Hosea and Gomer—Background of Hosea 3:1
Perhaps because they differ greatly from the rest of the book, the sections of Hosea which tell of his personal family life seem to be better known than the poetic passages. The relevant texts are Hosea 1 (particularly Hosea 1:2-3), and Hosea 3.When we look at those texts, we're immediately presented with the question of whether the two texts refer to the same woman. We are given a name in the first chapter, but not in the third, and it is easily conceivable the narratives tell of two different women. After all, it seems that God's command to Hosea in 3:1 initiates a new action on the part of Hosea. The use of "again" (עןד) in 3:1 seems most naturally to modify "The Lord spoke to me" (so NRSV), although it could conceivably modify "go" (ESV), or even "love" (NIV—this reading seems unlikely to me, and indeed the translation of the whole verse in the NIV seems to sidestep the legitimate ambiguity.) I read the first part of the verse as saying, "The Lord said to me again, 'Go, love a woman who has a lover and commits adultery...'"Although that reading may suggest that Hosea is being told to love a completely new woman, I think that on the whole the analogy depends on this being the same woman from chapter one. Just as the Lord is loving Israel despite her infidelity, I think Hosea is being told to love his wife even though she has been unfaithful to him. the analogy doesn't make sense if Hosea is starting a new relationship—that certainly isn't what God is proclaiming he is going to do! So we're on perhaps difficult methodological ground here. Although the intent of the passage was to make clear the Lord's action by way of Hosea's action, for us we almost need to reverse engineer the metaphor and interpret the reality of Hosea's action by what it is said to have represented in the Lord's actions. Thus, I felt comfortable letting my sermon on Hosea and Gomer grow out of this verse, because on the whole I think the data bests suggests that Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim mentioned in chapter 1, is the same person being referred to here in Chapter 3.
Hosea and Gomer—A Sermon About the Love of God
When my friends and I used to sit around and talk about women (and the chasing of them), I used to say that I was looking for somebody with three "G"s. I wanted somebody who was Genuine, Gentle, and Godly. (Kelly and I have often debated whether I have in fact gotten my wish list—I generally think she has a more gentle side than she recognizes herself.) There were two others aspects that, if pressed, I would have admitted pursuing. One is "Gorgeous", although I might not have confessed that because it doesn't sound too spiritual.The final element—and if I'm honest, this was at times the most important element of all—was that I was looking, quite simply, for a woman who would love me. For a while Kelly wasn't sure about that, and eventually, this was not just a peripheral issue, but THE issue. If she did in fact love me, we'd get married. If not, we were probably done. I knew I loved her, but if it didn't go both ways, I just wasn't willing to go any further.I suppose that isn't that uncommon. If you peel back the surface of what we all chase in relationships, it comes to this: we want somebody to love us. We just want to love someone and be loved back. All the world's tragedy and comedy comes down to this.And so we can only come to Hosea's story with bewilderment. While Hosea's marriage to Gomer was introduced in the first chapter, there it is essentially the context for the children and their prophetic names, in an account told by a third person narrator—"this is what happened to Hosea". In chapter 3, it takes center stage, in a first person account. This is Hosea saying, "This is my story." The first verse is enough for us to start with: "The Lord said to me again, Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods..."God invites Hosea to dive into God's own heart by entering into a relationship which he knows will be unreciprocal. God wants Hosea to love someone—not just marry them, but love them!—in the knowledge that his love will not be returned.You ever been there? Maybe not on purpose, but have you ever found yourself completely in love with someone that just wasn't that into you?That is simply one of the most painful things that can happen to humans—and it happens to most of us at some time or another.What is amazing is that God experiences this in his own heart. This is the most fundamental story we tell about God and his relationship with humans—God loves us, knowing that we often won't love him back. Indeed, this isn't accidental, but God created us with this precise possibility. God created us to live in community with him, but also created us with the possibility that we could choose to walk away from him. We often say that God did this so that our love would be of a certain kind—love freely given is the only kind that really matters, after all. I suppose there is a good bit of truth in that, but I think that this Hosea story reveals a deeper truth.The metaphor here works not because Gomer is going to love Hosea in a particularly powerful way after her faithlessness, although that is a possibility. Gomer's love simply isn't the point. It's all about Hosea's love—which of course means that it's all about God's love. See, God doesn't just give us freedom only for the sake of making sure that our love is free and thus particularly powerful. Even more, our freedom works to show us the incredible power of God's own love. God's love is a powerful "even though" sort of love that loves despite going unreturned. God loves even when repeatedly rejected.And yet, God's love always pursues us. God relentlessly chases us, desiring to draw us into relationship with him. God desires for us to respond to him, to freely come and join him. His desire in this text is that Israel would—eventually—come to love him, that eventually Israel would seek God out and join him. He desires the same of us, that as Ephesians says, we may have the power to comprehend the breadth, length, height and depth of God's love for us, and that perceiving that we may be live in the fullness of God, firmly rooted in his love. Radically, we might even take this further. Not only does he desire that we realize his love and return it to him, but God's vision for his people is that we join him in loving the world. Jesus roots his command that we love our enemies in exactly this, that this is how God loves the world. He knows it is different than how the world thinks about love—that's his point!
"You have heard it said, 'you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your father in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect." (Mt 5:43-48)
God loves even when his love is unreturned, and Jesus calls us to learn to love in exactly this way. Do we have the audacity to mimic God's love in our own lives—can we learn to love those who simply do not and will not love us back? Can we stop using our love simply as a tool to gain love back for ourselves? Once, God called the prophet Hosea to put his love—God's love— on display by loving someone who would not love him back—now he calls the church to do the same. We are called to be "Hoseas." Despite the knowledge that it will often be unreturned, we are called to love all—even our enemies. We do it in the hope that such love might communicate the unbelievable, relentless love of God—in the hope that even our enemies may be redeemed by God. And yet, even as we hope for their redemption, we are called to love regardless whether it ever has that effect or not. We are called to become like God, to break away from the limited nature of our natural way of loving. We are called to become, by the working of God's own spirit, capable of loving with God's own love.Thus the story of Hosea is a story of the gospel, that God loves us furiously. But that gospel is never for us alone. As soon as we grasp its meaning for ourselves, we are drawn into living it out for the world around us. We love with God's own love, for the sake of God's own glory. Amen.
Matthew's Genealogy and the End of the Exile
After reading N.T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God, I read Matthew's genealogy a little differently this morning.
Reflecting on the way I normally read Matthew's first chapter, I think I have typically read the counts that Matthew offers as simply being about the persons involved—Abraham to David, David to Jechoniah, and Jechoniah to Jesus. I've typically thought about that as one of the playful ways that Matthew, like the other gospels, shows that Jesus is in fact the Messiah. I suppose that reading is fine as far as it goes, but this morning a new layer seemed apparent.One of the insights from Wright that I found extremely helpful was the perspective that Israel still thought about itself as in exile into the new Testament period—indeed, for many Jews, long after that period. The spirit of the day was one of waiting for the promised day of Israel's full restoration from exile. (There is so much more to be said about this.)Reading Matthew with that perspective fresh on my mind, it's clear that the counted generations are not there simply to highlight certain people, but also the periods between those persons. So you're looking at the period leading up to the Davidic kingdom, the period of the rule of the Davidic kings, and the period of exile during which those kings lost their throne.What seems to me to be extremely significant in that reading is that by Matthew's reckoning, Jesus then represents the true end to the exile, the inauguration of a new period in the Davidic kingship. This doesn't deny my normal way of reading the text, but certainly shifts the emphasis towards what is happening with Israel in the coming of Jesus.
Reversal—A Sermon on Hosea 2
Hosea the prophet lives in a time of false security, when his nation manipulates politics to acquire a sense of independent security, and manipulates religion in an attempt to acquire economic stability. Their political/military life and their worship both lead them away from dependence on God, from faith. For both of these he speaks words of judgment, fiery words which call Israel (and now, the church) to see her sin for what it is, and to learn true repentance.We normally think of repentance as being about the past. We avoid it because we think it means a reliving of our worst mistakes, but nothing could be further than the truth. In repentance we confess and name our sin—not as a way of reliving it, but as a way of moving away from it. Repentance is about freedom from the past. Repentance is a consequence of hope. It grows out of two convictions about the future, convictions which Hosea leads us into by sharing God's mind with us.First, God owns the future. God declares the future through Hosea, not because he has some secret power of prediction, but because the future consists of the actions of God. God does not predict sports scores or the playing cards of a magician's trick, but is simply stating what he intends to do, with the knowledge that he can and will in fact do these things. While humans have plenty to say about what will happen in the mean time, the future—the ultimate future—will be as God wills. And so, God can declare that Israel will be exposed, that they will be stripped of all that they hold dear, that they will be confronted by the futility of their quests for power, security, and independence from him—not because it's a magical prediction, but because God himself will act to do these things. "I will strip her naked...I will expose her as in the day she was born...I will make her like a wilderness...I will turn her into a parched land...I will kill her with thirst...I will hedge up her way with thorns and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths...I will take back my grain, my wine, my wool and my flax...I will uncover her shame...I will put an end to her celebrations...I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees..." God can make these announcements because they are his actions. God is free and powerful to act in whatever way he wills. God owns the future.Second, God wants us to share his future. Hosea's word is ultimately one of invitation—God intensely desires for Israel to join him in the future. All of the judgments issued are for this purpose, and point toward the day of its completion, the day when Israel is restored to God. God acts to provoke a repentant response in Israel, so that she will come to freely love him and live in a covenant with God marked by peace, righteousness, justice, love, mercy, and faithfulness.What's remarkable about Hosea is the kind of language that God uses to describe his passionate desire for Israel to have a part in this future. God won't force Israel into repentance, but he will do almost anything else. Besides the prophetic word of warning, God flirts with Israel, gives her gifts, tries taking them away, exposes her other loves as frauds, finally draws her back out into the wilderness—like a husband who takes his wife back to the site of their honeymoon. He speaks softly to her, whispering, "we can just start over."His goal is the day when she responds with repentance, when she sees that he alone truly does own the future and yet offers her a place in it. His goal is a day of dramatic reversal, when all the pronouncements of judgment find their fulfillment—which is not to say, the destruction they foretell. No, Hosea's warnings only find their fulfillment in the repentance they are meant to provoke, whether or not that occurs before or after the impending calamity. His goal is the day when Israel responds with repentance, and all that is wrong can be made right.Hosea plays off of the warnings of chapter 1 to describe he dramatic reversal, flipping each name from its message or warning to one of hope. The stigma of bloodshed that brought about the name "Jezreel" will be replaced by the word's linguistic meaning—"God sows"—and God will plant the people in the land, establishing her with peace and abundance from his own hand, not as a result of her political or religious manipulation. To those whom he gave the name, "no mercy", he will now have mercy, and to those whom he called "not my people", he will again say, "you are my people." The renaming is completed, not by a word from God, but one from the people, as they finally and dramatically will say, "you are my God." God paints the picture of this future, seeking to inspire hope in Israel—for where hope lives, repentance is possible.Repentance happens in the lives of those who understand that God owns the future, and who believe they have a place in God's future. Reading Hosea now, some 2700 years later, and reading it on the other side of Jesus, we know that God has taken a dramatic step to bring about this future. While we wait for the final scene to begin, God has invited us to share in his future...now!God declares that his rule will be over all the earth, and in repentance we begin to live in that future now; we join God now, leaving the past behind and orienting ourselves by a future that redeems the present.And so it is that within these words of warning there is also a seed of hope, the promise of God's willingness to honor repentance, his burning desire to take back what belongs to him and make right what has been broken. I urge you to heed the warning that the future belongs to God, to take on the hope that he has a place for you within it, and to let it that hope bring forth the repentance by which God may enact his reversal.
Location in Hosea
Read through Hosea a few times, and you'll soon pick up on how frequently Hosea's prophecies are rooted in particular places. There are about 34 references to 20 different places in the book—a fairly dense concentration for a book of only 14 chapters! Some of them are familiar because of references in other biblical books, but others are fairly obscure to us, and we can only guess to their import by looking at the kinds of things Hosea has to say about them.What's interesting to me is the effect of rooting these poetic poems, which could be simply abstractions, in the concrete world of these specific places. Often that means the poem is bound to a narrative, or even a set of narratives, that comes with the location. All of this works throughout Hosea to give the book a sharp historical focus and feel, even if the specific force is lost on us as readers separated by a great distance. What's important is to pick up on the sense of place in the poetry. When you read the book as a whole, and get beyond the strange archaic place names, the continuing cadence of places helps pull the poetry out of the sky, planting it firmly on the earth.Here's a list of all the places that show up in Hosea, with some brief references to what makes some of them significant. This list doesn't include Israel, Ephraim, Judah, Assyria, or Egypt, since they are all significant enough either as places or players in the drama that I want to give them their own space.Jezreel and the Valley of Jezreel (Hosea 1:4, 5, 11, 2:22) This is perhaps one of the easier places to identify in the book, and its mention is by no means incidental. Indeed, God's instruction for Hosea to name his firstborn "Jezreel" signals the significance of the place for Hosea's message. Unfortunately, although it's easy to see that it is significant, it's not nearly as easy to see precisely why it's significant. The principle text is probably the explanation given for the name. The NRSV translates the key part of Hosea 1:4 like this: "for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel." Another rendering might be "in a little while I will apply the blood of Jezreel to the house of Jehu..." That more literal translation is only helpful in that it shows a little bit if the ambiguity in this text. It could mean that the same sort of violence that took place at Jezreel in the time of Jehu (2 Kings 9-10) is about to be reenacted—another Jezreel is coming. I think o this interpretation as being something along the lines of "you came to power by the sword, and you'll now lose power by the sword." Or, what seems more natural to me, it could mean that the violence of Jehu is about to be paid for by his descendants. This reading is, of course, more problematic since Jehu clearly acted by divine authorization. Perhaps he went beyond God's instructions? Or, perhaps the texts here are simply in tension.The Valley of Achor (Hosea 2:15) The Valley of Achor isn't very prominent in the Old Testament except in Joshua 7. "Achor" means "trouble", and the story in Joshua is when Achan brings "trouble" for the people after taking silver dedicated to God (for destruction) from Jericho. Hosea playfully reverses the name.Gilgal (Hosea 4:15, 9:15 12:11) has a little bit of a longer history. Hosea's references could both refer to the tradition of God reluctantly allowing the people to have a king at Gilgal (1 Samual 10-11), or simply to worship at the shrine there. Bethel (Hosea 10:15, 12:4) or Beth-aven (Hosea 4:15, 5:8 10:5, 8 ) is an official shrine in Northern kingdom, created by Jeroboam as the kingdom divided (1 Kings 12). Only having the one temple in Judah would have subverted the northern kingdom's independence for which Jeroboam was fighting. Supposedly devoted to worship of Yahweh (1 Kings 12), the shrine is often the target of prophetic scorn. Hosea's mocking nickname, "Beth-aven (house of trouble)" shows he does not really consider the shrine "Beth-el (house of God)."Mizpah (Hosea 5:1), Tabor (Hosea 5:1), Shittim (Hosea 5:2) All seem to be simply mentioned because of idolatrous worship.Gibeah (Hosea 5:8, 9:9 10:9) and Ramah (Hosea 5:8) are situated in Benjamin, placing them on the fringe of the southern kingdom, between Jerusalem and the armies of the North. Gibeah is the site of a crazy episode in Judges 19-21.Benjamin (Hosea 5:8) is a small tribe that became a part of the southern kingdom. It was on the northern border of the southern kingdom, though, and thus at the center of conflict.Adam (Hosea 6:7) seems to be a location unknown to us in the rest of the canon (or archaeologically). Of course, some take this to be the "Adam" of Genesis rather than a place, but I tend to think of it in terms of a place here.Gilead (Hosea 6:8 12:11) Shechem (Hosea 6:9) The references to these cities in chapter six perhaps regard political assassination (2 Kings 15:25).Samaria (Hosea 8:6 13:16) Is the capital of the northern kingdom, and also a site of a shrine for worship.Peor (Hosea 9:10) Shrine. (At this point, you're getting the idea.)Admah and Zeboiim (Hosea 11:8) seem to be simply cities that would evoke a memory of tragedy.Aram (13:12), or Syria, is the nation to the Northeast of Israel. During Hosea's time period it was an ally against Assyria and Judah. (The conflict born out of this alliance is known as the "Syrio-ephraimatic war"Lebanon (Hosea 14:5, 6, 7), the nation to the north of Israel along the coast, is often referenced in the Old Testament for the sake of its trees and lush landscape.
Names—A Sermon on Hosea 1
At the market, a man picks vegetables, tying to decide between the vegetables. He thumps a melon, scans the cucumbers, and inspects the onions. He notices a cute little girl playing with her brother near his basket and smiles at them. He turns to their parents who are standing nearby and, in the chatty way that people sometimes talk at the market, asks a normal question: "Your kids are beautiful. What are their names?"The parents expression darkens—the mother turns away, finding something else to do. The father's eyes narrow, and he steps closer. Pointing straight at the little girl, he says, "We call her 'unloved'. Unloved." Not knowing how to respond, the man shuffles his feet a bit, and finally says, "And the boy?""Not mine.""Oh, I'm sorry, I thought...""No, that's his name. His name is 'not-mine.' "Hosea is a shocking story. It does not allow for passive bland reading, and I assure you it does not consist of passive, bland writing. It opens with the story of Hosea's family—a family whose very existence could not but shock literally everyone who met them. The book of Hosea consists mostly prophetic poetry. Not the poetry which many of us have in mind—the dry tedious metered verses we labored to understand as school kids. This is the kind of poetry that Walter Brueggemann describes as "shattering, evocative speech that breaks fixed conclusions and presses us always toward new, dangerous, imaginative possibilities." (Finally Comes the Poet, 6) Hosea is full of wrecking-ball language, the kind that comes to destroy the peace of the present for the sake of the future.The book opens with a narrative, but the story is just as disturbing as the poetry that follows. In fact, we might think of the story as a setting for three brief, super dense poems—the names of the children. After all, even within the story, it's the word—the word from the Lord—that really matters.So in what was already a weird marriage (more on that when we get to chapter 3), three children are born, and given names that are extremely disturbing.It starts off with a son, who Hosea is told to name Jezreel. Hosea is prophesying during the reign of Jeroboam II, somewhere in the middle of the eighth century BC, in the northern Kingdom that we normally just call Israel. In the southern kingdom, which we call Judah, there had been stable dynasty for over two hundred years—the descendants of David. But in the north it had never really been like that. It was a country born out of rebellion, and which had seen it's share over the years. One of the most vicious upheavals had been at the hands of Jeroboam's grandfather Jehu. Granted, the dynasty in power before then (you remember Ahab and Jezebel, right?) had it coming, but when Jehu took up the sword to seize the throne he went above and beyond The site where all this went down was the city "Jezreel". So Hosea names his firstborn son after the site of a famous bloodbath, with a finger pointed straight at the king. "It's your turn, Jeroboam. The same violence that began your family's reign will soon put it too an end. It's time for another Jezreel."While the historical specificity of the name "jezreel" may protect us from the cold challenge the word contains, our own reactions intensify with the name of the second child. I mean, seriously, who would name a child "unloved"? The second child's name—"Lo-Ruhamah"—means exactly that.In 1920 a young woman named Josephine Dickenson worked hard to be the best housewife she could be, spending a lot of time on that one task of getting supper ready for her husband, Earle, before he got home from his job as a cotton buyer. Unfortunately, she was a little accident prone, and was constantly nicking her fingers with knives and getting little burns. Earle's first job when he got home was usually to help her dress the wounds. Finally he decided to come up with a way to make it possible for her to do this by herself before he got home, by rolling out a long strip of adhesive tape and placing little squares of cotton at intervals, so that she could just cut off a piece, wrap it on her fingers, and keep going. After that proved to be a great solution, he took his idea to his employer, Johnson & Johnson, and so was born the "band-aid". Sales didn't go too well at first, but WWII picked things up, as did the company's brilliant move in 1951 to start making band-aids with cartoon characters on them. After all, what kid can resist a sticker that comes with compassion?Part of my role as "daddy" is "band-aid dispenser." Now sure, there are times when I just kiss the supposed boo-boo and try to convince the child that it's not that big of a deal, but sometimes, when a kid is just absolutely certain that the wound is a matter of life and death, the best thing to do is to get the band-aid on and give some hugs and kisses, right?And that's just the small stuff. How many of us would refuse to give care to a child—any child, not even our own—if we went outside in this very moment and found one gravely injured? Who among us would just shake our heads and walk away? Who can refuse compassion to a child?That's why the second name is so shocking. "Lo-Ruhamah." The prophetic word means "uncared-for", "unpitied". God, who has always acted with mercy, pity, compassion for Israel since the day he heard their groaning in Egypt, will do so no more.That sense is intensified with the third name, "Lo-Ammi", or "not my people." Israel's fundamental identity was the covenant people of God, whom God had specially chosen, and called as his people. God's covenant was summed up in the phrase "You shall be my people, and I shall be your God." Now that is reversed—the very identity of the nation is reversed!—and God declares, "you are not my people." This prophetic word disowns the people.That is intensified by a fourth name here, one that is somewhat masked by the translation. In Hosea 1:9 most of the translations read something like "For you are not my people and I am not your God." That's not a bad translation, but it masks some of the punch. What the second part of that sentence says is kind of awkward in Hebrew, but literally reads, "And I am not 'I am' to you." God takes back his own name! God doesn't just put these odd names on the children, but changes his own name here, revokes the name which he had revealed to Moses at the burning bush. This is the ultimate message of the names—the world you live in is about to be undone. Everything from the seeming security of your monarchy to the relationship you have with God, even the very name which you know God by—all of it is undone by your sin. All of it is coming apart.The names provoke us. Why? What's the big deal? Why all the fuss? The names shock us. The question, "Who would ever name their kid that?" gets our attention so that God can look us in the eyes and speak to us about how serious sin is.And yet, even within these names and their word of judgement there is the seed of grace. Hosea will speak to the people of a repentance that can change the future, so that "Not my people can once again be called simply, "my people", and "unloved" will be called simply "loved". Hosea will offer a word of eventual reversal, when what is wrong will be made right. But don't read ahead to all of that, not just yet anyways. First, let this word of judgment break into your world, and ask yourself, "What is it in my life that needs to be undone." That word of redemption can only be heard once we hear the word of judgment and digest its reality. So today, we'll let that seed of grace wait for its time, and hear this single important word from the Lord—to walk away from him means death. Digest that reality.And then, the God who changes reality can act.
Historical Background of Hosea—Baal and Idolatry
The second major background factor that we need to grasp somewhat to read Hosea well is the worship of the Canaanite god Baal(s). (The first is the Assyrian crisis, discussed here.) The name "Baal" shows up seven times in Hosea (2:8, 2:13, 2:16, 2:17, 9:10, 11:2, 13:1); four of those instances are in chapter 2. Besides these explicit references, the worship of such gods is a prominent theme in Hosea, and it would be well for anyone reading the book to have some sort of an idea of what is going on."Baal" was something of a general name for a variety of deities, some of which were conceptualized as being particularly localized, some of which were seen as more general gods in the polytheistic mindset of ancient Canaan. How the various religious shines serving deities known as Baals should be identified as a consistent religious movement is something of an open question (at least in my mind).
Scholars gained substantial knowledge of Baal in the archaeological site of Ugarit, which was a Canaanite city northwest of Israel up until around 1200 BC. At the site were, among many other finds, documents from the Baal cults themselves—documents which were much more sympathetic to the god and its worshippers than were the Bible and its prophets! As should be obvious even reading the Bible, the religious landscape in ancient Israel contained devotees of other gods besides Yahweh, and often a syncretistic outlook which sought to incorporate the Lord into a wider pantheon.Basically, (severe oversimplification ahead) Baal was the god who ensured that the land yielded its crops. Baal was the rain/storm god, the god of the fertile land. Baal and his female counterpart(s) were worshiped in a cyclical patter following the seasons of the year. By ritual and sacrifice, worshippers sought to ensure that Baal would bring the rains necessary to grow crops—it was all about making sure they had food to eat.There has been a good bit of speculation and thought of how some of the rituals associated with Baal and his female counterpart Asherah contained an explicit sexual element. As a symbol of fertility, worship at the various shrines may have included some sort of sexual ritual. In the ancient worldview accompanying such religion, the sympathetic practice of a "magical" sexual rite may have been parallel with nature, particularly the fertilization of the earth (Asherah) by the rain (Baal). The rituals were a way of manipulating the gods, thereby manipulating nature. Baal worship was all about using ritual to control the forces of nature and get what you want. We should note at this point that commonly worship of the Lord devolves into the same thing. Hosea seems to observe such in his own day, and rails against that just as much as he does explicit worship as Baal. Worshipping Yahweh as though he were Baal is just as bad as worshipping Baal himself. Thus, the material against idolatry in Hosea actually fits well with the themes related to Israel's attempts to provide itself security in the face of the the threat from the rising Assyrian empire. Both are about the illusion of control—one the manipulation of politics to attain security, the other the manipulation of religion to attain abundance.Neither is acceptable to the Yahweh of Hosea.
Historical Background of Hosea—Assyria
Over the next month I'll be working through Hosea in sermons and some blog posts. The short book of powerful prophetic poetry (accompanied by two brief narrative sections), cannot be read in strict isolation. It contains virtually no historical context, and without at least some knowledge of the setting the prophetic words are almost impossible to consider rightly. There are at least two elements which need to be briefly described and grasped on some level before Hosea can really come to life for us. First, we must get a sense of the rise of the Assyrian empire, and how Israel responded to that rise, which is the subject of this post. Secondly, we must consider the nature of the Baal worship that Hosea so sharply criticizes. While other historical and cultural factors certainly add color to our reading of Hosea, these two simply cannot be ignored if we are to grasp the essence of the book's message. On the bright side, if you get these two down a little bit, Hosea is going to make enough sense to you for you to absorb some of its raw and powerful poetic punch.
The resurgence and expansion of the Assyrian empire in the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries BCE dominated the geo-political world of the Ancient Near East. In what historians refer to as the Neo-Assyrian period, a succession of ambitious and capable rulers built an empire capable of efficiently expanding through vicious military campaigns. Israel, located to the south-West of Assyria, would become Assyrian prey early on, paying tribute first of all in 841 BCE during the reign of Israel's king Jehu.Paying tribute essentially meant that the nation was formally submitting to the authority of the Assyrian emperor. By paying up, the smaller nation became a "vassal" to Assyria, or fell under Assyrian protection (think of a Godfather scenario if it helps you). Of course, the primary protection offered was from Assyria itself. Assyria was either your best ally or your worst nightmare. In order to avoid the Assyrian onslaught, neighboring kings such as Israel's were forced to make massive payments. As a result, the nations were constantly balancing the burden of making the tribute verses the temptation to rebel and seek security elsewhere.
For the Northern Kingdom of Israel, Jehu in 841 was to pay the tribute Assyria demanded, but it seems that at some point soon after Israel slipped away for nearly a hundred years without paying up. Tiglath-Pilezer (Pul in the Bible) reasserted the empire's dominance by collecting tribute from Israel during the reign of Menahem, sometime around 742 BC.Each time a new ruler came to either nation, the opportunity arose for Israel to rethink the relationship with Assyria. Further, the rising and falling of Egyptian power during that same time frame appeared at times to provide an alternative to Assyrian allegiance. There was a substantial ongoing rivalry between the Egyptian and Assyrian rulers, and Israel was sandwiched pretty squarely between the two. Depending on what they thought were their best interests, the rulers of Israel sometimes used Assyria as a shield against Egypt, and sometimes flirted with Egypt as an ally against Assyria. The result of all that was that for the last 120 years of its existence, ancient Israel vacillated between accepting and living under Assyrian rule and rebelling against it. Eventually Assyria got tired of the games and in a couple of different stages wiped Israel off the map.Hosea was active as a prophet over the 25 years or so of this process, from about 750-722 BC. That was an extremely fluid period of time for Israel politically, with seven different kings sitting on the throne of during that period of time. Four of those were assassinated, and the throne of Assyria also changed hands three different times. This was in no way a period of political stability.Hosea begins his prophetic period during a time of relative stability during the reign of Jeroboam II, which ended with his death around 746 BC, a year after Tiglath-Pileser III rose to power in Assyria. Jeroboam's son Zachariah took the throne, but within six months was assassinated by Shallum, who briefly took the throne before being assassinated himself within a month by one of the army's generals who didn't accept his claim to the throne. Menahem, who took the throne from Shallum, soon began paying tribute to Assyria, to the tune of some 37 tons of silver. He ruled for about ten years before dying and being succeeded by his son, Pekahiah. Pekaniah ruled for two years before Pekah murdered him and took the throne. Pekah, apparently supposing that the tribute being paid was too high, allied himself with Rezin, king of Damascus to the north, to try and rebel against Assyria and throw off the tribute. They attempted to force Judah's king Ahaz to join their rebellion, sparking what we call the Syrio-Ephraimatic war between Israel/Syria and Judah. Ahaz, however, appealed to Tiglath-Pileser in Assyria, and the Assyrians sometime in 733/732 invaded Syria, sacking Damascus and capturing Rezin, as well as taking major portions of land away from Israel. In the midst of this crisis, Hoshea assassinated Pekah, seized the throne, and reestablished the tribute to Assyria, effectively getting the Assyrians off Israel's back. After Tiglath-Pileser's death in 727, and the ascension of his son Shamaneser V to the throne, King Hoshea seems to have believed that the time was right for revolt again, perhaps because the country had regained some military capability after the 732 disaster. This deadly miscalculation brought the Assyrian army again to Israel, and although Shalmaneser himself died while besieging Samaria, Sargon II completed the job. Thousands were taken into exile, and the northern kingdom of Israel was no more. All of this is wound into the prophetic poems of Hosea. Israel is sometimes cozying up to the Assyrian Emperor, and at other times believing that they will be strong enough on their own to resist the powerful empire, or that with the help of Egypt or another ally they might achieve security. Hosea provides a theological interpretation of this developing crisis, and the word which he provides from the Lord here offers instruction to any who suppose their own means of security to be sufficient. While later posts and sermons can unpack some of those more theological thoughts, I might make one general note here.In Hosea's view, the world in which we can make ourselves completely safe through political manipulation, military power, or financial accumulation does not exist. As much as we want to believe that is the world we live in, ultimately, it is an illusion. Part of Hosea's prophetic role was to proclaim that the things Israel counted on for security could not protect them from God's judgment.
Shepherds and the Story—A Sermon about Elders
I've been thinking about how our understanding of elders and their roles as shepherds relates to the big picture, the story the church has been brought into by Jesus. With elders, as with many other parts of church life, it's too easy to think about them in isolation, as though we can simply turn to the proper chapters of scripture that address them and retrieve the list of rules that will tell us what to do. A much healthier approach is to start with the larger story in which we live, and let our understanding of the church's shepherds grow out of that context, out of that story.That larger story announces the reality of God's reign in the world and his willingness to love and redeem the world. It is the story of how the creator God remains concerned with his creation, and is active within it. It is the story of how that God made for himself a people, by making covenant with Abraham, and with his rescued descendants at Sinai. It tells of God's pursuit of Israel even when the covenant was broken. It tells how, in Jesus, God has made a new covenant with his people and opened the door for men and women of all nations to join Israel in becoming the covenant people of God. That story offers a way for humans to live within God's reign, and warns of judgment for those who continue to live in rebellion against God's reign. That story brings humans into participation in God's plan to fight the darkness that has corrupted the world, and announces that his victory is certain, and what is wrong will be made right.The church exists because of that story. It exists in that story. And it exists as an expression of that story.When we talk about shepherds and elders, we can't jump out of that story and imagine that we're just dealing with a simple fact of ordering religious life. The shepherds actually function, like the rest of the church, within the context of that larger story.As God's announcement of his reign became known in the world through the ministry and resurrection of Jesus, it was made known concretely to a group of disciples who became apostles, carrying the word into new territories, establishing colonies of disciples who took on the story of God and began to live it out in community together, and in relation to their neighbors in the cities and towns where they lived. Those apostles and their coworkers were charged with delivering the story to the world around them, and were highly mobile. Because of that, as they founded new communities, it became clear early on that within each new community of disciples there would need to be people who could function as "stewards" of the story, who could take responsibility to oversee how the community of faith lived out that story as "church". Those overseers (elders, bishops, pastors) became shepherds of the church, and bore several responsibilities in regard to the story that was driving the church. They still bear those responsibilities.Shepherds tell the story. That means they should be able to share the gospel, be able to articulate the gospel story, and teach others what it means to live that story. Both 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 refer to the need that those who become elders should be able to teach. That doesn't mean they're required to have great class management skills, but that they understand the gospel and are capable of sharing that story. Shepherds are storytellers, because the story of God's work isn't something we hear once and are done with, but we hear it over and over again, the church has to be immersed in the story, understanding the big picture and learning over time the finer points of what it means to live with God.One of the reasons the shepherds have to be continually telling the story is because the story is always vulnerable to distortion. People subvert the christian story for a lot of different reasons, replacing it with stories of gods who are legalistic, absent, only interested with the spiritual, spiteful, or apathetic to sin. Therefore, beyond being tellers of the story, shepherds guard the story. When scripture uses the language of guarding the flock, and defending the truth, it says the church needs people who can make sure that the alternative stories that threaten to draw people away from the one true gospel story are challenged and defeated. There is a definitive story that defines the church. That story can't be changed at whim.The relationship between the shepherds and the story goes much further than the types of things they might say about the story, though. Perhaps one of their most important roles as stewards of the story is being an example to the flock of what it means to live out the story—shepherds display the story. They extend the story by showing what it means to live in God's kingdom in work and play, within family and within a neighborhood. To say they are stewards of the story doesn't mean they hold an abstracted truth within their minds, but rather it means that the story has become enfleshed in them. they are committed to living faithfully in family life, to restraining themselves in terms of greed or argumentation, and living fully aware—refusing to drunkenly numb themselves or lose control of their lives to anything but the will of God. In all of this and more they put on display what it means to submit to the reign of God, and what it means to walk in God's presence and grace.Good shepherds understand as well that it's not all about them. they play a part in the story, but they are also mindful of what it means for the rest of their community to find its place in God's story. They are aware of doing the work God places in their hands, but also of helping the other disciples discern what it means for them to play a part in the story. Shepherds draw their flock into God's story. They can do that in some surprising ways.When shepherds encourage someone among us to find their ministry, equip them to do the ministry, and entrust them to do the work God has prepared for them, they help draw us into the story, into participation with God's work.When shepherds stand with us in crisis, they are a reminder that God is with us and active in our lives, they draw us out into the story, helping us interpret the crises and their places in our lives as part of God's story.When shepherds mourn with those who mourn, they help that mourning be placed in context and draw people into God's story—in which death loses its power.When shepherds celebrate with those who celebrate, they help interpret the moment as having holy significance, like all moments do. In so reminding us, they draw us into the story which is not yet finished, but ongoing.Shepherds are storytellers. they guard and defend the story, and display the story by living in such a way that the story is enfleshed in them. But they also draw us out with them into the story, so that it might be enfleshed in us as well. May it ever be so, for the sake of God's glory. Amen.
I Just Wanna be a Sheep (Baaaa)—A Sermon on Receiving Shepherding
A couple of years ago a movie was released that I suppose a few have seen, although I have not and hopefully presume that not many of you have either. Indeed, it is astonishing that there was a market at all for Black Sheep. The film is set on a sheep farm in New Zealand, and tells the story of a farm where a bit of genetic engineering goes terribly awry, creating a new breed of—wait for it—Zombie Sheep. Yes, Zombie Sheep. The generally docile creatures turn bloodthirsty, devouring whatever humans they can find, and in true Zombie film fashion, develop the ability to turn some of the bitten farmers into mutant were-sheep—hideous creatures covered with wool, frenzied and ready to join the attacking horde-flock in their quest to devour the remaining humans.This may well be a parable of the church.While much attention continues to be given (appropriately) to training leaders and discussing the evolving model of elderships within churches, but we need to talk more about the other side of the relationship—what we sheep bring to our relationship with our shepherds. Like any relationship, we can't work on only one side of the equation. For our model of shepherding to become truly effective, it can't just be about the shepherds. We have to also develop our sense of what it means to receive shepherding. You can't have good healthy shepherds in a church full of bloodthirsty zombie sheep.Scripture says something really interesting about this in Hebrews 13, which reads "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls and will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with sighing—for that would not be beneficial to you." Working on the sheep side of the relationship with shepherds doesn't just make their job more enjoyable for their sake, but it actually helps us, the sheep. When we engage our shepherds and willingly receive the shepherding they offer us, it is to our great advantage, because it creates the possibility of the sort of shepherding relationships we need—shepherds who show us grace, teach us the word, and help us carry our burdens when we are weak.But how can we have shepherds who show grace if we don't have sheep who show vulnerability? How can we have shepherds who teach if we don't have sheep who are eager to learn? How can we have shepherds who help the weak carry their burdens unless we are willing to freely admit our own weaknesses and accept help when it's offered to us?The shepherds don't function in isolation from the body, but function as a part of a body, as an expression of what God is doing in the church as a whole. And the relationship between how the shepherds do their work and how we do ours is one in which the church grows as every piece does its part, as each one of us contributes to the sort of community in which good healthy shepherding naturally happens. The eldership has a role in helping us become the kind of church we need to be, but we must also recognize that the church has a role in helping the elders become the kinds of shepherds they need to be.We need shepherds who help us hear the word, so that we can be formed by it and hear exactly what we need to take the next steps in growth. But to be able to do that, the elders need us to be willing to share with them where we already are in our process of growth. They need us to become candid about where we have grown, where God is working on us now, and where we are struggling in our faith. This is challenging, because we want to pretend that we're all in the same place, that we're all growing in exactly the same way, in exactly the same time—or worse, we want to pretend like we don't need to grow at all. We treat Christian maturity as if it's an all or nothing deal, as if we come up out of the water as fully formed disciples and there is nothing left to do but just hold on and hope we don't mess up. But in reality, we always need to be fed, we always need to grow.Elders have a teaching role, not just in classes or big public settings, but as a part of their relationship with their sheep, they naturally feed the sheep with insight from the word. I remember hearing Brent say that an important part of his role is to help people in struggle see their situation from a spiritual perspective, to help them see themselves in a way informed by scripture. And we need that, don't we? We need people who can come alongside us to speak to where we're at. But, how can that happen unless we're willing to be honest about where we really are—not just in times of obvious crisis, but in the routine times that make up so much of our lives and where most of our growing takes place.We need shepherds who will walk with us in all of life. Not just because they're elders, but because they are simply part of the church, and that's what church folk do—we walk with each other. We take care of each other, experience life with each other. Like Paul says:
"But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it." -1 Cor 12:24-26
That's for everybody, whether we think of ourselves as leaders or not—the church is built to be a community of people who live life together, and who share the ups and downs of life together. Good pastoral care doesn't happen in a church where the shepherds are the only ones doing it. It happens best in communities that understand that we all—each one of us—has an obligation to look out for each other. Ken has talked with me about continuing to build a culture of pastoral care in the church where it's not just about the elders, but about all of us pitching in to care for each other. In that culture, the elders are shepherds who lead by example. Shepherds give care to the hurting, but not alone. They lead a community that cares for the hurting among us.And not just in times of struggle! As we walk together, we learn to give God glory for all the different ways he is at work in our lives. Lance wrote to me that one of the things that has most surprised him about being an elder is how he started noticing how the Spirit was at work in so many lives around the church—Not because of anything special about him being and elder, but because he started opening his eyes and noticing more. He wrote, "I am constantly amazed how the Word of God transforms, grows and matures the believer...To increase my awareness of God growing so many members’ spiritual lives has been a surprise I was not expecting." Maybe our shepherds could help us recognize more and more of those ways God is at work—but how will that happen unless we make a commitment to share more of our lives with them, to let them walk with us? How will we recognize God's work in each other unless we're walking with each other?As we developed the process we're using this time to appoint additional elders, Tom reminded us that we needed to build in, from the beginning, some way of gauging the willingness of men to serve. The concept of willingness is critical to the role—we must have willing elders, willing shepherds. First Peter uses that language, that elders should serve willingly, not under compulsion, even eagerly. It's also true on the other end—we must have members who willingly receive shepherding. Willing shepherds, and willing sheep. Willingness may come easily to neither. But that spirit of willingness is at the heart of the church.Remember Mark 10? It was in a discussion of who in the community of disciples would lead and who would be led that Jesus told the disciples that he himself “had come not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” In discussing their willingness to serve each other, Jesus called the disciples to consider his own willingness to walk the way of the cross. To close this morning, I want to call you to do the same: consider Jesus. Is there anything in this sermon that exceeds the cross? In the cross, Jesus becomes the ultimate willing shepherd, and paradoxically, the best example of a willing sheep.In this, as in everything, may we only follow him.