SERMON 130 - SUNDAY 10 FEBRUARY 2019

Sermon delivered at All Saints’ Church, Whiteparish  – Sunday 10 February 2019 - Evensong

Hosea 1; Colossians 3:1-22

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen

Tonight we have had two rather challenging readings which, on first appearance, seem totally out of touch with modern thinking and experiences yet, when we reflect upon them more fully, and understand them within the context of the cultures of the time in which they were written,  they are perhaps more relevant today than at any other time.  At the end of this short homily this evening, I will invite you to say what you yourself think about these readings and, in particular, how they make you feel.

The Book of Hosea, in particular, makes uncomfortable reading, even frightening; but it is, actually, a story about love – both God’s love and human love. It is also about our human responsibility, about the choices for or against God that Israel had to make and that we too have to make in our world today.

Hosea is known in biblical study as one of the “Minor Prophets” – the first of twelve short books which come at the very end of the Old Testament and immediately before the Gospel of Matthew – leaving aside the books of the Apocrypha.  They follow on from the “Major Prophets” of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel and like them their writings are attributed to the time of the Exile following the occupation of either or both of the split kingdoms of Israel in the north and Judah in the south.  Hosea was a northerner and therefore his message was for Israel which was conquered by the Assyrians before the southern kingdom of Judah was overrun by the Babylonians.

It is a book about unfaithfulness; how Israel had become unfaithful by hedging its bets and worshipping other gods – especially the Canaan pagan god of fertility – Baal.  In this book God is asking Hosea to experience the hurt and anguish that God is himself feeling about the unfaithfulness of the people he loves. Hosea is asked to take, as his wife, a woman who will be become immoral – a surprising start for a prophet. Hosea was not only to preach about God’s persistent love for his people in the face of terrible rejection but was to actually live and feel that rejection in his own life – a costly ministry. He was to understand God’s anguish yet unconditional love by experiencing the rejection he was to suffer at the hands of an unfaithful wife. His wife, Gomer, was to become a picture of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God.

As you read the Book of Hosea you will find that nowhere are we given any idea of Hosea’s emotions or the depth of the hurt he felt as Gomer left him or the courage he needed to forgive and renew the relationship.  Those of us who have experienced something similar, as I have, can only have a really good guess. We do not know whether the marriage eventually had a happy ending because it is actually God’s love story and not simply past history  - it is God’s word for us today.  The message, as I see it is that however much we might hurt God by our actions and unfaithfulness, his love for us continues to be unconditional. 

I wonder how easy it would be for most to forgive an unfaithful wife and seek to mend the relationship. In his Book of Forgiveness, Archbishop Desmond Tutu gives us some ideas from the context of reconciliation in South Africa after the removal of white minority rule.  He says we can either chose to enter into a cycle of reconciliation or a cycle of revenge – the former often being much easier but leading to further destruction. Unconditional love and forgiveness are therefore often very difficult commodities, very difficult to provide but such is the love of God that we can feel secure in the knowledge that we are never beyond redemption in His eyes.  We must understand, though, that the story of Gomer’s unfaithfulness is also a metaphor for our own weaknesses, both men and women and we should not necessarily assume all the “badness” was on Gomer’s part either. The culture of the time of writing this piece of scripture was a time of patriarchal supremacy. Unfaithfulness by men was equally, if not more prevalent.  Today we also live in a society where sex is a commodity and exploitation widespread.

Likewise in our second lesson this evening – from the writings of Paul to the church at Colossae – we must be careful not to construe his message as being particularly sexist either.

Paul was concerned that the early Christians in their community in Colossae were in danger of being led astray by false teachings based on Jewish mysticism – in particular these false teachers were encouraging the Colossian Christians to return to specific Jewish customs – the practice of circumcision, the observance of certain food and drink regulations and keeping the laws about regular worship and activities on the Sabbath – in other words that salvation was to be achieved by deeds and not by faith.

In his letter, as a whole, Paul is trying to show that the proper worship of Jesus Christ affects every aspect of their lives and thus rules out the need for such mystical practices. In its place Paul, in Chapter 3 which we read this evening, talks about the new life in Christ following the two great commandments which Jesus left his followers – loving God and loving one another – from which all goodness will flow.

In other words, Paul is setting out a code of Christian conduct which is based once more on unconditional love; he asks husbands to love their wives and not treat them as a commodity – something which it was probably often difficult for the men of the time to do – something probably as equally hard as for women to “be subject to their husbands” but note that in this passage/translation Paul says “as is fitting in the Lord” – that is, as Jesus would find fitting or wish.

In both of our lessons this evening the theme is this – God’s unconditional love is so great that it stands head and shoulders above anything which we humans can comprehend.  God wants us to genuinely repent from our sinful ways – however much sinful they may be – and live a life which shows that same unconditional love for others, forgiving where necessary.  Not easy to achieve and requiring us probably repenting many times and asking forgiveness again and again – but doing so with a genuine and generous heart however much it might hurt to do so and despite the great hurt which might have been done to us.  Hosea and also Job experienced that hurt.  Many more of us have or will – but the prize at the end of such experiences is a prize well worth having – salvation; eternal life.

Amen                                                                                                    MFB/07022019