Name That Baby!
Hosea 1:2-10
I want to begin today by saying Happy Birthday to All God’s Children MCC. You are 33 years old this weekend. And you don’t look a day over 25! Birthdays are wonderful, aren’t they? It’s one of those times in the year when your family gathers around you and you realize just how dysfunctional your life really is or you wonder how in the world you are so sane being related to these people. I don’t know of a family anywhere that isn’t dysfunctional on some level. Sometimes it is all about keeping the dysfunction to a minimum. However, that would not have been Hosea’s game plan.
Hosea has to have one of the most dysfunctional families in the Bible – they make Ozzy Osbourne’s clan look like charter members of Focus on the Family. Keep in mind that there are a lot of crazy families in the Bible. Take Abraham, for example, who thought God required him to sacrifice his son Isaac on a makeshift altar – had the knife raised and ready to kill before God intervened and said enough. Isaac, as you might imagine after having experienced such an event at the hand of the father he loved, was so warped that when he grew up and married he didn’t know how to love his own children. He showed such favoritism between his twin boys – choosing Esau over Jacob – that Jacob and his mother schemed to steal Esau’s birthright, leaving Esau shattered. Of course there was Joseph and his brothers who were so jealous of him that they sold him into slavery to a passing caravan. Smearing his coat with goat’s blood they told their father a wild animal had attacked him. There were some pretty messed up families in the Bible but none of them are as strange as Hosea’s family. Hosea decides to be the first host of the “Name That Baby!” reality show. Survivor, Big Brother, Extreme Makeover – none of them can compete with the twists and turns of Hosea’s family drama.
Hosea believes he is called to marry a prostitute named Gomer – not exactly a seductive name, don’t you think? Gomer is probably not a name you would find in the 976 ads. The clear intent of the story was that the ones hearing this oracle – and by extension all of us reading this story today – would see ourselves in Gomer. Hosea wanted his readers to say to themselves, “Oh my God! I’m the hooker. Where are my fishnet stockings and stilettos?” The purpose of this realization is so we become more aware of what faithfulness looks like and the costs when we let faithfulness lapse.
Then the children come along – Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah, and Lo-ammi. Those names mean “God Sows,” “Not Pitied,” and “Not My People.” I don’t think you will find any of those in your book of baby names.
Now, don’t think Hosea is alone in naming his children weird names. Look at some of these: Mary Chris Smith, Dennis Toffis, Jim Nasium, Anita Roommate, Bertha D. Blues, Cole Kutz.
Some have interpreted this scripture to mean that it would be OK for someone to name their children horrible names to make a point “in the name of God.” Some have read this scripture – which clearly says God gave up on the people – to be an example of the limitations of grace. Just like with people, you can push God too far, goes this reasoning.
This scripture is seen by some to mean that you can put hateful messages in the mouth of God – that you can attribute despicable actions to the intent of God. This is proof, they reason, that you better get your life right to avoid the righteous wrath of God’s power. I mean, it says it right here in the Bible. Does any of this feel oddly familiar to our present world?
This text is a perfect example of what happens when metaphoric literature is taken literally. Everything about this story is symbolic not literal but you wouldn’t know that without an historical perspective. Jezreel was a valley and city where a great massacre occurred. King Jehu destroyed the reign of King Joram of Israel and King Ahaziah of Judah in one bloody campaign, wiping out both royal families and thousands of people. Ahaziah was killed simply because he happened to be visiting Joram when Jehu attacked. Later, when Ahaziah’s family came looking for him, Jehu had all of them killed as well. For such appalling and gratuitous violence God pronounces judgment upon everything that Jezreel had come to symbolize. What does this mean? Well, when you understand the context, it is pretty straight forward. If you sow violence, you will reap violence. The message I hope we take from this scripture is that we are called to resist violence and even in our duplicitous inaction, we share in the judgment this violence wrecks on our world.
I don’t know, you might be saying to yourself, this doesn’t seem that obvious to me. Evidently, this wasn’t clear enough to those who originally heard this oracle either, because Hosea takes the naming of a second child to bring it home again. “Not Pitied” meant that there would be no pity on the northern nation of Israel, which would be destroyed by the Assyrians almost a century before the southern nation of Judah fell to the Babylonians. The prophet notes that the ways that nations typically sought to save themselves were through weapons, war, and battles. This was a dead-end road then. Let those who may comprehend now, listen.
The last symbolic child is “Not My People”, maybe the worst name of all. It was a particularly horrible name to think about when the people of Israel so prized their faith history as being birthed by God. They claimed the title “God’s chosen” but the things they were doing with their lives seemed to show they were not following the purpose of their selection – to bring salvation (wholeness) to the world.
There was not a whole lot of good news in what Hosea was communicating to his world. It is a predictable cycle. We embrace violence over grace, we will spiral down through estrangement, isolation and fear. Fear is fertile ground in which another crop of violence may grow.
God’s Spirit covered this whole dysfunctional family and probably thought, “Well, you’ve made another mess of it, haven’t you! I keep nudging you toward wholeness and health, but you want to blow each other up and build bigger walls. Even though you don’t deserve it and you certainly haven’t earned it and you’ll probably not heed it, I offer you grace once more – scandalous grace. In the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.” What you can’t do for yourselves, my presence will do for you. When you make a mess of your world, I am still here offering forgiveness which is the only way out. When you’ve gone down every dead end street you can find, I am still ready to show you the way. Yes, some will call it cheap. Some will call it crazy. Some will be incredulous that God’s holiness can stomach the shenanigans of God’s people yet again. If you think like that, you’re God is too small. The Spirit of the Living God that scripture reveals to us is ever offering a way out, an alternative to the dead end, hope in hopeless situations, and a reminder that no matter how dysfunctional your family of origin or the family of God gets, we’re still all in this together so we better find ways to get along with our relatives.
Sources:
www.homileticsonline.com Hosea’s Mug Shot, July 2007.
http://www.funnynames.com/?op=listnames&cat=1