July 31, 2016
Hosea 11:1-11
My dad and stepmom are in the early stages of organizing in order to downsize from my childhood
home.
It’s a good decision for them and will make their lives simpler, but I’ve found myself getting a little sad thinking about that place no longer being part of my life. No longer having a connection to the spot where so much of my formation happened and where so many memories were made. My bedroom where I had sleepovers and listened to music and talked on the phone for hours. The porch where I’d go to read with my mom under the fan in the summer. The family room where I’d spread out with the funny pages and throw Christmas wrapping paper into the fire. The kitchen where my sister and I did dishes together. The dining room where we had so many family discussions and debates. The basement where I learned how to do 14 double-unders in a row so I could get on the travel jumprope team.
Probably because of the rising up of those bittersweet memories, yesterday I found myself with a photo album of pictures that span my time in that place.
I think I wanted to be reminded of all that happened there and be comforted that those memories were still safe. And as I looked through the pictures, I realized that while that house is definitely an important location in my family story, at the end of the day, it’s just a background to the relationships that happened there. The closeness and love and humor and understanding are what shine through the pictures, no matter where they take place. If you looked through the album wondering what my family was like, I hope those would be the things you would come away with.
And so I am particularly thankful right now for the hard work my husband puts into creating a photo book every year with our important family memories. We have a stack of these beautiful books that show our family’s life together, beginning from the year we got married in 2001.
Sometimes we sit down and look at them all and get a overview of the years. There are beautiful moments I never want to forget, like each kid’s birth, holiday celebrations, and family vacations. But there are also reminders of some rough times. I have trouble opening the 2002 book that shows my mom’s physical decline so starkly. And there are photos that bring me back to times of kids’ misbehavior. Like the one of 2 year old Maya with her face painted in sparkly magenta paint that she’d sneakily discovered when she was supposed to be napping. When I look at that, I remember the shock of turning the corner and finding her, and everything around her, covered and thinking at first that some horrible accident had happened. The albums show how our family has made it through good and bad, changing and maturing as we go. When I look through them I’m filled with love for my kids in each stage of their lives. And I hope that someday, if my kids or my grandkids look through these books wondering what our family was like, what will shine through will be the love and humor and understanding that we’ve shared, even in the times when things weren’t particularly smooth or easy.
It seems like something similar is happening in our Old Testament reading. Hosea lays out God’s memories of life with the people of God — the good and the bad — like a family photo album.
We flip through a few pages and it is so heart-warming. So full of promise, just like the garden of Eden. There’s God the loving parent, completely engrossed in the vulnerable children, self-giving and adoring. Turn the page and see God holding the children and lifting them to God’s cheek. Turn again…. There’s God teaching the children to walk. And look there, God squatting in front of them feeding them.
But we’ve read this story before, right? We know what comes next. A big clue comes from the fact that it’s set in the context of a parent-child metaphor, and all of us, either from being children or parents ourselves, know that that relationship can be both incredibly loving and fulfilling — and also incredibly demanding and fraught.
And sure enough, turn the page again and we see the children in their terrible twos, wayward and unappreciative. God remains tender and patient, but it sure looks like God is taking deep breaths and trying to remember that the children are too little to understand what they’re doing. Keep flipping ahead and we see the children become surly and unruly teenagers, completely disloyal to God, rejecting God’s love and care. We see God beginning to look frustrated and exhausted, beginning to wonder if there is anything more God can give, if God can bear any more grief. The people are scheming and militaristic and bent on turning away. God is miserable because of their betrayal, and because of the catastrophe that has befallen them. God wonders if maybe tough love is need. Maybe it’s time to stop answering when the people call so that they have to face the consequences of their actions.
And then comes what I think is the most interesting page of the photo album. The one where we see God pause and ask agonizingly, “How can I give you up? How can I hand you over? How can I treat you badly?” This is God’s inward conversation here. We’ve caught God in the most private of moments - a moment of reflection as God struggles over the people’s future.
And it’s a moment that we’ve probably all found ourselves in to some degree, when we’ve been overcome body and mind by our anger and disappointment and are just about to make a horrible, relationship-ending decision.
But instead of writing off the people of God, we turn the page again and see a new look in God’s eye. God is replaying those moments of closeness and love with the people and is reminded of the great depth of relationship and commitment God has for them. God has flipped through those old photos and remembers who God is: I am a warm and tender parent; “I am God and no mortal.” And the outcome of this remembering is compassion. Continued reaching out in love and forgiveness despite the behavior of the people. The outcome is nothing but grace.
There has been no change in the people; they continue to act badly and refuse God. They have taken no initiative to be reconciled with God. The change is completely within the heart of God.
I think maybe that is the answer to the question we had in the back of our minds when we started flipping through the photo album. The same question that might be brewing when we come to church, or when we venture in prayer, or when we look out at the world around us and wonder: “What is God really like?”
And the answer Hosea gives is this: Our God is one who never gives up on us. God doesn’t wait to embrace us only when we realize how wrong we’ve been and seek forgiveness. Instead, the photo album tells the story of a fiercely loving God who, despite heartbreak and anguish and rejection, resolves to continue seeking out the people. Over and over from the beginning God has kept reaching out even when the people — even when we — can’t be counted on to notice or understand or reciprocate.
And in just a minute, we’ll add another memory into the photo album that depicts the ongoing relationship of God with the people as Landon is baptized. Today Landon joins the throng of faithful that have made our vows to be the people of God and have been dunked into the waters of God’s creation and marked as Christ’s own forever. Today we claim Landon as one of the people of the God-who-never-gives-up. Amen.
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