Scandalous Love


Hosea23Hosea 1:2-10

It must have been frontpage news at the supermarket checkout
counters in Israel, right next to the hummus and the Tic-Tacs: “Local Prophet
Marries Prostitute” screamed the headline of the Israel Inquirer. “Holy Man Hosea
Hooks Up with Hooker” winked the Samarian Post. You can just imagine the
pictures—the paparazzi following Hosea around, the seductive poses of his wife
Gomer there in the centerfold. If the Israelites had had Google, Hosea and
Gomer would have been the number one search term in about 750BC, especially
given that in 2012 the number one Google search term was Whitney Houston dying
in a bathtub.

Americans love a good scandal. Whether it’s a government
official getting caught in an affair or celebrities hooking up in secret, we
want to see the pictures. Somehow it makes us seem more self-righteous, which
may be why most people feign disgust at the tabloids but then secretly buy
them. Tabloid sales are increasing while newspaper readership is decreasing.
The more salacious the news, the better it sells.

We might look at the book of the prophet Hosea as a kind of
tabloid story in the midst of the grand narrative of the Bible—like a National Enquirer tucked into the middle
of the New York Times. I mean, look
at how the story starts: “Go take for yourself a wife of whoredom,” God tells
Hosea, “and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by
forsaking the Lord” (v. 2). The fact that God commands this of Hosea, a
faithful prophet, makes it even more intriguing. Inquiring minds want to know
why.

Read deeper into the Scriptures, however, and you’ll see
that God is making the prophets do this sort of thing all the time. Isaiah walked
around Jerusalem barefoot for three years as a sign of God’s judgment on
Israel’s enemies. Jeremiah walked around with an oxen’s yoke on his next as a
sign that Judah would be under the yoke of Babylon. Think of these as a kind of
political theater designed as a public display that would get people thinking
about the symbolism. Hosea’s task, however, may have been the most personally
difficult of all the prophetic tasks—to intentionally go out and marry a woman
who we knows will leave him for liaisons with a host of other men.

Why does God make Hosea do this tabloid-worthy task? We get
a clue here in the second verse of chapter one: “The land commits great
whoredom (NIV says “adultery”) by forsaking the Lord.” One of the most common
biblical metaphors for the relationship between God and Israel is that of a marriage:
God as the loving husband and Israel as his bride. But Israel has been an
unfaithful spouse, forsaking God and running after the gods of wood and stone
that their pagan neighbors worshipped. Rather than relying on God’s provision
and love, they sought the comfort and pleasures of Canaanite idolatry, which in
the ancient world often involved sexual promiscuity. The Israelites thus broke
the covenant that God made with them at Sinai—a covenant where they pledged
fidelity by having or making other gods, particularly gods made in their own
image.

Remember that God had made this covenant with Israel has his
chosen people—a people who would be a light to the rest of the world by being
holy and set apart; a people faithful to one God and to each other. Israel’s
sin broke that covenant, much like infidelity breaks the marriage covenant
between husband and wife. Hosea’s marriage would be an acted parable of how far
the relationship had deteriorated.

So Hosea marries Gomer and, in the midst of this scandalous
relationship, they have three children whom God tells Hosea to name. The first
is Jezreel—Jezreel was the fruitful plain in the northern hill country, and the
site of many of Israel’s battles. It was also the route of enemy of invasion
into the northern kingdom of Israel. By naming the firstborn son Jezreel, God
foreshadows that Israel will be invaded as the result of their sins. You can
imagine the tabloid shots of little Jezreel and the speculation about his name
there at the checkout counter.

The second child, a daughter, is name Lo-ruhamah or “not
pitied.” The sign is clear: God will have no pity on those who forsake him. And
the third child, “Lo-ammi’s” name delivers the starkest image yet: Israel is
“not my people,” says the Lord, because of their flirtation with other gods. As
God is wont to do, he will punish his people by giving them exactly what they
want, letting them court other gods as lovers who will ultimately use them and
sow the seeds of their destruction.

Indeed, this is what Gomer, Hosea’s wife, does. She goes
after her lovers who use her and provide her with gifts (2:5). She doesn’t
realize that it is Hosea who provides for her and really loves her, just like
Israel does not realize that it is God alone who loves and provides for her. If
you read this story in the tabloids, you would certainly support Hosea in
cutting this woman loose, just like we would support any man or woman dealing
with an unfaithful spouse. We might even expect God to go and find another
people who might be more faithful to him.

Hosea holding gomerBut here’s the real scandal in the story. Rather than
leaving her, which would have been far less embarrassing in a culture of honor
and shame, Hosea goes after her and pursues her. Chapter three begins with
Hosea going to redeem his wife by buying her with a ransom and bringing her
back home to live with him once again. She must give up the promiscuous life,
but she is no longer condemned. She is home and part of the family again.

This is an extraordinary measure of grace toward one who
deserves only condemnation, but it is not only Hosea’s way—it is God’s way.
Like Hosea redeeming his wayward spouse, God will redeem his people. Look at
2:19—even after all of Israel’s unfaithfulness, God says to her, “I will take
you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and
justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in
faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.

And then look down at 2:22. Notice what God does for the
children: Jezreel will be prosperous with produce and not blood. God will have
pity on Lo-ruhamah, the one who had no pity. And Lo-ammi, the one who was not
my people, will be God’s people again. A faithful God redeems his unfaithful
people and reconciles with them through his love.

This isn’t the kind of text we expect to be reading at
Christmas—not something you’d put on a children’s bookshelf or read by the fire
on Christmas Eve. But this story, at its heart, is the story of Christmas, the
story of God’s coming to ransom and redeem a people who have long been
searching for love in all the wrong places.

The clue is right there in the manger—the name of the child
isn’t “no pity” or “not my people”: his name is Emmanuel—not “God against us”
or “God apart from us” but “God with us.” God takes the extraordinary step of
coming to his people in person to redeem them and dwell with them, to make a
home with them. That’s what John writes in his Gospel: The word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us (John 1:14). He came not to condemn, but to buy
us back with the ransom of his own blood.

When I was back at Asbury Seminary for my doctoral
graduation this week, we sang what has become known as the Asbury Hymn—Charles
Wesley’s “And Can It Be.” It is a powerful song about the gospel, and whenever
I hear it, it makes me weep. One of the verses captures the power of the
incarnation of God in Christ:

“He left his father’s throne above, so free so infinite his
grace. Emptied himself of all but love, and bled for Adam’s helpless race. Tis
mercy all, immense and free, for O my God it found out me!”

When Jesus began to preach, that immense and free mercy found
out many people who themselves had lived scandalous lives:

He came upon a woman, much like Gomer, who had been caught
in the act of adultery with another man. Jewish law said that she deserved to
be stoned to death, and should receive neither love nor forgiveness. Jesus
offers her both and embarrasses the hypocritical crowd.

He met a woman in Samaria who had had five husbands and was
living with another man. She is much like Gomer. He offers her living water, a
new chance at life and grace.

He encounters Zaccheus—a man who cheated and swindled his
neighbors from behind his tax collection table. He is sitting in a tree when
Jesus finds him. Jesus takes the risk of going to his house and eating with
him, which causes Zaccheus to begin living as an honest and generous man.

He tells a story about a wayward son who squanders all his
inheritance and then comes slinking home back to his father who, in a stunning
reversal of convention, runs out to meet his son, embraces him, and welcomes
him home. It’s embarrassing, scandalous, and unexpected. But that’s the nature
of grace!

Jesus didn’t come to bless the perfect, or to do the
expected. Jesus didn’t come to point his fingers at those on the tabloid pages
or those who keep secrets in dark alleys and bedroom. He came to ransom them—to
ransom all of us. He came to pursue us out of a deep love for us. He came to
offer forgiveness, love, reconciliation. He came to bring us home, not just to
some faraway heaven, but to a real life here and now.

A week from tomorrow we will have a packed house on
Christmas Eve. I am always fascinated at that phenomenon—why the church will be
full to overflowing one night a year but rarely on a regular Sunday. It’s easy
to speculate and, quite frankly, easy to get annoyed at the H2O people
(Holidays 2 Only). Sure, some will come out of tradition, others because family
members dragged them here. But I wonder if the real reason that people tend to
only come on that night is that they can stay hidden in the crowd—that they are
honest about their waywardness, more so than people in the church who may
simply be hiding that waywardness a little better. I wonder if they think that
their lives are simply too scandalous, too unacceptable to God. I wonder if
they’re trying to avoid having their lives become fodder for gossip from the
self-righteous who will discover the story and wag their heads.

Most wayward people stay away from church because there’s no
one willing to pursue them in love, to offer them grace, to welcome them home.
The church of Jesus Christ has largely lost his pursuit of scandalous
love—radical, unconditional, redeeming love for the world; love that costs,
love that risks embarrassment, love that reaches out to the broken with an open
hand rather than a clenched fist.

Church, are we willing to love those strangers who will come
here with a scandalous love? Are we willing to go out of our way, maybe even
risk embarrassment, to extend a hand, a word of grace, an offer of Christ?

And what about the days after Christmas? Do you know people
around you who are in need of some scandalous, unconditional, reconciling love?

Or, maybe it’s you who need it. Maybe you have been
wandering far off, looking for love in all the wrong places. Christ says to you
today, “I want to take you home. I’ve paid your ransom with my life. Won’t you
come home with me?”

Hosea intentionally married a spouse who soon left him. God
intentionally came to a people who had left him. Can we live in, or give in, to
that scandalous kind of love?

You can read the scandalous news in the Bethlehem Star: Unto
us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. His name is Emmanuel. God with us.

There is no better news than that. Amen.

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