Mixed Messages

As a parent, one of the most delicate balances to keep is that between discipline and unconditional love. We love our children. Most parents would trade their lives for that of a child. But children are fully human, and, therefore, fully fallible. They make mistakes—some maddening, some outright rebellious. We know a child needs accountability to become a mature person. We know also that we love them with an irrational love. Most parents know the temporary insanity of wanting to simultaneously murder and embrace a child finally home after teen angst put them in harm’s way. We find ourselves uttering all sorts of mixed messages as we seek to balance justifiable discipline with that unique selfless love of a parent. 

The prophet Hosea discovers that even God wrestles with this aspect of being a parent.

All of the prophets offer a vision of Israel’s life before God as Israel wrestles with, rebels against, and accepts being the people of God, but Hosea’s vision is powerfully intimate—God is Israel’s father—a father caught in the worst of scenarios—a child has gone completely astray, rejecting everything the father values. The wayward child is lost. Israel is directionless, visionless, and, worst of all, heartless. Israel abandoned God for more malleable divinities. Israel flies after anything that promises gratification and that feeds her inherent self-interest. God is coming in judgment, but it is a judgment that devours God—

When Israel was a child, I loved him,

    and out of Egypt I called my son.

The more I called them,

    the more they went from me;

they kept sacrificing to the Baals,

    and offering incense to idols.

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,

    I took them up in my arms;

    but they did not know that I healed them.

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.

They shall return to the land of Egypt,

    and Assyria shall be their king,

    because they have refused to return to me.

The sword rages in their cities,

    it consumes their oracle-priests,

    and devours because of their schemes.

 My people are bent on turning away from me.

    To the Most High they call,

    but he does not raise them up at all.

There it is—the pained love of a parent faced with the inescapable moment that discipline must come.

Before this moment, though, there was another.

God tried to warn Israel about what was coming. When God called Hosea, God did something ridiculous, if not absurd. God demanded that Hosea marry a practicing harlot. Then, as they had children, God ordered that they be named utterly awful names—No Pity and Not My People (can you imagine how they survived middle school with those monikers?). It was all to be a sign of things to come for Israel. Each act and each name was meant to reveal the crisis at hand. Israel was faithless to the point of contempt for her relationship with God. The consequences would be children of horror as God withdrew. There would be no pity. Israel would lose her very identity, orphaned and abandoned. 

Israel ignored every sign.

We need to stop and consider our own circumstance and context. If God were to be with us right now, would the coming children be No Pity and Not My People? You have to wonder. This summer has been ridiculously long, and it is only about half over. One atrocity after another has happened. It opened in violence with the massacre in a Turkish airport. Violent catastrophes have been like weekly specials. They have been global. They have been local. They have been vast. They have been absurdly intimate. We cannot run through the litany in our minds without hearing the echoes of God’s word to Hosea. The Kingdom of God seems hopelessly out of reach. Our petition in the Lord’s prayer—thy kingdom come; thy will be done—seems a ludicrous request. Chaos reigns where there should be order; chaos is so consistent as to have an order all its own.

Are we paying attention? 

God cannot be happy with things as they are. We need to ready ourselves for an accounting. We need to face the reality that we will be held responsible for a world we have all worked to make. And, yes, we are all responsible, whether we admit or not. 

Now, I realize that I sound like the proverbial hellfire preacher we Southerners are known for. 

But this is the point where the mixed message God uttered to Hosea begins to sound again. As sure as judgment is, so, too, is grace that redeems.

That truth is also writ large in the symbolic children of Hosea and Gomer. Even as God ordered their horrific names, so, too, God announces a redemptive hope. No Pity will find pity. Not My People will have children and descendants more numerous than the grains of sand on a beach. Each terrible judgment is met with an equal measure of grace that cancels the judgment and promises resurrection in its stead.

We need to hear this message, too. It is no less ours to hear.

The key is the same as the one we hope our children find sooner rather than later. By taking responsibility for one’s actions, there comes the hope of redemption. Every 12 Step group that deals with the recovery of addicts of all stripes starts with that premise—taking responsibility, admitting who one is, and accepting the consequences leads to healing. In fact, healing can’t come until that responsibility is present. 

The world really is a mess. But it is no one else’s fault that would allow any of us to excuse ourselves from responsibility. The world is as the world is because we are as we are. That is the simple truth.

Seeing that allows the path to healing to manifest. Now we can begin to reorient ourselves toward grace. We can accept that we are going to need help to alter the world. We need a power greater than our own to make things better. We need a love more profound than ours to bring in healing. We need God.

Recognizing and accepting that need allows a deeper grace to come. We are followers of Jesus. Jesus was God’s sign—yet another child named for who he is—Jesus is Greek for the Hebrew Yeshua which means “Savior.” Jesus embodied the saving grace of God. Jesus did so, though, as a human being—i.e., in part, he shows us how to live and be within the world. As we align ourselves with the way and life of Jesus, we become implements of God’s saving grace within the world. Our words and actions can be transformative. We can make a difference. We can be ushers of change in a world desperately hungry for it. It is not so much empty idealism, but, in fact, is actually realism—as we become embodiments of love, we become who we really are, becoming the Image of God in which God made us. The world can and will change course. There can be real and lasting hope. There can be an end to a summer that never seems to end.

A dear friend of mine back in Georgia, a Methodist pastor, preached recently, We are not called to be right in a wrong world; we’re called to be Jesus in a broken and hurting world.

Amen.

That indeed is our vocation. It is indeed the path away from God’s judgment and into a full experience of God’s grace. It is hearing the mixed message in Hosea, understanding it, and acting accordingly.

May we have both the courage and the faith to do so.