Hosea 1: 2-11
Steve Lindsley
May 12, 2013
So what’s really in a name? It’s the kind of thing Moms and Dads spend a lot of time thinking about when there’s a child on the way, isn’t it? A few weeks ago, Shasta sent me a weblink to an article titled, “8 Unusual Baby Names That Are Getting Popular in 2013.” Check out the first one! she urged. It was “Bentley” – which is my middle name; a name I acquired from my mother, as it was her maiden name. I’ve never gone by Bentley. I don’t really have anything against it – although whenever my parents did call me that name it was usually preceded by “Stephen” and followed by “Lindsley” and meant that I was in some serious, serious trouble.
So that’s one of the eight unusual baby names that are getting popular in 2013. You want to know the other seven? There’s Khloe with a “K,” there’s Mila and Olive, there’s Kellan and Jax, spelled “J-A-X,” and there’s Aria and Gemma. That last one, I think, would take some getting used to. I guess it’s like “Emma” – but with a “G.” Apparently it’s been all the rage in the UK and is slowly starting to make its way across the pond. I honestly can’t imagine naming my child Gemma, but my wife and I are well beyond the naming years so that’s not something we have to worry about. We’ll leave it up to the next generation of parents. (http://www.disneybaby.com/blog/8-unusual-baby-names-that-are-getting-popular-in-2013/?cmp=SMC%7Cdbaby%7Csoc%7CFB%7CMain%7CInHouse%7C032713%7CLink%7C%7CfamE%7CSocial%7C%7C&utm_campaign=disbabyeditors&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=referral#slide2, visited on 4.15.2013)
Let me tell you, though, about three names that would certainly never find their way to the top of this list, in this generation or any generation. Three names that no sane person would ever burden their children with. They’re the three names we find in our scripture today: Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah; and Lo-ammi. They’re Hebrew names; so they sound a bit strange to our Western ears. But it’s not how they sound that has them ranking low on the desirable-name list. It’s what the names mean.
Let’s set some context here: Old Testament times, the Israelites living in the Promised Land, but not always living into the promise. The perpetual struggle of remaining faithful to the God who brought them there when other nations and other Gods compelled them otherwise. We know what that feels like, don’t we? We know how easy it is to fail to reciprocate God’s faithfulness to us with faithfulness of our own back to God?
Enter Hosea, a man whom we know little about other than that he was a prophet; a spokesperson for God. The thing is, though, Hosea’s prophetic work wasn’t initially about what he said as much as what he did. And believe me, if prophetic acts are meant to grab your attention, Hosea didn’t disappoint.
That’s because the book of Hosea begins with God telling him to go marry Gomer, a known prostitute, as a way of demonstrating how God’s people had treated God. They had cheated on God, lied to God, been unfaithful to God. So Hosea is to embody this message in his very marriage. And as if that wasn’t enough, Hosea is given strict instructions on what to name their three children: Jezreel, the name of a city where much blood had been spilled in God’s name; Lo-ruhamah, which in Hebrew means “You are not pitied,” and Lo-ammi, which means “You are not my people.”
Wow. City of bloody war. Not pitied. Not my people. Suddenly, “Gemma” doesn’t sound all that bad, now does it?
Go ahead and say it, cause I know you’re thinking it. I hope you’re thinking it. It seems like a bit much to lay on the poor guy, doesn’t it? Marry a woman he knows will be unfaithful, and then shouldering their children with names that will forever serve as an agonizing reminder of God’s wrath and judgment – not to mention making them the butt of every joke on the school playground. I mean, can you imagine the first day of school, the teacher standing up front with the attendance book? “City-of-bloody-war,” is “City-of-bloody-war” present? How about “Not-pitied” – is “Not-pitied” here today? And how about “Not-my-people?” Go ahead and raise your hand, now, don’t be shy, “Not-my-people,” are you here?
It’s funny, but it’s not, right? It begs the obvious question of why in the world God would burden someone – especially a faithful servant like Hosea – with a family tree doomed from the get-go. In a society like ours, where divorce rates are at 50%; in a world where children are already behind the eight-ball as they grow out of dysfunctional families into an even more dysfunctional world, it’s no surprise if we find ourselves reading such a passage and slamming our Bible shut in disgust.
It’s one of those unsettling, beautiful “vertigo” moments of scripture where we’re not sure if what we’re getting is history or metaphor. Maybe it’s one or other; maybe it’s a little bit of both. And to be honest, for our purposes at least, it’s not really about whether this actually happened or not. That’s not the reason it’s in the Bible. What’s most important in these first few verses of Hosea is the metaphor that’s being played out – a metaphor of the heavily strained relationship between God and God’s people.
Which is why, strange as it may sound, this story is not really about Hosea’s struggle, or the people’s struggle. It’s about God’s struggle! I know, crazy, isn’t it? It’s about God’s continued struggle with the people God had chosen; the people God unequivocally loves, and yet the people who frustrate God to no end. It had been that way forever, really. Its history is as old as the earth itself.
Create a perfect world for a fine young couple in Eden and watch them ruin it all by doing the one thing – the only thing – they had kindly been asked not to do. Bestow these people with great leaders like Noah and Moses and Aaron and Miriam and Joshua – only to watch them struggle mightily to keep it all together. Hear a nation cry for deliverance and raise up for them powerful judges to fight off the enemy, only to have those people fall back into their old ways over and over and over again. Give in to the peoples’ desire and grant them their wish – a king – and watch as those kings become corrupt with power, greed, and the negative influence of surrounding nations. It is any wonder, really, that when we take a bird’s eye view of the history of God’s people up to this point, that God might have been a bit perturbed by it all?
All of which makes the rest of Hosea’s story so amazing. Because God’s anger with the peoples’ unfaithfulness and God’s instinct to disown them is not all that we find in the heart of God. For in the midst of this frustration lies a true and abounding love; a love which God himself recounts to the prophet when he says this:
Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them, "You are not my people," it shall be said to them, "Children of the living God.”
Did you catch that last part? We’ve got a renaming, folks! A reclaiming, if you will. And if it sounds a bit like divine whiplash here, that’s not too far from the truth. At least as Hosea tells it, even God experiences feelings fully; even God is not immune to the back-and-forth emotional roller-coaster that comes when you care so deeply for someone. In fact, God’s anger and frustration with us comes because of God’s intense and abiding love.
Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it? It’s the emotional roller-coaster of any intimate relationship; how deeply you can care for someone and how frustrated and angry you can with that same person. Perhaps you’ve heard me share the story that comedian Bill Cosby loves to tell. It’s about a cookie jar his family had on their kitchen counter; the very one that both he and his wife had told their five-year old daughter time and time again not to touch. One day while in the living room, Cosby heard a ruckus going on in the kitchen and got up to check it out; only to find his precious little daughter standing on top of a kitchen chair, pushed over beside the counter; one hand holding the cookie jar top and the other reaching in to grab a most delicious chocolate chip cookie.
Cosby recalls the “no cookie jar” conversation he’d had with his just that morning. Obviously disappointed and angry, he bellows out, “What are you doing?”
The child calmly responds, “I was just getting a cookie for you, Daddy.”
Caught off-guard by this response, and even more agitated, Cosby blurts out, “I don’t want a cookie!”
To which his sweet daughter replies, “Well then, can I have it?”
Now you don’t have to be a parent to put yourself in Cosby’s shoes and understand the irritation, the anger, the “pull-your-hair out” kind of frustration he surely had at that moment. But I think it’d be safe to say that, in spite of all this, his love for his daughter never went away – momentarily relegated to the back burner, perhaps, but still very much there – and that it wouldn’t be too long before he was holding her in his lap, cuddling her as she fell asleep and wondering how he ever really lived before she came along.
If you and I can picture that, then I think we have a glimpse of precisely the kind of relationship God has with God’s people. And because of that, I wonder if what we have in the opening words of Hosea is a beautiful message, despite its harsh appearance; a powerful truth that escapes us unless we are tuned in to its simplicity – that God’s love for us always comes out on top. Even though there is frustration after frustration, unfaithfulness after unfaithfulness, anger after anger, nothing ever causes God to “un-choose” God’s people, to not rename them. God is always there, like a jilted lover, waiting at the doorstep for us to come home. And when we do come home, as we inevitably do, the names that God once gave us – “Not pitied” and “Not my people,” fade into the distant past. And we are given a new name, one that God shared with Hosea, and in all truth the one that matters most: “Children of the living God.”
And I would dare say that it is this name that demonstrates the incredible and awesome love God has for us. Us – US! We who make a habit of unfaithfulness, we who thoughtlessly follow our own whims and desires on the path most frequently taken. It is a name that says it all: children, because ultimately God relates to us not as lord or master but as parent; and living God, because our God is an active and vibrant part of this world.
The name God gives us is a name that speaks to a promise – a promise of a relationship that will never die, never expire, regardless of how often we fail to be the kind of people God calls us to be. It is a name that readily admits from the get-go that there is nothing, nothing at all that we can do to earn or deserve this amazing love. And that is both the beauty and the scandal of it – to be fully loved and accepted and chosen, even when there is no reason at all that you and I should be any of those things.
The thing is, this new name God gives us calls us to accountability, and to the very faithfulness we often find difficult. And while God will never forsake us, while the names “Not pitied” and “Not my people” are no longer ours to be burdened with, we must live into our new name: “Children of the Living God.” It’s not that we’re held to a higher standard than everyone else. It’s that we have a completely different calling in life. To love our neighbor, even when that neighbor is an enemy. To avoid the sin of idolatry, where we put anything – material or ideological – above God. To seek not charity, but justice – repairing broken relationships with people and with the structures and systems of our day.
So whether we are in the process of choosing a child’s name, or trying to remember the name of the person sitting in the pew next to us, or thinking about the names of those most special people in our lives, let us always remember that our real name is rooted in the undying and eternal love of our living God. May God grant us what we need to live up to and into our God-given name, this day and for always. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God. AMEN.
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