Steven Hovater

Author: Steven Hovater

  • The Story (As Told by Steven, at This Moment, in This Place)

    I’ve been thinking a good bit lately about the nature of scripture, and particularly the grand narrative of the biblical text. There are a lot of synopses of the story,  but I’ve been tinkering with my own, a task that might not be a bad idea for most believers to work on every now and then. Recognizing that such a synopsis necessarily leaves things out and focuses on some elements at the expense of others, I’d love a little feedback on where I’m at with this version. I mean “Version” pretty intentionally, recognizing that it reads a little differently than it would have a year ago, or likely will a year from now. What’s here is a reflection of the story I see myself in right now. What do you see as missing or distorted here?

    The world and humanity were created by God, but became estranged from God because of human sin, and thus the world became broken. As a result, God set about revealing Himself to Abraham and his descendants, forming them into a people whose destiny was the blessing of the world—God would reconcile himself to humanity through Israel, and thereby heal what was broken.Although it appeared God’s plan would at times be thwarted by Israel’s unfaithfulness and resulting exile, God continued to pursue his plan through Israel, and eventually was victorious in creating the possibility of true reconciliation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. After his resurrection, God began using Jesus’s followers to proclaim the message of his reign, and to exemplify that reign within a new form of human community which we know as church. The church carries out that mission today, while trusting the promise that at some point God will assert his ruling authority over the whole earth, and thus bring the world back into its proper state. At that time there will be a resurrection of those faithful to Jesus, what was broken will be made right, and God’s reign will be fully realized.

    I’d love to hear your feedback on this!

  • Using Questions to Teach

    Discussing Discussions

    Increasingly, adult education in churches has depended upon discussion formats and less on lecture formats.  An increasing number of students expect there to be some level of discussion, whether that takes place in smaller discussion groups or with a larger class as a whole.  This shift has some very positive qualities to it, as it enables perspectives to be heard that otherwise would not, asks students to contribute from their own experiences, and think on an application level.  It also can help produce a warm, casual, and comfortable environment.The shift has negatives as well, though, which often go unnoticed in the rush to adopt the new style of teaching.  It’s easy to imagine that because of the time used by discussion, then the teacher needs less time to prepare for the class.  As a result, sometimes discussion times are used as a crutch to cover over poor class preparation.  This robs the class!  It’s important to make sure that we are using discussion as a tool for the right reason.  As a teacher, I have to ask, am I doing this just to take some of the pressure off of myself, or because it’s what everybody expects, or is it the best way to accomplish the goals of the class?  Starting off with the right reasons for using discussion as a mode of teaching goes a long way towards making sure I’m using it the right way, because done properly, managing and encouraging effective discussions is a lot of work!  It takes thinking ahead, using the right balance of active energy and passive receptivity to elicit the right responses, and using the right kinds of questions. 

    Good Questions

    But what are the right kinds of questions?  It takes some skill and practice to realize what will work and what won’t when preparing to lead discussions, and even master teachers sometimes ask a dud.  Here are some things to keep in mind as you develop the skill of leading discussions and grow into a master teacher! What’s the purpose of this question?  Is it to discover new perspectives or to just get everybody talking?  Am I trying to get people to provide information or express feelings?  Think through what you want to accomplish with each question you ask.  How does it fit into the overall plan for your class?  Does it contribute to what you are wanting to accomplish, or does it just fill space?How many different answers to this question are possible?  A question that has only one right answer is a dead end discussion.  Most people won’t even give that answer, because they sense the dead air that’s going to follow it.  A good discussion question has not only the possibility, but the probability of many different answers.Who can reasonably respond to this question?  In a related sense, there are some questions that only invite certain members of the class to respond.  Does the question require extensive pre-knowledge to answer, or a certain type of job or life experience?  This isn’t a deal-killer for a discussion question, but it can help you think through what is likely to happen and what is not likely to result from a particular discussion question.What can I follow the discussion with in order to enrich the discussion and validate it?  This is both a question of preparation and one that is ongoing in the mind of the teacher in the middle of the discussion.  This does not only mean validating the responses given, but demonstrating that the whole discussion moves the class closer to a desired goal.How does the Word respond to the discussion?  In completing the process, what are some ways that scripture might respond to the discussion, or add to it?

  • Preaching on Power

    I am super-stoked about preaching this weekend. It’s about power, which underlies so much of the world, but of which we speak so inadequately about. Here is some of the design work that goes with the sermon.

    Sometimes the sermon comes easier than others. This week’s had to go through a lot of wrestling, but in the end, after a lot of listening and struggle, I’m extremely excited to share it with the church.

    “They sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”

  • Naming the Elephant: Worldview as Concept by James Sire

    Lately I’ve been writing and thinking about how reading the Bible works as a formative practice, and it’s led me to think about the concept of worldview.  I found James Sire’s Naming the Elephant helpful in thinking about the concept, both as an abstraction and in terms of the worldviews I see at work in our community. Personally, Sire’s book helped me come towards a better articulation of my own worldview.Sire has been interested in worldview studies for a while. I know his book The Universe Next Door was used at Harding while I was there, and having gone through several editions, it’s probably been as influential in the way evangelicals think about worldview as anything else, particularly in how we see the differences between ourselves and other faith traditions.  As you would imagine, that has some intense missiological implications, and thus Sire has probably been read mostly in that context.This shorter book is particularly interested in teasing out the worldview concept itself, and Sire is candid about places where he felt his earlier definitions and examples have perhaps fallen short. Here, he surveys of perspectives on the worldview concept from philosophical, theological, and sociological sources to give a better articulation to what he means by this root concept. Ultimately, he comes the following well-thought definition:

    A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being.

    Most of the book, which is a quick read at 160 short pages, is the work of setting up this definition and giving it substantial nuance. He teases it out against the backdrop of worldview thinkers over the past two centuries—this is not a casual definition. Sire’s work on critically thinking through the implications of his definition is evident throughout the book, and the little book is quite worthwhile for that reason. The descriptions of Sire’s wrangling with the philosophical decision between the priority of ontology over epistemology is interesting, as is his writing about his growing recognition of the importance of story as a vehicle for worldview.Less satisfactory are the questions Sire offers as a mechanism for teasing out particular worldviews. He sticks to his guns with the following seven questions, although through the text he expands the questions as including more than they seem to on the surface.

    1. What is the prime reality—the really real.2. What is the nature of external reality, that is, the world around us?3. What is a human being?4. What happens to a person at death?5. Why is it possible to know anything at all?6. How do we know what is right and wrong?7. What is the meaning of human history?

    Sire has used these same questions for years, and in Naming the Elephant he interacts with questions posed by different authors and compares them to his own. There are a couple of places where I still think better questions exist.For instance, Sire discusses a set of questions posed by Walsh and Middleton,”Who are we? Where are we? What’s wrong?” and “What’s the solution?”. Sire wishes to subsume the first (Who are we?) within question 3 above, which seems fair, as does his inclusion of “Where are we”? within number 2 above. However, he also wishes to include the last two (What’s wrong? and What’s the solution?) within questions 6 and 7 above, and it really seems to me that as a set they function importantly enough to merit their own place in worldview analysis.Another criticism of the book might be that Sire’s assumptions about the Christian worldview seem to me to bypass critical theological issues. Of course, that’s not a fair criticism, since Sire isn’t really doing formal theology here, but implicitly doing practical theology, and his assumptions probably do reflect a good bit of ground level theological thinking in the sort of folk Christianity that exists in America. Beyond that, Sire recognizes that when he talks about a “Christian worldview” he is really thinking about his own worldview, which he perceives to be Christian. By and large I think he’s correct, and articulates the main parts of what might be fairly called Christian worldviews accurately.This is a fantastic little book. Sire is, for the most part, fair and measured in his analysis, and recognizes his own commitments as they come up within his argument.  Ultimately I think Sire moves the concept of worldview forward in helpful ways, and provides a good resource for anyone wanting to understand themselves, or the world around them, with greater clarity.

  • Egypt in Hosea

    One of the interesting features of Hosea is the role(s) that Egypt plays in the text. The word “Egypt” shows up 13 times in Hosea (2.02 occurrences per 1000 words). That’s the highest concentration of occurrences of any book in the whole Bible outside of Exodus (3.45/1000 words), unless we divide Isaiah into the customary first and second parts. In that case, although my old version of accordance won’t tell me, I imagine First Isaiah’s concentration would be higher—31 of Isaiah’s 34 references to Egypt are in chapters 1-39. The similarity is no surprise, of course, because the historical situation of Isaiah 1-39 is contemporary to Hosea.Hosea is steeped in the exodus tradition, so that he sees the departure from Egypt and the time in the wilderness as formative for Israel’s special relationship with God. But Hosea is also writing during a time when Egypt is appealing as an ally against the Assyrians. So he writes about Israel being called out of Egypt (Hosea 11:1) by YHWH, and also about their “return” to Egypt. Egypt is a world power that offers an alternative security to that offered by YHWH, and Hosea sees reliance on any such power as a road to ruin—indeed, a return to slavery. That means that Hosea is able to play off the exodus tradition, suggesting that Israel’s flirtation with other powers will reverse the situation of the Exodus.  This is just another layer of the whole reversal position of Hosea—their current actions threaten a reversal of the entire covenant, though the Lord will eventually again reverse this judgment and restore them again. Hosea thus imagines a new exodus, this time from Egypt and Assyria (Hosea 11:11).This is an interesting take on a theme present within many of the biblical narratives—Israel’s morbid obsession with forms of power that threaten and oppress them. (Egypt, Assyria, monarchy) Even post-exodus, Egypt has a strange allure. What once enslaved Israel calls her back, promising her relief from her current troubles.This is, of course, a recurring theme not just with Israel, but humanity. Alcoholics, the greedy, the gluttonous, addicts of all flavors and the rest of us all have our Egypts, and when we find ourselves under pressure, they can sing a sweet, sweet song. Ultimately it is a song of death.

  • Hosea—A Bibliography for Study and Preaching

    While I’ve been preparing for the Hosea series of sermons (and blog posts!) I have had the wonderful chance to work through a few books, and I thought I should share a few I’ve found helpful. Looking for a commentary on any given text can be tough, because there is simply so much material available. I haven’t read all of the following cover to cover, but have used each at some point in my preparations on Hosea over the course of the last few months.I worked through Luther Mays’ commentary of Hosea (1969) first, from the wonderful Old Testament Library series. I found it to be an excellent wonderful theological guide to reading Hosea. The themes of covenantal faithfulness resonate throughout the commentary. Mays is thorough, but typically is not overly so, and his commentary doesn’t burden the reader with too much technical language. It is perhaps a bit dated, (1969), particularly as regards the Caananite Baal cult and other archaeological data, but nonetheless the theology Mays read out of Hosea holds up well. He does not delve deeply into the many text-critical issues at play in Hosea, but I imagine most readers will find that a plus. He is certainly not ignorant of the issues and takes them well into account, but aside from very brief discussions at key places he judges that exhaustive textual discussion would overly burden the commentary, and I think that is correct. As the commentary stands, I think it provides a good level of theological material, such that will challenge most readers in a way that they can appreciate. Most other scholars seem to believe that Mays’s work is the landmark text.The commentary by Andrew Dearman (2010) is perhaps the most well rounded and up to date volume that I worked with as I prepared to preach from the book. Dearman takes form critical matters seriously without swimming in them too much, and the same is generally true for his treatment of ancient Israelite religious matters.  This commentary has a great balance, and doesn’t feel too heavy for the average user, but is also well-informed and dialogues with other treatments of the book well. There is also a kindle version available, which is the only of the commentaries listed here for which that is true. The kindle version doesn’t include (at this point) page numbers, which is a bit annoying, particularly if you want to cite the book.  Nonetheless, I think this is a great buy, and if I was starting over I think I’d pick this up first.Gale Yee’s commentary on Hosea in the twelfth volume of the New Interpreter’s Bible (1996) challenged me in some very helpful ways. While being extremely readable, Yee’s commentary provoked me to thinking through something of a feminist perspective of Hosea, particularly helping me see a new perspective on some of the rhetoric about Yahweh as husband. While I don’t know that the commentary would be sufficient by itself, it would make a fantastic second voice for a full conversation about Hosea. This volume includes commentary on each of the Minor prophets, as well as Daniel, from good solid scholars, and at $40 on amazon might be the best deal dollar for dollar, particularly in you’re going to work on the other minor prophets as well. As a side note, I think this whole set of commentaries has really been done well.  The lineup of contributors is impressive, and the format is excellent. Douglas Stuart’s commentary on Hosea (1987) is in a volume that also includes commentary on Joel, Amos, Obadiah, and Jonah. Hosea gets the lion’s share of the substantial book, though, and Stuart is very thorough in his treatment of Hosea. Writing from a very fixed perspective, Stuart heavily emphasizes that Hosea is a reformer, seeking to call the people back to the covenant made years ago as represented by the book of Deuteronomy.  I appreciate Stuart’s perspective, but at several points felt as though he was a bit overconfident in his argumentation of the point—perhaps even condescending, although he certainly isn’t the only scholar to be guilty of such. On balance, I think the commentary is a nice contribution, and I found it helpful, although a little annoying.  That in itself is not a serious criticism, because if you aren’t willing to learn from annoying sources occasionally, you just aren’t going to learn.The mammoth commentary on Hosea by Anderson and Freedman (1980) in the Anchor Bible Series could be quite helpful to some, but this is a heavy (literally and metaphorically) book with a good bit of technical discussion in it. I think the authors offer some great analysis and fresh insight, but this book is just simply going to be too much for most readers of the text. If I was doing a paper on a specific text, I’d definitely check it, and on particularly difficult passages for preaching there is some very helpful work here. However, at 600 plus pages, I simply can’t imagine reading through this whole work. If you can, more power to you.I only briefly looked at James Limburg’s commentary on Hosea (1988) in the Interpretation series. While I typically have enjoyed commentaries in that series, and have written elsewhere of my appreciation of Limburg’s work on Ecclesiastes, I was really quite disappointed with this volume.  It was too stiff, and I just didn’t get the same vibe of creativity here as I did with his ecclesiastes work.  Alas.

  • 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. (more…)

  • 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.