Hilton Head Island, SC – June 17, 2018
The Chapel Without Walls
Hosea 4:1-10; 11-19
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel; for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or kindness, and no knowledge of God in the land. -- Hosea 4:1 (RSV)
As a group, the Hebrew prophets could not be characterized as optimistic cheerleaders for the people and nation in which they lived. In every prophetic book, every prophet occasionally or frequently tore into their fellow countrymen or their rulers like a pack of ravenous wolves would attack a hapless deer or steer which they surrounded in the wilds of Wyoming or Montana.
Many pundits or news commentators are like that too. They take delight in ripping into those whom they consider flagrant wrongdoers. However, our contemporaries who attack politicians or other public figures or cultural icons do so solely on the grounds of political or cultural or moral propriety. The biblical prophets were not like that. In their minds, their disputes with the people of Judah or Israel were based on theology. What did God have to say about what was going on at any given time in biblical history? Did God approve or disapprove what His people did?
In terms of personality and demeanor, the prophets were much more like Chris Matthews, Chris Cuomo, Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilley than they were like Edgar Bergen, Jack Benny, Jimmy Stewart, or Mr. Rogers. You may instantaneously have noted that the last four gentlemen have been dead for some time. That may say something about the time in which we now are living. If Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, or Jeremiah were alive today, I am fairly sure they would come across as attack dogs rather than lap dogs. Prophetically, scathing criticisms are now much more in line than friendly pats on the back.
There are fourteen chapters in Hosea, and for at least ninety percent of what Hosea wrote in those chapters, he was energetically lacing into his neighbors in Israel. But, like all the other prophets, he did so not as though he was speaking on his own behalf but rather on behalf of God. Occasionally what the prophets said God said is in quotation marks, but most of the time “the word of God” is really the words of the prophets. That is also true for all other biblical writers. Everyone understood what the prophets were attempting to do in what they wrote, and either the people did or did not agree with it. Too often they ignored it, as far as the prophets were concerned.
We learned last Sunday that the opening three chapters of Hosea, which are written as prose, are a made-up story which everyone who read it would realize was made up. But from the fourth chapter on, Hosea speaks with God’s voice, saying what Hosea thinks God wanted to be said about what was going on in the kingdom of Israel. “Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel; for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or kindness, and no knowledge of God in the land” (4:1). Surely that is an intentional overstatement, because at least some of the people must have continued to be faithful to God, but Hosea refused to let anybody off the hook.
“Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field, and the birds of their air, and even the fish of the sea are taken away” (4:3). That is prophetic poetic license, because the creatures of the earth and sea couldn’t know of the swearing, lying, stealing, and murder of which Hosea so vehemently complained on behalf of God.
As I said last week, Hosea was incensed by the idolatry of the Israelites. Too many of them were worshiping the Canaanite gods, especially Baal and Asherah. This week he addresses general sinfulness, but institutional religious sinfulness in particular. For at least a thousand years, from the time of Elijah about 850 BCE to the end of the New Testament period, about 100 CE and beyond, all God’s prophets raised opposition to the religious establishment of Israel. That establishment was led by the temple priests. Jesus stood squarely in the prophetic tradition, and like the other prophets before him, Jesus often also railed against the priests. Men (and only males) could be priests by being genetically linked to the biblical tribe of Levi. Only priests could sacrifice animals in the Jerusalem temple. It was believed that sacrifices of animals had to be made in order for the sins of the people to be negated.
After the Israelite kingdom split in two, with Israel in the north and Judah in the south, the northerners built their own temple. There the priests of Israel sacrificed animals to atone for the sins of their fellow countrymen. Hosea and Amos both derided the priests for being practitioners of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer much, much later was to call “cheap grace.” They did not demand that the people follow God and do the right; instead they merely went through the motions of giving them pardon for their sins by killing a defenseless animal and burning it on the altar they firmly believed they had built for God.
The prophets have never had an official place in either the Jewish or the Christian religions. Almost never in history was a prophet ordained to become a priest or bishop, an elected denominational president or chief executive. Prophets usually speak out against the religious establishment, not for it. It is the vocation, the divine calling, of prophets to condemn rather than to congratulate. That’s why they are never welcomed into the inner circles of any religion. They are agitators, not assimilators, irritating provocateurs, not irenic proclaimers.
Here are a few things Hosea said about the religious leaders of his time. And remember, as far as Hosea is concerned, it is God who is doing the speaking, not Hosea. “Yet let no one contend, and let no one accuse, for with YOU [my italics and capitalization] is my contention, O priest. You shall stumble by day, the prophet also shall stumble with you by night” (4:4-5). “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me” (4:6). “And it shall be like people, like priest; I will punish them for their ways, and requite them for their deeds” (4:9).
Now I want you to listen very closely. We are going to review some history, which began ninety years ago. It is vital that you understand this in relationship to a prophet who lived over twenty-seven hundred years ago.
A terrible injustice was unleashed on the world by means of Germany starting World War I. Almost as great an injustice was unleashed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended World War I. The economic collapse and the political instability of Germany in the 1920s was a direct result of a foolishly retributive agreement of the victorious Allies.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party were elected to take control of the German government. They were a minority party, and they received a minority of the votes. By a peculiarity of German political organization, however, Hitler legitimately took office. Nearly everything he did from then on was illegitimate, illegal, immoral, and unethical. But he shrewdly utilized the understandable grievances of the German people for his own twisted political ends.
From 1933 on, Hitler and the Nazis had the strong support of most of the members of the German churches, both Protestant and Catholic. Those who approved of Hitler were called the German Christians. The Christians who opposed Hitler were a dedicated but numerically small minority. They called themselves the Confessing Christians. All through the Thirties, leading up to the declaration of war by the Allies on September 1, 1939, the Confessing Christians warned Germany of the folly of their ways. Many of them were arrested at that time, and during the war, many others, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were executed. Six million Jews were killed in the death camps, but so were six million others, including many thousands of Confessing Christians.
The German Christians kept insisting that Hitler was taking the proper steps to restore German power in Europe and around the world. It was, after all, as the national anthem proclaimed, Deutschland, Deutschland, uber ALLES.
The German Christians were like the priests of Hosea’s time. “There may be mistakes,” they admitted, “but God is on our side, and therefore everything is certain to turn out well.” The Confessing Christians were the prophets. “We are being led into a political and military buzz-saw by a very smooth operator,” they said, “and this is going to end in catastrophe.” Nevertheless, the German Christians continued their uncritical support for Hitler and fascism. Inevitably, the events of the early 1940s played out to their bitter and ignominious end.
Was the kingdom of Israel in the eighth century BCE like the Third Reich in the mid-twentieth century CE? That is a matter of debate. But it should be debated, even now.
In the early years of the twenty-first century in the United States of America, evangelical Protestantism is the leading religious influence on American political, social, and cultural life. The evangelicals have far more persuasive power over government and the passage of laws than all Roman Catholics, Mainline Protestants, black Protestants, and Jews put together. Evangelical Christians represent present-day priestly Christianity. “Overlook the sins of the people,” they say, “and do the best you can, and everything will come around. God is on our side. Don’t be negative. Be positive.”
Who can be conscientiously and unreservedly positive about the direction in which the United States of America seems to be headed? Without question some very good things have happened under our current political leadership, especially economically. Anyone who denies that is a blind ideologue. But the drastic mistakes that are being made cannot and must not be overlooked.
To give one example, we don’t know what Singapore will ultimately produce, but we do know what the G-7 Summit in Canada produced. It is now effectively the G-6, although one man with immense power is saying it should be the G-8 again. He wants Russia reinstituted among the world’s leading economic powers, after it was thrown out of the G-8 for invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea. Through its primary leader, the United States has staked out a position against the entire developed world, saying that we know better than they do how to operate in the current world economy. We are Germany in the Thirties, going full speed ahead when the world was fruitlessly warning Germany and the Axis powers that they must cease their relentless expansion and militarization. The Allies took the priestly position; “Don’t worry, overlook inevitable errors, and all will go well.”
The non-evangelical churches are too timid, and are afraid of becoming prophetic. They want to maintain whatever institutional strength they have left. Remember this: prophets don’t predict the future; instead they always refer to present realities. If the present is malignant, the prophets take scalpels and start cutting. What they say may have relevance for the future, but it may not.
When things go smoothly, the prophets are silent. In good times, prophets are unnecessary. It is in bad times when prophets are needed to speak up on behalf of God, lest the bad times turn calamitous.
I want you to know that when I planned to preach this sermon several weeks ago, I had no intention of saying what I have just said. Maybe it was two international back-to-back summits that prompted this outburst. The unbelievable assault on world order that occurred in Quebec and the as-yet unpredictable outcome of Singapore probably provoked this tirade. Whether President Trump becomes Neville Chamberlain or Winston Churchill remains to be seen. If true peace comes out of the Summit of the East, more power to the President. But economic peace cannot possibly come out of the Trump-thwarted Summit of the West. No one can turn his back on so serious and august a group as the G-6 without drastic repercussions. And for anyone, especially evangelical Christians, to continue to show support for such atrocious behavior as that constantly exhibited by the American leader leads down a slippery slope to national and international disaster.
Is the United States of America in the early twenty-first century like Germany in the early twentieth century? That is most certainly debatable, but it should be debated, especially now.
God is not mocked. God must not be mocked. That is a universal theme in all the prophets who have ever lived. God cries out against immorality and injustice, but God never cries out directly. He does so only indirectly, through people, through those who feel called to proclaim the truths of God to a people who may or may not want to hear them.
Hosea begins the eighth chapter of his prophecy by poetically putting these words into the mouth of God, “Set the trumpet to your lips, for a vulture is over the house of the Lord, because they have broken my covenant, and transgressed my law” (8:1). Later Hosea says God says, “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (8:7).
A generation after Hosea finished his prophetic calling, the Assyrians came and conquered Israel. Never again did it regain its status as an independent kingdom.
We all try to do what we think is right. But IS it right? Is it? That is the question with which prophets --- and priests --- must always wrestle.
Sometimes, as the old Shaker hymn declares, by turning, turning, we come round right. Other times what we thought was right was horribly wrong, and the wheels come off.
In his own time and place, Hosea was convinced that the Israelites were a people with no sense of direction. It behooves Americans living in our time and place to ask ourselves: Are we a people who have a strong sense of divine direction? Or do we suppose we now find ourselves in a unique place in our history, charting our course according to our own tribally-determined designs?