How Can I Give You Up?

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August 4, 2013

Hosea 11:1-11

¹When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. ²The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. ³Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. ⁴I 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.

⁵They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. ⁶The sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests, and devours because of their schemes. ⁷My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call, but he does not raise them up at all.

⁸How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. ⁹I 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.

¹⁰They shall go after the LORD, who roars like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west. ¹¹They 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.

Sermon: “How Can I Give You Up?”

This book is full of stories: some, comforting and reassuring, others deeply troubling.  Some of these stories we read lovingly over and over again; others we rarely glance at.  But every single word of this sacred text of ours has something to teach us.  That lesson falls into one of two categories (and, of course, often both at the same time): we learn who God is, and we learn who we as people are. 

There are passages that make no mention of God and yet describe the violent conquests and political manipulations of humans, such as the book of Esther.  Those teach us, through the particular ways a writer chose to selectively remember their history, about the darkest parts of ourselves, of our tendency to seek power at any means. 

And then there are passages, like our text from Hosea this morning, that give us a glimpse into the Divine, of the very nature and substance of God. 

Before we enter into this text, I want you, for just a moment, to let a word form in your mind.  When I say “God”, what word first appears to you? 

What are some words that came to you just now?  (Share them.)

Did any of you, in this moment, have the word “heartbroken” come into your mind? 

We do not often use this word to describe God, do we?  We might, when reading Jesus’ words from the cross, “My God, my God what have you forsaken me?” begin to see God in this way. 

Here in Hosea, if there were one word to describe the God we discover in these words, it would be “heartbroken.”  This God loves a people completely, as a parent loves their child, but watches in sorrow as they willfully turn away, again and again.  The pain of this rejection is so great that God wishes to turn away from these wandering people.  (And being God, God could easily make this happen.)  This whole text describes that internal struggle between the desire to abandon these unfaithful people to their own consequences, or to love them relentlessly. 

“My people are bent on turning away from me.  To the Most High they call, but I do not raise them up.”

“How can I give you up, Ephraim?  How can I hand you over, O Israel?”

“My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.”

And with those heart-warming words, the internal debate is over.  God’s decision is made.  That choice is to remain faithful, to love unwaveringly even if that love will never, and can never, be returned. 

“I will not execute my fierce anger,” God says.  “I will not destroy…that is the way of humans.  I am not a human being, I am God, the Holy One, and I am capable of much more than that.”  Consider this something of a motivational speech from God, to God.

American Baptist pastor Stacey Simpson Duke aptly describes the character of God revealed here:

“This is not the story of the “prodigal son” who, having struggled with his own bad choices, finally turns and comes home.  This is the story of a prodigal God who – in anguish, heartbreak and the fiercest love – comes seeking out the children who have strayed.”

Do we know this God at all?  Do we know a God who is as fierce as a lion roaring to gather in trembling children and, at the same time, heartbroken that those children will not return without first being summoned? 

This God is somehow more fragile than the God we often think of, a God who doesn’t come at the choice to love because he is sugary goodness and can’t help himself.  This God chooses to love a people from infancy to idolatry through great inner turmoil. 

That choice comes at a cost: to love at all costs.  It is a choice that only God could make.  For we human beings are not capable of such a costly choice: we can love in astounding and transformative ways, but we can never love as this God loves.  For this God’s love is not a sweet nothing whispered in the ear of an adored object of affection.

Hosea tells us this God’s love is a roar.  It is a fragile and yet frightening love, that roars forth until, trembling, we wander home again.  It is the roar of deep calling calling to deep as thunder peals in a darkened sky; it is the roar of wordless, piercing grief; it is the roar of a baby’s first hungry cry; it is the roar of anguish from a lonely cross, and it is the roar of glorious silence in an empty tomb. 

The love of this prodigal God roars through our days and our lives.  It is a love we do not deserve.  It is a love we will never be able to return fully.  It is a costly love, but it is ours, not because we have earned it or can fully understand it, but because God made a choice, and still does.  That choice is to feel deep anger but not act on it, to see our wandering feet and remember instead our first steps.  That choice is to not grow silent when our prayers do, but to instead roar and roar and roar until, all other paths abandoned, we stop, listen, and come home. 

We have a choice, too.  We can choose to let our anger turn into retaliation and violence.  We can choose to worship the things we make, or buy, or earn, because that is the easier road.  We can choose to turn away from God because we are too busy, or too sad, or too distracted, again and again and again.   

But God will always choose us…again and again and again.  Because that is who God is.  Made in the image of this God, we can be a shadow of that kind of love.  And in this world of us-versus-them, of tit-for-tat, of every-man-for-himself, even a shadow of that roaring love is enough to change a heart, a life, a church, a world.  For the echo of a roar is still powerfully loud. 

Thanks be to the God whose heart breaks for all of us, to the Savior who shows the depths of that heartbroken love and to the Spirit who sometimes whispers, and sometimes roars, but never gives us up.  Amen.