"2" Views Of God (Hosea)

How do you have hope when the future you can picture is uncertain or even non-existent? Hope is an entirely future oriented experience. President Obama used Hope to inspire Americans beyond their present woes. Obi Wan Kenobi was the rebellion's “only hope”. Hope is the belief that it can and WILL get better. It is trusting that there is a better way forward, even in the midst of tough/difficult times.

I will heal their disloyalty;

    I will love them freely,

    for my anger has turned from them.

I will be like the dew to Israel;

    he shall blossom like the lily;

    he shall strike root like the forests of Lebanon.

At the start of and during the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (called Ephraim by Hosea), we get a narrative prophetic book. Tiglath Pileser III (a killer name and a killer…literally) is in charge of the Assyrian empire and is beginning a wider and broader take over. The King of Israel begins to make alliances with Egypt and Assyria trying to double cross both. And in comes Hosea! Hosea is best known for being a parabolic narrative using a marriage to an unfaithful woman as a metaphor for Israel's relationship to God. And interwoven into this messy relationship between Hosea and Gomer is a parable for God’s messy relationship with Israel, and ultimately with all of humanity.  

The God of Hosea wants to know us with deep intimacy. The word used for know is the hebrew yada - יָדַע, and carries with it a deeply personal, intimate, and sexual connotation. The people God desires to know  are far too busy getting to know, intimately, the political power and dominance of Egypt and Assyria. 

This God who desires for you to be known wants to remind you of where you come from. Hosea reminds Israel of their long history of turning from God toward idols in the direct face of God’s constant showing up for them. And we see over and over in Hosea, and over and over in our own lives that we abandon God again and again. While it is often expressed that Hosea has this central theme of “our” abandonment of God and God’s punishment for that, the motivation seen throughout by God is love. Hosea’s own narrative bleeds into his understanding of how God shows up and what God wants. 

Hosea gives us 2 images for God that should shape and reshape our imagination for the way we understand God’s experience of our abandonment. God is portrayed as an ever-loving parent and as a Tree or Plant with deep roots. Hosea portrays this loving father as a metaphor for God. God can be angry and heartbroken, but ultimately is moved from love. Hosea’s poetic take is “How can I give you up?” And God as a tree with deep roots invites us to be reminded that to root ourselves in hope beyond our current situation is the best place we can be. God in the midst of our suffering does not avoid but participates with us. God is not an unmoved being but rather one who is working to move us further to the place of liberation and healing where we then aspire the same for all. 

God seeks to heal and to forgive, two things that on this second day of Christmas are well worth our own aspiration to embody. We learn from Hosea that God roots Godsself in our suffering, and seeks to heal and draw us deep into an intimate embrace of love and acceptance. We, by God, are seen, known, loved, and celebrated. The challenge is to now do the same for others. 

Let us challenge the status quo of empire and seek to liberate all from the exiles we have made for ourselves and others.