KGL+
Sermon
Trinity Church Boston
Year C Proper 12
July 27, 2025
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be always acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Without fail, it is always this particular week in our lectionary readings cycle when an enthusiastic lector ascends to the lectern ready to share the Word of God and finds themselves uttering the phrase ‘whoredom’ three times in the very first sentence of the first reading. Probably in front of their parents, or their children, or someone they really don’t want to have said that in front of. Thank you, XYZ, for taking the reading for the team today!
The reading from Hosea is what your preaching clergy might technically refer to as ‘a bummer’. Part of the narrative lectionary cycle in our Old Testament readings, this particular track of our first lessons during the summer follow the history of Israel, and don’t actually adhere to the themes or contexts of our assigned collect or the following Gospel we offer—so any sermon attempting to try to connect Hosea’s unfortunate maiden voyage as prophet will not, and cannot, and may I add, should not, be tied into Jesus teaching us how to pray.
But for every scripture we want to overlook, avoid, diminish, there is usually a kernel of something we need to hear. So let’s dive into Hosea this morning.
Hosea is one of the early prophets, living in the Northern Kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BCE. He is often paired with the prophet Amos, and they are both notable in that they are some of the shortest books in the Bible, so one rarely stumbles upon them by casually flipping through the Bible. The Book of Hosea is part poem, part prose and notably, there is no narrator—we begin with the Lord calling Hosea for the first time, telling him to marry an unfaithful woman—a ‘wife of whoredom’.
Friends, you will want to expend your energy on the shocking language regarding Gomer and her children here—I know, I’ve been there earlier this week. This particular framing of marriage in Hosea has no doubt influenced how many Judeo-Christian traditions have promulgated gender-based roles and expectations within the covenant of marriage. Hosea Chapter 2 goes on to describe how a ‘faithful wife’ presents, as opposed to, say, a ‘faithful spouse’. That chapter is a beautiful ode in many ways to fidelity, but because it is centered in gendered roles, and even though the nature of the metaphor would have been clear to the contemporary communities listening to it, it comes across on a first reading to modern listeners as a primer for patriarchal and nearly abusive reactions towards women.
Lucky for us, the powerful imagery and language of the unfaithful wife is actually not the story we are meant to be following—it’s the juicier one, and the easier one to center our outrage and self-righteousness, but it’s the surface only of this particular book of scripture. The role of a prophet here is not to go through the motions as God tells him to, echoing only the words God speaks to him exactly as written—Hosea’s role as prophet is to have his life radically embody and signify the message for which he has been chosen to tell the world. And what God is asking Hosea to tell the world is that God’s people have been unfaithful to their covenant and relationship with God. And that God notices and feels and responds when we are unfaithful.
The Northern Kingdom of Israel where Hosea is writing from separated from the Southern Kingdom of Judah during the reign of King Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, nearly two hundred years earlier. The Southern Kingdom retained Jerusalem, and continued Temple worship practices and contained largely urban centers. The Northern Kingdom, however, was highly agrarian—farming, cultivation were the essentials in a largely rural and tribal region. Their economic backbone depended on two major essentials: the success of their crops and their relationships with other trading partners. The Kingdom of Israel was in Canaanite country—where the worship of Ba’al, a fertility god, was particularly inherent (it was also probably a helpful type of deity to worship, when crop management was the forefront of their livelihoods).
Between the focus on successful and productive farming and keeping good relationships with trading partners, many of whom worshipped gods other than Yahweh, the God who had claimed God’s people as God’s own, it’s possible to sense how business might have gotten in the way of fidelity. I’ve never served in a corporate capacity, but I do know from movies that business is never just what happens in an office—it might start like this, ‘Oh, hey you like to golf? I like to golf too! Let’s play golf together and kind of reference work, but also know that we like to do the same things so maybe we extrapolate that to believing we can work together too”; or, “Hey, do you like baseball? Cool, we have tickets for you to use, because we too, here at this business, like baseball, look we are willing to share our tickets with you, so maybe you’ll be more inclined to value us and our work”; or “Oh, I notice that you are wearing a shirt that references a place I know as well—now we can talk about common experiences and perhaps that will allow you to have increased trust in me relationally, which might in turn lead to more partnerships”.
Let’s be clear—I do this at playgrounds with my children too. “Oh hey, I see you have a six year old. I, too, have a six year old child. We should have a playdate, and also, will you be my emergency contact going forward?”
For the Northern Kingdom of Israel, it is, “Oh hey, you worship Ba’al? You know, we here in Samaria are super Ba’al-curious, so maybe if we get in with you guys, we can all sort out how we can potentially align our profits together.”
I mean, networking hasn’t changed that much in 2800 years.
For the priests and bureaucracy of the Northern Kingdom, it was exactly the same: in order to build relationships which would then lead to economic wealth, the upper echelons of authority in Hosea’s time would network through worshipping the local deities in order to reinforce relationships with trade partners; they would utilize places of worship for economic gain; they would ‘do it for the bottom line’, but also receive the benefits of the excess and retain them for themselves.
There was no trickling down of financial relief in this system, by the way, to the farmers who were producing and the tribes who were dependent on the land. Economics, religion, justice, authority, worship —all of these were in one hand in the ancient world, and to shift the direction of one was to shift the direction of all.
The God who liberated the people from slavery, claimed God’s people in the wilderness, who named them and renamed them, who provided them with lineage, blessed them with abundance and provided manna in famine, this God is a bit pissed off that they are indiscriminately worshipping other gods as a matter of sartorial ambition reserved only for the benefit of a few. Those in power are leading their people away from the basic tenets of God’s own love and justice, exchanging their souls for a burgeoning stock portfolio and comfortable bank account balance.
Which brings us back to Hosea and the message God has for God’s people.
Which is, what does fidelity to God—fidelity to God’s claim on us—fidelity to the relationship that we have named as covenant in our baptisms—what does that look like? And how are we, or are we not, upholding that relationship? And, more, what are we willing to give up—which may or may not directly benefit us—in order to prioritize the God who is one of liberation and promise?
Hosea and Gomer and their children, they embody the divine frustration with a people who are given love, accompaniment and hope, and yet because those aren’t the values which are convenient or have a quick satiation effect, their God is abandoned in the name of efficiency.
If you are horrified at the treatment of Gomer and their children by Hosea, and by God’s injunction leading to that treatment, it’s always a good thing to recall that we do not remain neutral bystanders in this interaction. We, all of us, regularly forget, forsake, forgo, being people of a God whose hallmark is mercy and accompaniment, because it’s easier to simply not be merciful. To leave others behind when they become inconvenient. To forget what we owe to one another, and what we owe to the God in whose image we are each created.
God’s rejection of Hosea’s family (and Israel) does not last forever. It doesn’t even make it to verse 7, and then in the verse immediately after the end of this reading in chapter 2, which reverses the hard-hitting names of their children—they become ‘he sows’, ‘she is motherly-loved’, ‘he is God’s people’. The covenant is for God’s people to claim it and commit to it for themselves. God cannot, and will not, command or force faithfulness; it is up to God’s people to see for themselves- ourselves- that we can be ‘children of the living God’, the fruits of the values we choose to embody and uphold, at all times, and at all costs.
Amen.