Hosea must have been crazy. God told him to marry a prostitute named Gomer, and so he did. Now, stories of reformed prostitutes who settle down and become good wives and mothers are a staple of romantic fiction. How many of you have seen Pretty Woman, starring Richard Gere as the rich man who falls for streetwalker Julia Roberts? Well, the movie doesn’t take them past the wedding to ordinary family life, but the implication is certainly “happily ever after.” But that didn’t happen in Hosea’s case. Far from it.
This whole story of Hosea and Gomer is what’s called an “enacted parable.” It’s intended to be a metaphor for God’s relationship with his chosen people, Israel. God’s relationship with Israel should be a Cinderella story, shouldn’t it, with the prince - or in this case, the king - riding off into the sunset toward a fairy tale ending of eternal love. But God’s relationship with Israel is, instead, just like Hosea’s relationship with Gomer.
Listen to the synopsis of their marriage:
"Gomer conceived and bore [Hosea] a son. And the LORD said to him, 'Name him Jezreel; 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 the house of Israel. . . . ' She conceived again and bore a daughter. Then the LORD said to him, 'Name her Lo-ruhamah [not pitied], for I will no longer have pity on the house of Israel or forgive them. . . ' When [Gomer] had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. Then the LORD said, 'Name him Lo-ammi [not my people], for you are not my people and I am not your God.'” [Hos 1:3-9]
We don’t even know if two of the children are actually Hosea’s. Because the text says that Gomer bore Hosea a son, while it doesn’t say to whom the next two children were born. And to further confirm Gomer’s continuing infidelity, Hosea has to go and go and buy her back from “the other man.” Or perhaps even from a brothel. This is grounds for divorce, folks. Even Jesus didn’t require people to stay married to adulterers.
The next nine chapters are an extended description of the many ways in which God’s relationship with Israel mirrors Hosea’s relationship with Gomer, detailing the uncountable times when Israel’s people had run off to commit adultery with foreign gods, alternating with God’s patient wooing of them back to their rightful place, only to be faced with another betrayal.
What kind of fool would behave like that? Doesn’t God know when to cut his losses?
Did you know that in domestic violence cases most women go back to their husbands, even after landing in the emergency room with broken bones or concussion or other injuries? On average, it takes eleven violent incidents before a battered woman will actually leave.
That’s crazy, we say. Hosea’s crazy to put up with Gomer, too. Does that mean God is crazy?
In 1981, a movie from South Africa called “The Gods Must Be Crazy” became, surprisingly, an international best-seller. The movie tells the story of Xi, a bushman from the Kalahari desert. Xi and his little clan had absolutely nothing but what they had to have to live on. They lived in complete harmony, sharing all things in common (my goodness, that sounds a bit like the early church, doesn’t it?) But this idyllic existence was soon to come to an end. One day, a careless bush pilot tosses a coca-cola bottle out of his little airplane. It fell in the clearing where Xi and his people lived. The tribe assumed that this shiny object had fallen from heaven, a gift from the gods. However, even though they couldn’t find any use for the bottle, everyone wanted to possess it. This brought disharmony and actual violence to the tribe. Xi decided that it must be some kind of trick being played on them by the gods, a rather nasty one, in fact. So he took the bottle and went in search of the end of the earth in order to return the bottle to the gods.
A lot of people reject God because his behavior seems irrational. That is to say, it’s not how they would behave if they were in God’s shoes. For instance, we wouldn’t let babies and children and teenagers die, would we? There’s far too much untimely death around, folks, whether by accident or illness. We all know that. Many of us have experienced it. “How,” ask so many people, “can a just and loving God allow this?” Natural disasters cause many of us to rail at the heavens at the sight of so many innocents destroyed by what seems like random forces.
But the most irrational behavior of all on God’s part is this continued insistence on chasing after an unfaithful people, cajoling, begging, even bribing an ungrateful and unfaithful life partner to return to the abundance and security that was so freely given.
It’s not that God didn’t have other alternatives. Look at what he did to Noah, to Sodom and Gomorrah, to Pharaoh and his armies.
But even if God chooses not to go for total extermination, he has other options. First of all, he can just forget about them. Look at what he says in chapter 4: ". . .because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children." [Hos 4:6] This isn’t just an absent-minded forgetting of their birthdays; God is talking about disowning them altogether. The Israelites violated the contract they had with God, and so of course God is freed from his obligations as well. He could just walk away and start over again with another people.
But, of course, that has terrible consequences as well, often as bad as direct annihilation. Because the Israelites’ prosperity and security - like ours - are due to God’s benevolent protection. The dire calamities that are listed as being the Israelites’ just deserts may come directly from the hand of God or just because he’s no longer protecting them from the greed and ambition of their neighbors. “Woe to them indeed when I depart from them!" [v 9:12] says the Lord. And the beat goes on:
"Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me! [v. 7:13] "They shall soon writhe under the burden of kings and princes.... I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour his strongholds." [v. 8:10, 14] "Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver; thorns shall be in their tents.... I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more.... They shall become wanderers among the nations." [v. 9:6,15, 17]
Doesn’t that sound great? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all those things would happen to the people who have betrayed us, who have hurt us, who have failed to live up to our expectations? Divorces can get pretty ugly. People not only hide assets from each other, they use their children as weapons, destroy property, even threaten or commit actual violence. It sounds just like what God is threatening to do to his unfaithful spouse. Wow. Maybe that means we’re entitled to behave the same way. “I have a little list, they never will be missed,” wrote Gilbert and Sullivan. But oops. I forgot. God keeps the pleasure of revenge for himself. “Never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” [Rom 12:19]
But it gets worse. Not only are we not allowed to avenge ourselves, or even to take delight in the downfall of our enemies, we’re supposed to do good to them. Paul said, “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” [Rom 12:20] And Luke adds, “Expect nothing in return.” [Lk 6:35]
We are always angriest at the people we love, because only love has the key to the inmost recesses of our hearts. We do not recover easily from such blows. And it is not only the people we love who can hurt us. It is the institutions we have loved, the causes we have believed in, the heroes we have looked up to. We have expectations of them. We humans not only desire that our love be returned, we expect it. We also expect the objects of our affections to be worthy of them, and when they are not, we often abandon them, or even turn on them. Hurt gives rise to the most deep-rooted and lasting anger. But hurt is not healed either by punishment or by abandonment. It is healed by love.
Look at what God actually does in the end:
“How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?... My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. 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.... [My] children shall come trembling from the west. . . .and I will return them to their homes, says the LORD." [Hos 11:8]
It’s irrational. God is simply inviting another round of betrayal, of unfaithfulness, of backsliding. It’s like Charlie Brown believing that this time - surely, this time - Lucy will not pull the ball away when he comes up to kick the ball. It’s like that battered woman returning to her husband one more time - after all, he said he was sorry, he promised not to do it again! Hope triumphing over experience. God must be crazy.
And to make it even more irrational, this is how God expects us to behave, too. Jesus said: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." [Mt 5:44-48]
But the difference - actually, one of many! - between God and Charlie Brown, between God and the battered woman, is that God knows what he’s getting into. God knows why he is doing it. And God has a solution. When the time was right, “while we were still weak,” God sent his son into the world. And “... to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” [Jn 1:12] “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." [Jn 3:16]
All our earthly loves are transformed when we bring them under the authority of Jesus Christ, and in him no love is ever lost, no love is ever unrequited - even when we have chosen wrongly and have to back up and start over again. And when we partake in his life, the Holy Spirit empowers us to love as Christ loves. Let us begin today.
