Sermon delivered on Sunday, Trinity 9C, July 28, 2013 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH. If you would like to hear the audio version of this sermon, click here.

Lectionary texts: Hosea 1.2-10; Psalm 85.1-13; Colossians 2.6-19; Luke 11.1-13.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

In our OT lesson today, we are confronted with some graphic and colorful language that is even more shocking when we remember that it comes from the Lord himself via his prophet Hosea. Let’s face it. We don’t really expect to hear God engaging in this kind of name calling! But more importantly we are also confronted with an apparent enigma about God. How can God condemn his people Israel in one breath and then turn around and call them his children in the next? It is this issue I want us to look at briefly this morning because it gets to the heart of the nature of God and our relationship with him.

The first thing that grabs our attention in our OT lesson is God’s call to his prophet Hosea. God calls him to act out symbolically God’s prophecy, much like God called Jeremiah and Ezekiel to do. Hosea is to marry a whore and have children by her. We don’t know for sure if Gomer was a prostitute when Hosea married her or whether she was unfaithful to him later on. But that really isn’t the point. The point is that God wants Hosea to live in a relationship that is symbolic of the relationship between God and his people. If we can get past our initial shock of hearing God calling his people Israel a whore and not focus on the graphic language, we realize that the text is pointing us to the real problem of unfaithfulness on Israel’s part and we can understand this very well. Just this past week, for example, a mayoral candidate who had gotten himself in trouble before for texting graphic pictures of himself to other women was at it again. And once again we see this man’s wife standing by him as he confesses his sins to the public, making us scratch our heads in bewilderment and disbelief, among other things.

A similar dynamic is going on in our OT lesson. Hosea is to embody God’s faithfulness to Israel by remaining faithful to Gomer, despite her whoredom. Just as Gomer had (or would) dally with other men, thereby being unfaithful to her husband, so Israel had dallied (and would continue to dally) with false gods and idols, which had led them astray so that they were no longer being faithful to God or living as his called-out (holy) people to bring God’s healing love to the nations. As we think about the pain that Gomer’s unfaithfulness would have caused Hosea (and the pain Israel’s unfaithfulness clearly caused God), we are tempted to wonder why Hosea just doesn’t dump Gomer and move on. Why doesn’t Hosea just let her spend the rest of her life in the mess she’s created? After all, it would serve her right! But when we judge Gomer like this we bring judgment on ourselves because who among us has been entirely faithful to God? It would be just as easy for us to ask why God doesn’t just dump us and move on, leaving us to live with the messes we have created!

That’s why it is so easy for us to understand the significance behind the naming of Hosea’s and Gomer’s children because we understand that when one party is unfaithful in a relationship, it has the power to damage or destroy the relationship and our relationship with God is no exception. No wonder there was judgment in the names of the three children born! God has had enough of his wife Israel’s unfaithfulness and now judgment is coming. And that’s the scary part because if we are really honest with ourselves we know that we too deserve the same condemnation for our unfaithfulness to God. But then at the end of the lesson we read the most amazing thing. After telling his people Israel that they are no longer his people and he is no longer their God, God speaks of a startling reversal. Not only will Israel enjoy unheard of prosperity, they will be known as children of God! What is going on here? Is this another example of God going all schizo on us again?

Of course not. There is almost always an element of God’s grace that accompanies his judgments in the OT because it is God’s nature to be gracious and merciful. But the fuller answer is found in our epistle and gospel lessons this morning. Paul talks about God taking the record of our sins—sins typically caused by our unfaithfulness to God when we chase after other, lesser gods, including our own disordered desires, all of which God’s law condemns—and nailing it to the cross of Jesus. What makes this promise even more remarkable is the startling fact that Paul proclaims God himself arranged the condition for our forgiveness and pardon by becoming the man Jesus of Nazareth and dying for us so that we would be spared his just judgment on our unfaithfulness. Not only that, Paul makes the equally incredible statement that on the cross, God has disarmed the dark powers behind our sinfulness and waywardness.

All this is language that simply means that by becoming human in Jesus, God himself has broken sin’s power over us and the death that results from it, and instead has paved the way for us to have new life, free from the fear of God’s just condemnation (cf. Romans 8.1). There is no condemnation because when we are Jesus’ people, when God looks at us he sees Jesus’ faithfulness, not our unfaithfulness. This is why we don’t need to have our flesh cut away as a sign that we are God’s children. Instead, we are circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, i.e., by his death and resurrection, our Lord Jesus has cut away the power of sin over us so that we are able to live as God’s children, faithful and obedient to God, and this is the outward sign that we are God’s children through our relationship with Jesus. As we are healed by Jesus, we become jealous for God’s good name to be honored among all the nations, just as our Lord taught us to pray in his prayer. That’s what “hallowed (holy) be your name” is all about.

And how do we receive this gift? By believing it’s true and as a result, living our lives as if we really believe Jesus is Lord. This is what Paul calls being in Christ. We start this process of being in Christ at our baptism, which is the sacramental sign of our new and restored relationship with God in Jesus. Paul tells us that at our baptism we and all that keeps us hostile and alienated from God are buried with Christ so that we can also be raised with him to new life. This latter promise speaks to our current situation as well as our future living in the new creation. When we are baptized, we are initiated into God’s family and become his children through our faith in Jesus. Of course, like any relationship, our relationship with God requires our effort. There is nothing magical about baptism. Rather, it is an outward and visible sign of the inward and invisible reality that we are loved and rescued by God because of what God has done for us in Jesus’ death and resurrection. God has a history of rescuing his people and baptism is no different. What this means is that we no longer need to fear God or God’s just judgment because in Jesus we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins.

But, you protest, even if this is all true and God has forgiven us in and through Jesus, we are still broken and fallen people. We still miss the mark and we have a track record to prove it. I’m glad you voiced this concern because it will allow me to finish this sermon in a timely manner. I am not suggesting that our relationship with God will be easy or automatic as a result of what God has done for us in Jesus or at our baptism because, yes, we are still weighed down by our body of sin. But there is good news even in this area because part of what Paul and Jesus want us to see is that when we come into a real relationship with God through Jesus, we no longer have to live life alone or solely under our own power. We are promised the gift of the Holy Spirit to live in us to transform us over our lifetime into the very image of Jesus so that we can truly be the people God called and created us to be.

Yet even having the Spirit live in us won’t make us immune from hurt or failure. We live in a fallen world where things sometimes go wrong and as Paul reminds us in Romans 6.7, we are not totally free from sin until we die. But that should not discourage us because none of this negates what God has done for us in Jesus. When we truly believe that in Jesus, God has rescued us from sin and death and act like we believe it, we still don’t have to worry about facing condemnation, even when we are unfaithful on occasion, as long as we repent and return to faithful living. And when we have the Spirit living in us, we can be assured that we are given a power to live according to God that would simply be impossible without his healing and transforming presence. And as Jesus reminds us in our gospel lesson, all we have to do is ask for the Spirit to come and live in us. Are you praying this audaciously?

So what do we do with this? In a few moments we are going to baptize baby James into God’s family of redeemed people in Jesus. We have been reminded what happens in baptism and the wonderful hope and promise it symbolizes. But as we have also seen, this is only the beginning. Like a physical birth, there is much growth that will occur thereafter, God willing. And there will be great opposition to James’ new birth and to his new life in Christ as he grows and matures. So what are we to do? Well, as Jesus reminds us, we start by praying for the entire Sang family, that God will equip them to raise James faithfully. They will do that in large part by sound teaching and embodying Jesus in their daily lives. But the Sangs are not an isolated unit. They are part of our family and we are given the task of helping them raise their sons, not only by sound teaching and how we live our lives, but by how we love and support this family as they live their lives.

This is where paying attention to the context of Paul’s letter to the Colossians can help us. Paul tells us not to be taken captive through philosophy and empty deceit. His arguments and word choice for captive suggest that the Colossians were being assailed by false teachers, most likely Judaizers who were trying to persuade them that Jesus wasn’t sufficient for healing, forgiveness, and redemption; neither was he sufficient for them to fully understand God. Instead, all of this would come only through their obedience to the law. Not many of us have to worry about coming under the influence of Judaizers but that does not mean we are out of danger because in our world today there are many forces that seek to pull us as Christians away from Jesus. We hear constantly that all religions are equal, that there are many paths to God. This message can lead us to think that we can add elements from other religions to our Christian faith to help us find deeper spiritual fulfillment, whether it be New Age, transcendental meditation, or whatever. But that is not what Paul and the first Christians proclaimed and our epistle lesson stands as a clear warning against any such dallying because it will surely lead us astray, make us lose our focus on Jesus, and result in us living unfaithfully, just as it did to God’s people Israel. James will face this temptation as he grows up just as we do now and this makes the necessity for prayer and our grace-filled fellowship even more urgent so that we do not give up the wondrous gift of God to us in Jesus. If we want to know the true God, his heart and character, we need look no further than Jesus because he is the very embodiment of God.

So we must all be careful to always keep our focus on Jesus and not be distracted by other, lesser things or gods and be eventually consumed by them. I say this especially to those of you this morning who might be struggling with issues of forgiveness or with your relationship with God. God himself has called us out of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of light. In God’s sovereign grace and power, God has declared us not only fit in his sight, but also his children in Jesus—forgiven, healed, and greatly loved. He has given us tangible signs of his healing love in the sacrament of baptism and in the lives of his saints. Dare to believe this and take hope and comfort that no one is out of God’s reach. No one. This is the hope and promise that is baby James’ at his baptism and it is the hope and promise of all God’s people, broken as we are, because in the end, the gospel is not about us or our power. It is about the amazing love and healing and sovereign power of God as manifested in Jesus Christ. And when by God’s grace you really do embrace the promise, you will surely know what it means to have Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

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