Hosea 11:1-5, 9-11
11:1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
11:2 The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.
11:3 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.
11:4 I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.
11:5 They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me.
11:9 I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.
11:10 They shall go after the LORD, who roars like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west.
11:11 They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the LORD.
In part one of this Sermon, we were given the model of love of husband and wife. Now our text brings us the image of the love of children given to our care. This seems like familiar ground, even if we’ve not been parents.
The other obvious point is that this is transformational love. Our Love must both Transform and Be transformed. Side Note Black Love Ephraim Love is Beautiful.
You teach, guide, set boundaries, and encourage and support your children. Yet Racism, hate, and bigotry have a way of bringing the worship of Baal to the table. You know Baal, the worship of stuff, Money, Power, and Greed.
However, Hosea, in the third chapter, is commanded to go and secure his wife from the life she seemed prone to live. We don’t have many details about where she was, with whom, and why she was there. Gomer’s understanding of love Was based on Love for economics and greed. She was a poster child for Baal's type of worship.
What we discover in the Text is that Hosea loved her—not just because she was the mother of his children, not just because she was an intricate figure in their household.
He loved her so much that he went to secure her by paying her to return. At least, this is what it looks like.
God is also reflected in Hosea 11 as a loving parent. God is showing his prophet, Hosea, what Love is! He is remembering through Hosea what it was like to Risk loving them only to see them fall to a non-existent god, Baal.
Using the imagination of a parent, God is recalling those days of teaching his people, guiding them, blessing them, and loving them.
But God had a vision and a promise. He was showing that Prophets like Hosea must be witnesses.
Prophetic Witness, Ethical Prophetic Witness is about telling divine truth—which discloses God’s self—by means of unmasking the reality of suffering and leading into the promised hope of God.
God restores them with the power of his prophetic voice, but until then, God endures the heartbreaking experiences of watching the people he loved dig themselves in a deep spiritual hole.
I wanted to talk about BMCR a Little this Morning. BLACK METHODISTS FOR CHURCH RENEWAL is the organized Black caucus of the United Methodist Church. We are one of the United Methodist denomination’s five U.S.-based ethnic caucuses. BMCR represents and is dedicated to more than 2,400 Black United Methodist congregations and approximately 500,000 African American members across the denomination.
Like Ephraim in the Hosea Text, we are one of God’s older Children, and like Ephraim, we have not always been faithful to God or to the community. Like Ephraim, God Walked with us and has allowed us to struggle at times because we have turned to the gods of Baal, Money, Power, and Greed.
The United Methodist Social Principles claim:
We affirm all persons as equally valuable in the sight of God. We, therefore, work toward societies in which each person’s value is recognized, maintained, and strengthened. . . . We deplore acts of hate or violence against groups or persons based on race, color, national origin, ethnicity, age, gender, disability, status, economic condition, sexual orientation, gender identity, or religious affiliation.
The problem is that while we disavow acts of hate and violence in principle, the Methodist Church remains silent or passive when confronted by hate and violence.
According to a Pew Research study conducted in 2014, United Methodists are one of the least diverse religious groups in the United States.
Black Methodists and their institutions framed a platform for contesting oppression.
Yes, BMCR produced leaders, institutions, and resources necessary for African Americans to confront the political, economic, and social infrastructure.
Such leaders and institutions remain necessary for the redress contemporary concerns and conditions related to African American and African Diaspora peoples.
Hence, when Black folk in Methodism say, “Here I am,” we’re here to remind “you” how it was . . . is . . . and ought to be.
At this moment, at Wesley Chapel Church, we are called to prophetic responsibilities.
3 Quick points on how to be a Hosea Prophet. How to live out your prophetic responsibilities.
First, we have a theocratic responsibility to listen to God’s voice amid the noise of our everyday experience and media-drenched culture.
In practical terms, it is recognizing how and where our faith calls each of us to respond and engage.
Second, we have a democratic responsibility to either invest or reinvest in the individual for the collective good.
Simply praying for change to come and abstaining from struggling with one to become the change is counterproductive.
Each of us exists within a net of mutuality, knitted by the thread of our respective sacred personhood.
Our responsibility is a reexamine and aligning of misguided, oppressive, and abusive theological and social constructs toward healthy, loving, and just relationships and practices.
Third, empathic responsibility it requires us to engage in faith-filled dialogue and to actively participate ethically in the public square.
It calls us to embrace a radical love ethic and transformative love thought and action.
It requires more than good intentions and lip service. It requires us to make ourselves, and maybe those whom we love and respect, feel uncomfortable.
Lastly, Bobby McClain said right here in this Family Life Center Before the Pandemic, “African American Methodists are both a remnant of hope and a reminder of the ideal for their church to match its practice with its proclamation.”
Despite Black members in Methodism being relegated to a “church-within-a-church,” and despite the assault on the human dignity of Black lives in our communities, and despite the trials and hardships, the dissolution and decline, our presence is required and essential. No Methodist ministry or lives matter until Black lives matter.
