Grace, mercy and peace to you this day -- from God who holds us in our fear, in our anger, in our grief, and in our joyful times as well. AMEN.
I’ve been spending some time this week going through old pictures...going all the way back to 2013. Now, before you tell me, “Oh, that’s not old...” I agree, but keep in mind, when I go through pictures, you have to remember that I’m part of that Gen X/Millennial age group so we have thousands of pictures and videos of our kids, and for anyone who has small children, you know: a lot has happened in the last 2-3 years.
This is a good time for that too: flipping back (or scrolling in my case) through photo albums. Getting a little nostalgic and wanting to hang on to the past a little tighter. There’s something about the weather getting cooler and rainier, the seasons changing -- I really have acclimated, I think, to resetting my clock, not with daylight savings, but resetting my clock to a new year on the First Sunday of Advent, rather than New Years Day (next Sunday is Christ the King!), so I’m also really feeling another year coming to a close here. It’s good to get nostalgic at times, I think, to celebrate the beauty of the past, as we hope, and look forward.
It’s also something we do...when times get tough. I remember when Heather and I got our professionally-done wedding album in the mail, at last. We were so excited to see all our best pictures, and then someone (I don’t remember who) said, “Oh yeah, hang on to that: you’ll need.” You’ll need it when it gets tough. It’s a running joke with my friends, when our marriage waters get choppy, “I pulled out the album last week.” When the marriage is tried...or when the kids grow up and start getting into trouble, we pull out the albums, and quietly and nostalgically, longingly, flip through the pages, trying to transport ourselves to better times. (You been there?)
This text today from Hosea gives us first a God who’s flipping through the pages of the past: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” How many of us can picture a parent -- maybe you did this yourself -- calling and encouraging a newly walking child: “C’mon! You can do it!” We don’t generally imagine Israel’s journey through the wilderness as child toddling into first steps, but that’s what’s happening here in Hosea. We need to savor those memories; God savors those memories.
Hosea, by the way, is a prophet in the Northern Kingdom, and times are tough. The Northern Kingdom (unlike the Southern) has a king every couple years. Stability is eroding: outside pressures are crowding in, foreign enemies are attacking, terrorism is a daily reality for the Israelites in the north. We’ve come a long way [bookshelf]: from Egypt, into Canaan, building up this powerful monarchy, and now it’s all starting to crumble again. Hosea is speaking to these northerners who are getting scared, angry and sad. And needless to say, he’s speaking to us too. In this time of violence and terror, with the horrifying bombings in Paris, with all manner of terror and violence on our own soil too, with common decency and human compassion eroding away, outside pressures creeping in constantly...here’s God, through Hosea’s pen, getting nostalgic:
“It was I who first taught Ephraim [largest tribe in the North] to walk, I took them up in my arms, but they did not know that I healed them.” How many times has a parent helped a child, taken a child to the ER, stayed up hours nursing or rocking them to sleep...and the child doesn’t even know it or remember it. How many hours do parents worry and fret and love and hold their babies, and the babies can’t rationally remember it, don’t even know it...except for somewhere way down there, they do.
God is, in this text, being imaged as a loving mother. You have no idea what I’ve gone through for you, Israel. You don’t even know. [Emma describes God as “a loving and welcoming mother bringing us in with a warm embrace...looking back at us with loving eyes.”]
And yet -- Israel. Keeps. Turning. Away.
If we have the Prodigal Father in the New Testament, we have the Prodigal Mother in the Old. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. We need to linger in this imagery this week; at the end of this year...savor God as our loving mother caring for us when we didn’t even know it.
Or, if this is helpful -- if you just can’t imagine God as a mother yourself -- think of this as the part of the Prodigal Son parable that isn’t told. Think of this as what the father is doing while the son is out burning the family inheritance. The loving parent is flipping through the pages, moving through all those feelings of grief, anger, fear...but finally arrives at love.
“How can I hand you over, how can I give you up...My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger.”
God is not unmoved. God like a parent gives consequences. God gets angry, sad and scared for us. For you. But finally God arrives at love. “My compassion grows warm.” [Hebrew word...from one Hebrew scholar: This word is a fascinating one in Hebrew because it means something along the lines of "take a deep breath in a way that changes one's emotional mind." Like a worked up parent, God is taking a deep breath before executing punishment on the child. The word is often seen as problematic because the idea of God changing one's mind is theologically difficult for many. Used as a noun in this verse, it simply means compassion and mercy. Definitely not problematic. However, verse 8 does point toward the malleability of God's will, always moving toward mercy over justice."]
Sisters and brothers in Christ, God continues to go with us. God has not let us go -- despite all the turning away we’ve done --God longs for us to change certain of our ways, and come home. Come back. Turn around. God longs for the days when we weren’t so stubborn, and know-it-all. “Remember,” God says, “when I could tell you something and you trusted it to be true.” [pause]
We grow up and our Heavenly Parent’s voice can sometimes be all but forgotten, certainly not always trusted. But God is still calling to us this day, calling you back. Offering you peace and safety that world cannot give. Offering you hope and grace. Offering you forgiveness and joy.
When our children have safe homes where they are brought up, then they live lives out there in the dangerous world, yes, but they live with confidence, wisdom and compassion...
God has given us a safe home. God started us from a safe, loving, and nurturing place -- even if that’s not true in your own upbringing. God our nurturing parent -- through the bathtub of the baptismal font, at the breakfast table of the altar, with the bed time stories of the faith -- God has raised us in safety and peace, and so we can walk into the dangerous world with confidence that we are loved, with wisdom to discern right from wrong, and with compassion. God’s compassion for us overflows, and we in turn share compassion in a world that so desperately needs to receive it.
God’s still with us, in Christ Jesus. AMEN.
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