The Astonishing Fact of God's Love for Us

(Hosea 11.1-11)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – August 30, 2009

The eighth in a summer series on topics people in the church asked to hear a sermon about.
Today's topic: The 'angry' and 'vengeful' God of the Old Testament

It's come up in every Christian church I've spent any time in. The comment that goes something like, I don't like the Old Testament God. That God is so angry and vengeful. The God of the New Testament is much more compassionate.

The Old Testament God who is so angry and vengeful.
When the Lamb ripped off the second seal,. . . [a]nother horse appeared, this one red. Its rider was off to take peace from the earth, setting people at each other's throats, killing one another. He was given a huge sword….
When he ripped off the fourth seal,. . . I looked [and saw a] colorless horse, sickly pale. Its rider was Death, and Hell was close on its heels. They were given power to destroy a fourth of the earth by war, famine, disease, and wild beasts (Revelation 6.3-4, 2-8, The Message).

The New Testament God who is so compassionate.
Don't be afraid, I've redeemed you. I've called your name. You are mine. When you're in over your head, I'll be there for you. When you're in rough waters, you will not go down. . . . That's how much you mean to me! That's how much I love you! (Isaiah 43.1b-2, 4, The Message).

There's only one problem. It is the 'compassionate' New Testament God who sends messengers down to earth to take away peace from it and to destroy a fourth of her creatures. And it's the 'vengeful' Old Testament God who calls us by name and will never let us go down in rough waters.

Which is an inconvenient truth for those who like to make a nice neat division between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New.

Some of the most comforting passages in the Bible come from the testament where God's supposed to be so vengeful and angry. Our first hymn this morning comes from a psalm that's been read at every memorial service I've ever been to.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. . .
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.
For you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. . . (from Psalm 23).

To people in grief, to political prisoners, to slaves, to the lost and the frightened, these words come. For 2500 years, these words have come like rain on parched ground. To make real the astonishing fact of God's love for us (phrase from Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets: An Introduction, Harper & Row, 1962. p. 44). The 'vengeful', 'angry' God of the Old Testament loves us.

And then there is our Bible story for this morning from the prophet Hosea. Hosea speaks for a God who is enraged. It is the rage of parents who have done everything for their children. Yet the children keep rejecting their love. It's the most painful rage there is. Because God's rage comes from a broken heart. God keeps reaching out to them. And they keep turning away.

Listen for a Word from God.

When Israel was only a child, I loved him. I called out, 'My son!' – called him out of Egypt. But when others called him, he ran off and left me. He worshiped the popular sex gods. Still, I stuck with him. I led Ephraim. I rescued him from human bondage. But he never acknowledged my help, never admitted that I was the one pulling his wagon. That I lifted him, like a baby, to my cheek, that I bent down to feed him. Now he wants to go back to Egypt, to go over to Assyria – anything but return to me! That's why his cities are unsafe – the murder rate skyrockets and every plan to improve things falls to pieces.
My people are hell-bent on leaving me. They pray to Baal for help. He doesn't lift a finger to help them. But how can I give up on you, Ephraim? How can I turn you loose, Israel? How can I leave you to be ruined like Admah, devastated like luckless Zeboim?
I can't bear to even think such thoughts. My insides churn in protest. And so I'm not going to act on my anger. I'm not going to destroy Ephraim. And why? Because I am God and not a human. I'm the Holy One and I'm here – in your very midst (Hosea 11.1-11, from The Message© 1993-96, 2000-02. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group).

Maybe many Christians believe the Old Testament God is vengeful and angry because the stories of the Old Testament are so honest. There is no story in the New Testament like the one Nan just read. Hosea takes us into the very heart of God. Here is God's 'child', Israel, whom Hosea also calls 'Ephraim'. God is torn between punishing Israel for worshiping the gods of greed, violence, and power, and forgiving them. God can't decide what to do. Hosea invites us into the excruciating struggle going on in the heart of God. So we hear God's rage and God's desire to punish… Because when we read about God's rage, many of us we say, "That's not the God I believe in!" So we stop reading. Which means we don't hear the stories which sing the astonishing fact of God's love for us. We don't hear, "The Lord is my shepherd"; we don't hear, "You are precious in my sight, and I love you". To hear these compassionate words and to believe them, you have to go through God's rage. You have to sit in God's anguished heart. To hear about God's desire to punish . . . and then for God to turn away from rage, and reach out again in an all-embracing love. The Old Testament stories let us feel the anguish in the heart of God. So to hear the life-giving word of God's forgiveness, we need to go through the rage that comes from God's broken heart.

In a world where a deeply disturbed man kidnaps an 11-year-old girl, and for the next 18 years rapes her, and imprisons her and her two children whom he has fathered, (news story of Phillip Garrido and Jaycee Dugard), don't we need a God who rages? And lest we allow our revulsion to lead us to demonise Phillip Garrido, don't we need a God who looks at him, and says, "You are my beloved child, no matter what horrors you commit"?

There is a lot of violence in the Bible. Just as there is a lot of violence in our world. What do we do with stories that seem to say God blesses genocide, by telling the Hebrew people they can destroy the tribes who were living in what is modern-day Israel? What do we do with stories like the one I started this sermon with – passages from the book of Revelation in which God's messengers destroy a fourth of creation, and send all who do not believe in Jesus Christ to eternal torture?

We don't resolve these tensions by making make a nice, neat division between the 'angry, vengeful' God of the Old Testament and the 'compassionate' God of the New Testament.

I love the Bible. It sings about the God who calls us to life. And about people who try to be faithful, and fail, and try to be faithful again. The Bible sings of the broken-hearted God who gives second and third and 1ooth chances to be faithful because that's how much God loves us. That's how much God years for us to love more deeply.

So when I come across stories in the Bible which say God blesses violence and prejudice, I see two things. I see them as reflecting what people in a particular time and place believed God was calling them to do. And I see them as examples of what happens when we refuse to love. I see them as examples of what breaks God's heart and makes God rage. Because God leads us on a different path. And we choose instead to follow other gods.

In the Bible, God sings love to us. God reaches out to enfold us in strong, tender arms. To heal us from the fears that keep us from loving. To heal us from the wounds that keep us from feeling anyone can love us. In the Bible, God shouts and whispers and sings, You are my beloved. You are precious. You are the one I lifted like a baby to my cheek. You are the one I bent down to feed. And so is your enemy. So is the person you hate. Your enemy, the person you hate, is also precious to me – also my beloved. The one you hate, your enemy, is one I lifted like a baby to my cheek. One I bent down to feed. You will only be able to believe I love you that much if you can believe I love your enemy and the person you hate that much.

This is the song the God of both the Old and New Testaments sings to us. Let us open ourselves to hear that song of God anew, as we sing the astonishing fact of God's love for us.

"Like a Mother Who Has Borne Us"
Words by Daniel Bechtel © 1983 by Selah Publishing Co.;
Hymn #583 in The New Century Hymnal © 1984 by The Pilgrim Press

Like a mother who has borne us, held us close in her delight,
fed us freely from her body, God has called us into life.
Like a father who has taught us, grasped our hand and been our guide,
lifted us and healed our sorrows, God has walked with us in life.
Though as children we have wandered, placed our trust in power and might,
left behind our brothers, sisters, God still calls us into life.
When we offer food and comfort, grasp our neighbor's hand in love,
tread the path of peace and justice, God still walks with us in life.

Not a "What?" but a "Who?"

(Hebrews 11.1; Matthew 28.20; John 10.10; Matthew 11.28-30; John 14.27; John 15.4)
A sermon preached by Cynthia Figge and Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time: August 9, 2009

The seventh in a summer series on sermon topics members of the church have asked to hear about.
This morning's topic: What is radical hope?
Cynthia
What do we hope for? Is there hope? I started with these questions after hearing Dave's sermon soon after returning from speaking at a technology conference on the state of the future. At that conference I talked about how each day the oceans absorb 30 million tons of CO2, increasing their acidity. The oceans are warming about 50% faster than the leading global scientific body reported in 2007, with the number of dead zones doubling every decade since the 1960s. Human consumption is 30% larger than nature's capacity to regenerate. James Hansen, a leading NASA climatologist, argues we must reduce CO2 below where we are right now to avoid hitting a point of no return for global warming. Hansen is joining student protests of coal plants, believing that we must close all coal plants within two decades. World energy demand will most likely double by 2030, with China and India accounting for over half the increase. The world's population is 6.8 billion, and expected to grow the 9.2 billion by 2050. A billion people are undernourished, lack safe water, have the highest birth rates, and live on just $1.25 a day. This group could grow to 3 billion people by 2025. While we may worry that "our" jobs are being outsourced, the challenge of global joblessness is staggering. And we are facing the extinction of species at the highest rate in sixty million years. Some experts speculate that the world is heading for a time in which technological change is so fast and significant that we today are incapable of conceiving what life might be like beyond the year 2025.

As I was leaving for the airport an attendee said, "I had no idea about all these problems. This is the most hopeless I have been after this conference. What can I do? It's a global systems challenge." It was very hard for me to hear this woman say she felt hopeless because that's not how I see it. Since 1996 I have been working in the field of sustainability, with the gift of "seeing ahead" and coming back to my business clients to help them see how to change and adapt to the social and environmental changes ahead. Although the signs have become clearer over the past 14 years, the pace of change is slow…

We are passing the reins to our young adults including Ross, Ben and Abby in a time of enormous uncertainty. To some extent our youth are undaunted by the peril, which is good, for who would dare to change systems of oppression or economic systems if we really knew what we were up against? I think of people who are hopeful in spite of the evidence that this is a bit crazy (Harvey Milk, young suffragists, and others).
However, this new generation has the ability to keep evolving to connect the right ideas to resources and people to help address these global and local challenges. They are the first generation to act via the Internet with like-minded individuals around the world. This is a unique time in human history. We are interdependent and can create solutions together.
Perhaps there's some combination of belief, knowledge, foolishness, and persistence that leads one to radical hope. I like radical with the word hope because it implies moving beyond a mental state to action.

Hope is not a frivolous word. I watched its power during the Obama campaign, and eagerly read his book, The Audacity of Hope. As I have wrestled with this word over the past two months, the new question that has emerged for me is what is hope?

Hope is not optimism. Optimism is moving toward a positive outcome in ways we can see. Hope is the fulfillment of God present now, hope is realized by making the life giving choices - every day we can do this. Hope is not measured by an endpoint. We are moving into hope every day as we live out our call and passion. So hope is very personal. One of the things I love doing is starting new businesses. This feels really hopeful to me. There's something in the creation - the ambiguity, uncertainty, unknown outcome, giving something you've imagined some real form in the world. There's no promise of success. Start-ups become the fulfillment of imagination, and I'm energized by it. Dancing is also hopeful because I allow myself to be completely in the moment of movement. That's the other side of hope: being willing to NOT looking forward to promises – the fulfillment NOW piece.

In my senior year of high school and summer before college, despite good grades, close friends, and meaningful accomplishments, I felt a certain despair. I think I was seeking the source of real hope. This led me to a much deeper relationship with God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. I now realize that my hope and "save the world" gene flows completely from faith. And I also see that my faith is embedded in this gathered, hopeful community. It brings me to one of my favorite scriptures in Hebrews 11:1 – Faith is substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

So my hope is global, personal and anchored in this beloved community.

Before handing the baton to Dave, I want to say how in awe I am that Dave considers these enormous questions of our minds, hearts and souls each week, and weaves all the strands into a whole cloth. So I turn to Dave with the question of not what is hope, but who?

Dave
Until Cynthia and I started talking about hope, I thought I'd thought about hope a lot. As a pastor and a therapist, I often walk beside people who feel like hope is very far away. As someone who at times lives with clinical depression, I know how about being in that dark and lifeless space that seems to repel any light and hope that seeks to enter it. As a preacher, I spend a lot of time in the Gospels. The word gospel means good news. And spending so much time with the Gospels means I should know something about hope.

But hope moved into our house this week, and made itself at home. Hope and I have shared meals, prayed, watched a really mediocre DVD, read a great novel, and gone to a Spanish class together. We spent time at the Recovery Café. We listened to a woman talk about her hope that maybe now she's ready to be the mother she's always wanted to be. We listened to a woman whose boyfriend had again hit her share the hope that, maybe this time, she won't go back to him. After spending so much time with hope this past week, there's at least one way that I have a totally different view of hope than I did when Cynthia and I talked about hope for an hour on the phone last Sunday night.

What's different is that now I can't talk about hope in terms of a what. I can only talk about hope in terms of a who.

How do we talk about hope?

We hope for love, for less anxiety, for a better job – or any job. We hope for friends, for a place we feel like we belong, for meaning, for a championship. We hope our kids are happy and safe. We hope they have a good life as they move into the world. And as they move into their worlds, we hope they still find ways and room to love us. We hope for justice, for wiser hearts, for God to show up, for more chances to play.

These are the 'what' of hope. They're what we hope for.

What happens when something we hope for comes true? We usually feel more alive. Happier. Grateful. More confident life can be good. But even when that happens, there's usually a tiny part of us that is still looking for something. A tiny part of us that's still hungry, still longing for something. And after a while, something changes. The hope that came true doesn't offer what it used to. We're different, so what we hope for is different. So we try to make another hope come true. When that comes true, we're glad . . . and there's that tiny part of us still that is looking for something more. And the cycle starts over again. Everything we hope for and get eventually disappoints us . . . because we change, and life changes.

Sharing home with hope this week has shown me I can only talk about hope in relation to a who. And that who is Jesus Christ.

These are some of the words of hope Jesus offers. [All passages below are taken from The Message © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by per ission of NavPress Publishing Group.]

"I'll be with you, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age."
(Matthew 28.20)
"I have come so you can have real and eternal life, more and better life than you ever dreamed of." (John 10.10)
"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. . .Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11.28-30).
"I'm leaving you well and whole. That's my parting gift to you. Peace. I don't leave you the way you're used to being left – feeling abandoned, bereft. So don't be upset. Don't be distraught." (John 14.27)
"Make yourselves at home in my love." (John 15.4)

My hope lies in the one who spoke these words because he still lives. Christ still lives these words and calls all who want to follow him to radical hope. In Jesus is radical hope. Radical hope for a better-than-we-can-possibly-dream-of life that moves to unforced rhythms of grace. In Jesus is the radical hope for the peace that frees us from our fear, and frees us for a home in his love that never dies.

How he loved, what he did, how he died, how he rose to new life, how his Spirit gathers the Church and calls us all to radical joy and justice: these are why I can only talk about hope by talking about Jesus. He is my hope. He is hope because he spoke hope as God-in-the-flesh. And he speaks hope as the Risen Spirit who walks by our side. He is hope because he lights a fire in his church so we don't settle for tired slogans and delayed justice.

St. John of the Cross lived in Spain in the 1600s. One night he had a vision. In that vision, he saw a man standing at the doorway of a long gate. Beyond the gate was utter, total darkness. John walked up to the man at the gate and said, "Give me a light, that I may tread safely through the unknown." The man replied, "Step into the darkness. Put your hand in the hand of God. That will be a better light, and safer than a known way."

If my hope were in a what, I could hope for the courage to step into that darkness. I could hope that there'll be a flash of lightning right over that darkness, so I'll be able to catch a glimpse of what I'm stepping into. I could hope someone shows up so I can step into the darkness with someone I can see. I could hope that there's nothing in there to be afraid of. But I don't believe radical hope can rest in a what.

What's radical hope? Hope that frees me from the fears that keep me from the life God wants for me.

For me, the only hope that frees me from such fears is a who. My hope is the living God, the living Jesus Christ, the living Spirit . . . who calls out to me from the dark. Who asks me to hope when hoping seems insane. And who always holds out a hand in the darkest of darkness . . . and hopes I have enough hope to hold out mine as well.

Amen.