Jay Rowland
When God Roars
Hosea 11:1-11
7/31/2022
This sermon utilizes published material, some of it verbatim, from Walter Brueggemann: “Who am I? Rant vs. Relationship” (Hosea 11:1-11), ON Scripture, July 25, 2016.
When God ‘Roars’
In every intimate human relationship, problems and conflicts are inevitable along the way. So naturally this has been the case for God and God’s people–aka “Israel”. A quick scan of the Table of Contents of the Bible reveals a list of many books named for each of the prophets in the so-called “Old” Testament (Hebrew scriptures). Seeing how many there are, it isn’t necessary to read them all to figure out that after God rescued the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt and lead them to the Promised Land, it doesn’t proceed to “and they all lived happily ever after” from there.
Call me Captain Obvious, but I think it’s still worth pointing out that the prophets have a difficult job. They are never called to service when the relationship between God and God’s people is clicking and pleasant. Rather, God faithfully calls prophets when things couldn’t be much worse.
What’s more, when this relationship is most dire or contentious some of the prophets turn to poetry. Poetry helps the prophets deliver difficult truths to God’s people and begin the process of restoration. Poetry allows the use of metaphor and vivid imagery and imagination to probe the depths of the relationship problem(s) between God and God’s people. All of which is to say that the passage we have before us today from Hosea chapter 11 is indeed a poem.
Since most of us, including myself, are not Hosea scholars, a quick summary of the situation is appropriate. God calls the prophet Hosea to minister to an Israel which is teetering on the brink of self-destruction. It’s gotten so serious that God is actually troubled, aggrieved about the situation—which is unique among all the prophets. The poetic imagery in Hosea, particularly in the earlier chapters, is perhaps the most disturbing of all the prophets. It has ignited a fierce scholarly debate over the treatment and portrayal of women in the Old Testament which is an important, but veers away from my intended focus upon Hosea chapter 11—but I wanted to note this for any who are interested in reading Hosea.
Brueggemann notes that “the poetry (in chapter 11) is cast in the imagery of "father-son," with God cast as father and Israel cast as son. It could just as well have been cast as "mother-daughter," but that would not happen in that ancient patriarchal society. The imagery of "father-son" was the operative image in Israelite imagination ever since God declared in Exodus 4, "Israel is my first born son" (4:22).”
The poem summarizes the relationship which begins in Egypt with the emancipation of the Hebrews from slavery. It then jumps to their settlement into the Promised Land. Once there it doesn’t take long for Israel to start asserting its independence from God, as in, “Thanks God! We’ll take it from here.” Whether this assertion is was conscious or not, it is human nature. But it’s also the beginning of Israel’s relationship problems with God. Hosea uses the image of God as the doting parent to reveal the sense of betrayal God feels as Israel entertains other “loyalties” (idolatries).
Even so, God the parent is patient and kind, teaching the “little child” to walk; carrying the little child … attending to every fall, every scar, every scab, every wound, and every fear. God the parent cares for the little child Israel with embraces of love, holds the child close, stoops low to attend and feed and heal the child, guarding and protecting the child through its most vulnerable years.
Then suddenly the tone of the poem shifts when the vulnerable little child grows into its defiant adolescence … rejecting and refusing all parental advice. In real life terms, Israel the nation enters into military alliances with its powerful neighbors Assyria and Egypt. This is a tiny nation compared to the surrounding ones, and with limited resources and This decision to play these superpowers off against each other clearly violated the covenant between YHWH and Israel, which provokes Hosea’s attention.
Rather than trust that God who delivered the people out of slavery in Egypt, and look to this God to defend and help them, the decision to make alliances and trust in worldly ways puts Israel in harms way but leads to the nation being, in Brueggemann’s words “devoured by militarism”. Putting its trust in military strength or agreements, rather than in God. The poem cries out with God’s roar of woundedness. Israel’s rejection of their life-giving relationship with God wounds God so much that when the foolish adolescent child calls for help God does not answer. Brueggeman imagines God’s roar of protest erupting in God’s own mind … God struggles with how to respond. Brueggeman calls it a rant, the kind teenagers regularly evoke from even the most caring parents” as the poem continues. The parent is completely exhausted with the adolescent youngster and is willing to let the consequences of adolescent defiance carry the day. Brueggemann again, “Israel is abandoned to its self-destruction, the kind in which any teenager can find themselves when a parent shows them tough love.”
In a fascinating turn, the poem takes us into the inner workings of God’s own mind! Brueggemann again: “...here the poet gives us access to divine self-critical reflection in which God recalibrates … (like a parent) in the middle of a rant, … wonders, "What am I doing?"
As The divine parent comes to recognize that the one against whom he rants is his well beloved first-born son. As a result, the father asks himself four probing questions that are in exact parallel: "How can I...?" Give up, hand you over, treat you like Sodom (Admah), like Gomorrah (Zeboiim)! It is as though God recognizes the unacceptable conduct of treating his well-beloved son in such a harsh, rejecting way. These are serious probes on God's part, as the father sees that his actions toward his son are not really what he wants to do and are quite inappropriate.
The divine parent responds promptly to this probing self-wonderment: "I am a (parent) with warm and tender compassion. That is who I am." The parent suddenly wakes up from this ranting and railing against the defiant adolescent, and God fully regrets the angry reaction sounding much like God does in the Genesis story of Noah and the flood:
I will not act that way again; I will not destroy again.
And the reason is a fresh self-recognition of identity: "I am God."
I am the Holy One of whom more is expected and from whom more is promised. I, as Holy One, can turn ordinary rage into viable relationship. More than that, I am the Holy One in Israel. … I made a covenant with this people, defiant or not. So I will not go against my better self. And so the child Israel, by the will of the divine parent, will be restored to home & well being. Because unlike we earthly parents God will no longer react to our defiance but according to God’s covenant promise and love declared in Hosea 11:1.
This extraordinary poem dares to take us inside the conflicted interior life of God in order to see that God is not aloof or unfeeling, not some cosmic computer running on autopilot, rather, God as our parent suffers when we go rogue. God actually feels torn between emotive rage and self-disciplined patience. Brueggemann: This is not the God of popular piety who is "best friend" in a therapeutic culture. Rather, this is a God of deep and complex emotive honesty which runs contrary to most religious “God talk” and which must therefore be rendered in poetry, because poetry is well-suited to process the powerful emotions, feelings and inner turmoil of the human being and our God!
You may rightly wonder, so what?
Brueggemann responds by noting that at least concerning the prophet Hosea’s presentation, “the future of God and the future of God's people (and the future of the world) all depend upon both God’s and our own willingness to ask ourselves "What am I doing? What will I do differently to be my true self?" Without such self-critical reflection, Brueggemann adds, “the future can only be a continuation of the present. To have a future that is in any way discontinuous from the present depends upon "coming to one's self" in a self-critical way. God models and performs that self-critical act in this rhetorical move from oracle to soliloquy. We might indeed be imitators of this God who moves from a naked rant or lamentation to genuine and deeper relationship with God’s beloved.
And so as uncertainty and fear swirl all around us and even within our own souls, let us dare to listen for that imperceptible roar of God, reminding us that God is with us in the midst of these seemingly unprecedented struggles of our time. God remains with us, committed to us in spite of our foolish and self-destructive ways. But let us not fool ourselves into believing that God is somehow willing or able to ignore or overlook all our self-destructive habits, but rather than waiting for us to change, God is instead willing to walk with us into the heart of self-destruction to show that God’s love for us and God’s love for Creation will not die … In the meantime, listen closely when God roars into your heart.
