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Hosea 1: 2-10
Psalm 85
Colossians 2: 6-19
Luke 11: 1-13
The literalists will be cringing under their pews this morning! The truth or otherwise of Hosea's marital problems is debatable, but in the context
of the whole book of Hosea this morning's reading can be seen as a
metaphor for the relationship between God and his people. The Old
Testament portrays a constant battle between the ethical religion of
Yahweh, and the cult of Baal, the fertility god of the Canaanites. Yahweh
had been with the Israelites in the desert from Mt Sinai through the
wilderness. When the Israelites arrived at the 'land of milk and honey,'
they saw that the local Canaanites had a god, Baal, who was said to live
in the fields and crops and to provide life giving rains. As the nomadic
Israelites became settled farmers, there was a strong temptation for them
to abandon their 'desert' god for the 'farmers' god, or even to confuse
the two and say that Yahweh = Baal.
This is syncretism at its most fundamental. The prophets went to great lengths to show that their God, Yahweh, was the only God and the God of all creation--which includes rain and the staple crops of grain, wine, and oil. Hosea's story is a complex metaphor relating the sexual and worship practices of Baal with whoredom, and the judgement and collapse of Israel as the abandonment and divorce by Yahweh of his unfaithful wife, Israel. Verses 1-9 sets up the struggle against paganism and syncretism through the imagery of matrimony, but suggests that the aim is for conversion rather than destruction, or persuasion rather than coercion. God's aim is to re-establish the original relationship of reciprocal love and affection. The last verse, vs. 10, gives the hope that Yahweh is a faithful husband and will forgive his wife and eventually be reconciled with her, as Hosea is with his wife Gomer.
The harsh opening of Hosea leads into the wonderful story of love and forgiveness in next week's reading (Hosea 11: 1-11), and suggests the love and feeling that Yahweh has for his people Israel. It is the story of God in an ongoing relationship with the people of Israel. Through myths and stories the authors tell how God works with the world as it is. The Israelites make their choice and God, through the prophets, provides them with a new aim. Gerald Janzen says that "in many aspects the Old Testament reads much more naturally and suggestively in a process perspective than otherwise." The book of the prophet Hosea is a good example of this contention.
Psalm 85 and Hosea 1:10 can pose a problem for our understanding of God. We are told of God's wrath and we can understand that the Israelites deserve it. But in the next instant we are told that the mind of God has changed and that rather than "You are not my people" they will be "Children of the living God." Rather than "wrath" and "hot anger" there will be "steadfast love and faithfulness." What happens to the wrath of God? A traditional reading of Psalm 85 goes something like this: 'God has put aside his anger, forgiven them their sin, and restored the life of land and people.' In other words, we are loved so much that God just changes God's mind. However, if we understand a God who gives us an initial aim and the freedom to choose our actions, and then works with the world as it is, this explanation does not sit very well and we need a different interpretation.
The Old Testament is a story of the relationship between God and the Israelites. This relationship is described as a covenant, or two-way agreement between God and God's people. For the Israelites the covenant is the 'lure,' a constant reminder of where God wants them to go. For God, the covenant can be seen as the promise that God will continue to guide and direct the people. The Israelites regularly broke the covenant, and in so doing displayed "anger" and "wrath" against God. God receives this anger and wrath into the divine life without qualification and works with it as it is. God does not change our decisions or undo what we have done, but creatively transforms them into a new aim in the divine imagination. The breaking of the covenant would be intolerable to God's nature, so the wrath of the people is not forgotten, but is transformed into a new divine aim. I can read the words of Psalm 85 and hear the psalmist asking God to do just that. "Restore us again. . ." "Will you be angry with us for ever. . ." "Show us your love. . ." The psalmist recognises that this will happen to them when they ".hear what God the Lord will speak. . ." and "turn to him in their hearts. . ." and looks forword to the time when heaven and earth will be in full harmony.
The Colossians are told to be aware of two philosophies that can poison their faith in the one true God. There are those who insist that they must continue with the rules covering food, drink, festivals, new moon and sabbath. The other group wants them to participate in special rituals of self-abasement, worship of angels,and being "puffed up" with their own knowledge. Instead 'Paul' wants them to continue to grow in the faith that they were taught by Epaphras. The author says that to receive Christ Jesus is not just a decision but a way of life, a process of "walking" from where they were to what they will be, (vs.6-7).
In the remainder of the reading 'Paul' uses an interweaving of images and metaphors to highlight the differences between following Christ and following the false philosophies. From 'emptiness' to 'fullness,' from the uncircumcision of life to the circumcision in Christ, from death to life, from condemnation to acquittal and from captivity to freedom. As in Hosea, there is no syncretism: it is God or Baal, it is life in Christ or life without a future.
Paul and the pseudo-Pauline writers write about Jesus Christ, but who is Jesus for them? Verse 2:9 says "For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily," in 1:19 the author continues "and through him God was pleased to reconcile himself to all things." The word for fullness, pleroma, signifies that God possessed Jesus completely and that he was not just a manifestation. In saying this we are not saying that Jesus represents everything of God in the sense that there is no revelation outside him. For the Christian, Christ represents not the final but the definitive revelation of God. As David Griffin puts it, every event in the world is an act of God in the sense that it originates with an initial aim from God, but that "Jesus was God's supreme act of self-expression, and is therefore appropriately apprehended as God's decisive revelation." Griffin continues, "The aims given to Jesus and actualized by him during his active ministry were such that the basic vision of reality contained in his message of word and deed as the supreme expression of God's eternal character and purpose." When 'Paul' tells us to be "in Christ," we are actually being part of the "body that grows with a growth that is from God."
It should not be the case, but I am always surprised when I see a pattern in the lectionary reading. In reading for today's notes I saw that Breuggemann identifies in the readings from Hosea, Psalm 85, and the Lord's Prayer the same yearning for human hope for the produce of the earth so that there is sufficient for all. There are two issues in today's reading. The first obviously concerns prayer, and the second is a continuation of Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom of God. Today we learn that the disciples are told to model their prayer on that of Jesus and to pray for the Kingdom of God, for the strength to do God's will, and for sufficient to meet our daily needs. Their prayer is to be simple and natural, but it would have been shocking to a traditional Jew to address God as Father. We have gained the impression that God's Kingdom had already come on earth, but the kingdom of God cannot be complete on earth while evil exists, so the disciples are asked to pray for forgiveness of sins.
Like all the lessons Jesus taught, the disciples have to take responsibility for their own actions. They must also forgive those that sin against them. Marjorie Suchocki, in her lovely book In God's Presence, says that the first thing Jesus teaches us in this prayer is that the Kingdom of God is "communal" while at the same time being personal. She says that when we pray the oldest Christian liturgical prayer, "we are praying the translated words and spirit of generations of Christians."She writes, "If God receives us into the divine self and joins us there with our relevant world, are we not then joined with those who have also prayed this prayer?" We pray to "Our Father" indicating a God in relationship with all. We pray for our daily needs, for food and for forgiveness. We know that we do not follow God's will all the time so we also need forgiveness on a daily basis. We then ask not to be brought to the time of trial so that we do not make the same mistakes over again, we ask that our ill shall be replaced with good.
We have been told in these five readings from Luke that being a disciple means being concerned with the Kingdom of God. Jesus listened, heard, and acted on the will of God. His disciples were told that they must be ready to follow and there were to be no excuses, they must not expect earthly reward for doing God's will, they are to love their neighbour even when it goes against their traditional loyalties and prejudices, they must take time to listen to God and finally they must pray for God's Kingdom to come. As Christians we must take these lessons and apply them to our own journey as disciples.
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