Steadfast Love
1st Sunday of Advent
2 December 2012
Scripture: HOSEA 6:1-6
Rev. Barry W. Szymanski, J.D.
Minister of Pastoral Care
First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa

READINGS
HOSEA 6:1-6

‘Come, let us return to the Lord; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.’ Impenitence of Israel and Judah What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early. Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have killed them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

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PSALM 25 - SELECTIONS

To you, O Lord, we lift up our souls. Our God, in you we trust. Make us to know your ways, O Lord; teach us your paths. Lead us in your truth, and teach us, for you are the God of our salvation; for you we wait all day long. Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love. According to your steadfast love remember us, O Lord!

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SERMON

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Advent leads to Christmas. And Christmas leads me to thoughts of gift giving. My attention is focused on gifts to be purchased for my two grandchildren, Eddie and Opal, my daughter, my wife, my son-in-law, my paralegal assistant who has been with me for almost 20 years, and other relatives and friends.

There is a part of me that wants to give very strong hints of what I would like to receive as a gift at Christmas! This is the one part of the sermon I want everyone to hear: People like gifts. You like gifts. I like gifts. By the way, King Eddie told me the same thing. He likes gifts. He likes Santa Claus. So do I. I think that if I did not somehow believe in Santa, that my childhood would be over – and that would be sad. But we know that Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus.

At this time of the year when my wife is prompting me to set up and place lights on a Christmas tree, and decorate our home, I am also to consider the incarnation: the Word became flesh – who dwelt among us. That is a tall order. And this is a busy season. It might be easier to think about the theological implications of the incarnation of the Second Person of the mysterious Trinity on a quiet day in July. Or would it be easier? Maybe the rush of the Christmas season is what we need to confront.

Let’s move to scripture. The passage I choose for today is from the prophet Hosea. Let me say a couple of words about who he was. Hosea’s ministry as a prophet extended from as few as 35 years to as many as 66 years. Why this extensive 31-year range? Scripture scholars set the dates based upon Hosea’s references to the kings who ruled during his life.

During Hosea’s life the Assyrian military made numerous attacks on the land where he lived. The Israeli kings and soldiers were not able to protect him or his fellow citizens from attack. Therefore Hosea and his family and friends lived under the constant threat of assault.

During Hosea’s life there was governmental turmoil. He lived under six kings within 30 years—there was constant intrigue and political violence. One King, Zechariah, was murdered after only six months on the power throne. Shallum, the person who was believed to have killed King Zechariah, was himself assassinated only one month later!

Throughout all of this, Hosea preached. The principal message he spoke of was God’s mercy. Hosea was convinced that regardless of how faithless Israel was, God still loved his people. Hosea’s main advocacy was to turn the Israeli people back to God. However, even in his criticism of the people, Hosea did not exclude himself. When he preached, he said, “Come, let us return to the Lord;” He carefully included himself as one who similarly needed to turn fully to God. He told the people that when all of us return to God, he will heal us;” Most importantly, Hosea wanted his people to grasp the foremost reason they should turn back to God was so “that we may live before him.”

If Hosea were preaching today, he would preach the same message to us: “Come, let us return to the Lord;” “he will heal us;” we should turn to God “that we may live before him.” That is the great Advent message: Let us prepare for the celebration that is Christmas. Christmas is a season of gifts. And the primary gift is Jesus himself. Jesus was born so that we will be able to fully live as human beings. Jesus wants us to be fully alive. Even today there are some who deny Jesus. And in denying him, people may also be denying God’s constant involvement with us in our world. This current viewpoint that God is not present with us in our modern culture, is not any different from the opinion held by many of the individuals of Hosea’s time – some 2,700 years ago! Many people then had the same idea: God has left us.

In the passage read today, Hosea answered the critics who felt that God was no longer present to them. Hosea answered them by declaring that God’s “appearing is as sure as the dawn;” Hosea was absolutely certain that God was present to him, and to his people. Hosea was confident that Yahweh was active in him, and in his world. Allow me to give just a bit more of history.

During the lifetime of Hosea, many people began to worship Baal who was a fertility cult-god of the northern region. Hosea felt awful because he knew that the people were violating the commandment that there be no other gods before Yahweh. Hosea suspected that part of Israel’s downfall was due to the people’s adoration of false fertility gods.

In response, Hosea told his people that Yahweh’s “appearing . . . will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.” He wanted the people to feel that God is all around them just like the drops of rain surround us and drench us during a downpour. If they believed in God they would realize that God’s grace is able to totally soak into us.

Hosea was keenly aware of God’s covenant with the people of Israel. The essentials of the covenant were announced by God when he said: ‘I am your God, and you are my people.’ However Hosea saw that the people were not living or believing in their covenant. He felt that at one point in life they did, but now they no longer believed, and no longer lived the covenant. Hosea sarcastically told the people that their ‘love [for God] was like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early.’ In other words, as soon as the sun rises in the sky, and dries up the dew on the grass, so Israel’s love for God withers just as easily.

Hosea strongly worked so his people would rediscover Yahweh. He urged them to get to ‘know’ the real God; to rid themselves of false cult-gods. He told the people: “let us press on to know the Lord.” As a prophet, he spoke on behalf of God: these are the words of the Lord as announced by Hosea: “For I, your God, desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings.”

The implications for us on this first Sunday of Advent are just as obvious: God wants us to know Him; that is one reason Jesus was born: to give us a more profound understanding of our God. As we continue to strive to understand God as much as any human can comprehend the Divine, we are called to live out the simple covenant: that God is our God, and we are His people: that God freely offers us His love, and we are to respond to Him alone. We are not to adore false gods; we are not to abandon our covenant with God.

As covenantal Congregationalists, we should appreciate Hosea’s plea to turn to the one God as much as the Israelites Hosea preached to. In our modern world, in 2012, we do not culturally burn offerings, but we act similarly to the people of that time in many ways. We find our worship flowing toward phony replacements for God Himself. Hosea could not stand for the bogus, the sham, the counterfeit. Nor should we be tricked into adoring what is false, what holds us back from encountering God. Hosea only wanted to be face to face with the one true real God. Because he found the genuine God, Hosea wanted to offer Him what he said that God desired, which is ‘steadfast love’.

Hagen Staack, a modern theologian who died in 1992, author of the book, Prophetic Voices of the Bible, tells us that the Hebrew word for “steadfast love” is difficult to render into English.“Like many key words in the Bible, it was not one in common use.In Hosea 6, the word we translate as “steadfast love” is a special term used in the Hebrew Bible to express the unshakable loyalty that should bind together the two parties of the covenant. Israel is what it is only as a covenant people . . . “ and the covenant means that in His steadfast love God has committed himself untiringly to the covenant, for our sake, asking in return the “steadfast love” which means that we give ourselves completely to Him. God’s reaching out to us in a covenantal relationship is an act of God’s overwhelming grace and love – to want to belong to us as God wants us to belong completely to Him. Isn’t this the best image of what faith ought to be?

Hosea’s life shows that words are important, but they are not enough.“It is important to note that, in addition to “steadfast love,” this verse of Hosea requires “knowledge of God.” Here again the English translation is inadequate.What is meant by the Hebrews word is not the knowledge, which results from the storing of information in our human memory bank. The kind of knowledge of which Hosea speaks is close to that kind of “knowing” we encounter frequently in the Old Testament in a statement like, “Adam knew Eve his wife,” or, in the New Testament, when we are told that Joseph knew not his wife Mary. This most intimate kind of knowing is a knowing, not merely with one’s mind, but with one’s whole person. Only in genuine love can one really “know” another….”

During this Advent season, as we prepare for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day family gatherings and gift giving, keep in mind that the bedrock of Christmas is God’s proving His ‘steadfast love’ for us through Jesus, the Word of God, becoming one of us. The Son of God lived -- dwelled among us. He ‘knows’ us better than we know ourselves. He is the creator; we are the created. And the creator and created live and suffer and die together. We are called to ‘know’ Him: in fact that is His special gift to us this Advent and Christmas season.

While you and I may spend time frustrating ourselves in an attempt to purchase the best gift we can for those we love, God did so by gifting His son. And God continually gifts His son to us. So, while King Eddie and I and, I hope many of you, [who also believe in Santa], anxiously await whatever gifts we are to receive, we did receive the gift of the Christ child. And all he wants in return is our ‘steadfast love’! No less than that, is not worthy of God. Amen.