“God Says, ‘Keep ‘Em’”
August 5: 2007
Text: Hosea 11:1-11
Perhaps you saw in the paper this morning that Jim Skinner has died. He was the irrepressible Ford dealer with the zany TV commercials that always ended with, “A hundred dollars says we’ll beat your best deal, regardless.” Jim Skinner’s ad campaign showed he never took himself too seriously. By contrast, one of his chief competitors was all business. The slogan at the old Lonnie Russell Ford, was “The Boss said, ‘Let ‘em go.’” The implication was the ‘boss’ was tired of looking at all of those cars out on the lot, and was ready to “let ‘em go” at bargain prices.
In today’s first scripture reading the prophet Hosea imagines an exasperated God saying just that, “Let ‘em go!” Hosea imagines God as a frustrated parent, looking down on us sons and daughters--God at wit’s end because of our rebellion against God, because of all of the unfairness and injustice in the world . . . . And Hosea imagines God saying, ‘Let ‘em go.’
It doesn’t take an OT prophet to see that God has grounds. All of us can imagine God’s anger at humankind in our own time and place. God railing against us in the divine council.
‘Just look at what they have done to my beautiful creation!’ ‘Whoever gave them permission to strip the forests, to pollute the rivers and foul the air?’ ‘See how they abuse one another--even within families, even within the Church.’ ‘Watch them tearing down barns to build bigger barns, tearing down houses to build bigger houses.’ ‘See them piling debt upon debt, fighting war after war.’ How tempting it must be for God to break that long-ago promise to Noah--to never again destroy the earth God has created (Gen 8.20f)!
Of course, God’s anger is not all that Hosea imagines. Oh, I suspect the anger is real enough. We humans get angry--at ourselves, at one another, even at God. We are made in God’s image. So surely God gets angry. Surely, at times, God wants to shout and scream, ‘Let ‘em go! I wash my hands of the whole human race.’ But, with God, anger does not get the last word. At the height of divine frustration--having voiced it in no uncertain terms, Hosea imagines God saying, “No, I can’t, I won’t let them go.” Here, it is God who turns the other cheek, remembering the joys of parenthood. “When Israel was a child, I loved him . . . .” God held us in the divine arms, and taught us to walk.
4 I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.
Hosea reminds us that God loved our ancestors right out of Egypt, right out of slavery and into freedom. Translate that to our current circumstance, and imagine God loving us away from drugs and alcohol and sex, from addition to work and debt, to over-eating and under-exercising. Imagine God leading us through the withdrawal pains of wilderness and into a good and broad land flowing with milk and honey-- clean living, faithful relationships, peace and harmony. Imagine God leading us to Holy Ground.
Now, you would think we would stay put, stay healthy, stay faithful. Having been led to the “promised land” you would think we could recognize our good fortune, settle down to “worship and enjoy God forever.” But nooooooooooooooo! Inevitably, we are drawn, time and time again, back into the same old self-destructive behaviors. Right back to the cesspools of Egypt, where we hate old Pharaoh, but cannot keep our hands out of the imperial cookie jar.
Speaking for God, Hosea says, “My people are bent on turning away from me.”
Surely this time, God has had enough: ‘Let ‘em go,’ and ‘good riddance.’ Let’s just be done with the whole human enterprise-- with the crime and violence, with the unfairness and the injustice, with the greed and gluttony in the face of hunger and want, with war as the answer to war. And the Boss says, “Let ‘em go.”
But God says, “No, I’ll keep ‘em.”
I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.
Australian biblical scholar Howard Wallace observes:
Throughout this passage, we sense the tempestuous moods of God,
the deep tides of God’s compassion
surging against the rock of a justly-deserved punishment
for the people’s faithlessness.
Hosea has God going back and forth--to be or not to be . . .angry, vindictive, judgmental; to show or not to show mercy and grace.
There is here no cheap grace, no easily won indulgent love. Rather we glimpse the pain of a parent’s heart, torn by the thoughtless straying of a wayward child, yet loving us nonetheless.
Is there any hope for the parent-child relationship. With the child so bent on self destructive behavior--on hurting self as well as others . . . ? Is there any hope for the divine desire for meaningful relationship between God and God’s people?
The prophet Hosea is wise enough to know that such hope cannot rest on change in the child. Children may grow like weeds, but we don’t change all that much. Hope for the future of the children, hope for us, lies not in our prospects for getting it right. Rather, our hope for ourselves, for the church, for the nation, for all of humankind rest solely on the gracious “turning” within the heart of God.
Here, in the prophesy of Hosea, says professor Wallace,
. . . we are shown the Holy One who is beyond our ways, whose steadfast love outlasts all betrayal.
The boss says, “Let ‘em go.” And sometimes the parent must do the same. Must make the awful, terrible decision to let the adult child bent on self-delusion and self-destruction . . . . To let him or her go. After all, we are mortals; we are not God. We are not divine. And that is all the more reason we bow in reverence to the Holy One of heaven who stands forever ready to give us . . . yet one more chance. The boss may say, “Let ‘em go,” God says, ‘No, no, I’ll keep ‘em.’ Because, according to Hosea, God has a hunch we’ll be back.
God’s children shall come trembling . . . .
11 They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt,
and like doves from the land of Assyria;
and I will return them to their homes, says the Lord.
We will come “trembling” because our waywardness, our rebellion against God, is inevitably costly. It brings needless suffering and destruction into the world-- nation against nation, people against nature. It brings pain and agony into our own lives, and into the lives of those we love. But we mortals are not the only ones who suffer. Hosea wants us to know that our sinfulness has brought anguish into the very heart of God. Suffering that will culminate in the suffering of Christ on the Cross.
The Boss says, “Let ‘em go.” God could have said the same thing long ago. Even now, God could say, “Enough is enough.” But doing so would violate the divine nature of our heavenly parent. When justice and grace are weighed in God’s balances, (God’s) grace always prevails.
2 Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
1 O give thanks to the Lord, for (God) is good;
for God’s steadfast love endures forever. Psalm 107