“The Liberal Church: Where There Is Compassion for Those in Need”

Hosea 11: 1-9

Fourth Sunday in Lent +

March 22, 2009

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

Rev. David Brown

It happened some 750 years before Christ in an unknown town in the northern kingdom of Israel. A man walked through the streets on his way to the slave market. The eyes of all the villagers were on him as he strode along. They all knew who he was: Hosea, a prophet of the Lord. But the people were puzzled. Hosea was the last man on earth who should have been going to the slave market that particular day. Why? Because up ahead, on the auction block, his own wife was going to be sold as a slave. Why was Hosea going to the slave market?

But when they thought about it for a moment, the townspeople could have easily answered their own question. They had heard Hosea preach many times. They knew him for a fiery prophet of the judgment of God – a grim man with a grim message. Anyone, taught Hosea, was free to break God’s commandments, but when you did you’d better be ready to take the consequences. And what was true for individuals was also true for nations. Israel, the people of God, had repeatedly and flagrantly broken God’s commandments. They had been rebellious and unfaithful. Now, said Hosea, God’s patience had run out. The time of punishment was near at hand.

Hosea had even gone so far as to give his children names symbolic of his message. One child he named “Jezreel,” to remind the people of the national crime that had been committed in the city of Jezreel when the whole family of King Ahab had been murdered. Another child he names “Lo-Ammi,” which means “not my people,” since God had decided the Israelites were “not my people” and was ready to abandon them to their fate. Hosea named his last child “Lo-Ruhamah,” meaning “no mercy,” because God would not forgive the people anymore.

But the hard man who preached this hard message had suffered a tragedy in his own home. Though Hosea had deep insight in some areas of life, in his relationships with people he had little understanding and almost no compassion. Can you imagine what his wife must have felt like married to such a man, calling her children by such names? Finally, it was too much for her. She deserted Hosea and her children and went out to make her own way in the world. It hadn’t been easy. We know how difficult it can be even today for women to find suitable employment. In Hosea’s time, it was all but impossible. Soon Gomer, Hosea’s wife, became a prostitute. After her charms faded and she was deeply in debt, she was going to be sold at public auction. Her body and her future would become the property of anyone willing to buy her.

The fate of Gomer was the perfect illustration of everything Hosea had preached. She had rejected his love and protection – as Israel had rejected the love and protection of God. She had turned from his home to the arms of other lovers – as Israel had turned from the Lord to idols. The judgment of sin had now fallen on Gomer and she would be sold into slavery – just as the nation would soon become the slave of a foreign conqueror. It was neat – pat – perfect; an absolute verification of everything Hosea had taught. As the villagers watched Hosea on his way to the slave market, who could have doubted he was going to use the occasion to preach another sermon with his own wife as the object lesson. I imagine the whole village went to the slave market that day.

But when they got there, they witnessed an amazing, an unbelievable, thing. Hosea – this man of iron integrity, of unshakable convictions – stood in the public slave market, in the presence of his neighbors and friends, and bid for the purchase of the woman who had disgraced him. And he offered far more than was necessary. He paid down the price – half in money and half in grain – then he walked back through the crowd taking his wife home again. Everyone was astonished. Why had he done it? Why had the prophet of judgment stepped in to save someone from the consequences of her own sin? Why did he do it?

Friends, the answer is both simple and profound: Hosea did what he did because he believed that it was what God wanted him to do. In the days and weeks and months after Gomer left him, Hosea had done a lot of soul searching. He had taken another look at the way God deals with foolish, fallible, fallen human beings. Hosea came to understand that God is not primarily a God of judgment but a God of compassion. Hosea learned what the Psalmist would later write:

“The Lord is gracious and merciful,

Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

The Lord is good to all,

And God’s compassion is over all that God has made.” (Psalm 145:8-9)

And the only thing this God of amazing grace asks is that we show the same compassionate mercy toward those who have wronged us. That’s not easy to do, I know, but if we don’t the results can be awful. We’ve all heard the expression: “We reap what we sow” It’s absolutely true. Violence breeds more violence, hatred more hatred, and cruelty more cruelty. Isn’t that what has been happening in the Holy Land for so many decades? Unless that vicious cycle can be broken it will go on forever.

Against that kind of behavior, biblical faith calls us to a different way of life, the way of accepting, forgiving, and redeeming love. As Jesus told his followers then and now: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another . . .” (John 13:34). If we decided to live that way the results would be astonishing. That kind of love changes everything. That’s why love can be commanded, because it’s not a feeling, it’s a strategy. We are not asked to change our feelings about people. We are asked to act on the basis of love in spite of our feelings.

Sometimes I think you and I have been duped into thinking that we can’t change things in this world of ours. There is nothing we can do but accept things as they are. There is so much pessimism in our world today. We find it as much in eighteen-year-olds as in eighty-year-olds. Sometimes people justify their pessimism by calling it realism. “That’s the way the world is,” they say. “That’s the way people are.” Sometimes they marshal facts to prove that they are right. The funny thing is that today a wide variety of scientific disciplines don’t agree with them at all.

I read an article a few years ago by a psychologist at UCLA dealing with that widely accepted notion that modern life inevitably causes stress in human beings. Not so, he wrote. To a far larger degree than we give ourselves credit for, we can shape the kind of life we want to live. And we can do that in spite of external circumstances or internal feelings. He said the way we could do this is by using such phrases as “I have decided to . . .” or “I have made a commitment . . .” or “I will do this . . .” or “I won’t do that . . .” The result would be that men and women would regain some of the dignity and freedom appropriate to beings made in the image of God, rather than being mere reactions to environmental stimuli or impulse-driven creature of emotionality.

Anthropologists are saying the same thing about their discipline. Do you remember those popular books of forty years ago by Robert Ardrey and Konrad Lorenz, perpetuating the idea that to be human was to be aggressive and territorial? Of course, all kinds of theories about how to live successfully came out of those theories. Books and lecturers told us we would be successful in business to the degree we used power to our advantage. Our personal relationships would improve if we were more assertive, even aggressive.

But now there are other voices challenging this notion that to be human is to be aggressive. Richard Leakey wrote that the earliest human beings were not distinguished by their drives toward self-assertion . . . not by their hidden impulses to power . . . not even by their intelligence . . . but by their generosity. According to Leakey, the first human beings were distinguished from the rest of creation by their ability to care and to share. The first human communities were created because of their capacity to love one another. As Leakey puts it: “We are human because our ancestors learned to live with a network of obligations.”

A network of obligations. Isn’t that what Paul meant when he wrote of the more excellent way of love in Corinthians 13? Love creates relationships and communities. It can also restore relationships and communities.

We all remember the sad story of the devastation in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina. We saw the pictures and heard the reports of what happened. But have we also been paying attention to what has happened since Katrina? Many people have come from all parts of the United States to rebuild what was destroyed. And not only buildings but a new sense of community has been created. We have learned again that we are one people, one family.

Why should it take a human tragedy to teach us that lesson? Now is the right time to learn the truth of these powerful words from novelist James Baldwin: “For nothing is fixed forever and forever, it is not fixed, the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, and the sea does not cease to grind down the rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because they are the only witnesses we have. The sea rises, the light falls, lovers cling to each other, children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

How fitting that the grandchild of slaves would have known exactly what was going on in that slave market 3000 years ago and the message is always the same: we love or we perish. Friends that is the challenge that is always before us as a Liberal Church: how can we show compassion to those in need? As a church we have done much over the years and we continue to serve our community today in so many ways. But the need never ends. We dare not surrender to what some call “compassion fatigue.” But knowing you I do not believe that will happen. We know who we are and we know what we must do. That is our calling as a Liberal Church.