by the Rev. Allison Liles
This sermon is based on Hosea 11:1-11. Click here to listen to an audio version of this sermon.
Becca founded Magdalene in 1997 as a free two-year residential program for women with a history of prostitution and drug addiction. She created this community to offer women a safe, disciplined and compassionate place to recover and heal from their histories of sexual abuse, violence and life on the streets. But then she soon found out that when the women graduated from the program, they didn't have marketable skills to earn an “honest” income. So Becca’s dream of a non-profit business run by the women of Magdalene became a reality and Thistle Farms was born. Women create natural bath and body products that are sold online and in over 200 businesses around the country. Every product is created with the belief that freedom starts with healing and love can change lives.
Hearing the Old Testament reading last week from Hosea stirred up all of my encounters with Becca, the women of Magdalene and my two visits to Thistle Farms. If you weren’t here last week or if you don’t remember the short reading it recalled the moment during the 8th century BCE when God calls upon the prophet Hosea to marry Gomer, whom Hosea delicately refers to as “a whore.” God wants Hosea to marry this woman of ill repute to symbolize the covenantal relationship between the always- faithful God and the continually unfaithful Israelites. And God doesn’t just tell Hosea to marry Gomer once, God pleads with Hosea multiple times in the first three chapters of this book: “The Lord said to me again, ‘Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods.” Israel has become the promiscuous woman who violates her marriage vows. For three chapters Hosea describes Israel’s behavior as his wife, the streetwalker, who searches high and low for her next sexual partner as if she yearns for this adulterous behavior.
But what Becca Stevens has learned about these so-called “whores” is that they are victims. Becca says she’s has yet to meet a prostitute who was not sexually abused as a child -- most of the women at Magdalene started being sexually abused between ages 7 and 11. 7 and 11. They’ve never known a true, authentic love and therefore keep circling in the same destructive patterns. Women today are treated just like Gomer in the 8th century BCE. Property to use and toss, use and toss. A clergy colleague wrote this week that “we don’t sit down and listen to Gomer enough” to hear her side of the story. And when we add today’s reading from Hosea’s chapter 11 I feel like we’re just rubbing salt in her wounds.
Chapter 11 begins with God’s mothering acts on full display: “I loved … I called … I taught … I took them up … I healed … I led … I bent down … I fed.” All the attributes Gomer is denied as a woman described as choosing promiscuous sex over nurturing her own children. While we’re told Gomer loved earning her pay as a prostitute on the threshing room floor (9.1), the Lord is described as loving Israel above and beyond anything else. “When Israel was a child, I loved him,” God says, “and out of Egypt I called my son.” God speaks of calling to the child, begging the child to come home, but the child resisting, going away. “Yet,” God says, … it was I who taught [my child] 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 (11:3-4).
While I think this metaphor is incredibly insensitive to Gomer, I find it helpful for you and me who are all children belonging to somebody. Perhaps in this day and age, when a father is just as easily likely to be the primary caregiver for a young child, these words in chapter 11 don't have the same impact on us. But for Hosea's original hearers, make no mistake: these were the actions of a mother. Verse after verse, line after line, the motherly love of God is related. But Israel proved to be a wayward child despite the attentive nurture and loving care of the faithful parent. According to the Torah, rebellious sons are to be stoned to death (see Deuteronomy 21:18-21). As for Israel, it deserves destruction but God can’t bring Godself to follow through with what is deserved. In response to what sounds like a suggestion that this loving mother simply give up on her incontrollable child, God replies with perhaps the most comforting words in all of scripture, “How can I give you up…? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender…” [Hosea 11:8].
It’s clear to me from last week’s text describing a one-sided marriage and this week’s recollection of a wayward child and devoted mother, Hosea employs the most viscerally-experienced relationships and all of their emotions to paint the picture of what it must be like for God to suffer such unrequited love. One of the ways we understand our relationship with God is through the lens of our own human relationships. Every metaphor has its limits, and this one in chapter 11 is no exception. There are wonderful mothers who cannot save their children from unendurable pain, and there are dreadful mothers whose children overcome abuse and neglect and thrive later in life. There are mothers like Gomer who appear to choose infidelity over parenthood; like women in the Magdalene community who chose to feed their addictions rather than their children’s rumbling tummies.
But, shortcomings aside, if we embrace these metaphorical words from Hosea about God as Israel’s mother we learn that it is God who brings us to birth, who knits us together in our mother’s womb. It is God who holds us, who nourishes us. It is God teaches us the basics of what we need to know. It is God who heals us, holding us in the divine embrace…even when we disobey God, God loves us. Even when we fall victim to other gods, and cause God to pain and suffering, God never stops loving us.
Hosea gives us peek at God’s suffering love when we go astray in verses 8 and 9:
My heart recoils within me;
my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my fierce anger;
I will not again destroy Ephraim; (11.8-9)
my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my fierce anger;
I will not again destroy Ephraim; (11.8-9)
In English we have turned the word “heart” sentimental and soft, but in Hebrew the word translated “heart” contains layers and layers of meaning, including the “inner person,” the “mind,” the “will.” This word indicates something fundamental about one’s very being. And the heart of who God is does not will punishment or suffering on God’s children. “I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath,” says the Lord (11.9b).
We come to the table today perhaps with many memories of dinners prepared by our mother—or maybe our father. This table before you is hosted by our heavenly parent - -- God is the provider of this meal, the founder of the feast. God has prepared this life-giving bread and wine out of genuine love for us. There is nothing we can do to earn that love. And there is nothing we can do that will cause us to lose that love no matter how out of control or promiscuous our life may be. We are loved, completely, perfectly, passionately, by God. And so we come to the table for the meal given to bring us life and strength, and we can trust that this motherly love of God will continue to touch us and heal us and make us whole. Becca Stevens understands the power of this transformational love. She knows that God’s love can heal even the most broken and scarred members of society. The Holy God who is just and righteous is, above all things, compassionate. As the anger subsides and the love is rekindled, God finds a way for grace to prevail and calls us back to this table. And to that I say, Thanks be to God. Amen.
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