Sermons from the Pulpit

The prophet Hosea did a very strange thing, and he did it, he said, because God told him to. He deliberately married a woman by the name of Gomer who was, shall we say, not a lady. She didn't stand by her man. She took lovers, she had children by them, she gave herself over to the pagan god known as Baal, she betrayed him again and again. And the only thing Hosea got out of it was, he got the opportunity to preach about the similarities between his terrible relationship with his wife and God's relationship with the chosen people. And he goes on for a couple of pages about how horribly she's treated him, how she's completely forgotten about him, how he's going to divorce her and have no more to do with her - and then all of a sudden he changes his tune, and this is where our reading begins.

Sermon

Therefore, I will now allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.     -Hosea 2:14

And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.      -Hosea 2:19

     Personally, I'm a big fan of the institution of marriage. It has certainly been good to me. But I read yesterday in the paper where the divorce rate in Japan is going up. It used to be very low. Now it's on a par with the divorce rates in Western European countries like France and Germany. But the people demanding these Japanese divorces don't fit the stereotype of middle-aged men chasing after - what's that new expression? - arm candy. No, it's middle-aged wives, empty nesters, paying a huge price under Japanese law and culture just to get free of their tiresome, oppressive husbands and enjoy life a little while they can.

     Yet another blow struck at the battered institution of marriage. Yet another reason to doubt the old wisdom that marriage is the path to happiness. Oh, and by the way, our divorce rate here in the USA is twice as high as the rate in France, Germany, or Japan.

     Meanwhile the Supreme Court of the State of Vermont is telling the legislature that it has to do something to legitimize same-sex couples, and legislators in other states including New Hampshire are talking about it too. Some folks are convinced this would destroy marriage and family, but you could make the case that that's already been done. It makes me wonder, why would anybody want to climb aboard a sinking ship, and be included in such a flawed and disappointing institution as that? Maybe they think they can rehabilitate it. Who am I to say they can't?

     And then there's the Bible. The Bible is full of marriage metaphors in which, almost invariably, God is the husband and humanity or some part of humanity is the wife. This has made for some sublime poetry and for some blissful images of the life of faith. The words of countless hymns describe the Church as the Bride of Christ, and Christ the Bridegroom shines forth in the music of Bach and others as the ultimate faithful lover and partner, literally the divine and perfect companion. And the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon is a steamy love poem which no decent parents would want their children to read and which, by the way, our famous New England Puritan ancestors loved to read and preach about.

     But I'm afraid today's readings expose the dark underbelly of all that. Think of Gomer as the Bride of Christ! And that's the striking thing, I now realize. When the Bible says that God's relationship with us is something like the relationship of a lover to the beloved or a husband to a wife, it doesn't ask us to put on any rose-colored glasses, it gets right down there into all the things that go wrong with love, all the ways promises can be broken, and it says this is the way it is between God and God's people! It can be wonderful, and it can be horrible.

     Christ the Bridegroom goes out looking for his beloved, and where does he look? Not among the respectable folks, the debutantes as it were, but among tax collectors and sinners. We need to be clear about what that means. In Roman-occupied Palestine, tax collectors were people who made a living by helping the imperial authorities to extract wealth from their own people, and taking a nice cut for themselves. And sinner, as the word is used here in Mark, is a synonym for a prostitute. Just like old Gomer.

     Old Gomer, who's about to be divorced for adultery as she richly deserves, when suddenly her husband does this touching about-face and decides to try a little tenderness. I will allure her, he says, although the verb probably means something more like "seduce;" I will speak tenderly to her, I will take her back, I will take her for my wife forever in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I mean it's sweet, but Ann Landers would tell him to wake up and smell the coffee and stop being a doormat!

     And always, always, our task is to listen to all this, all this stuff that we call The Word of God, and ask ourselves one question, always the same question: What can we learn from this about God, whom we call our God, and about ourselves, whom we call God's people?

     Well, let's try this: We can learn, in fact maybe we are learning right now, that to be a believer is not a cosmic status but a living, breathing love relationship, or perhaps I should say love/hate relationship, and far from being the lofty distant unmoved mover of the philosophers, the God who is revealed in the words of Scripture and in the person of Jesus is more passionate than lordly, more persistent than punitive, more wounded than enraged, and more than willing to go back to the beginning of the honeymoon and give it another try. Not a doormat, just an incredibly determined loving spouse.

     And the most remarkable and most promising implication of all is that to live in covenant with God and with one another is, at least potentially, to be on continuous honeymoon - not the naive blissed-out holiday of folks who levitated on their wedding day and haven't yet come back to earth, but the better, realer time of truth, reconciliation, respect, steadfastness, and healing - always the healing of the wounds, pain and sickness that we thought we were covering up so well.

     A second honeymoon, then. A festival time. No time for fasting, and focusing on deprivation. No time for grim determination of the sort that all those silly atheists out there associate with religion. "Look how miserable they are! You can tell they're religious." We all know that no matter how determined we are to do the right thing it won't work if our heart's not in it. As we heard from Paul, the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Well, there you are. Let the secuctive Spirit of the living God be doing its wonderful thing in our hearts.

     Amen.