Hosea 11:1-11
“Painful Love”
August 1, 2010 - Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

         Watching the bright arc of a fly line flowing back and forth across the rocks and water brought tears to my eyes. I was watching “A River Runs Through It,” a beautiful film by Robert Redford based on an even better book by Norman Maclean.

         My tears had something to do with the beauty of the cinematography, but more to do with the story around which were strung gorgeous scenes of fly-fishing on Montana’s big rivers. It’s Maclean’s semi-autobiographical account of growing up as one of two sons of a Scottish Presbyterian minister who was also a passionate fisherman.

         Like God in the first few verses of our text, the minister father brought his sons up with all the love that he knew how to show them. He provided for them. He taught them the Bible and how to pray. And when they were just little boys he taught them how to fish.

         In verse 1 God speaks of Israel as His child, says, “I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” In verse 3, Hosea has God call Israel “Ephraim,” using the name of just one tribe as a loving, parental nickname for the whole northern kingdom of ten tribes. God is a loving parent, teaching Ephraim how to walk, stooping over and holding the boy’s arms in gentle hands to keep him upright as he takes his first steps.

         Yet both in A River Runs Through It and in our text there is a dark, deep current of sadness because the more the father seeks to love, the more the child turns away. God says he taught His children to walk. The stodgy Presbyterian minister taught his sons to fish. Both were acts of the deepest love.

         Yet in the movie we see Norman’s brother Paul rejecting his father’s and his whole family’s love. The small boy sits resolute in front of a bowl of oatmeal he refuses to eat. His shoulders are firm, his lip is set, and he is ready to sit there without yielding as long as it takes. In the novel Maclean wrote, “My father was hor­rified—at first because a child of his own bowels would not eat God’s oats, and, as the days went by, because his wee child proved tougher than he was.”[1] The oatmeal was never eaten.

         The boy’s stubbornness blossoms into full rebellion as Maclean’s story unfolds. The grown-up Paul, played by a young Brad Pitt, is totally bent upon following his own will no matter the consequences. The same is true, says Hosea in verse 2, of Israel, “the more they were called, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to Baals and they burned incense to images.” The end of verse 3, after recalling God’s fostering of Israel’s first steps, says “but they did not realize it was I who healed them.”

         Many of us have experienced the pain of loving someone who spurns and ignores that love and goes his or her own way. It might be your own rebellious child. Possibly it was for you, as it was recently for me, a parent whom you tried to show love, but who was oblivious to your kindness. Perhaps a spouse or friend broke your heart, but I’m guessing you have in you some grasp of God’s heart as Hosea lets us glimpse its depths. God overflows with painful love, love that hurts because it is rejected.

         In our own pain and rejection, God has blessed us with the capacity to understand His feelings toward us. Every time we’ve been ignored or betrayed or just neglected by another human being, we feel what God feels when we turn away from Him to other concerns, when we walk away from Him to do as we please rather than what He desires.

         Verse 4 tells of God’s constant attempt to draw Israel to Himself, “with cords of human kindness, with ties of love” He reaches out to them. Like a parent stooping down to lift a sulking child, Hosea imagines God lifting His people to His cheek and bending down again to feed them. He’s remembering the manna they ate in the wilderness and all the rich produce of the land in which they live. Just as you or I keep trying to love that child or friend who rejects us, God keeps on loving us and keeps on getting hurt.

         What pains God is not His own need to be loved. God suffers from the consequences for the children He loves, the people and tribes of northern Israel. Though they’ve been called up out of slavery in Egypt, verse 5 tells how they will be returned to captivity in Egypt and made slaves anew by the Assyrians.

         Verse 6 continues the dire prediction of Israel’s slide away from God. “Swords will flash in their cities, will destroy the bars of their gates and put an end to their plans.” What pierces God’s heart is that His people’s rebellion is self-destructive. When we turn away from God it hurts Him because it hurts us. The heavenly Father hurts like the parent of a child slipping into some self-destruction, whether it’s drug addiction or an eating disorder or a series of abusive relationships. The parent aches because of the child’s own pain.

         That’s the gentle center of Jesus’ harsh parable of the rich fool in our Gospel reading today. In Luke 12:13-21, the Lord is trying to warn of the consequences when we turn from centering our lives on God to centering them on what we own. Jesus says essentially the same thing about the rich fool that God said about Israel. There will come an end to all their plans, and it may be sooner than foolish people will imagine.

         In A River Runs Through It, the real pain of Paul’s rebellion against his father is the pain he brings on himself. He begins to drink and to gamble. He gets in debt to dangerous people. And through it all, his mother and father and brother ache for him, want to help him, but he constantly refuses all their offers of help, all the cords of love by which they try to draw him back from his own doom. They feel helpless as they watch this man they love destroy himself.

         God expresses almost that same feeling of helplessness when verse 7 says, “My people are determined to turn from me. Even though they call me God Most High, I will by no means exalt them.” It sounds harsh, but hear it with a parent’s ears. It’s God’s frustration. He’s done all He can, but those He loves are determined in their self-destruction. In the end, all He can do is watch. They may fall down, but He “will by no means exalt them.” He can’t raise them up if they keep throwing themselves over cliffs.

         Paul’s life finally ends by his being beaten to death in an alley behind a bar, and we come to the heart-breaking question at the end of A River Runs Through It. Paul’s pastor father raises it first through the safe emotional distance of a sermon, asking, “How do you help someone who does not want to be helped?” That’s what he feels about his son. That’s what Norman feels about his brother. When the one you love is bent on ruining his life what can you do but stand by and watch? If the text ended here, that might be God’s own question. What can He do for us if we reject His love and help?

         Yet grace brings us some of the most remarkable lines in Scripture. In verse 8 God says, “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboyim?” Admah and Zeboyim were smaller cities located in the vicinity of Sodom and Gomorrah. God is asking Himself how He could possibly let the people He loves be destroyed like those places. In the end, He cannot. He goes on, “My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.”

         God will not let Himself just turn away from us when we turn away from Him. He is the perfect, loving Parent. Sitting in an airport a few weeks ago I saw a mother struggling with a tired, cranky, rebellious little girl about three years old. Mom herself was tired and she wanted the child to walk rather than be carried, but the toddler just threw a tantrum of screaming tears.

         I watched and listened as the young mother finally said, “O.K. Christy, I’m leaving. You can come or you can stay here.” Then she turned and walked up the terminal away from her child. She took about thirty or forty steps, hoping her ploy would work and Christy would get up and follow. But like Paul in the movie, Christy had a stronger will than her mom. She just lay there on the floor, looking and crying and refusing to get up. Finally those “cords of human love” grabbed hold of that poor mother. She turned, threw up her hands and in swift, long strides came back to snatch up her precious child and carry her down the concourse.

         Our heavenly Father will not give us up. As we lay kicking and screaming, completely rebellious in our sin, God turned and came back, came down to snatch us up in the strong love of Jesus Christ. God stooped down on the Cross, bending over as far as He could to catch us up in His own painful love. When Jesus was raised from the dead, we were raised too, snatched up out of our own sin and self-destruction and carried by Him into a new life.

         The forgiveness and grace of God comes beautifully and clearly to us in Jesus, but it was not new even then. Eight hundred years before, God said in verse 9, “I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again. For I am God, and not a human being…” There is our great hope and prayer. God loves like a father. He hurts for His children like any human parent. He grows frustrated when we turn away from Him. But He is not a human being. Which means He’s not less than human, but more than human. His love is more than ours, deeper and greater and yes, more painful than our love. Unlike our own flawed loves, His love always overcomes His anger. He will not give us up. He will stoop down, even to His own death, and raise us up to be with Him.

         The last two verses are grand, tender images of God not giving up on us and drawing us back with strong, unbreakable cords of love. “They will follow the Lord; he will roar like a lion. When he roars, his children will come trembling from the west. They will come trembling like birds from Egypt, like doves from Assyria.”

         Many of us have read the Narnian Chronicles of C. S. Lewis or seen the movies made from them. We can appreciate how the roar of a fierce Lion is also the gentle welcome home of a Parent whose love has not given up. We can picture God’s people flocking like trembling, timid birds to that roar, knowing that the One who roars is the One who loves.

         Don’t be the rich fool in Jesus’ parable, ignoring God because of concern for possessions and homes in this world. The promise of a lion-hearted love is told at the end of verse 11, “I will settle them in their homes, declares the Lord.” No matter what our circumstances right now, we have a home with Him. Our psalm for today, 107, verses 7 and 8 sang, “He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for humankind.”

         God will not give us up. He came and He is coming again to settle us in His good kingdom, in homes that last forever. He’s come and picked us up in unfailing, painful love, in crucified arms, to bring us to His place for us. Colossians 3, 1 and 2 told us, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

         There was an old saint named Ephraim in my previous church. He was ninety years old. He loved that verse where God speaks of gently teaching his namesake Ephraim to walk. It’s because Eph for so long felt in his own life the gentle, unfailing love of Jesus lifting him up, drawing him to walk by His side, carrying him safely to a new home. I pray that might also be true for everyone here today.

         It’s what we celebrate now at this Meal before us. We have a God, a Father, a Savior and Brother, a gentle lion Spirit, who did not give up on us. He’s come and He will come back to pick us up, to exalt us into His unfailing love forever. Come to His Table and set your mind on that, on the heavenly, gracious, unfailing love of God in Jesus Christ.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2010 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj