Proper 12
Preaching
Preaching and Reading the Old Testament Lessons:
With an Eye to the New
We are a whoring nation, are we not? And our harlotry is not only spiritual, so that we worship all sorts of deities besides the Lord. Our harlotry is also physical. Ours is a sex-saturated culture. Our magazines, our advertisements, the newspapers in our supermarkets all concentrate on sex and sexual attraction. Every romantic encounter on television automatically leads to bed. Pre-marital and extra-marital affairs are taken for granted. Our schools hand out condoms, our college students live on campuses rife with promiscuity. And often the center of our attention are those Hollywood and television "stars," who live together or have children together without a thought of getting married. We are absorbed with sex, even in our churches, and most of it is harlotrous and adulterous.
The result is that we are not too shocked when the Lord commands the prophet Hosea to "Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry, for the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord" (v. 2). But in our sex-saturated situation, perhaps we need to listen carefully to this story about the call of the prophet Hosea that comes to us from the eighth century B.C. northern kingdom of Israel.
Hosea is commanded by God to marry a "woman of harlotry." What does that mean? In Hosea's time, when Israel was shot through with the worship of the fertility gods or baals of Canaan, it means that the prophet was commanded by God to take as his wife a woman who had served, either once or frequently, as a so-called sacred prostitute at the worship site of Baal.
In baalistic religion, it was believed that various baal-gods "impregnated" the land, the mother goddess, with rain, causing it to bring forth produce. Similarly, the baal gods were understood to be the source of fertility in human beings. So by enacting the "marriage" of baal by means of sexual intercourse with male and female prostitutes at the cult site, worshipers thought to coerce the baal, by sympathetic magic, to bring forth fertility in both human beings and the land. In short, baal was believed to be the source of life, and worshiping him assured his devotees that they would have the good life.
The view was not too different from our modern belief that sex is the most important thing in our lives. If you don't have sex, our young people have been taught, you can't be a whole person. And if the sex life in a marriage isn't good, well then, you should abandon the marriage. A lot of people look to sexual intercourse for the source of the good life. But of course the real source of the good life -- of abundant life -- is God, isn't he? And that is the message that Hosea, by his sacrifice, is commanded to convey to his people.
Hosea suffers under the prophetic role given to him, as all the prophets suffer. After he marries the harlot Gomer, he watches the three children that she bears to him, playing in the courtyard. But only one of the children is said to be his. And the Lord commands him to give the children awful names: "Jezreel," (v. 4), the name of the place where the earlier king Jehu had fostered the worship of baal (2 Kings 10:29-31); "Not pitied" (v. 6), the sign that the Lord would no longer have any pity or mercy on his apostate people, but instead would send them into exile; and finally, "Not my people" (v. 9), the most ominous name of all. When God made a covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai, he had told them, "I will be your God and you will be my people" (Exodus 6:7; Leviticus 26:12, et al). Now God declares to Israel that they have destroyed his covenant bond with them, and they no longer belong to him. The covenant is abandoned, and God will no longer be with Israel as their God, for he now divorces them as his people.
Hosea's marriage and the naming of his children are prophetic "signs" to whoring Israel. Not only do they announce information, but they also begin God's action of judgment upon his whoring nation, a judgment that finally ends in the Assyrian exile of Israel in 721 B.C. and her disappearance from history. When God divorces his adulterous wife Israel, she is as good as dead.
Should we not wonder, then, what God's future is for our society, for a people that no longer knows faithfulness to God's commands about sex and marriage and who therefore no longer are faithful to our Lord? Running after the temptations, the thrills, the daring of unbridled sexuality, have we run away from our God? And therefore will God say to us, "You are not my people"? Have we lost his care for us, his pity and mercy, his forgiveness, and his abundant life? Indeed, have we lost the resurrection and its eternal life beyond the grave?
The editors who assembled the oracles of Hosea made a pattern of alternating Hosea's judgment oracles with passages concerning salvation. The lectionary therefore has attached verse 10 to our reading. But verses 10-11 are separate pronouncements, given much later in Hosea's ministry, and indeed, never fulfilled during Hosea's lifetime. The eighth-century kingdom of Israel goes into exile, and it dies. If the preacher uses verse 10, he or she should be aware of those facts of history. It is not until the birth of Jesus Christ that God's promises of salvation in Hosea's book are realized (cf. Matthew 2:15).
Lutheran Option: Genesis 18:20-32
This passage follows immediately on last Sunday's text, in which the three men appeared at the door of Abraham's tent in Mamre, and one of them, the Lord, promised the aged Abraham and Sarah a son. Now the question of the sin of Sodom is taken up in a marvelous conversation between the Lord and Abraham.
Abraham is not particularly interested in saving Sodom, that legendary symbol of sin that was located at the southern tip of the Dead Sea. (The site is now under water.) Nor does Abraham show any concern for his nephew Lot, who dwells in Sodom. Rather, the patriarch engages in a theological conversation with his God.
Abraham, like so many of us, is interested in the justice of God. God has revealed to Abraham that he is going to destroy Sodom (cf. vv. 17-19). But Abraham wants to know if righteousness counts more with God than does unrighteousness. If God finds fifty righteous in Sodom, will he spare the whole city on their account? Surely, the Judge of all the earth would not destroy them (v. 25)! Abraham has his own conception of what God should be like, and God patiently puts up with Abraham's questioning -- perhaps with a smile on the divine face.
Abraham does have some awareness of his own boldness. "Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes," he says (v. 27). Such humility is fitting for a conversation with God. But that does not deter Abraham's boldness. If God finds forty-five, or forty, or thirty, or twenty, or just ten righteous persons in Sodom, will God spare the city for their sake? How much does righteousness weigh on the scales of God's justice?
But it is not justice that the Lord talks about in this passage. It is mercy. And for the sake of ten righteous persons in Sodom -- or for the sake of one righteous man named Jesus Christ -- God will not come to destroy us. Christ's righteousness on the cross and his victory at the resurrection atone for all our sins, and God counts us justified through faith in our Lord. An incredibly merciful, patient, loving God wills for us life instead of death.
If we should want a just measurement in the scales of God of all that we have done, not one of us would deserve life, because each one of us has sinned. And "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift" -- totally undeserved, totally a gift of grace -- "is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).
The result is that we are not too shocked when the Lord commands the prophet Hosea to "Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry, for the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord" (v. 2). But in our sex-saturated situation, perhaps we need to listen carefully to this story about the call of the prophet Hosea that comes to us from the eighth century B.C. northern kingdom of Israel.
Hosea is commanded by God to marry a "woman of harlotry." What does that mean? In Hosea's time, when Israel was shot through with the worship of the fertility gods or baals of Canaan, it means that the prophet was commanded by God to take as his wife a woman who had served, either once or frequently, as a so-called sacred prostitute at the worship site of Baal.
In baalistic religion, it was believed that various baal-gods "impregnated" the land, the mother goddess, with rain, causing it to bring forth produce. Similarly, the baal gods were understood to be the source of fertility in human beings. So by enacting the "marriage" of baal by means of sexual intercourse with male and female prostitutes at the cult site, worshipers thought to coerce the baal, by sympathetic magic, to bring forth fertility in both human beings and the land. In short, baal was believed to be the source of life, and worshiping him assured his devotees that they would have the good life.
The view was not too different from our modern belief that sex is the most important thing in our lives. If you don't have sex, our young people have been taught, you can't be a whole person. And if the sex life in a marriage isn't good, well then, you should abandon the marriage. A lot of people look to sexual intercourse for the source of the good life. But of course the real source of the good life -- of abundant life -- is God, isn't he? And that is the message that Hosea, by his sacrifice, is commanded to convey to his people.
Hosea suffers under the prophetic role given to him, as all the prophets suffer. After he marries the harlot Gomer, he watches the three children that she bears to him, playing in the courtyard. But only one of the children is said to be his. And the Lord commands him to give the children awful names: "Jezreel," (v. 4), the name of the place where the earlier king Jehu had fostered the worship of baal (2 Kings 10:29-31); "Not pitied" (v. 6), the sign that the Lord would no longer have any pity or mercy on his apostate people, but instead would send them into exile; and finally, "Not my people" (v. 9), the most ominous name of all. When God made a covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai, he had told them, "I will be your God and you will be my people" (Exodus 6:7; Leviticus 26:12, et al). Now God declares to Israel that they have destroyed his covenant bond with them, and they no longer belong to him. The covenant is abandoned, and God will no longer be with Israel as their God, for he now divorces them as his people.
Hosea's marriage and the naming of his children are prophetic "signs" to whoring Israel. Not only do they announce information, but they also begin God's action of judgment upon his whoring nation, a judgment that finally ends in the Assyrian exile of Israel in 721 B.C. and her disappearance from history. When God divorces his adulterous wife Israel, she is as good as dead.
Should we not wonder, then, what God's future is for our society, for a people that no longer knows faithfulness to God's commands about sex and marriage and who therefore no longer are faithful to our Lord? Running after the temptations, the thrills, the daring of unbridled sexuality, have we run away from our God? And therefore will God say to us, "You are not my people"? Have we lost his care for us, his pity and mercy, his forgiveness, and his abundant life? Indeed, have we lost the resurrection and its eternal life beyond the grave?
The editors who assembled the oracles of Hosea made a pattern of alternating Hosea's judgment oracles with passages concerning salvation. The lectionary therefore has attached verse 10 to our reading. But verses 10-11 are separate pronouncements, given much later in Hosea's ministry, and indeed, never fulfilled during Hosea's lifetime. The eighth-century kingdom of Israel goes into exile, and it dies. If the preacher uses verse 10, he or she should be aware of those facts of history. It is not until the birth of Jesus Christ that God's promises of salvation in Hosea's book are realized (cf. Matthew 2:15).
Lutheran Option: Genesis 18:20-32
This passage follows immediately on last Sunday's text, in which the three men appeared at the door of Abraham's tent in Mamre, and one of them, the Lord, promised the aged Abraham and Sarah a son. Now the question of the sin of Sodom is taken up in a marvelous conversation between the Lord and Abraham.
Abraham is not particularly interested in saving Sodom, that legendary symbol of sin that was located at the southern tip of the Dead Sea. (The site is now under water.) Nor does Abraham show any concern for his nephew Lot, who dwells in Sodom. Rather, the patriarch engages in a theological conversation with his God.
Abraham, like so many of us, is interested in the justice of God. God has revealed to Abraham that he is going to destroy Sodom (cf. vv. 17-19). But Abraham wants to know if righteousness counts more with God than does unrighteousness. If God finds fifty righteous in Sodom, will he spare the whole city on their account? Surely, the Judge of all the earth would not destroy them (v. 25)! Abraham has his own conception of what God should be like, and God patiently puts up with Abraham's questioning -- perhaps with a smile on the divine face.
Abraham does have some awareness of his own boldness. "Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes," he says (v. 27). Such humility is fitting for a conversation with God. But that does not deter Abraham's boldness. If God finds forty-five, or forty, or thirty, or twenty, or just ten righteous persons in Sodom, will God spare the city for their sake? How much does righteousness weigh on the scales of God's justice?
But it is not justice that the Lord talks about in this passage. It is mercy. And for the sake of ten righteous persons in Sodom -- or for the sake of one righteous man named Jesus Christ -- God will not come to destroy us. Christ's righteousness on the cross and his victory at the resurrection atone for all our sins, and God counts us justified through faith in our Lord. An incredibly merciful, patient, loving God wills for us life instead of death.
If we should want a just measurement in the scales of God of all that we have done, not one of us would deserve life, because each one of us has sinned. And "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift" -- totally undeserved, totally a gift of grace -- "is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).
