A sermon preached at Gonville & Caius College Chapel – Choral Evensong, 16th February 2025
Hosea 10.1-8, 12
Israel is a luxuriant vine
Galatians 4.8-20
Has my work been wasted? I wish to be present with you.
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The
basic premise of the book of Hosea, from which our first reading came this
evening, is that if the relationship
between God and his people, Israel, can be likened to a marriage, then Israel
has committed adultery and been relentlessly unfaithful.
Unfaithful
in a thoroughly promiscuous way.
Who
said the Bible is dull?
In
the face of that infidelity we see the face of the faithful God, who continues
to yearn for his spouse who has turned away.
It’s
not just in Hosea: Israel’s unfaithfulness is a recurring theme in the Hebrew
Scriptures.
There’s
a pattern of covenant made, covenant broken, yet always marked by God’s grace
and mercy to restore that broken relationship, albeit with palpable
exasperation at times.
This
nuptial theme continues into the New Testament where Christ is portrayed as the
bridegroom coming to his people, hence his first sign in St John’s Gospel is at
the Wedding Feast at Cana in Galilee.
Ultimately,
the fulfilment of all things, in the Book of Revelation, is at the Marriage
Banquet of the Lamb, something prefigured in the Eucharist.
That
sweep of the Biblical narrative and Christian practice is compelling in so many
ways, for it reminds us of Hosea’s message of the faithfulness of God in the
teeth of human infidelity.
Within
the overarching sweep of the narrative, Hosea has a particular take.
Hosea
sees how easily our heads are turned by those things that we find more
attractive or seductive, things that are less demanding of commitment than the
ongoing paying of attention, and relinquishing of self-obsession that a stable,
faithful and committed relationship demands.
It
was true of Israel and it’s true of individuals.
***
The
Israelites - those living in the Northern Kingdom, sometimes also known as
Ephraim, politically, but, not religiously, distinct from Judah, the Southern
Kingdom – had their heads turned by the worship of Baal.
Baal
was an agricultural god with a mythology that on an annual cycle associated the
seasons and climate with his life and death.
The
seasons apparently turned as a result of Baal being rescued from the underworld
by his wife, Asherah.
Their
reuniting was, in the eyes of the Hebrew prophet, a debauched fertility festival
and worship of the calf god representing Baal.
That’s
where the reference in our reading to ‘the calf of Beth-aven’ comes in (Hos. 10.5).
In
a land and climate where crops could easily fail Baal had a bit of a pull.
But
Hosea asserts that ‘the people shall mourn for [the calf], and idolatrous
priests will wail over it, over its glory that has departed from it’. (Hos.
10.5)
Its
time is up; its glory has gone; return to the Lord of glory.
Hosea
is telling us that Baal, and his like, is an attractive fantasy on which to pin
your hopes, but the Lord your God is the one to whom you, people of Israel, are
pledged.
There
are echoes here of the prophet Elijah in his feats against the priests of Baal
in the first book of Kings. (1 Kings 18.20-40)
And
what happened when the priests of Baal were destroyed by Elijah? It rained
after years of drought! (1 Kings 18.41-46)
This
was to demonstrate that it is the Lord God of Israel who gives the rains, not
Baal, hence a verse in Hosea:
And in that day,
declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call
me ‘My Baal.’ (Hosea 2.16).
***
The
agricultural and fertility gods of human imagining have never really gone away,
but have new forms.
Tempting
though it is to worship the creation, the climate, the seasons, the trees –
which are the golden calves of Baal and Asherah - we are called to worship
their Creator, the God of Israel.
It
is what the great canticle Benedicite,
omnia opera asserts:
8 O ye Showers and Dew, bless ye the Lord :
praise
him, and magnify him for ever.
11 O ye Winter and Summer, bless ye the Lord :
praise
him, and magnify him for ever.
12 O ye Dews and Frosts, bless ye the Lord :
praise
him, and magnify him for ever.
20 O all ye Green Things upon the Earth, bless
ye the Lord :
praise
him, and magnify him for ever.
(from The Song of the Three Holy Children
35-66)
Created
things, however beautiful, are just that, created, and not the Creator.
Calling
us back to a consummated relationship with the Living God, Hosea says,
Sow
for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground;
for it is time to seek the Lord, that he
may come and rain righteousness upon you.
There’s
an echo in St Paul who reminds us that, ‘neither the one who plants nor the one
who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.’(1 Corinthians 3.7)
Fidelity
to the God of Israel, sees us in a right relationship with him - faithful,
committed, permanent - that is what we are to sow on the seedbed of our hearts.
Hearts
and lives, like the fallow ground, need tilling ready to receive the potential
of the seed that will take root, grow and bear fruit, thirty, sixty and one
hundredfold. (cf The Parable of the Sower: Mark 4.1-9)
***
What
does that look like?
I
don’t know if you were a Valentine’s Day person or a Palentine’s Day person
last week, but every relationship, between husband and wife, parent and child, two
friends or companions, needs nurturing and fostering in tangible ways.
So
it is in the life of faith.
As
with any human relationship it is not enough to love God in the abstract,
simply as an idea, for then God becomes an object, a golden calf.
Love
needs concrete expression.
The
consummation of our relationship with God is found in the sacramental practices
of baptism, Eucharist, confession: where created matter -water, bread, wine -
becomes a channel of grace, not an object of worship in itself, and reconciliation
is expressed in charity.
Hosea
is cautioning us away from a life turned in on itself, the ‘Incurvatus in se’ as St Augustine puts
it.
When
we fail to pay attention to the other then we become self-consumed, ultimately self-destructive,
as was Baal.
Prayer,
adoration, devotion, the sacraments, turn us away from self and to mystical union
with God, and that is surely Hosea’s aim and call.
…it
is time to seek the Lord,
that
he may come and rain righteousness upon [us].
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