Pity on the House - Hosea 1:2-10 (Pentecost 7C)

 This passage from the Bible doesn’t seem like it belongs there. It feels like we’re reading from a different book, and you might be feeling confused. This and next week may a the only times you ever hear a sermon preached on Hosea and Gomer, so hopefully it’ll make an impact. And if not, well - I’m pretty sure it’s a lot cooler in here than it is outside, so why don’t ya’ll stay for a bit? 

Let’s take a wider view of this book before we jump into the scripture today. Hosea is one of the twelve minor Old Testament prophets we’ve been talking about for the last few weeks, and he’ll be the last one in the series. He lived in the northern kingdom of Israel, and he lived about the same time as Amos from last week, just a little bit after him 753 to 715BC, so about seven centuries before Christ. Israel would be captured by Assyria in about 722 BC, so this is the beginning of the end, and based on what Amos heard from God, that seems accurate. 

Hosea is preaching to Israel, and this story may seem a little jarring. Why would a loving and caring God essentially order a faithful servant to marry a whore? I know that this whole passage would be shocking but I will not dance around the difficulty because this is what is happening.  There’s no way to sugarcoat it, and I need to be faithful to the text. 

This seems like at best an unfortunate situation, but God lays it out very clearly in verse two. I am doing this because my people are being unfaithful. If I was Hosea, I’m not sure what I would have done. It’s easy to criticize people as sex workers, saying that they must be down on their luck, or made bad choices, but as we know with people’s stories, they are more complicated and as varied as each individual. Gomer may have been from a very dysfunctional family, perhaps with sexual abuse in the home. Maybe she ran away from that situation and discovered that’s one of the only ways for her to survive. We want to remove ourselves and think this was a problem of antiquity, but sex work and trafficking is unfortunately big business still. According to the US Department of State, between 15,000 and 17,500 people - human beings -  were trafficked into the United States in 2020. Maybe she was sold into slavery from her parents, or she was a drug user. 

Regardless of her background, we are not told why Gomer is a prostitute. It’s a point that doesn’t really matter. There have been many sermons written and preached about how women have been the downfall of the world, ever since Eve. This is NOT one of those sermons. Gomer is not a root of a bigger problem. There is no conspiracy that women should be dismissed because of how they dress, whether or not they drink alcohol, and how and for whom they should be able to use their bodies. Men are no more moral leaders than women, just like women are no more unfaithful sinful rulebreakers of the community.  It’s interesting that God is shown with some of the very attributes that are spoken against women: too emotional, too intimate, angry, and irrational. 

Gomer isn’t even really the center of the discussion here. She’s merely a character in the story. I don’t think she even says anything in the entire book of Hosea. But this character is used to represent how God feels about his people. God loves God’s people, and has entered into a covenant with them - like a marriage with Israel. But Israel has been unfaithful, which has broken God’s heart. God’s response to that is reasonable - being angry, hurt, full of rage and sorrow. This is not a God who lives high in the clouds, separate from his people, this is a God who is intimately relationally connected. Deeply and emotionally invested.

 This book has little to do with the story is actually talking about but is an allegory, a metaphor if you will, for God’s love for Israel. Replace Hosea with God and Gomer with Israel and it comes into focus. We never picture ourselves as the unfaithful ones, but how are you living a righteous life? What other gods are we “promiscuous” with? Workaholism? Greed? Security over basic human rights? Security can be an illusion if everyone is not treated with basic respect. 

Let’s think about for a second what it means to be faithful to God. Loving God, loving our neighbors. But how do we do that? Do we wave at them while we water our flowers? Have a quick conversation with them after mowing the lawn? Does it mean meeting them where they are?

There was a song that I heard when I was in high school that I didn’t think about until preparing the sermon this week. It’s kind of an obscure song, so I’ll understand if not everyone knows it. A band called Third Day wrote a song called “Gomer’s Theme” and I didn’t understand it at the time, but after reading Gomer & Hosea’s story got me to flesh it out a little more fully. The chorus of the song goes: “She’s forgotten her first love / But He’s forgotten that she ever went away and broke his heart” and that really applies here. God knows us and created us. But yet, even here in the Old Testament, he is trying to reach out and continue to love us. He wants the relationship more than he is angry about our sin and deviance. This is a very risky love, that seems even a little foolish, setting someone up for heartbreak.

Billy Graham once said, “God is the God of the second chance—and the hundredth chance, and the thousandth chance! No matter how rebellious and sinful we’ve been, He always stands ready to forgive us and welcome us home if we truly repent and commit our lives to Jesus Christ”. That was also a risky love that Jesus had for us. I add this in there because as much  in verse 11 - which is right after the last line that Tim read - “The people of Judah and the people of Israel will come together; they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.” That comes true in the Gospel, which we know about but these people did not have that knowledge, so they hoped. 

A key element to this understanding of risky love is that we are also called to love those who are hard to love. We aren’t given permission to cut off anyone here. We don’t draw lines and say we’ll love this one and not that one. And there is risk, of course, that is why it is called risky love. But we go forward with eyes wide open. We aren’t fodder for abuse; that’s not loving. Sometimes we are called to love from a distance. Sometimes to protect ourselves and others, we have to withdraw, but we can still love. We can still hope for transformation; we can still fervently pray for the other to fulfill all that God has in store for them. Hosea was called to love like that. And so are we.

Hosea puts to rest that old cliché that the Old Testament is about the God of Law and Judgement and the New Testament is about the God of Love. The God of the Hebrew Scriptures is much more complex than such an adage can describe. As is the God of the New Testament, of course. But here we have a God who calls for risky love. It is a love that responds lovingly even when hurt, even when not returned.