walked with them in the garden. I led them to a land of milk and honey. I gave them commands to enrich their lives, and in the end, I sent my Son to hang on a cross so that all people will know that there is no end to my love. I am God and I can do no other than invite my people into a loving relationship and to sustain them along the way.

If we can get past the domestic abuse and the odd behavior of the prophets, if we can reject a culture in which women and children were expendable, if we can see people through God’s eyes, we will see that there is no end to God’s love for us. We will see that there is nothing we can do that will cause God to love us less. We will see that God is “for us,” not against us, that God longs to hear from us, that God wants to say the words, “well done, good and faithful servant,” that heaven does applaud when a single sinner stumbles home. If we can see God in and through the context of the text, we will see that Lo-ruhamah is Ruhamah (loved) and that Lo-ammi is Ammi (my people). If we can see God raising us up in His arms and holding our hands as we walk, we will see that God is love… and we may even cry out, as Jesus did, “Abba, daddy,” thanks for loving me. Amen.

TAKE A PLUMB LINE, CHRISTIAN! WHAT DO YOU SEE?

Amos was a shepherd in Tekoa, a small village, south of Jerusalem, in the southern kingdom of Judah. He lived in a time of relative peace and things were going well, especially in the northern kingdom of Israel… where many of the people drank the best of wines and lived in big stone houses. They were also a religious people who gathered for their festivals and joyfully presented their offerings to God… but (and this is a big but) they had built their “good life” on the backs of the poor and vulnerable who lived in their midst.

They were filled with a sense of entitlement. They were drunk on their own wine. They had come to believe that God blessings were all designed for them… and they had ignored the justice (mishpat) and righteousness (sedeqah) that God demanded from the very beginning.  Amos was neither a prophet nor a son of a prophet. He was a shepherd, but after he received his call from God, he traveled north to present God’s case against the way in which the poor and marginalized were being treated. He condemned those who had winter homes and summer homes, while others were struggling, and he singled out the entitled women of Bashan, whom he called “fat cows” because they oppressed the poor and crushed the needy.

Speaking for God, he criticized the wealthy for worshiping God on their own terms and for being more filled with self-righteousness than righteousness. “There are those among you,” Amos noted, again speaking for God, “who hate the one who upholds justice and detest the one who tells the truth.” Not only do you avoid both justice and the truth, but you persecute those who try to help and get attention for the poor and disadvantaged. According to Amos,there were those who “levied a straw tax on the poor” and who “oppressed the innocent by taking bribes,” while they build stone mansions for themselves. “I hate, I despise, your festivals.” God said. “I will not listen to your harps”... until justice rolls down like a river and righteousness like a near falling stream. I will not attend your events and I will not listen to your organ music until you practice mishpat and sedeqah in your land and show my love in the way you treat others. “Your beds are adorned with ivory and you drink wine by the bowlful,” but you “do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph.”

Israel was a religious people, but they were not faithful. They did not love their neighbors as themselves. They were not their brothers' or sisters' keeper, and they didn’t keep their thumbs off the the scales in the marketplace. Their religion had become part of their self-serving and dismissive lifestyle. SO… God showed a plumb line to Amos… and asked, “What do you see?” What do you see? Are things okay, or are they out of plumb? 

Are things okay or are they out of plumb in our world, our country, our town, our church, our families, in our own lives? Or are they straight and lined up with God’s will, to the best of our ability? What do you see, dear Christian? Are things plumb or have they gone awry? Are there safety nets and helping hands for those who are vulnerable? Are strangers welcomed when they show up at our door? Are the circles of grace and acceptance that we draw… as big and as permeable as God’s? Do we see other people, near and far, the same and different, as bearers of God’s image or as people who can serve us and be of some use? Are we rearing our children in the way of the Lord? Have we tamed our tribal tendencies? Are we doing better at knowing and trusting our neighbors? Have we broken the cycle of violence in our towns and in our homes? Do we leave some of our crops for the poor and the strangers? Are we, as a people, in good shape morally and spiritually? Do we really walk hand in hand? Do we even try? Do people really know us by our love? Do those who have two coats give one to the person who has none? Do we speak for those whose voices have been silenced? Do we speak truth to power, even if it costs us something? Does Abel’s blood cry out to us, for the taking of his life, as it did to God so many years ago? Do we embrace the unlovable and forgive the unforgivable? When we look into the eyes of a person who may be next to us in a line somewhere, or at table with us, who may or may not look like us; who may be, or not be, in agreement with us- do we see a child of God?  Or is our vision blinded by stereotypes and our own self interests?

      Take a plumb line, Christian (you and me) and see if things are plumb… in the world, in the church, in your family, and in your heart? Amen.

THOUGHTS ON LOVING OUR NEIGHBORS AS WE LOVE OURSELVES

I preached on the Good Samaritan story recently, and as I've thought about what it means to love our neighbor in a time when loving our neighbor has become a political issue, I can't escape these seven thoughts and conclusions:

1) I will never meet a person whom God doesn't love. Neither will you because God is love. I may like some people more than others. I may even have prejudices against certain people, but I will never meet anyone whom God does not love.

2) In Christ, there is no male or female, no slave or free, no gay or straight, no black or white, no any difference at all that would give us reason to fear, discriminate, or hate anyone else.

3) There has always been a special place in God's heart for the vulnerable and the foreigners in our midst. In Leviticus, we're told to love foreigners in our midst because we were foreigners too, and in the book of Hebrews, we're encouraged to treat all people with the greatest respect because we may be in the company of angels and not even know it. In short, feeding the poor, clothing the naked, and embracing the foreigners in our midst... is NOT a matter of politics. It is a matter of faith!

4) Biblically speaking, love is an action word. It is doing something for someone else, even if that "something" puts us a risk, takes up our time, or brings us into contact with someone we would rather avoid. If they're hungry, we feed them; if they're wounded, we patch them up; if they're lonely, we visit them, without judgment or prejudice.

5) Our "neighbor" is the person who is near and in need. It may be someone we work with, golf with, or meet on a street corner. It may be someone who offends us and puts us at risk. It doesn't matter because he or she is our neighbor, and we are called to love him or her, as we love ourself.

6) Getting involved is the most important part of loving someone else as we love ourself. We can't take a cup of water to a man dying in the desert without going into the desert, and we can't patch up a man who has been beaten and robbed, without kneeling down and touching the man to see if he is alive. This isn't easy, which is why most of us just walk on by;

7) Finally, we simply need to do it! According to Soren Kierkegaard, we are all "artful dodgers" who pretend that we don't understand Scripture because we don't want to practice it in our own lives. Who is our neighbor, we ask, as we pass by the beggar on the street, drive by the home of someone we know to be lonely, or let our phone ring when we know it is someone who really needs to talk. O Lord, let me see others as you see them and give me the courage to love them every bit as much as I love myself.

THY KINGDOM IS IN YOUR HANDS!

When I was working as a rehabilitation counselor with the Iowa Commission for the Blind, my job included a variety of duties. My main responsibility was to find gainful employment for a caseload of clients, and as a rookie counselor, I drove clients to Iowa City for eye care.  One of my favorites was Tom Kazarek. Tom was a young man who with significant mental disabilities in addition to being legally blind. He lived in a group home and had never worked, but he really wanted a job. He wanted a job where he could get out into the world, do something worth doing, and earn a little money. He felt that he could do more than he was doing in his group home, and I agreed. So, I asked my friend, Phil Parks, to give Tom a job and Phil hired Tom as a dishwasher in his restaurant. Well, as it turned out, Tom loved the job, and Phil loved Tom. It was "win-win" in every way, and whenever Tom saw me in the cafe, he would wave and holler out, "Hi, Ken." (I didn't need my second 'n' in those days) and I would holler back, "Hi, Tom. How's it going?" "Oh fine," he'd say, "Everything is fine."

I bet the Kingdom of God is like that- like the thrill of being accepted for who you are, like the joy of having someone embrace your abilities rather than your disabilities? The unexpected joy of having someone open a door for you, or in discovering that, in a world filled with critics, you have a cheerleader? I'm sure that the Kingdom of God is like that. I believe that the Kingdom of God is filled with drop-givers and cheerleaders. When I close my eyes and imagine the Kingdom of God, I see a banquet hall where every single person eats his or her fill. I see a dais where there the least among us are sitting and I see a rainbow of people... who are beautiful in their differences. They are singing the same song in harmony without favor or discrimination, and I hear the joyful sounds of laughter. The place is filled with 2nd-chance people, like me, and they never quit expressing their gratitude and joy.

Oscar Wilde wrote of a beautiful prince who was an exquisite statue, looking down on the city with priceless sapphire eyes. Well, one night a small swallow landed wearily at the prince's feet and he noticed that the prince was crying. "There's a sick child over there," the prince said, "Begging his mother for food. Swallow, give this ruby to the woman to relieve her pain." The next morning the prince saw a young man, freeziing and hungry. "Take one of my eyes," he told the swallow, "to buy firewood and clothing." Then came the unemployed woman, the very old man, and many, many more. The prince kept giving and the swallow kept delivering until the prince was little more than a shell. In time, the prince rusted and the people tore the statue down, scrapping the prince's heart next to a dead sparrow. Looking down at the city, God told an angel to go to the earth and bring back the two most precious things he could find. Soon, the angel returned with a rusted metal heart and a smal dead bird. "You have chosen rightly,"God said. Rightly, in my view, because the Kingdom of God is filled with compassion and sacrificial service.

The Kingdom of God is far-away and hard to explain... but it is also very near and in our hands. The Kingdom of God shows itself whenever someone blesses us with an act of love and/or unconditional acceptance. Whenever we love someone simply because he or she is a child of God, or forgive someone because we know ourselves to be forgiven, or stand and applaud when someone else wins the price... the Kingdom is shining through. It has been 50 years now since I saw Tom Kazarek and Phil has been with God for decades. But there was a moment when the Kingdom of God broke through in the kitchen of a small diner. I suspect that you've also experienced the Kingdom in your own life, but if it's been awhile, take the time to say "hello" to someone who is sitting alone. Visit someone who doesn't see many visitors. Treat the poorest of people as if they are dressed up for a ball and the least important person you know, as if he or she is wearing a crown. Give your server a bigger tip than the rules dictate, Forgive someone whom you have refused to forgive, get to know someone whom you've been afraid to know because they're different from you. Do things like this... and the Kingdom of God will shine forth from you. Amen!