Bad Names [Proper 12C]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Hosea 1:2-10

Bad Names

At the tail-end of our Gospel reading today, Jesus extols the basic decency that is inherent in your average, run-of-the-mill parent.  Admittedly, it is a fairly low bar that he sets.  He takes for granted that the parents in that 1^st century crowd, when their children are hungry, when they ask for dinner, do not place on their little ones’ plates live, venomous creatures – not even when those children are acting very naughty.  Jesus assumes that the typical parent basically wants good things for his or her children. 

And I do think that most children of most parents would agree with Jesus’ rather milquetoast statement.  But I can think of three children who might legitimately contend with Christ.  The three kids that I have in mind have a father named Hosea and a mother who apparently had very little say in the naming process.

There are many reasons the Old Testament passage from Hosea might have caught, and even held, your attention this morning.  For one, let’s just name it, it does feature the word “whoredom” quite prominently – fired off three times, by God, in rapid succession, to begin the reading.  It’s jarring.  And probably not what you expected immediately after Fr. Brendan invited you to be seated for the Scripture readings this morning. 

But the language, while admittedly a bit shocking to church-y ears, is not intended to be what shocks us in this passage.  What is meant to be shocking is not what is said but rather what is done, what God commands the prophet to do.  Hosea is unusual; he is a prophet who lives his message.  Most commonly in the Bible, prophets deal strictly in oracles.  They are charged with speaking the words of God to the people of God, like a conduit channeling divine speech into the world of mortals.  That is overwhelmingly the model in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Throughout, there are prophets speaking before kings and speaking in the town square and speaking in holy places and speaking to travelers on the road.  The messages vary – sometimes their words are encouraging; sometimes the words form ominous portents; sometimes the words are intended to inspire repentance – but generally, what all the prophetic voices have in common is that they are voices.

But interestingly that is not the case here.  Hosea is a prophet.  But his prophetic ministry, in this earliest iteration, is seen and not heard.    

Which, if you think about it, really slows things down.  Certainly this message was not delivered with the same efficiency as the spoken word.  We read all three thirds of the communique in a matter of seconds this morning.  That’s pretty efficient: the entire message in less than a minute.  But Hosea’s neighbors, his contemporaries, those who were interested in his prophetic drama, had a long wait between each divinely inspired revelation.  There was a literal pregnant pause between each new message.  It was like a short story told over years and years. 

It is not only the prolonged timeline that is peculiar; it is also the strange family dynamic that God encourages for this symbolic spectacle.  This particular configuration is probably not what folks have in mind when they use the phrase “biblical family values.”  Hosea’s is not exactly an arranged marriage, but God does give him one very specific criterion for his future wife.  According to the biblical witness, this instruction was to marry, what some biblical translations call, a “promiscuous” woman. Hosea’s marriage was to be his first prophetic act: to be committed to one who would not commit, to purposefully give his heart to someone who would trample it – so that the nation would see themselves in the infidelity of his wife.  They were her; she was them.  God didn’t want them to just hear it, but to see it, to see God’s pain in Hosea’s pain, to see the wounds of betrayal that lived in the heart of God.

I suspect Hosea envied all those prophets who were asked to deliver bad news from their soap boxes and say hard things in royal palaces.  Hosea was asked to live God’s broken heart – to become the incarnation of God’s pain.

Hosea was asked to inhabit a life of deep sadness.  It was a big ask.  What we read today is Hosea’s prophetic call story.  And it is not nearly as romantic as some of the other call stories we find in the Bible.  Hosea was called to sacrifice his life, his happiness, his dreams, to tell a very sad story – a story that the nation need to hear, or in this case witness.

And so Hosea obeys.  He gets married, a marriage in which fidelity is off the table from the beginning, and they start having babies – not as manifestations of their marital love but because God needs vehicles for the terrible names Hosea is directed to confer.   And those names are rough, so rough that they undoubtedly fractured any relationship Hosea hoped to have with his children.  Preachers are always cautioned against mentioning their children in sermons because it can breed embarrassment or resentment.  I can assure you that Hosea’s children feel no pity for the kids who are simply mentioned in one forgettable homily.  They lived with these names for their entire lives.   

The oldest child is named Jezreel.  Jezreel is named after a famous massacre – actually named after the location of a famous massacre.  It was in the valley of Jezreel that Jehu staged a brutal coup de tat and claimed the throne of Israel.  And God was not pleased.  But rather than command the prophet to proclaim that message of displeasure on the street corner or in the throne room, God’s intention to end the dynasty of Jehu, and ultimately the kingdom of Israel, is embodied in Hosea’s firstborn son.  The child was a reminder of the blood that stained the royal throne, of the unrepentant violence that marred the nation’s history, and of the royal assassination that was hiding in the not-too-distant future.  This child roamed the earth wearing a word of treason.     

After the first child was weened, and the couple conceived and the 40 weeks of gestation were over, Hosea’s wife Gomer gave birth to a daughter.  This little daughter carries the second part of the prophetic message.  Her name is Lo-ruhamah; that means something like “not loved” or “one for whom I have no maternal compassion.”  That is not a great name for a little girl, or anyone for that matter.  Once again rather than shout the bad news from the town square, the message becomes flesh.  And this little girl walks the earth as a reminder that God’s maternal compassion, God’s motherly love, will no longer be experienced by the nation of Israel.  It is a devastating word, like a spiritual death sentence.  And the people see it in a little girl’s eyes; they hear in her innocent laugh.

And finally, after another long wait, the youngest son is born.  His name, Lo-ammi, means, “You are not my people and I am not your God.”  Throughout the Old Testament the Covenant between God and the people is articulated as “You are my people and I am your God.”  It is clear here that his name implies a nullification of the sacred covenant – covenant that the nation had long taken for granted, a steady assurance that lived in the background of their lives.  It would be like sending your child into the world with the name, “God does not love you.”  Again that is a dreadful name with which to spend one’s life.  Three children, three terrible names. 

This was the life to which Hosea was called.  Hosea allowed whatever dreams he might have had for his life to die because God said “Go.”  He married a woman who would never truly love him, who would make a mockery of him in his village.  He introduced his babies by the horrible names God assigned.  He made those children living, breathing reminders of tragedies the nation would experience.  With no say in the matter, those three children became symbols of a community’s devastation.  The bad news, worn by a family – a family destined to float through life like storm clouds.

And I am sad to say that Hosea was right.  His prophecies true.  Every name came to pass.  The royal dynasty ended.  The nation fell.  The people were scattered into exile like ashes on the wind.  The terrible future that Hosea’s family predicted went unheeded until it was too late.

But just because something is true doesn’t mean it is true forever.  After all the names are assigned, there is one more verse.  A verse that feels as jarring as anything in this strange passage; a verse that sounds dissonant in the best possible way.  Like a scorned lover trying to protect a fragile heart, God claims to be done, done with them.  But it was never true.  God could never stop loving them. 

And so while the people did break God’s heart.  And while they were unfaithful – over and over again.  And while maybe some part of God wanted to just walk away.  That is not who God is. 

And so in the next breath, the last breath, the final word, God says, through the prophet who is finally given a voice, “In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my children,’ it will be said to them, You are ‘Children of the living God.’”

And so while the prophet lived a hard life, carried a heavy burden, sacrificed everything for the call God placed on his life, he also got to say that last word – something so beautiful and so true that it made it all worth it.