"Israel, I will make you my wife forever. I will be honest and faithful to you. I will show you my love and compassion. I will be true to you, my wife. Then you will know the Lord."
Hosea
Most of you have probably seen the movie "Sister Act". In the movie, actress Whoppi Goldberg takes some popular hit songs from the sixties and uses them in a gospel context: "I will follow Him, follow Him no matter where He goes. There isn't an ocean too deep, a mountain so high as to keep, keep me away, away from His love."
As in the movie, there is nothing to stop us from taking our own experience of love or failed love and putting these events into the context of our spiritual journey with God, no matter how painful or ordinary these events may be.
The prophet Hosea, did exactly that. The prophet has just gone through the painful experience of a marriage that has failed, and uses it as a channel of revelation. The love that Hosea felt for his wife becomes an image of God's love for His people. The unfaithfulness of Hosea's wife, her lack of tenderness and mutual trust, her ignorance of the covenant that had existed between them, becomes an image of Israel's rebellion against God.
What is happening in Israel that Hosea and other prophets are called to speak out against? The time is around 750 BC. It is after the building of the strong Northern and Southern Kingdoms of Israel by David and Solomon. It is a time of prosperity, but also a time of political corruption and moral decay. Hosea describes Israel as a luxuriant vine, yielding plenty of fruit. The more the fruit increased, the more altars they built, the richer the land became, the richer they made their sacred stones. Their heart was a divided heart.
Like Hosea's wife, Israel was guilty of unfaithfulness, lacking in tenderness and trust for God, who freed them from Egyptian slavery. Israel grew in ignorance of the ancient covenant that held them together with God, that made them a nation of integrity, of kindness and love for one another. They began to follow the Canaanite Gods, often referred to as Baal; the god of fertility, the god of prosperity, the god of increased richness. So Hosea spoke out during this time when the quality of "things" became more important than the quality of the "heart". "Your hearts are a divided heart; very well, you must pay for it". And pay for it they did. Northern Israel was defeated by Assyria, its citizens deported. Judah became a puppet nation of stronger nations before its eventual defeat.
The struggle of the people of Israel, that struggle of a divided heart, is the struggle of every person through out history. It is largely the struggle facing our generation today. It is the struggle that Jesus commissioned His apostles to speak about when He told them: "Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and tell them: The Kingdom of heaven is at hand." In other words, God's kingdom is imminent, and that kingdom is a society of people whose hearts are possessed by God and not by things.
And today, God calls ordinary people like ourselves, common people who do ordinary things, with no special education or social advantage, people whose hearts are not divided, but united to serve the cause of God's Kingdom. God calls us to see that healing and wholeness comes through our faithfulness and commitment to that which brings life.
You gave me strength to stand alone again,
To face the world out on my own again.
You put me high upon a pedestal,
So high that I could almost see eternity.
You needed me.
You held my hand when it was cold,
When I was lost, you took me home.
You gave me hope when I was at the end;
And turned my lies back into truth again.
You needed me. Anne Murry
No comments:
Post a Comment