Hosea 11
Happy Father’s Day! This is my second Father’s Day, and I am have to report that not much has changed for me since last year, I still have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. I find myself apologizing to Killian often (I promise I will be better at this with your future siblings, sorry you are the guinea pig). But he won’t remember. And while this is no surprise to you, it has been a little bit of an eye opening experience for me. I’ll tell you why.
A few weeks ago, I found myself in a unique position, where I realized that my parents were a little worried about me. I won’t go into detail, but I found myself getting a little annoyed. “Mom, Dad, I’m 34 years old!” I thought to myself. I haven’t lived under your roof in a long time, and you raised me to be an independent thinker and on and on. This RARELY EVER happens with them and what it boiled down to is, “why are you worried? I’ll be fine! I’m OK.” I don’t know if you ever had any of these moments with your parents, I think we all do. I couldn’t understand WHY they were concerned about me like that. And then I got it, I began to understand a little better.
What made me understand was a realization I had with my own son. He is taking his sweet time with walking on his own, although I think we are knocking at the door of his first steps after this last week. But it was in this process of helping him walk that the lightbulb switched on for me. He was walking all over the house, holding onto one or two of my fingers, and having the time of his life. He thought he was a pretty cool and self sufficient dude, but I knew better. I knew that he needed me to be there to support him, and to keep him from falling. And I also realized that I will never forget those moments of teaching him to walk, and that Killian will never remember them. He won’t remember needing me like that. But for the rest of my life, my first instinct and reaction will be to try and support him, and keep him from falling. And presto-chango, I just turned into my parents. Amazing how that works, right?
All of us, at some level, can relate to what I experienced here, whether with your own kids, or with nieces and nephews, or whether it might be just a memory of relying on your own parents, we get it. But on this Father’s Day, the perspective that we might not think about much, is that God, “gets it” too. That God himself has the fatherly feelings, and instincts, and reactions to each and every one of us. That God feels a certain way about you, and has memories of you that you don’t even have yourself, and the he loves you so deeply, and is so concerned about you.
It comes through in places like Psalm 139 where David realizes the intimate relationship God has with him: “You created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb… My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.” God was full of love for David before David even knew what love was.
Another place we see this love expressed so beautifully is in the book of Hosea. He was one of the “minor” prophets (not the importance of their work, but the length – how politically incorrect, maybe today we would call Hosea an “efficient prophet” or something like that).
But Hosea is a challenging read, and the main message he carried to the people of Isreal was one of judgment of their unfaithfulness in the midst of God’s ever faithful, and unwaivering love. And the people were filling the bill of the “unfaithful” to God with a vengeance: “The people were not worshipping God, but were very dedicated to worshipping false idols. The people were not taking care of one another like you would expect from a Godly community, but rather they were extorting one another, and stealing from each other. Even the priests and kings were known for rampant unfaithfulness to God and disregarding his Word and Law. It was a horrible mess.
And in Hosea 11, one of the most powerful illustrations that God calls him to share with the people was the image of the Faithful and loving father who is rejected by his own children. And suddenly God’s horrible heartbreak comes into a different kind of focus for us, than maybe we are used to. God gets our attention in an intensely personal way. Listen to how he talks through Hosea:
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.
God calls Israel “his son, his child.” And he opens with the heartbreaking image of calling out to them, and his son, his child pays him no mind or respect. In fact, his son, his children turn the opposite way. They turn to worship other gods, false gods, Baals that have nothing at all to offer. You can feel the pain of God as the loving parent of ungrateful, and unrepentant children. And then the imagery gets even more personal: Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.
The message is clear, the people of Israel truly have no idea how much God loves them. They were going through the motions of worshipping Him, but they were also being unfaithful to him in their hearts and in their actions. Their actions said that they didn’t care that much about God at all. But his love for them couldn’t be stronger. He calls them his SON. He recalls his love for them like a parent thinks of their child holding onto their fingers as the learned to walk. How he has such pride in his child. How his child was so oblivious to the help he was receiving and just taking those big goofy steps and smiling. He recalls leading his child, with this toddler holding onto cords with his fat little hands as he got better at walking, and lifting his child to his cheek, and bending down to feed him, and watch him learn to feed himself. This is how God thinks of his children.
But as many parents realize, their children won’t remember these things. They won’t truly appreciate them until maybe later in life. Their children will rebel, and go their own way, and dishonor, and disrespect the very parents who held them, and fed them, and taught them to walk, and stayed up late at night worrying about how they were doing, or how they were feeling. And God is no different. In Hosea, God’s heart breaks wide open at the rebellion of his children and at first he gets angry: My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all.
But then his Fatherly love for them takes over: How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.
He crys out, how could I give you up, or hand you over, you are still my Son, you are still my child. I could never stand by and watch you be crushed like the cities of Zeboiim or Admah, cities symbolizing the utter destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
So God our Father expresses the result of this love: I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. In fact, not only is he going to refrain from executing his wrath, he is going an unbelievable step further. He is going to roar like a lion, not a call of warning or threat, but a loud and sure call for his wayward children to come home, to find peace, to be in relationship with him once again. Because he will NEVER STOP loving his children, and he will NEVER STOP being their father.
It’s a message that comes through in our readings for today. Through the prophet Isaiah God the Father calls out again to his wayward children: I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me; I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, “Here am I, here am I,” You have found yourself in huge trouble, you have not sought me, and all I want is for you to call out to me, to seek my love, my forgiveness, my heart. I’m right here, all the time, any time. I’m right here for you my son, for you my daughter, my creations, the ones I knit together in your mother’s womb. HERE AM I, HERE AM I!
Your Father loves you so much. He knows you, he calls out to you, and he makes you his own child. I know we say that a lot, but I hope today you think about what that really means. And I hope you think about what that really costs. God did the unthinkable to call you back to himself. He showed a love that we have trouble understanding. He showed love to you by sending his Son to die for your sins. He sent his own child, his ONLY child, to die in the place of people like you and me, people who have wandered from God, people who have disregarded our Father, and his Word, and his love, and have tried to go our own way, and who have made a total train wreck of our lives. He sent his Son live the perfect life you failed to live, and to die on the cross to pay the price for the eternal life with him that you failed to earn.
And the truth is, for the people back in Hosea and Isaiah’s day, and for you and me right here and right now, that we have NO IDEA how much our God loves us. We can’t begin to understand the depth of his love, the agony of the heartbreak over our sin and waywardness, the absolute JOY he takes in knowing that our sins are forgiven, and we can live with him forever, not through our actions, but through faith in his dear Son Jesus Christ. You have no idea.
I love how Paul talks about what Christ has done for us in our reading from Galatians: But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
Today, Father’s Day, we take time to celebrate our Dads, as imperfect as they are, even Killian’s dad. Some of us maybe don’t celebrate this day because we had a broken or hurtful relationship with our father. But no matter what kind of earthly father we have, we have a true and perfect Heavenly Father, who loves us in a way we can’t even begin to imagine or comprehend. Who loves us at our best, and even at our worst. Who loves us without waivering, or wondering, but who unequivocally says, through his own Son, “I love you, you are my child, and I am your Father.” Who loves us so much that he fills us with his Holy Spirit, to give us faith, and cause is to cry out from our hearts, “ABBA FATHER!”
Da-da, Daddy, Papa, or whatever else a little child might cry out. This is the relationship God has with you, whether you realize it or not. I don’t know where you are this morning. Maybe you wonder how God feels about you, or maybe your relationship with God has been strained lately. You have felt let down, or just haven’t come around much to spend time with your Heavenly Father. Maybe you’ve had some deep doubts, or sinned and feel ashamed to come to your Father.
The truth is that God hasn’t forgotten about you, and God doesn’t have any doubts about his relationship with you. How could he? He created you, he smiled when you took your first steps, He held onto you through the most difficult spans of your life. He sent his son to die for you. No matter where you are today, know that your Heavenly Father is crying out to you, “HERE AM I, HERE AM I.” And He’s waiting for you to cry out, “Daddy, Abba Father!”
Happy Father’s Day.
Amen.
