[Dialogue] Spong, 12/04/08: Hosea: The Prophet Who Changed God's Name to Love

Thu Dec 4 14:09:48 EST 2008

Subject: Hosea: The Prophet Who Changed God's Name to Love

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Thursday December 04, 2008 

Hosea: The Prophet Who Changed God's Name to Love

Hosea is probably my favorite of all the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures. His story is so real and so compelling and his expansion of the meaning of God was so closely tied to his personal domestic situation as to make his witness unforgettable. The story line is not always clear in the text, but the facts, as we piece them together from this book, are that Hosea and his wife Gomer had three sons to whom they gave strange names: Jezreel, Not Pitied, and Not My People. There is some suggestion that Hosea had actually married a prostitute, but I think the data is much more substantial that his wife later became a prostitute and ultimately a slave. We know that Hosea purchased her at a slave market for fifteen pieces of silver and restored her to the place of honor in their home as his wife. It was out of this experience that Hosea came to a new understanding of the unbounded love of God. With these few details, which are all that we can glean from the text, I have let my imagination run to come up with the following story through which I can communicate the powerful message of this book. 
"Tongues must have wagged in Jewish20social circles when the staid and respected holy man Hosea married Gomer, the party-loving youngest daughter of the old merchant Diblaim. Gomer was known for her dark and flashing eyes and her dancing feet. The tongue wagging was also driven by the fact that Hosea was an older and settled man while Gomer was much younger, one who loved the pace of the social scene and was thought of as overtly flirtatious. People wondered if such a union would last. Hosea, however, was obviously proud of his beautiful young bride and he vowed to do all he could to make her happy. 

"At first, things went well. Hosea seemed to find a whole new lease on life as he accompanied his wife to countless events where he basked in her popularity. The social pace, however, did not slacken after a year or so and Hosea began to yearn for the somewhat quieter life he had known before his marriage. Almost inevitably these realities brought tension into the relationship. From time to time Hosea wanted to leave a party sooner than Gomer, so a compromise was arranged by which he departed earlier and she was escorted home later by their friends. That tactic, though dangerous in that society, seemed to work well. When Hosea finally got to the place where he did not want to go out as often, a much more dangerous compromise was instituted. Gomer occasionally went to a party either with her friends or finally alone. Over the years these occasions increased until they became the rule not the exception. An unescorted woman was20almost unknown in Jewish society for it left her vulnerable and unprotected. This was especially so when that woman was by nature a sensuous and fun-loving person like Gomer. 

"Almost inevitably, the fears and suspicions were fulfilled and the night finally came when Gomer did not return home at all. Alarmed, Hosea immediately began to search for her, but to no avail. She vanished without a trace or clue. 

"While Hosea continued to search for her, Gomer, now unburdened by her more sedate husband, became the favorite plaything of the Jewish jet set. She rode this track until it stretched into years. Hosea, his love for her undiminished, continued to search while Gomer continued to play. Life in the fast lane, however, fades for everyone sooner or later and as the years passed, Gomer was no exception. Yesterday's favorite plaything can always be replaced with tomorrow's younger models. Youthful beauty also does not last forever. Even Gomer had begun to notice that "crows' feet" were appearing around her eyes that cosmetics could not disguise. Next she recognized that she was sagging in places she had never sagged before. Inevitably, she had begun that fateful descent of the femme fatale. Once the favorite plaything of the social pacesetters, she soon had to adjust to being the plaything of anyone who wanted a plaything. When even that activity had run its course, she became a common prostitute, selling what remained of her charms for enough money to survive. Even prostitution, however, is a competitive profe
ssion and the day came when those seeking her services were no longer attracted at all. Gomer then descended to the final rung on the social ladder, becoming a slave and offering her labor to the family that owned her in exchange for sustenance. 

"Through all these downward spiraling years, Hosea kept up his search for the woman he had married and still loved. As the years passed, the search became less frantic, but it was always on his agenda. Hosea knew the ways of his world, so, after some years had passed, he limited his search to the slave markets, which were only places that seemed to be her likely destination. His was a lonely life. He knew not whether his wife was dead or alive. 

"Then one day it happened. He found a slave market, where the usual riff-raff of society offered loud commentary on the human cargo placed on the block. Hosea moved into the crowd just about the time a woman was placed on the block for public inspection. Her hair was matted, her eyes were bloodshot and her face was lined, revealing the toll that the years had taken. The crowd was delirious in its derision, suggesting by their shouts that no one would be so foolish as to pay anything for this old bag. The slave master tried to ignore them while he sought in vain to secure a purchaser. Their guffaws, however, were not silenced until Hosea, recognizing this woman as his wife Gomer, stepped forward and with a clear and audible voice bid fifteen pieces of silver for her. A momentary stunned sil
ence greeted this bid while the crowd turned to see who had made this incredibly stupid offer. Fifteen pieces of silver was the top price that young, strong male servants would bring. Only someone significantly naïve or totally uninformed could have offered so absurd a price for this battered piece of cargo. The crowd's abusive shouts now shifted quickly from this pathetic woman, who was little more than a throw-in on another sale, to the strange man who had made such an incredible offer. This bidder had been duped, so they hurled their insults at him, profoundly unaware of the drama being acted out before their eyes. 

"Taking no notice of their catcalls, Hosea walked forward, paid the offered price, took the woman by the hand and led her past the mocking bystanders until their words faded in the distance. When he reached his home with her, Hosea informed his household that Gomer was not a slave, but his wife and he installed her into the place of honor she had once occupied as the mistress of his household and the center of his affection. 

"It was following this experience that Hosea began to reflect on his life and on what it meant to be God's prophet. His relationship with Gomer led him to examine what he perceived to be God's relationship to the Jewish people. His thoughts about God began to intertwine with his thoughts about Gomer. Just as he loved Gomer regardless of her actions, so he began to understand that this is the nature of God's love for God's people. God's love 
is not conditional, nor is it tempered by Israel's actions. This definition of God began to grow in Hosea. The love of God was not an entity to be earned, it was a reality to be entered, something to be lived. His meditation, born in his own pain, paved the way for him to arrive at a new understanding of what divine love really meant. God's love cannot be earned and God's love cannot be destroyed no matter what people did. This was the message of Hosea. 

"Later in Jewish history, this message of Hosea was seen in Jesus of Nazareth. When the gospels were written that understanding of love permeated every verse. Jesus was portrayed as praying for his tormentors and giving his life and love away even as people thought they were taking it from him. The message of Jesus that the gospels sought to convey was very clear: There is nothing you or I can ever do; nothing you or I can ever be that will separate us from the love of God. As I read this small book, Hosea reaches out to love and even to rescue his wife from the consequences of her own decisions, though by the standards of that day, she would have been judged as not worthy of such a response. That was the message of Jesus 800 years later." 

Now, let me quickly say that even in this reconstruction of Hosea, we do not know the whole story. A marital relationship is never one sided. In the biblical text, we do not have access to Gomer's side of the relationship. Hosea may have been an impossibly righteous man. W
e do know, however, that selfless love is always a doorway into transforming forgiveness, expanded life and perhaps even a larger consciousness. We also know that the idea of God being defined as selfless love brought a whole new dimension to the meaning of worship. 

After Hosea lived through this experience and found reconciliation, he still had to write his story and someone somewhere had to make the later decision to incorporate that writing into the sacred scriptures of the Jewish people. That is what enabled Hosea's message to reverberate through the ages. Later generations of people listening to the words of Hosea would begin to hear in them the "word of God." 

I treasure Hosea for many reasons. His message is real and it counters the anti-Semitic Christian rhetoric of the ages that suggests that the Old Testament portrays a God of judgment while the New Testament portrays a God of love. Judgment is nowhere as severe in the Bible as it is in the New Testament Book of Revelation, which portrays eternal fire and flaming pits as the eternal fate that God has designed for sinners; and love is nowhere portrayed more profoundly than in the Old Testament Book of Hosea, who turned his personal pain into a new understanding of the limitless love of God. 

God does not change over the course of time, but the human perception of God is ever changing and in the Book of Hosea a new breakthrough into the meaning of God was achieved.

–John Shelby Spong

Question 
and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

Colleen Nicholson, from Petersburg, Alaska, writes: 
I receive your newsletter and have read several of your books, so I am familiar with your work and so appreciate all that you bring to your readers. I am encouraged and nurtured by your teachings. I am presently reading Honest Prayer, which was not easy to find. The book is giving me new insight and excitement about the Lord's Prayer, and I wonder if you have considered a new edition? If you were to write it today, would you change it in any way? I am part of a group of women who meet on Sunday mornings at our church to discuss a book we have chosen to read individually, chapter by chapter. One of the topics we have studied is prayer. Honest Prayer is just what we need to read and talk about to open our understanding of God and of the practice of prayer. For some time now I have had the feeling that much about my prayer life has involved superstition about who God is and what God will do in regard to prayer. In reading your books I am growing and maturing spiritually and I thank you for sharing your life with your readers.

Dear Colleen,

Thank you for your letter. Thanks especially for your words about Honest Prayer. That was my first book, written in 1972 and published in 1973. HarperCollins asked me to consider the possibility of revising and updating it during the 1980s, but I declined. It represents a stage in my growth, life and development and I decided it need
ed to be left with its own integrity. It is not that I disagree with the things I wrote then, but it is that I have moved far beyond where I was when I wrote that book. Something reflective of that growth will be found in two chapters on prayer in A New Christianity for a New World, which was based on a series of lectures I delivered at Harvard University in 2000. That book was published in 2002. Honest Prayer has been out of print for years, but has recently been reissued by a small publisher in New Jersey – St. Johann Press, 315 Schraalenburgh Road, Haworth, New Jersey 07641 and can be ordered directly from them (201-387-1529). It is also available through Amazon. I am sorry you had a hard time finding it. 

I have thought a lot about that book recently since I am working on a book about life after death. The reason for that connection is that it was an experience of prayer that I had with a dying woman that forced me to look at prayer in a new way. Honest Prayer was the result. 

Her name was Cornelia Newton. She was the wife of a country doctor in Pearisburg, Va. and the mother of three children. She had been active in the affairs of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia while I was a rector in Lynchburg. That was how we met and became friends. 

About a year after I had moved to Richmond, Virginia, I got a telephone call from Cornelia, who was a patient at the University Hospital in Charlottesville. She asked if it might be possible for me to 
come up and see her. "What's wrong, Cornelia?" I asked. "I don't want to talk about it on the phone," she said, "but I would like to see you." 

Of course, I went the next day. It is a little more than an hour's drive from Richmond to Charlottesville, but I arrived, parked, found her room and began to talk with her about 1:30 p.m. She had just been diagnosed with a silent and fatal cancer. She had only months to live. I was stunned at the news. She was so young, so vital, and so necessary in the lives of her husband and their children. "Tell me what it is like to hear that news," I asked and with that question one of the most remarkable conversations I have ever had occurred. Cornelia invited me into her death experience, and for three hours we roamed over the terrain of her life. She talked about what it is like to face limits, to know that she would never see her children graduate from high school, from a university or even get married. She would never know her grandchildren. She wondered about how her husband's practice would be affected without her anchor at home. She walked into dreams that would never be realized, recalled treasured moments that she would always cherish and mentioned relationships that had enriched her. She laid down the defensive shell in which all live human beings hide, and we talked deeply and honestly as two people do when they are not trying to pretend or to guard their vulnerabilities. Of course it was painful, but it also was real. 

When=2
0the time came to leave about 4:30 p.m., I fell into my professional role and asked if I could pray with her. She did not say no. It was as if she felt that if it was something I needed to do, it was OK with her. So I took her hand and prayed, using the familiar and hackneyed phrases of my profession. It was a performance not a reality and I felt that this prayer actually cheapened the visit. I realized then that my life and my faith practices were out of sync. I reflected upon that as I drove back to Richmond. 

My conversation with Cornelia had been expansive and life giving, honest and real. My prayer had been tangential, seemingly phony and unreal. Our conversation served to enhance my life and hers. My prayers seemed to diminish my life and hers. Which one was the real prayer, I asked? I vowed never to pray again with a person unless I could do so as honestly as I could engage that person in dialogue. 

Honest Prayer was the result of that thought process. I also began to think about prayer out loud in a series of addresses and sermons as I wrestled with this subject intellectually. That book was destined not to be my last word on that subject, but it was my first word and it remains the framework in which I still think about prayer even though it has been significantly modified by additional life experiences. 

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to recall these moments in my life some 35 years ago. 

– John Shelby Spong

Send your questions to support at johnshelbyspong.com 

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