I've been teaching on the book of Hosea at our church the last month. The book is raw, full of vivid imagery and has lots of language that you'd never dream of hearing or saying in church. So far I haven't been tossed out of the sanctuary yet. :)
The form of the writing is poetry-prophecy and the dominant imagery is that of Israel and God in a marriage relationship, but Israel, God's bride has been unfaithful and is "prostituting herself to other lovers" via the worship of the Canaanite god's. In spite of her unfaithfulness God continues to pursue his wife and call for her return.
I am struck by the way that God is portrayed in this compliation of poetry-sermons, because God is pictured as a husband that refuses to give up on his adulteress wife. It is like God's plan to love people cannot be thwarted in the slightest.
One of the Hebrew words that Hosea uses to speak of God's love is the word Ahab (some know this word as Ahava, if you've seen Rob Bell's Nooma video called Flame). Gary Smith defines ahab as "irrational power that is unexplainable and paradoxical, since it is undeserved. It is a free giving of one's self to another to care for, forgive, and protect that person--without strings or conditions. Another commentator writes saying, "love works irresistably as an original force in the nature of God. When he acts in love, God demonstrates no less than his proper character as the holy God. It nearly seems as if God's love is more powerful in its compelling force than he himself."
Several weeks ago, the headlines were replete with stories about the shooting at the Amish School. The Today Show did a story on the incident and on the community's decision to forgive the shooter. One of the experts that they brought on the show spoke about how forgiveness is an irrational act, yet powerful. I don't think she was using the word irrational in a pejorative way, rather I think she was saying that for most of us forgiveness doesn't come naturally. We would rather get revenge and we would rather hate our enemy.
Then a few days later I read an article about how half of the mourners at
Charles Carl Roberts funeral were Amish and that their presence and actions were powerful displays of love and forgiveness. Most everyone attending the funeral was moved to tears.
Most of us look at that story and say, could I forgive like that? I'm not sure I could do that. Nevertheless, it is something that the amish have done and in my mind it is a very poweful story of love triumphing over evil intentions. This is a good story for our society to think and wrestle through. The buzz word and attitude of our society is "tolerance," while this can be a helpful concept properly defined, it is not enough.
There is nothing powerful, or motivational about tolerance; you are merely putting up with someone else. Tolerance is an inadequate posture for our society, rather I think our society needs to learn to love unconditionally. What if people from different social, political, ideological backgrounds actually saw the "person" behind all the other junk? What if we cared about people more than our own agenda? If we could truly learn to love our neighbor could we form a better society, neighborhood, or home?
I'm not sure when this happened, but a few years ago our family decided that holidays such as Thanksgiving, where everyone was home, was to significant of an occasion to eat a food as bland as turkey. Therefore, we have usually cooked the family favorite, beef teriyaki.
