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.
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.
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.*
Our
readings this evening take us straight into the complex simplicity of
humanity’s relationship with God…
Bear
with me if that phrase, “complex simplicity” sounds like utter
nonsense to you: I want to explore the thought that actually this
central relationship, the thing for which we’re made, is ALOT less
unfathomable than we seem to make it – and I’m thankful for the
way God spoke through Hosea so many centuries ago in a way that makes
perfect sense to me today.
You
see, I’ve spent the past week really getting to know my tiny
grand-daughter Eleanor, as I’ve been with her morning, noon and
frequently night, as she has settled down into life in this world. I
was short of grandparents myself – two having died many many years
before my birth, and the remaining pair following them quite early in
my childhood – so I was completely unprepared for the way Ellie has
taken over my life by storm. In the same way that, 30 years ago, the
arrival of my firstborn changed the landscape of my life forever,
Eleanor has refashioned it all over again, so that my priorities have
changed, my horizons shifted all because of that tiny scrap of
humanity.
My
rational brain knows that this is a common experience but my emotions
are reeling, as I’m drenched with a tide of love that might well
sweep me off my feet and land me, who knows where?
So
what? This whole “revelling in grand-
Our
Old Testament reading chronicles centuries of God’s love and
humanity’s indifference...but while the idea that God cares isn’t
exactly news, the idea of God as a perfect parent can cause a few
problems for us, as struggling human beings. Most of us have at some
point been a lot LESS than perfect in our behaviour to other people –
whether as parents, children, colleagues, siblings, friends.
So
the well-worn metaphor of God as loving father can be really
uncomfortable, even painful, for those whose own experiences of the
parent/child relationship have involved less love, more pain.
We’re
so very very good, we humans, at messing up relationships, at causing
hurt to people who just don’t deserve it...goodness, even JESUS
seems to have done this as part of his adolescent spreading of wings.
Even as Mary and Joseph heard the words that confirmed they hadn’t
dreamed the extraordinary events of their son’s birth, those same
words must have cut them to the quick.
“Didn’t
you know I’d be in my Father’s house, about my father’s
business.”
What
price the family home in Nazareth, they must have wondered.
Whatever
his special relationship with God, couldn’t Jesus be a little
kinder, a tad more considerate to us?
We’ve
been so worried – and now we have him back, but it seems that we
are already losing him to a life that is beyond anything we might
have dreamed of or imagined for that precious baby boy who once
snuggled in our arms.
But
– wasn’t that just a bit cruel, a little thoughtless?
In
his focus on the divine, did he forget that he was human too?
And
of course, the irony is that it will, surely, have been the human,
proto-teenager in Jesus who shaped that conversation – not the God
who knows all the secrets of our hearts, and all the wounds that we
so carelessly inflict on one another, and on Godself too.
That’s
the thing, you see.
By
choosing to be involved in creation God makes God vulnerable to all
the hurt that fallen humanity can perpetrate...and you can feel that
hurt in every line of our reading from Hosea, just as you can feel
the tenderness of God’s love in caring for the unthinking toddler
nation, Israel.
“When
Israel was a child I loved him….I took them up in my arms...I led
them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love.”
That
love is offered to us, too, although we are still very bad at
recognising it, don’t realise that God is caring for us, even while
she holds us in her arms.
Often
people in some horrible situation will say to me “God doesn’t
care, or can’t be real, because God has left me all alone to face
this” - not seeing, amid their fear or sadness how often God
arranges for God’s love and care to come through other people.
“They
did not know that I healed them”
But
our lack of response or recognition makes no difference.
God
simply carries on loving us, because we are God’s children and the
God who IS love can do no other.
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.
There
really is no option.
God
loves us because she loves us, because she loves us, because she
loves us….
There
is nothing we can possibly do to make her love us more.
There
is nothing we can possibly do to make her love us less.
Each
of us is Ioved, completely and fully, as if we were a precious only
child, made for love and held in love at each moment of our lives.
Simple
At
the beginning, though, I spoke of complex simplicity.
Being
loved, of course, is what makes us able to love in return…but we
are apt to find the staggering truth of God’s love too much for us
to absorb or accept...and so we’ve hedged it round with rules and
practices, with worthy doctrinal attempts to make sense of a mystery
we are invited to enter into and live within…
That’s
not wrong
– of course it’s not. Our intellects are gifts from God to be
used to make sense of our place in the world and the ways in which we
might make real God’s desire that we would do justice, love mercy
and walk humbly...and where there is much to be done, we can do
better together, so the institutional complexities of the Church make
sense too.
It’s
not wrong – but sometimes it can cloud the issue and, worse still,
deter others from daring to believe that God is interested in a
relationship with them.
But
at the core there’s something very very different.
“I
was to them like those
who
lift infants to their cheeks”
Says
God to Israel.
I
want my people to be that close...so that we can become all the world
to one another, bound up for all time in a relationship of love that
has no fear and no hurt in it whatsoever.
In
a perfect world, with a perfect lectionary, we would have heard this
evening not Psalm 132 but its immediate predecessor, psalm 131...and
that’s where I would like to leave you – resting on the God who
demands nothing from us but that we should accept God’s love, and
rest in it all our days, as simply and trustingly as Eleanor slept
last week nestling on my shoulder
“O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.[
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.[
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
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