"Micah - Picking and Choosing" - Richard R. Crocker

Richard R. Crocker

Picking and Choosing

Micah 6:6-16

Church of Christ at Dartmouth College

July 21, 2013

            Those of you who were raised, as I was, in a Bible-centric culture might be familiar with the old practice called sword drills. We did them often in youth fellowship. The idea was that we each held a Bible, which was our sword, and the leader called out “attention!”, then “present swords”, at which point we held the Bible between our hands, and then the leader called out a random verse of scripture, such as “Micah 6:6”, and then said “Charge!”. The first person who could find that verse stepped forward and read it.  The person who was first most often won.

            The other practice that I sometimes heard about occurred when people wanted guidance about a problem or dilemma and sought it in the Bible. Rather than thinking about what Jesus may have said, or pondering the ten commandments, the practice was simply to open the Bible at random. cover your eyes, and point to a verse. Whatever that verse said was deemed to provide the needed guidance. This technique produced rather haphazard results.

            This way of looking at the Bible both rests upon and perpetuates a uniformly revelatory view of scripture, where very single part is seen as equally revealing the word of God, and those who read the Bible differently are often condemned for “picking and choosing.”  “You can’t pick and choose”, we are told. “You have to believe the Bible from cover to cover, every single word.”

Such a way of reading the Bible can be extremely naïve, unhelpful, and sometimes dangerous. Every part of the Bible is enriched when we know the context of the scripture we are reading, when we do not pick isolated verses, but when we place passages into context, compare them with other passages, and use our minds and spirits to discern the truths that such serious study reveals.  One result of reading the Bible through, from beginning to end,  as some of you have done, is that you may find it very uneven in its helpfulness. Some passages stand out as more helpful, more beautiful, truer, and more useful than other passages.  Some passages seem odd, useless, or even horrible. Christians, for example, pay little attention to the rule in Exodus and Deuteronomy (Exodus 23:19 and Deuteronomy 14:21), which tell us that we should not boil a kid in its mother’s milk, while Jews see this injunction as an important part of their Kosher laws. Christians and Jews alike reject the injunctions to stone criminal offenders, including Sabbath breakers (Leviticus20:2 ff and Numbers 15:35). It is impossible to read the Bible without picking and choosing.

            And nowhere is this more evident than in reading the book of Micah. I chose for our scripture reading for today a passage in Micah that is familiar to all of us.  It is perhaps one of the most familiar passages in scripture - much quoted and much loved, and probably very helpful. But you will have noted that the scripture reading did not end with those familiar words. Rather, it proceeded to the next “saying”, which I would venture to say you have rarely heard and which may not be as helpful to you. Let us consider them both.

            It would probably be helpful today if in fact you took out one of the pew Bibles and opened it to the book of Micah and followed along with some of the passages that I will mention. Now, since you were probably never trained with sword drills, you may have trouble finding the book of Micah. (Like Howard Dean, who said that his favorite book in the new testament was the book of Job, New Englanders are not known for their Biblical literacy). So I will tell you that the book of Micah begins on page 866 in your pew Bibles.

But first, let us remember: Micah prophesied in the southern kingdom, the Kingdom of Judah around 700 BC, The northern kingdom of Israel had already fallen to the Assyrians, and the southern kingdom, under King Hezekiah, had also been invaded by Assyria and made a vassal state. It was a time of turmoil, confusion, anxiety and distress.

            Biblical scholars, using the tools of linguistic and historical analysis, have concluded that the book attributed to Micah actually contains sayings from a number of different writers from different time periods that were all collected into this single book (or scroll). The earliest sayings are near the beginning of the book. The passages after chapter 4 come from a variety of sourses – so  that, ironically, the some of the most well-known passages in the book may not come from Micah himself. That is really not a problem for us, is it? It’s like my house in Lebanon. We say that it was built in 1858.  But in fact, only part of it was built then; additions were made at a later time since they didn’t have indoor plumbing in 1858.  It’s still one house that we live in, and Micah is still one book, - a complex house, a complex document. Would we expect anything else?  After all, most of us know very little about how the books of the Bible were selected, put together and transmitted, do we?  Most of us know very little about architecture and how houses grew.  And most of us don’t care. We just want to have a house to inhabit and a Bible to anchor us in our faith.

            So, if you look in Micah, chapter 6, beginning with verse 6 –  the passage that was read – you see the words that have become a watchword for what constitutes true worship – words that cut to the essence of worship rather than the periphery. “What does the Lord require of us?” Does God require that we bring burnt offerings? Does God require offerings of calves or rams or oil? – Remember that these were some of the offerings customarily made at the temple in Jerusalem. Would God even require that we give up our firstborn child – a practice that was not unknown in the middle east at that time – and a practice that is reflected in the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac. NO – we are told. God doesn’t requires any of these things. Rather, God has told us very simply, that what is required is simply that we do justice, love kindness (or mercy), and that we walk humbly with God. You will note that these words make no mention of religious ritual. What is required is an attitude of humility as well as actions of justice and kindness. Most of us feel comforted and reassured by these words – challenged also to examine our lives, but mainly comforted and encouraged. But then look at  the verses that follow immediately upon this passage.

It is helpful to read them again. They are directed at the city of Jerusalem:

9 The voice of the Lord cries to the city

   (it is sound wisdom to fear your name):

Hear, O tribe and assembly of the city!

10   Can I forget the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked,

   and the scant measure that is accursed?

11 Can I tolerate wicked scales

   and a bag of dishonest weights?

12 Your wealthy are full of violence;

   your inhabitants speak lies,

   with tongues of deceit in their mouths.

13 Therefore I have begun to strike you down,

   making you desolate because of your sins.

14 You shall eat, but not be satisfied,

   and there shall be a gnawing hunger within you;

you shall put away, but not save,

   and what you save, I will hand over to the sword.

15 You shall sow, but not reap;

   you shall tread olives, but not anoint yourselves with oil;

   you shall tread grapes, but not drink wine.

16 For you have kept the statutes of Omri

   and all the works of the house of Ahab,

   and you have followed their counsels.

Therefore I will make you a desolation, and your inhabitants an object of hissing;

   so you shall bear the scorn of my people.

These words are not as familiar to us, are they? Why? because they are not as comforting, or because they are not as helpful? Perhaps because the earlier words are universal, applicable to all times and places, whereas the latter passage is aimed directly at Jerusalem. Micah is famous for having prophesied the fall of Jerusalem, which did indeed happen in 586 BC, when the Babylonians invaded, laid the city waste, destroyed the temple, and took the most prominent of its citizens into captivity into Babylonia. Certainly the words of this prophecy are accurate in anticipating and describing the devastation of that event – so accurate, in fact, that some scholars see them as having been written after the fact. Certainly they were preserved after the fact. But sometimes prophecies like this are seen as applying not only to that time period, but to all. Consider, for example, those who see this prophecy as applying not only to Jerusalem, but to New York City. Does it accurately describe the greed and dishonesty of Wall Street and the financial industry? Does it tell us of the certain doom that will happen unless we repent? Some people think so. Their interpretation of biblical prophecy allows them to do so. I think we may well see these as words of warning to any society in which greed becomes rampant, and when the poor are ignored. That is a proper use of prophecy, but thinking that the events of 9/11 were prophesied in the book of Micah is probably a stretch.

Let us look at one other very famous part of the book of Micah – the prophecy contained in chapter 5, beginning with verse 2. You have all heard it, I am sure.

2 But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,

   who are one of the little clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

   one who is to rule in Israel,

whose origin is from of old,

   from ancient days.

3 Therefore he shall give them up until the time

   when she who is in labour has brought forth;

then the rest of his kindred shall return

   to the people of Israel.

4 And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,

   in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.

And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great

   to the ends of the earth;

5 and he shall be the one of peace.

Where have you heard this before? From the Gospel of Matthew, of course; we hear it every Christmas – where it is quoted as a prophecy about the birth of the Messiah. When the wise men are seeking Jesus, they ask King Herod where he shall be born. Herod seeks advice from the biblical scholars, and  they quote this prophecy. Obviously, it seems to us to refer to Jesus, the prince of peace, our messiah. It’s right there in the Bible, isn’t it? And certainly the writer of Matthew’s gospel, and Christians ever since have thought of it that way. Many now see it as referring not only to the birth of Jesus, but also to the second coming of Christ.

While Christians are free to view the prophecy this way, it is unlikely that Micah intended the prophecy to be fulfilled 600 or 2600 years after he spoke it. Rather, he (or one of his followers) was speaking a word of hope to a discouraged people – a word that indicated that not all was lost, and that, just as King David was selected by the prophet Samuel in a very unlikely setting in the little town of Bethlehem, there would be another great king yet to come.  We Christians of course hope that Jesus’ birth will usher in a reign of world-wide peace. At the moment, though, after 2000 years, it hasn’t happened. I wonder why? Well, if Christians really acknowledged Jesus as the prince of peace and as their Lord and Master, and if they refused to make war in his name, there would be a lot less war, wouldn’t there?

This brings us back to the problem of picking and choosing when we are reading the bible. At one end of the spectrum are those who believe we should see every single word, every single letter of scripture as fully revelatory, and any problems or contradictions this method produces are due to our lack of understanding. At the other end are those who believe that we should pay attention only to those words and verses that we happen to agree with. Studying the prophets teaches us a different way. Some of their words and images are limited to a time and place which is merely historical. What was deemed acceptable human practice 3000 years ago is not deemed acceptable today. But, at the same time, we should not see our era, and our sensibilities, as the epitome of perfection. In some important ways, we have not advanced at all. I dare say that greed is more fully rampant and more deeply ingrained in our society than it was in the Jerusalem of Micah’s and Amos’s time. Their insistence that greed, violence, and disregard for the poor would lead to the destruction of society was true then, and it’s true now.

            No doubt Micah was right. For all time, for all people, in answering the question, “With what shall I come before the Lord?” the answer is simple -. The Lord does not require our material offerings. What the Lord requires is that we do justice, love mercy (and kindness), and that we walk, every day, in humility before our God.

            Those words are as applicable to us today as they were 2600 years ago. These words grab us. In a way, we don’t pick and choose them; they pick and choose us. Now it’s up to us to live by them. Amen.

"Zephaniah: The Problem with the Prophets" - Richard R. Crocker

Richard R. Crocker

Zephaniah: The Problem with the Prophets

Church of Christ at Dartmouth College

July 14, 2013

Zephaniah 1:10-16

          Today, in the third of our series on the minor prophets, we consider Zephaniah. Zephaniah brings us face to face with certain problems that most of us have with these prophets – problems that we have acknowledged in the earlier two sermons but not really addressed. The first problem is that we often do not like what they have to say. The second problem is that their messages, delivered in the name of God, often seem to some of us to contradict the God we know and worship in Jesus Christ.  And the third problem is that they require us to read the Bible with a degree of sophistication that goes against the way that many of us were taught to read the Bible. Today we will try to deal with these problems head on.

          But first a little background. The book of Zephaniah is very short – only three chapters. If you haven’t read it, you can do so in about ten minutes. Unlike Amos and Hosea, Zephaniah prophesied in the southern kingdom, the kingdom of Judah sometime around 630 BC, during the reign of the good king Josiah, after the northern Kingdom had fallen to the Assyrians, and Judah had been reduced to a vassal state, paying tribute to Assyria. In the opening verses of the book, Zephaniah traces his ancestry back to Hezekiah, which was the name of a previous king of Judah – so, in fact, Zephaniah may be a royal descendant – but this is uncertain.

          What is certain about Zephaniah is his message. In three short chapters, he proclaims doom, gloom, and resume. Aside from the strained  rhymes, this three word summary is actually pretty accurate – not only for Zephaniah’s prophecies, but for many of the prophetic messages we have heard before.

          Doom. The first chapter of Zephaniah’s message is overwhelming doom. Beginning with verse two, he says (speaking for God): “I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, says the Lord. I will sweep away humans and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea.” His message is one of utter destruction. Why? Because of idolatry and false worship: the people of Judah have worshipped Baal; they worshipped Milcom (the god of the Ammonites) and worshipped the astrological gods of the Assyrians. The king’s sons have “dress(ed) themselves in foreign attire, and some of them have “leap(ed) over the threshold.”

But in addition to these idolatrous acts, the people have practiced violence and fraud and have been indifferent to the God of Israel. And for this, utter destruction is promised.

Now this seems pretty extreme to us, doesn’t it? Utter destruction for leaping over the threshold? Maybe for fraud, maybe for worshipping Baal with ritual prostitution, but for dressing in foreign attire and leaping over the threshold?

Now we need to confront the problems of this passage directly. Granted, we know that these words were spoken (and written) 2600 years ago. But they are part of our holy book. They are words spoken on behalf of the God we worship, claimed as being the words of God.  Do they mean anything at all to those of us who hear them today – or are they only of quaint historical interest?

Do we believe that our God threatens any nation – or humanity itself – with utter destruction because of false worship? Will God actually destroy a whole people because some of them have leaped over the threshold? What does leaping over the threshold mean, anyway?

Here we confront a very basic problem. This God does not seem very likable. More important, this God does not seem to be the God with whom Abraham argued. You remember how God threatened to destroy the city of Sodom, but Abraham argued with him – you remember how: Abraham asked God; would you destroy a whole city if there were as few as a hundred righteous people in it? And God says no. And Abraham argues with him further, reducing the number each time, and finally asks: would you destroy the city if there were only ten righteous people in it, and God said, No – I will not destroy it even for ten righteous people. Is this the same God who says he will destroy all humanity? What happened to the story of Noah and the rainbow – the promise that God would never again destroy the earth?

And then, of course, we face the fact that this God does not seem the same as the God we know in Jesus Christ – the one in whom God offers salvation to the whole world.

So how are we to understand these words of Zephaniah? Is he just being dramatic? Is he exaggerating? Or is he speaking an important truth that we need to hear, even though the language makes us cringe with  discomfort? How do we discover the God of love, whom we know in Jesus Christ, in the words of Zephaniah?

Let us grant the words of the prophets are frequently dramatic- designed to get and hold our attention. But can they be therefore dismissed as irrelevant? Can they be reduced to words that are more pleasant, less drastic, and perhaps more forgiving? Only by the most strenuous effort. We must start out by facing the fact that these words are very hard to hear and understand; they were hard to hear and understand then, and they are hard to hear and understand now.

But, as Christians, we believe that those words both hide and reveal the same God we know in Jesus, the one in whom we put our trust. Jesus also is reported to have spoken some harsh words – words that are also prophetic and hard to hear – words like “I have come not to bring peace, but a sword;” and “Depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;” (Matthew 25:41) and “if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off;” (Matthew 5:30) and “if you eye offends you, pluck it out” (Matthew 5:29). The problem is not  that we cannot envision a God who loves us; most of us can, since we have heard the gospel – and the story of the rainbow -  preached to us since childhood. But we have a much harder time (those of us in the liberal tradition, anyway) picturing and understanding a God who judges us.

In the Presbyterian tradition, worship services begin, after a hymn of praise, with a prayer of confession, in which the congregation acknowledges its collective and individual sin and asks for forgiveness. One of my colleagues (the same one I mentioned last week, whose church is a union church of several denominations), after trying to introduce the prayer of confession into the morning worship service, reported a conversation with a parishioner – a conversation that is probably more common than not, in which the parishioner objected to this confessional prayer, saying: “Why should I say a prayer like this? I don’t have anything to apologize to God for.” My feeling, when I heard this was, “This church definitely needs to be more Presbyterian.” Such words remind me of Zephaniah’s, when he said: “At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the people who rest complacently on their dregs, those who say in their hearts, “The Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm.” (Zephaniah 1:12)

So often, we say that we believe in God, but we don’t expect God to do anything.

That belief, of course, can be a reaction to those who believe that God does everything, whether it involves helping us with a parking place or helping us pass a test for which we have not prepared, or inflicting illnesses on us or destroying cities with tornadoes and hurricanes. Once perhaps people believed that everything that happened was an act of God; some of us may still believe that, but now, many of us see no room at all for acts of God – only the acts of chance produced at random in a vast and impersonal universe. Unlike Zephaniah, we do not want to see anything as God’s blessing or God’s punishment.

Certainly we do not believe, do we, that God caused Hurricane Katrina to destroy New Orleans, or Hurricane Irene to wreak havoc in Vermont, or super storm Sandy to destroy whole sections of New York city and New Jersey? Do we, or do we not? Certainly some Christians believe that such events are punishments for wickedness; most of us, however, have a hard time believing  that. Well, then, if God didn’t cause it, who did? No one, we say; it just happened.

What the prophets are trying to say is that the way people live has consequences. Beneath our too easy embrace of tolerance sometimes lies the assumption that nothing really matters. The prophets remind us that things matter very much. Where we put our heart, our allegiance, our hope matters very much. And from that we can say: the kind of God we worship matters very much. Not the God we say we worship, but the God we really worship.

And prophets remind us that we may say we worship the God of Israel but our behavior proves otherwise. Whether our words are compromised by partaking in rituals that we know are disgraceful, or whether our professions of faith in God are compromised by our worship of things we can make and buy, prophets call us to account and remind us that our worship has consequences. Not every disaster, of course, is directly attributable to our actions – but some are. We are properly horrified to think that God would destroy a city, but let us remember: who has destroyed cities in our lifetimes? Certainly, there have been tsunamis for which we have no explanation at all, but we do have an explanation for the monstrous destruction of Hiroshima – and Sarajevo and Baghdad? We do have an explanation for the destruction of the World Trade Center and for the bombing of Baghdad. Who did that? People. What we do matters; what we believe to be true matters, where we put our hearts matters.

I said earlier that Zephaniah, like many of the prophets we are reading, proclaims doom, then gloom, then resume. The doom is painted as absolute, but it frequently softens to simply being a period of gloom, when what had been depended upon for wealth or safety no longer provides wealth or comfort or safety. When security falls away, be it our finances or our health or our family stability, we experience gloom. But gloom is rarely the final word, certainly not in Zephaniah. In the third and last chapter, Zephaniah’s words become more comforting. After chastisement and failure there is hope and comfort – not because people become fundamentally better, but because they have learned humility. Here is what he says:

Therefore, wait for me, says the Lord,

for the day when I arise as a witness.

For my decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms,

to pour out upon them my indignation,

all the heat of my anger,

for the fire of my passion

all the earth shall be consumed. (Zephaniah3:8)

But then, the tone changes:

At that time I will change the speech of the people

to a pure speech,

that all of them may call on the name of the Lord

and serve him with one accord.

…

On that day you shall not be put to shame

because of the deeds by which you have rebelled against me,

for then I will remove from your midst

your proudly exultant ones,

and you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain.

For I will leave in the midst of you

a people humble and lowly.

They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord – the remnant of Israel;

they shall do no wrong and utter no lies,

nor shall a deceitful tongue

be found in their mouths.

They will pasture and lie down, and no one shall make them afraid. (Zephaniah 3:9-13)

Doom, gloom, resume. What dooms us is our unaccountable pride. The gloom that follows is painful. This is a continual theme in all of scripture. What results is a new humility. It is a mistake to read the Bible unhistorically. Indeed, it is dangerous to do so; it is dangerous to infer from prophets like Zephaniah any precise predictions about  specific events of our time.  But, as extreme as the prophetic language may be, it is still valuable for us. We too have been through destruction. Our pride has been, and will continue to be, our downfall, resulting in suffering and destruction for many. From all of this, we – by which I mean all of us – may learn a proper sense of humility. We are not God. Our knowledge will always be incomplete, and sometimes simply wrong. In such a world, humility is appropriate, even though it is not popular. It is dangerous and arrogant to proclaim that any disaster is God’s doing, But it is also ignorant not to see God’s presence with us even in those situations and circumstances that overwhelm us. Doom, gloom, resume – having learned not to trust our own goodness, but  the goodness of God. We don’t always like this message, but there it is. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

Hosea: Love that Will Not Let Us Go - Richard R. Crocker

Love that will not let us go …..

Richard R. Crocker

Church of Christ at Dartmouth College

Hosea 11:1-9

            I have chosen for our text this morning one of the tenderest parts of the book of the prophet Hosea. Those of you who read the entire book, or who plan to read it, will note the difference in tone between this passage and many of the others, which are not nearly as tender.

                        This is the problem with prophets. Their words are so often disturbing, provocative, extreme, and unsettling that we don’t want to hear them. Only later, in hindsight, can we say they were right and appreciate the severity of their language. In the present, prophets do not make pleasant dinner guests.

            A contemporary example: Bill McKibben is a very kind man. But when you talk with him about climate change, his language is not measured. His warnings are severe, unsettling, disturbing, and downright unpleasant. It is much nicer to have dinner with those people who assure us that nothing is wrong.

            But back to Hosea.  You remember that after King Solomon, the united kingdom of Israel broke up into the Northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Last time we spoke about Amos, a southerner who went to the more prosperous north to proclaim the priority of justice over greed. Hosea was Amos’ contemporary. He also prophesied in the northern kingdom – just a little later than Amos.  Amos, as you remember, spoke during the time of the great king Jeroboam II, under whose rule Israel had prospered. Hosea began prophesying under Jeroboam, but saw four kings assassinated in the next fourteen years. Things were falling apart, and the kingdom of Israel was struggling to come to terms with its great   neighbor, Assyria.

            Assyria. 2700 years ago, the nations of Judah and Israel were constantly worried about their more powerful neighbors – Assyria to the northeast and Babylonia to the southeast. Fast forward 2700 hundred years to today, and the nation of Israel is still constantly worried about its more powerful neighbors – Iraq (formerly Babylonia) to the south, and Iran and Syria (formerly Assyria) to the north. We are talking here about enduring geo-political realities, and about an enduring faith. What we consider ancient history is also quite contemporary.  Neither Assyria nor Babylonia exists today as an empire, but the geo-politics remain. The fragile coalition of tribes who struggled to remain faithful to the revelation of the God of their ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who brought the children of Israel out of captivity in Egypt and established them on the strip of land along the eastern Mediterranean, still struggle to understand and embody faithfulness, and prophets have continued to encourage them, to condemn their faithlessness, and, alas, to proclaim the calamities that will result when they forsake the commandments of their God.

            As a side note, let me remind you of a singular resource that some of you may not know about. Only two blocks from here, in the Hood museum, in the first room you enter, is a permanent exhibit that will bring you into immediate contact with the Assyrian empire. There you will find a marvelous display of stone plates, spread across an entire wall, that were taken from the palace of Ashurnasipal II at Nimrud near Ninevah – stone reliefs that decorated the palace of this ruler of Assyria in the years around 850 BC. The story of how these stone reliefs came to Dartmouth is quite interesting and is outlined at the exhibit. Suffice it to say that it had to do with the influence of American missionaries and British archaeologists in the 19^th century, along with the rivalry between Dartmouth and Williams colleges.  It is a fascinating story – and you should go and look at the exhibit, which is permanently on display. But my point now is that the exhibit reminds us of the reality of the situations that Amos and Hosea addressed; a struggling small kingdom constantly at the mercy of a larger empire. Both Amos and Hosea were right in asserting that the northern kingdom of Israel would be destroyed. In the year 721 BC, after several more minor invasions, the northern kingdom of Israel was devastated by the Assyrians, who populated the area and produced, by intermarriage and conquest, the people known in New Testament times as the (despised) Samaritans.

            Are prophets always speaking doom? No, not always, but frequently.  Both Amos and Hosea called Israel to account, calling them to return to the true worship of God, but the two prophets are very different. Hosea’s message was, like Amos’, a call to repentance, but it was also, and perhaps primarily, a message of God’s faithfulness, even amid and despite the faithlessness of the people of Israel.

            As you will know from reading the book, Hosea’s message begins with a very dramatic event. He feels called to go and marry a prostitute – one whom he knows will be unfaithful to him, even while he is faithful to her. This marriage symbolizes God’s faithfulness to Israel, even when his bride, Israel, is unfaithful to him. Hosea’s marriage to Gomer, the prostitute, is the central metaphor of Hosea’s prophecy – but it is not simply a metaphor, it is a reality. Scholars have debated – did Hosea really do this, or was he just speaking metaphorically. The strong opinion  is, yes, he really did it.  Prophets often really did (and really do) strange things that other people only talk about. But Hosea’s action makes more sense when one looks more closely at the situation he was addressing.

            You see, when the tribes of Israel established themselves in the land called Canaan, contrary to the impression given in some parts of the Bible, they did not really obliterate the people living there. Rather, they inserted themselves into a culture that already had its own religion – and this religion was quite typical of the fertility cults that were prevalent throughout the middle east, and, indeed, elsewhere. Fertility cults were based on the need to seek good conditions for crops and flocks. Today, many of us have forgotten what our ancestors knew – that we human creatures are dependent upon the earth for our very survival, and that we cannot control all the conditions that make for good crops. Therefore actions and imprecations to the powers beyond us have been prevalent throughout history. In ancient times, often these actions and imprecations involved ritualized sexual activity, designed, it seems from a removed perspective, to encourage fertility in the earth and powers beyond us. So sites of sacred or ritualized prostitution were part of Canaanite religion – practices that occurred on the “high places” where cultic prostitutes were part of the sacred rituals to the God called Baal. Israelite religion, of course, was incompatible with such practice. We know that Israelite religion involved the sacrifice and sacred consumption of animals and fruits and grains: Israelite worship was something like the annual homecoming service at my church in Alabama: an hour of prayer and sermon and singing, followed by a gigantic feast.  The sacrifices offered to Yahweh were consumed by the priests but also by the people. Food is still a part of our worship experience. But fertility cults, the worship of the god often called Baal by having sex with sacred prostitutes – this was not part of Hebrew worship. Still, one can perhaps understand its continuing appeal. By contrast, Hebrew worship was somewhat austere, and the emphasis on the holiness of the one God whose name could not even be uttered was hard to maintain. It faced continual competition.

It was in this context that Hosea was called to dramatize the nature of the God of Israel – by marrying one of these cultic prostitutes, having children who may or may not have been his own, and proclaiming thereby, dramatizing, that though the people of Israel were forsaking Yahweh, Yahweh, the true God, the holy one, would never forsake them. Yes, they were doing things that would lead to destruction; Hosea saw the coming Assyrian invasion as a direct result of God’s rebuke of his people. All Hosea could say was that, even so, God would be faithful, and his people would not be totally destroyed, and that Judah would continue faithful to Yahweh. Hosea continues to use the word Ephraim, as he does in the passage we read, to refer to the love that God has for the people who have forsaken him. Ephraim was, you may know, the favorite son of Joseph, who was the favorite son of Jacob. So Ephraim represents the beloved son of the beloved son (Joseph) – perhaps the most beloved. The genealogy in Chronicles indicates that King Jeroboam was in fact a descendant of Ephraim. So when Hosea decried the faithlessness of Ephraim, he was speaking of the pain of a lost son, and at the same time of the faithfulness of a loving God, a loving parent, who will never forsake the beloved wife, or the beloved child.

            And so, though Hosea’s words are word of discipline and destruction, they are also words of comfort and pleading, words of constancy and faithfulness.

            At Dartmouth, it has been a pleasure and honor for me to work with so many outstanding students, who are generally motivated by a great desire to succeed and, usually, to please their parents. These high achievers are often so motivated, but not always. I have also, over the years, seen the child who chooses a different path, sometimes a self-destructive path, usually marked by abuse of drugs and alcohol, whose parents mourn the loss of the promise that they had cherished in their child. Sometimes there is nothing a parent can do except stand by and watch and pray – like the father in the story of the prodigal son, when messages even of love and support are spurned and rejected. There is no pain like it, I know.

            And such is what we feel when we read these tender words from Hosea;:

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 away 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 hands of love.

I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks.

 I bent down to them and fed them.

…

How can I give you up,  O Ephraim?

The essence of Hosea’s prophecy can be summarized in one sentence: we are loved by a love that will not let us go.

Let us return for a moment to Bill McKibben, our contemporary prophet. Bill has spoken to us continual words of warning. He has pointed to our extreme climate events – floods and hurricanes and tornadoes. He has pointed to the melting icepacks, to the rising sea-level, and to the rising level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. There have been warnings and crises, but little change. I asked a student, a thoughtful, good student – the other day how he thought about the inevitable climate change that would create a crisis for his generation. He replied, honestly, “well, I guess I’ll just have to move to higher ground.” If Bill McKibben is right, it won’t be that simple. We continue, as a people, to live carelessly, extravagantly, and heedlessly. Unfortunately, humans, as a group, do not usually -change unless they are forced to do so by a crisis of gigantic proportions. And sometimes, it is too late. The warnings come; God’s love for us remains, but we sit like paralyzed frogs in a pan of warmer and warmer water until inevitable destruction comes.

Hosea wanted Israel to remember its history and its God. He counseled the nation to be aware that self-indulgence – whether it be financial or sensual - is not what the God of Israel expects from us; indeed, Hosea predicted that by such behavior we will destroy ourselves and grieve the God whose love for us is unfailing.  As another prophet – Jesus – said: “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.”