Throughout time, God has called
individual persons to serve as prophets.
Within scripture alone, there are many prophets, including Nathan,
Jeremiah, Isaiah, Micah, Joel, and Amos.
In all cases, the role of the prophet was to call God’s people back to
faithfulness towards God and to work towards establishing God’s Reign on
Earth. In the Hebrew tradition,
prophetic work included healing the earth and establishing justice for the poor
and marginalized.
Within the biblical prophetic
tradition, God usually speaks through the words of the prophets. However, in the case of Hosea, God speaks not
so much through the words of Hosea.
Instead, God speaks through Hosea’s actions and through his life. That is, Hosea’s life becomes a metaphor of
God’s message to the Hebrew people.
The book of Hosea begins with God
instructing Hosea to choose a prostitute for his wife and to marry her. Hosea does as God instructs him, marrying a
prostitute named Gomer, and having three children with her. Yet, even in marriage, Gomer is unfaithful to
Hosea, having many adulterous relationships, until ultimately Hosea must
divorce her. After the divorce, Gomer
seeks after other men, whom she thinks will provide for her. But, she can never find anyone else. Eventually, she sinks to the role of a house slave. Yet, Hosea continues to love Gomer and he
forgives her. Eventually, Hosea redeems
Gomer, buying her back with silver and food.
In the story of Hosea and Gomer, it
is important to understand that Gomer was not a prostitute in the everyday
sense in which we use the term today.
Instead, Gomer was most likely an ordinary Hebrew woman who turned away
from her Hebrew religion and embraced another, false religion called Baal. Baal was a fertility cult, and so it is most
likely that Gomer sexually offered herself to men as part of the religious
worship of Baal. In that religious
sense, Gomer was a prostitute.
As suggested above, the relationship
between Hosea and Gomer becomes a prophetic metaphor for the relationship
between God and the Hebrew people. Just
like Gomer, the Hebrew people are continually denying and abandoning God. Instead, like Gomer, they seek after the
false fertility god, mistakenly imagining that Baal can provide them with
riches and luxuries and freedoms beyond their wildest hopes. Again and again, Baal fails to provide and
they find themselves as indentured servants with no freedom at all. Similarly, God, just like Hosea, continually
seeks after the Hebrew people, offering them forgiveness and reconciliation, as
well as true blessings beyond measure.
Again and again and again, God seeks after the unfaithful chosen people.
Integrity
grows out of the same root word as the mathematics term, “integer,” meaning a whole number.
Integrity means whole or
complete. As a human characteristic, it
refers to a person who is honest and has sound moral character. In other words, a person with integrity is
whole in their actions, without deceit or dishonesty. Similarly, a Christian with integrity is a
disciple of Christ who rigorously and consistently lives their faith. A Christian with integrity puts their faith
into action; it refers to a Christian who “walks the walk, instead of simply
talking the talk." It is not easy to be a
Christian with integrity; it is actually very hard.
Hosea demonstrated great integrity
in his faith because he was willing to endure public scorn and humiliation in
order to create a prophetic metaphor, calling upon the Hebrew people to return
to faithfulness in God. As a devout
Hebrew, Hosea was undoubtedly mortified, when God asked him to marry a
prostitute, whom many of his neighbors had probably been intimate with. One biblical scholar writes that God’s
command “must have involved Hosea in a terrible spiritual turmoil.” Yet, Hosea was willing to live his faith;
that is, he was willing to “walk the walk.”
Just as with Hosea, God asks us to live lives of spiritual
integrity. While our challenge may not
be exactly the same as Hosea’s, each of face situations where we are tempted to
abandon our faith and to live lives that lack spiritual integrity. Join us for our weekend services at
Meriden UMC this week, as we explore challenges to the integrity of our faith
and how we can becomes as strong as Hosea.
Our church is located at the corner of Main and Dawson Streets in
Meriden, Kansas. We have two worship
services each weekend:
Ø Our
contemporary service starts at 6 pm on Saturday evenings.
Ø Our
classic service starts on at 10 am on Sunday mornings.
Everyone is welcome and accepted because God loves us all.
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