The Gospel According to Hosea

The Rev. Brandon C. Ashcraft
Trinity Church in the City of Boston
Hosea 11:1-11
8 Pentecost / Proper 13C (August 3, 2025)

The Gospel According to Hosea

The five-year old staring back at me through my iPhone was wide-eyed and breathless. “Uncle Brandon,” he exclaimed, “I found the missing puzzle piece!” I had all but forgotten the exhaustive search we’d undertaken several weeks earlier. When my nephew Francis and I rolled up all the rugs and canvassed underneath the couches, undeterred by dust bunnies and petrified food particles. In the end, our search that night hit a dead end, denying us the gratification of snapping that final puzzle piece into place. Until that Saturday morning when Francis discovered the elusive prize, wedged between Minnesota and Mississippi in the United States map puzzle box, where it decidedly did not belong. After our call concluded, I sat for several moments, basking in gratitude for the simple but priceless gift of a FaceTime call from my nephew.

It was a longing to be closer to my sister-in-law’s growing family that first drew me to Boston, a longing I can trace to the first time I met my older nephew. A meeting that occurred before my husband and I were married. Before I had any legal claim to a familial title, his parents introduced me to their first-born child as “Uncle Brandon.” Their act of naming me conveyed that I was beloved. It gave me a new identity. By bestowing on me the title of “Uncle Brandon,” they grafted me into their family.

In the rite of Holy Baptism, we, too, are grafted into a new family. The family that is the Church, the body of Christ. And when we emerge from the waters of baptism, we also receive a new identity. We are adopted as God’s beloved children and become “inheritors of the kingdom of God.”¹ “The Catechism,” section, in The Book of Common Prayer: And Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church: Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, 1979 ed. (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2007), 858. In baptism, we are given a name, and we are marked as Christ’s own forever. Moments from now, the parents and godparents of Henry Joseph Corcoran will present him by name to be baptized. And then, by means of holy water and holy words, he will be grafted into a family, as the newest member of the Body of Christ.

When it comes to my identity as Uncle Brandon, I’m still learning the rights and responsibilities that come with the title. I’m fairly certain it involves being a good example. To be someone my nephews can turn to when life gets hard and the path is uncertain. But it’s a relationship I’m figuring out as I go. No one has given me a guidebook, and the covenant governing the relationship isn’t clearly spelled out. But when we are grafted into the Church in baptism,

the expectations are much more explicit. When we become members of the household of God and receive the gift of new life in the Holy Spirit, the covenant is clearly spoken. Indeed, we will hear its terms momentarily when Henry’s parents and godparents make the vows that have sealed the covenant of baptism for centuries. As they renounce the “evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.”² “Holy Baptism,” section, in The Book of Common Prayer: And Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church: Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, 1979 ed. (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2007), 302. As they claim Jesus as their Lord and Savior, promise to “follow and obey” him³ Ibid., 303., and to put their “whole trust in his grace and love.”⁴ Ibid., 302.

These promises of this baptismal covenant are big, bold promises, and a bit overwhelming, to be sure. Renouncing the “spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God” is a herculean task!⁵ Ibid., 302. It helps to remember that the ritual of baptism is only the beginning. The promises of this covenant are lived over the course of a lifetime, as we grow into the “full stature of Christ.”⁶ Ibid., 302. But we would be remiss if we did not ask the question: what happens when we fall short of keeping these vows? What’s at stake if we forget the terms of this covenant? For an identity so sacred as “child of God,” for a relationship so profound as the one with our Creator, surely there must be consequences if we fail to keep our promises.

The Prophet Hosea was sent to a people who had failed to keep their promises. A people who had forgotten their identity as God’s chosen and broken their vow to worship God and God alone. Although Hosea prophesied almost three thousand years ago, his eighth century BC world was not so different from our own. During a time of enormous wealth and prosperity in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, our forebears in the faith had turned to other gods. As they constructed idols of money, power, and military might, they turned away from the God of Israel.

The God who had delivered their ancestors from slavery, and into the Land of Promise. And while Hosea’s words on the page in front of you are not on the Bible’s greatest hit list, they should be. For they offer a rare window into the very heart and mind of God. Indeed, one scholar goes so far as to say that “nowhere else” in the Bible do we find “such an awesome unveiling of [God’s] own inner conversation.”⁷ H. D. Beeby, Grace Abounding: A Commentary on The Book of Hosea (Grand Rapids, Edinburgh: Eerdmans ; Handsel Press, 1989), 104.

Hosea’s portrait of God resembles a heartbroken parent. Like a parent who had watched her children take their first steps, God is deeply grieved by their infidelity. Indeed, God is positively anguished by their decision to turn away from her protective embrace. In desperation and helplessness she cries out, “The more I called them, the more they went from me.”⁸ Hosea 11:2a (NRSVUE) As we follow this inner monologue, God’s heartache veers uncomfortably toward vengeance in response to her children’s disobedience. “[Because] they have refused to return to me,” God says, “They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king.”⁹ Hosea 11:5 (NRSVUE) This is an apparent reference to the Assyrian conquest of Israel in the year 721. The allusion to this catastrophic event in Israel’s history, and the language of the “sword” that “rages” and “devours,” forces us to contend with the biblical concept of God’s wrath.¹⁰ Hosea 11:6 (NRSVUE) To grapple with a portrayal of a God who vacillates between a destructive impulse and a desperate desire to show mercy.

Contending with these challenging characterizations in scripture and working to make sense of them is part of faithful living, and I offer no easy answers. But I do wonder, would we rather a God who is indifferent when we turn away? Would we prefer a God who is resigned when we rebel? Instead of seeing a vengeful God, can we instead see a God who, like a loving parent, knows that corrective consequences for disobedience are an act of love? We should take solace that, in the end God’s mercy looms larger than his anger. “My heart recoils within me,” God sings. “my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger. For I am God and no mortal and I will not come in wrath.”¹¹ Hosea 11:8b-9 (NRSVUE) The fire of God’s mercy and compassion always burns hotter than the fire of his wrath.

My friends, we are not so unlike ancient Israel. We, too, from time to time, forget that we belong to God. We, too, turn toward false gods that cannot save us. Like the Rich Fool in today’s gospel, we are guilty (certainly in this country) of building barns to hoard our abundance rather than sharing it freely.¹² The appointed Gospel passage in the Revised Common Lectionary for this day was Luke 12:13-21, often referred to as “The Parable of the Rich Fool.”  And I have no doubt that it breaks God’s heart when we turn away from him. When it comes to keeping the promises of my baptism, I can only speak for myself that I fail time and time again. I consistently fall short in my efforts to “seek and serve Christ in all persons” and to “strive for justice and peace among all people.”¹³ “Holy Baptism,” section, in The Book of Common Prayer: And Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church: Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, 1979 ed. (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2007), 305. But I am human. A mere mortal. And the Good News, as Hosea reminds us, is that God is no mortal.

Now is the time when I invite you to refer to page 298 in your open Prayer Books

(click here to view this page online). In these prefatory notes for the baptismal liturgy, in the second sentence of the first paragraph you’ll find a truth about our baptismal covenant that we cannot afford to miss: “The bond which God establishes in Baptism is indissoluble.”¹⁴ “Concerning the Service: Holy Baptism,” section, in The Book of Common Prayer: And Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church: Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, 1979 ed. (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2007), 298. Which is to say that our bond with God, forged in the waters of baptism, is unbreakable. Once it has been established, nothing we can ever do, or fail to do, can weaken it. No sin we can commit would ever annul it.  No promise we can break would lead God to turn away from us. My friends, the most important baptismal promise of all is not a promise we make, but a promise made to us.  In our imperfect humanity, in our mortal weakness, we will fail to keep our baptismal promises perfectly. But God is no mortal, so God perfectly keeps his. This is the Gospel according to Hosea. Amen.