Scripture: Hosea 2: 14-23; Revelation 3:8, 10-14.
This is a sermon about race…partly…eventually.
But let me begin today with the scriptures, with a reading from the Hebrew scriptures, from a book called Hosea.
I decided to read this passage myself today, because it needs some explanation. We need to do a little Bible study even before we come to today’s passage.
Hosea is one of 12 books in the Bible referred to as “minor prophets”. Hosea is certainly not the most obscure book of the minor prophets; he’s one of the more major of the minor prophets. But he doesn’t get much attention. When people turn to one of the minor prophets, it’s likely to be Amos (“let justice roll down like waters”) or Micah (what does God require but to do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with our God?”), or maybe Joel (“your old shall see visions and your young shall dream dreams”). Hosea doesn’t have such memorable quotes. What Hosea may be most remembered for is the person he married, whose name was Gomer.
Gomer was a prostitute. Hosea married Gomer because God told him to. God told him to because God wanted to use Hosea and Gomer as real live symbols of the message that Hosea was going to bring to the people of Israel.
God wanted Hosea to compare Gomer to Israel. Like a prostitute (Gomer) Israel was to be portrayed as faithless and fickle and promiscuous, betraying the person she should be loyal to. And yet Gomer is married to Hosea just as Israel is married to God. And Hosea will receive her back into his good graces, just as God will receive Israel—after, that is, they have been suitably humiliated and have repented. Gomer actually has three children, and God instructs that they be named: Jezreel (meaning it is God who sows), Lo-ruhamma (not pitied), and Lo-ammi (not my people). When Gomer and Hosea are reconciled, symbolizing the reconciliation of Israel and God, the children’s names will be changed to Jezreel, Ruhamma (pitied), and Ammi (my people). Hosea was supposed to be living out this little parable of God’s anger and judgment and justice on the one hand, and God’s love on the other.
With all that said, let me read the particular passage I chose for this morning. This comes at the end of a chapter and a half of God raging about how unfaithful Israel has been, and what is going to happen to her as a result. At the beginning of Hosea we see a god who rants and weeps and pounds his fist and pulls his hair and beats his breast and who is very much a “he-type” god. God is the husband who demands faithfulness. Israel is the wife, the prostitute, who betrayed him. But then, all of a sudden God begins to speak in a different way, with a different voice and a different feeling. (Read vs. 14-25)……..
I chose this passage for some reasons that I’ll get to in a few minutes, but I have to begin by confronting some parts of the passage that are a little off-topic but that I find to be offensive because of their attitude toward women. As I say, I chose this passage for other reasons. I was not intending to preach on gender issues in the scriptures this morning, but after I chose the passage and began to think about it, I realized that I just couldn’t let this part of the reading go without comment.
It’s the image of the faithless woman that bothers me here. Hosea, the male in this story, represents goodness, in fact represents God. Gomer, the female, is a prostitute who represents Israel’s sin. It bothers me that the scripture sets up this symbolic situation of man=good=God vs. woman=sin=Israel. It bothers me that it is the female prostitute who is singled out for her faithlessness, while the males who engage in prostitution with her, are not made an example of at all. It bothers me that the burden of sexual purity and fidelity falls here, as it always has and continues to fall, on the woman. It bothers me that the role of the woman seems to be to be faithful and obedient, while the role of the man seems to be a dispenser of judgment or forgiveness, as he sees fit. And that if the male determines the female has been unfaithful, he is justified in humiliating her, even brutalizing her, punishing her into submission.
The kind of set-up we have at the beginning of Hosea is, of course, an allegory, a way of talking about the relationship of God to God’s people. But the set up the way it is here describes in fact real life situations where women bear more than their share of the blame for sexual misconduct and where violence has been done against women and justified by men on the basis that the woman somehow deserved it. Forget the allegory for a moment. The situation depicted in Hosea brings to mind real life situations where women have been harmed by men who had power over them.
Still there is beauty, and even truth, in what Hosea is trying to say. I don’t want to just discard the scripture entirely, but for me even to speak about this scripture, I need to find a way that gets past this hurtful symbolism I’ve been trying to talk about. If you don’t understand what my problem is, if I haven’t made it clear, or if you just don’t agree that it’s a problem, then I have to ask you to indulge me. My way of being able to speak about this passage is to reverse the genders. I want to speak of Hosea and of God as though they were female, as though Hosea was, and God was, a loving, justice-seeking wife who has been betrayed by her philandering husband. I don’t know if that will help you. It will help me a little.
And I’ll return to Hosea, but I first want to put alongside of the Biblical passage an experience several of us had last weekend at the annual meeting of the Central Atlantic Conference of the United Church of Christ. Sojourners was on the agenda, thanks to the efforts of Archie Thornton, who was on the planning committee for the conference. We were leading a workshop on racial justice and racism in the church.
This came about really because of our leading concern in which we committed ourselves, I believe, to raise the issue of racial injustice however and wherever we could in the Charlottesville community, to keep racial justice concerns in front of us here at Sojourners, and to bring them to other levels of the church when the opportunity presented itself. The opportunity presented itself this year through Archie, who convinced the planning committee to include in the program a workshop on racial profiling, which grew into a broader workshop on what churches should be doing, and what the CAC should be doing, to deal with racial justice concerns. Archie was supported in his efforts because we had our leading concern, and we were appropriate leaders for the workshop because of the leading concern. And so I want to take a minute to report on this to you because in a way the whole church was involved in this workshop taking place.
This was not a high-powered workshop that we “put on”. I didn’t have any sermons to give, none of us had any speeches to make. We didn’t have a lot of handouts, information to present, arguments to make. As I saw it, our job was simply to provide a place for people to talk about “racism and the church” and “racism in the church” and what we should be doing about it, what the Central Atlantic Conference should be doing. And I believe that the opportunity to have that conversation is mostly what drew people to the workshop.
And it turned out that quite a few people were drawn to the workshop. When we decided we better begin the room was comfortably full. After we decided to go ahead and get started, people just kept coming in until there were no more chairs and not enough room and people were standing in the doorway. To me, this indicated that this was a conversation that was probably long overdue in the Central Atlantic Conference. I, of course, don’t know what the longer history is in the CAC. I do know that in the two conferences I have attended this was the only workshop dealing directly with racism. And the need for it was underlined by the fact that when I went around to the small groups we had divided into to see if we could come back together, every group said basically the same thing: We’ve hardly even started.
It was that image of the open door that stuck in my mind as I thought about what I might say this morning. We provide a place for a serious conversation to take place about race, racism, racial justice—that’s all we really had to offer as I see it, just the opportunity for a conversation—and more than twice the expected number of people show up. People keep coming through that open door and end up standing in the door, wanting to be part of that conversation.
Now I don’t want to make too much of this. I know this doesn’t always happen. But it does seem to me, judging by the response to the workshop and the e-mails I have received over the last week, that there are a number of people in the CAC, who are hungry for this conversation. And it occurs to me that there may be many people in our society who are hungry for such a conversation. Racism is so pervasive and hangs so heavily over all of us—people of color and white people alike—well not alike, in different ways—but over all of us—that it may feel like we’re dealing with racism all the time. I believe we are all wounded in some way and we all carry those wounds in us. It may feel like we’re dealing with racism all the time, but we’re not really dealing with it. It is simply troubling us. And so when the opportunity comes along to have a conversation about race that is sincere and honest, that is not just for venting, or for self-promotion, or for pontificating, and that aims at something more than conversation, then for people to walk through a door into a such a conversation can be liberating.
That I think is one of the things we have been trying to do in our leading concern over the last year. To provide a way for a conversation about race and racial justice to take place, to provide a door for people to walk through so that we don’t bear these burdens from a legacy of racism separately or silently. Archie has been a constant voice reminding us that conversation is not enough, and that talk only goes so far, and I think we all know he’s right. Sometimes talking and studying can be a way of avoiding doing anything. It can become escapism. But sometimes providing a place for real conversation is a way of doing something. I do believe it was at Central Atlantic last weekend. It has been for us over the last year. I especially remember the school superintendents saying how rare such conversations are in their experience. And without presuming to say what we will or should do about our leading concern when our year’s commitment comes up for discussion in September, there is one thing I do know: that one way or another the conversation needs to continue—at Sojourners and as many places as we can make it happen.
There needs to be that door for people to walk through. I saw that as a symbol for the conversation about race that occurred last weekend and that we have been trying to have happen since last September. And so I went looking through the scriptures for the image of doors, just to see what I might find. I won’t lie to you and tell you that I remembered on my own that in Hosea 2:15 God says, “From there I will give her vineyards, and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.” I didn’t know that verse, but when I found it, it seemed appropriate. When people walk through a door in a room where a meaningful conversation about race is occurring, it is like walking through a door of hope. The Valley of Achor was a place where the Hebrews marauded and plundered as they entered the Promised Land under Joshua, and it became a symbol for a place of sin. So what the verse says is that God says she will turn the sinful past into a door of hope. Walking through any door of hope is of course only a beginning, but if there is not that opportunity then all we can do is continue to bear the burdens of a sinful past.
So I liked that phrase from Hosea because of its connection to that image of the open door from the conference last week and because of its connection to what I understand us to have been doing all year. I also liked it because of another meaning the symbol of the open door has.
I read a an article recently that was talking about God opening the doors to our hearts, and also about how sometimes we can open the doors to God’s heart. Hosea gives us a very clear picture of a God whose heart is burdened. We don’t know or need to know all the specific things that may have burdened God’s heart in Hosea’s day. Clearly in our day racism is something that burdens our hearts as human beings, and we need ways for our hearts to begin to be unburdened. But of course God’s heart is burdened too. And it may be that every step we take, even the little baby step of just holding a conversation on race in the late afternoon of a church conference, that even those baby steps we take help to open the heart of God, help to unburden, if ever so slightly, not only our hearts but God’s heart.
And finally, as God’s heart is opened, we may see once again that what God’s heart contains is a vision for what human life is meant to be. The door of hope is a doorway into the heart of God. And what the heart of God contains is the vision, the hope that Jesus referred to as the kingdom of God, the reign of God. And Hosea speaks of it here. Or rather God speaks through Hosea. She says: “I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will take you for my partner forever; I will take you for my partner in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love and mercy. I will take you for my partner in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.” As we continue the conversations on race that we have begun, but only begun, may we pray daily for the coming of God’s reign, and may God give us the words to speak of God’s reign of justice to each other and to our world with voices that are clear and brave. Amen.
Jim Bundy
June 24, 2001