Unrequited Love

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.