Rochester, MN UCC - "The Tender Heart of God” - Hosea 1:1-11

In modern liberal Christianity the observation is frequently made that the Old Testament depiction of God seems harsh, judgmental, and full of wrath. This is then contrasted with the supposedly more peaceful, accepting, and forgiving nature of Jesus in the New Testament. As popular as such an observation is in our times, it's actually as old as Christianity itself. In the first Christian century a man named Marcion of Sinope made the same observation. Marcion’s observation led him to conclude that the Bible actually describes two Gods: a vengeful and evil creator God described in the Old Testament, and a loving and redeeming God described in the New. Among the problems with this view, subsequently known as Marcionism, is that it directly contradicts the words of Jesus Christ who says that He is one with the Father. It also promotes a negative depiction of the material world- describing all of creation as evil created by a vengeful God. Finally, it is fiercely anti-semitic: its ascription of evil to the God described in the Old Testament leaves one to believe that Jews worship an evil God. Marcion was excommunicated in 144 AD, and his views have been held to be heretical by the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches.

 The text we will read together in worship this Sunday is perhaps among the best refutations of Marcionism in the Old Testament. In the 11th chapter of Hosea, the relationship between God and Israel is described with the tender language of a mother and son. “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son…it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up in my arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.” This is the God of the Old Testament, the creator of the world, describing His love for Israel: how He loved them, called them, taught them, healed them and fed them. And when Israel strayed from God and the ways of love, when their rejection of God led them into captivity in Egypt and Assyria, would God abandon them to their wickedness? Would God allow His wrath to destroy them for their faithlessness? No. “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? … My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.” Righteous anger and wrathful indignation are the ways of mortals, mercy and forgiveness are the ways of God. God remembers his love for Israel, he forgives them, and saves them. “They shall go after the LORD, who roars like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west. They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt and like doves from the land of Assyria, and I will return them to their homes, says the LORD.”

 Hosea describes a God who loves his human children, a God who teaches, heals, feeds, forgives, and saves them. To recognize that this God sounds a lot like Jesus Christ, is to recognize both the heresy of Marcionism and the truth of Christianity. Jesus Christ reveals to us the character and will of the one true God of both the Old and New Testament. Just as God loved the children of Israel, just as he forgave them and saved them, so too does Jesus Christ offer God’s love, forgiveness and salvation to all of us. We also were created by a loving God who led us with cords of human kindness and bands of love. We also have strayed from the ways of that loving God. Yet God is always one and the same- God is always the God of mercy, forgiveness, and salvation. In Jesus Christ we come to know not only the love in which God created us, but also the love that reaches out to us in forgiveness and mercy. This Sunday lets listen to the stories of God’s love and mercy for Israel, and let us celebrate that this very same love and mercy are offered to us in Jesus Christ.

 - Rev. Andrew Greenhaw