Last week I spoke a little about prayer, and as I did so, I mentioned some biblical images of God other than the image of God as Father. In today's first reading, the prophet Hosea gives us the opportunity to explore a little more.
Hosea had a truly dreadful family life. If you have been reading the daily readings over the last week you will know all about it. Hosea's wife, Gomer was a prostitute, so that Hosea suspected that her children were not his. He called them by names of shame; calling her first son Jezreel after a place of bloody slaughter. Her daughter was called, "Not Pitied" and her second son Hosea named "Not my people".
This may seem a cruel thing to do, but Hosea was filled with frustration and despair over Gomer's behaviour. Hosea was a sensitive man, with a great imagination. He was a man who loved his family and his God deeply and passionately. Gomer's faithlessness was sheer agony for him, and in his prophesies he shares God's pain over the faithlessness of God's chosen people. The prophet Amos, who we heard from a few Sundays ago, spoke of what God has done for God's people. Hosea speaks of God's feelings towards his people. Hosea, the prophet is a poet and a singer, singing God's love song for the people of God. In the first four verses of today's reading Hosea compares God's love for God's people to the love of a parent who cares for and brings up children. God is like a parent teaching them to walk, embracing them and feeding them. God is like "those who lift infants to their cheeks." It is a tender and moving image. Often we are presented with an image of God who is king of kings, a bringer of justice and judgement, a mighty bringer of salvation. We see "right hand and mighty arm" of God, active in the world, one who lifts up the lowly and casts down the mighty from their thrones. These are good images, biblical images, and they warn and encourage us. It is good to know that the power that brought the universe into being is on our side. But Hosea's image of God is of a heart broken lover, a parent who grieves for children who have gone astray, ending up as captives to foreign nations and followers of strange religions. God cannot stop loving them, just as Hosea could not stop loving his wife and her children. "How can I give you up?" cries God, "How can I hand you over? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender." God cannot remain angry with his foolish and disobedient children. After all, God is God, and not a mere mortal human. God is the Holy One in the midst of his people, one who knows the hearts and the suffering and the pride of his people, and grieves for their suffering and the pride of their hearts. This is what compassion means - knowing and sharing and feeling with those we love. For Christians, God showed the depth of his compassion by sharing his life with us in Jesus Christ. St Paul explained to the Colossians that in sharing our lives and sufferings, Jesus shared his life and greatness with us. "When Christ who is our life is revealed," he say, "then you also will be revealed with him in glory." St John, in his gospel, says that in believing in Christ we are given power to become God's children. This is God's free gift to us, given to us through Jesus, from whom the grace and truth of God overflowed to fill all the world. Hosea, I think, would have seen the work of Christ differently. Hosea, remember, was a compassionate man. When eventually his wife, Gomer, sank so low as to be sold as a slave, it was Hosea who saw her anguish and shame. He bought her and restored her to her family. Her children's names were changed to reflect this reconciliation. They became Pitied and My People, in that same way that God always kept his love for his people and called them by his holy name - the name Israel means "May God show his strength" - and to be a Christian means to belong to Jesus Christ. Maybe Hosea would have seen the love of God working in Jesus in the same way, seeing our anguish and shame, and reconciling us to God. But Hosea was a poet and a man of imagination, a dreamer of dreams. I think he saw God as parent and lover, seeing the suffering and loneliness of his beloved and willing to bear their pain for them, willing to give them his own life, willing to die with them out of love. When I first wrote this sermon, I stopped at this point, but I would like to see how this image of God can be used to look at other passages of the bible and what is happening in our own lives. Take the gospel, for instance, the parable of the rich fool. Here is a man who has spent all his life collecting wealth - his barns are overflowing with the abundance of his crops, and all he can think about is how to gather more. God calls him a fool because he is about to die, and what good will his riches be to him when he is dead? The loving, passionate, God of whom Hosea speaks will mourn for such a waste of life - God calls him a fool, but out of pity. This rich fool has ignored the love of God, which is a rich, satisfying and fulfilling gift which will last for ever. Instead he has opted for worldly goods which cannot love anybody. How God grieves for those who die, never having known the love of God! St Paul warns the Colossians to turn away from earthly preoccupations and turn towards the renewing love of God. This is where true life may be found, he says, for Christ is all in all. When we look at this through the eyes of the compassionate God; we might imagine God saying, "You foolish Colossians! How can people turn to such unsatisfying and transitory things, and not accept the love I can give?" Jesus called such love, "Living water, a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." Perhaps now we could pause for a few moments and consider our own lives and the lives of those around us. Let us pray for wisdom, for ourselves and for all people, so that we may accept the love of our compassionate God and so fill all the world and God with joy and life. Amen.