“Love in a Slave Market”

Hosea 11:1-11 and I Corinthians 13

July 25, 2010

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

All my life I’ve loved the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, particularly the marvelous “patter songs.” One of my favorites is Ko-Ko’s song from The Mikado. Ko-Ko has been made the Lord High Executioner and he’s “got a little list” of all the people who annoy him. Now that he’s the Lord High Executioner he has the power to get rid of them. Of course, the people on Ko-Ko’s list were those who annoyed William S. Gilbert who wrote the lyrics for The Mikado. It’s one of the most amusing songs in the operetta because we are all a little bit like Ko-Ko. We’ve all “got a little list of society offenders who might well be under ground and who never would be missed.” My own list would include people who have those sonic-booming car stereos forcing the rest of us to listen to their awful music. And how about those hypocritical “Family Values” preachers and politicians who get caught in adultery? I’ve got them on the list. And let’s not forget the people who insist on doing their own annoying ads on television. “They never would be missed. They’d none of ‘em be missed.”

Ko-Ko assures us that there is plenty of room on his list to add our own nominations. And I’ll bet you have been thinking of a few right now. It’s all very funny. But some of us have another list that isn’t funny at all. On this very personal list we have the names of those who have hurt us cruelly. These are the folks who “did us dirt.” We can’t forgive them or forget them. We carry that list of names around with us for years hoping that someday they will get what they deserve.

There’s a story about a man who was bitten by a dog suspected of having rabies. He was rushed to the hospital. A doctor examined him and confirmed that he had, indeed, contracted rabies. The man immediately asked for paper and pencil. The doctor assumed the man was afraid he was going to die and wanted to make out his will. “Don’t be alarmed,” the doctor reassured him. “You’re not going to die. We have a serum to counteract the rabies. You don’t have to make out your will.” “I’m not making out my will,” the man replied. “I’m making a list of the people I want to bite before you cure me!”

That’s funny. But sometimes such stories are not so funny. I remember one of the participants in the Spanish Civil War, Ramón Narvaez. On his deathbed he was asked by a priest if he wanted to forgive his enemies before he died. He answered, “Father, I have no enemies. I killed them all.”

I think what “hooks” us about Ko-Ko’s song, the funny story about the man with rabies, or the sad story of Ramón Narvaez, is that all of us have had murderous thoughts about someone at some moment in our lives. It’s a good thing we didn’t have the power to give them what we thought they deserved. Two people would have suffered. Yes, those who hurt us would have suffered, but we would have suffered, too. Revenge may taste sweet for an instant on our lips, but it leaves a sour pain in our stomach for a lifetime. Revenge poisons the person or society that practices it. In First Corinthians 13 Paul tells us he will show us a more excellent way, the way of forgiving love.

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

Those are matchless words. They are so beautiful they blur the distinction between poetry and prose. Some of us can recite them from memory. I am sure that everyone here this morning would want to say: “Yes, Paul, you are absolutely right. We should love other people that way.”

Ah, but the problem is, how do we do it? We all agree that First Corinthians 13 is great in theory, but how do we practice this way of love? We need an example from real life to show us how and I want to do that right now. I’m going to tell you the story of how one man did show this kind of love.

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 named “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 m8uch 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 conquer. 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, and 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?

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 write:

“The Lord is gracious and merciful,

Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

The Lord is good to all,

And his compassion is over all that he has made.” (Psalm 145:8-9)

The only thing this God of amazing grace, of amazing love, and amazing forgiveness asks of us is that we show that same compassionate mercy toward those who have wronged us. That’s not easy to do I know, because I carry with me the same anger and bitterness that you do. But I also know that if you and I don’t forgive, the results with be terrible. We will become just like those who have hurt us. I don’t want to do that and I hope you don’t either.

Last week as I began my sermon I asked you to remember someone who had a profound influence for good on your life. This week as I end this sermon I want you to remember someone in your life who hurt you badly, someone who betrayed you terribly. This may have happened recently or long ago but all of us remember who that person was.

Now I want you to close your eyes as I close mine. I invite all of us to visualize the face that person who wronged us. I can see that person now and I believe you can, too. Just as we have never forgotten them, we have never forgiven them. Their face and what they did to us haunts us to this day.

Still with our eyes closed, I want us all to say in our hearts as we see their face: “I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you.” Now you may open your eyes. I invite you to practice this act of forgiveness during this week over and over again until forgiveness begins to grow within you. If we sincerely try to forgive I believe we will. Don’t knock it ‘till you try it.

Now is the 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, 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. Now go out and find someone to forgive and to love.