Transcribed from the Sermon Preached on June 25, 2004

The Reverend Max Lynn

Our passage from Hosea is one of the least difficult of this very difficult book.  At least we find signs of forgiveness.  Hosea is a little strange.  I think Hosea actually had a wife named Gomer who committed adultery.  Yet Hosea uses his story as a metaphor for God’s relationship with Israel.  Gomer comes to represent not just the individual adulterous actions of one woman, but the unfaithful and unjust actions of the ruling men of Israel. 

Shortly after Solomon, the Judean empire split in two; the capital of Israel became Samaria, and the Capital of Judah to the South was Jerusalem.  Of particular relevance to Hosea are King Jeroboam and Uzziah.  These Kings instigated specialized production in agriculture for export and destroyed the diversification of crops upon which the villagers depended.  While the state was procuring the maximum wheat, wine and oil through taxes and its own production, villagers who could not raise enough food to feed themselves were forced to borrow against their future harvest to buy grain when it was scarce and expensive.  Meanwhile large landlords dominated local courts, and peasants lost their land at increasing rates

The boom in agribusiness fostered increased patronage to Baal, the God of commerce.  "Nobles and warriors," says Bob Coote in Power, Politics and the Making of the Bible, "formed drinking societies to commune with departed strongmen, local heroes and saints, in orgies expending vats of wine and oil.

"As wheat, wine and oil flowed out of villages," Coote continues, "villagers starved in increasing numbers, and Assyria was attracted to Palestine’s efficient economy."  It is important to note that the people of Hosea’s time did not separate life into compartments such as economics, politics, religion and private life.  They were all mixed up together.  So when the elite were doing business with Assyria they were doing it in the temples of Assyrian Gods and Baal.

In Hosea’s mind this is adultery against God.  I suspect that Hosea’s wife may have been drawn into one of these religious/ business orgies, with Hosea left publicly shamed and dishonored.  The poor people, the common peasants, the children in Hosea’s story suffer, both from the wife’s misdeeds and from her husband’s wrath.  In this patriarchal culture, the husband questions who is the real father, and is within his legal rights to shun his family forever.

This selfish greed and consumption causes the poor and the land itself to suffer.  Hosea 4:  "There is no faithfulness or loyalty.  Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed.  Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish, together with the wild animals and the birds of the air; even the fish of the sea are perishing."  Then in

Chapter 10:13:  "You have plowed wickedness, you have reaped injustice, you have eaten the fruit of lies.  Because you have trusted in your power and in the multitude of your warriors, therefore the tumult of war shall rise against your people…"

Now in Chapter 11, after naming the punishment and judgment Israel would receive, Yahweh recollects his love for his children.  Before they had memories, when they were just babies, God took them up in his arms and healed them; he led them with cords of human kindness, and bands of love. "I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks.  I bent down to them and fed them…"  God has a deep love for his children, and even though they turn from him and are suffering the consequences, God still loves them.

God will remain faithful to his children.  Even though they turn from him toward self serving commerce and hedonism, even though the children and land suffers, the people have an opportunity to come back home, to turn toward God, toward justice and sustainable economics.  God still yearns to hold and care for them.  Despite everything, He can’t help but love his children.

The Luke passage is probably familiar, and reminds me of this saying, "Instead of being thankful when their cups runneth over, too many people pray for a bigger cup."  A man asks, "Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me."  How interesting is Jesus’ response:  "Friend, who set me to be a judge over you?  Take care; be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist of abundance of possessions."  The Jesus has no way of knowing what this man’s brother should or should not do.  During a situation of grief, nobody is perfect.  One of the sure ways to cause rifts in a family is to fight over the will.  Does our love for our family allow us to overcome our greed or even our sense of entitlement?  Can we forgive our family members as God forgives us?  Will we remain faithful to God and our family or will we go after what we want regardless of the impact of our actions on them?

From a social perspective are we as a nation and people storing up excessive luxury at the expense of other people and the environment?  Is our desire to secure oil to maintain and increase our level of consumption leaving children without parents or food in their stomachs?  When Las Vegas is the only city growing faster than our prison system and the military, maybe our faithfulness to God should be questioned.  I suggest that in this pluralistic, secular nation we need to question even our faith in our ideals, and hear Jesus when he says there are all kinds of greed.  In thinking of national and social sin, I am drawn again to Reinhold Niebuhr: "The paradox is that patriotism transmutes individual unselfishness into national egoism.  Loyalty to the nation is a high form of altruism when compared with lesser loyalties and more parochial interests.  It therefore becomes the vehicle of all the altruistic impulses and expresses itself, on occasion, with such fervor that the critical attitude of the individual toward the nation and its enterprises is almost completely destroyed.  The unqualified nature of this devotion is the very basis of the nation’s power and of the freedom to use the power without moral restraint.  Thus the unselfishness of individuals makes for the selfishness of nations."

It is quite possible then, that even a nation blessed by God, like the United Sates or Israel, may lose track of the one who blesses it and begin to idolize itself.  The nation and its people may begin to think that the nation is bigger and more important than God and God’s people outside that nation.  As the Church we are called to honor simple things, to call attention to the unfaithfulness of our nation in its failings to promote cords of peace and justice.  And we are called to remind one another that God’s home is found not in one particular place or another, but where there are cords of human kindness and bonds of love.