Good morning! It’s good to be together this morning, the second Sunday of what is called “Ordinary Time” on the church calendar, and with any luck, the 28th consecutive day of rain on what is called “the Seattle calendar!”

Well, my kids have been continuing my education into the evolving vocabulary of the English language. Recently I have learned an entirely new meaning for the word “ridiculous.” Being as old as I am, I have lived my entire life with the old meaning of “ridiculous,” as in “silly, preposterous, absurd to the point of laughable.” “My teacher wants me to write a paper over the three-day weekend, that’s ridiculous.”

But now, I’m told, there’s a new way of using the word, which is pretty much at the exact other end of the spectrum. It means “superlative, incredible, amazing, fantastic.” “She has such a great voice, it’s ridiculous.” “The Seahawks won a playoff game, that’s ridiculous.” The interesting thing is, because the word can have meaning at both ends of the spectrum from something silly to something amazing, you really have to know the context it’s being used in.

This morning we’re going to attempt something ridiculous, clearly in the old sense of the word. We’re starting this new sermon series on the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament, “Majoring in the Minors,” [not minor league, but shorter in length than Isaiah, Jeremiah & Ezekiel, and read far less] but I told you last week we only have seven weeks to do it before Lent begins. So we’ll have just one week each to deal with 7 of the 12 different prophets which is not nearly enough. So one of my hopes for these weeks is to just whet your appetite to read more. Next week we’ll look at the prophet Amos.

But to make it even more absurd, in order to even read these strange creatures called prophets, we just have to have a little background on what a prophet was…and the world into which they originally spoke. So this morning we’re going to think about those two things, and then get a quick glimpse of the first prophet, Hosea. Stick with me!

There were three figures in the history of the Old Testament who stood out as leaders in the Israelite community:

1. Priests, concerned with the spiritual health of the community, helping connect God with the people.
   
2. Kings, who were a later addition to Israel and which God seemed to provide only at the people’s insistence.
   
3. Prophets. Prophets, Priests and Kings. Christians think of Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of all three of these categories…but that gets ahead of ourselves.

Prophets were unique people. They were the mouthpieces of God to the community. “Thus says the Lord,” many of the prophetic oracles begin; the Word of God being transmitted to the people of God.

So what was a prophet?

1. A See-er, who foretold the future. This characteristic is the one most familiar to us, but probably the one emphasized the least in the Old Testament.
   
2. An Intercessors, who in some senses stood between God and the people, receiving God’s communication and sometimes pleading with God over what they heard.
   
3. An Interpreters, who looked at society and interpreted the events going on in the world through the lense of what God wanted to communicate. They usually had different perceptions. Whereas you or I might look at the world and say “well, it’s okay,” the prophet thinks it is dreadful, awful, a crisis.
   
4. A Doom and Gloom-er. It’s certainly true that normally prophets were the bearers of bad news. Went with the territory. Prophets were not generally called to say how pleased God was with the way things were going. Often they told of terrible things to come.

But most important, prophets essentially communicated God’s Word, without regard to the (usually negative) impact to their own lives.

Prophets did not make up this Word, but received it from God. Prophets did not put themselves forward, but were called specifically by God for this role, and eventually at least, affirmed by the community… though sometimes the community did not recognize them as prophets until much later.

In their desire to communicate, prophets sometimes not only spoke the word, but embodied it. Several prophets, including Hosea, named their children in such a way as to reflect God’s Word. Jeremiah was called to buy a field in an occupied, useless land as a sign of hope for the future. Isaiah walked around naked for 3 years to prove a point. That was ridiculous!

They often came kicking and screaming. The prophet Isaiah, for instance, in a beautiful spiritual vision was called to the task, excitedly raised his hand and said “I’ll do it!” And then when he found out the stubbornness and non-receptivity of the people he would have to speak to immediately said “How long do I have to do this for, God?”

Prophets saw things others did not or would not. The great Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel said “While the world is at ease and asleep, the prophet feels the blast from heaven,” …and then must deliver it. Prophets were no ordinary people.

We could use all of these things and more to help evaluate more modern-day prophets. Many people think Martin Luther King Jr. was a modern-day prophet. Other people, like Pat Robertson, seem to think it about themselves. And that is ridiculous.

Now, let’s talk just a bit about the world of these biblical prophets. In your bulletin is an insert that has a map on one side, and a chart on the other. When I was in business, long before I ever thought about being a pastor I signed up for a couple classes at Fuller Seminary’s extension program, for exactly this reason…I felt like none of this Old Testament stuff made any sense at all. Even though I’d grown up with the Bible, I had no context for the words and stories. So at the risk of review for some of you, let’s look.

Look at the chart. Just to put things in context, look first at the top couple of squares of the chart. Way back in Genesis, Abraham’s family is called to move to Canaan, in the Middle East somewhere around 1800 BC. Eventually God’s people, ended up as slaves in Egypt, escaped in the Exodus with Moses around 1300 BC and entered the Promised Land about 1250 BC. In the time of King David and his son Solomon all the 12 tribes of Israel were in one unified kingdom around 1000 BC. In 922 that split in two, with the northern tribes usually being called Israel, and the southern ones called Judah (one of the most confusing things in the Old Testament is that “ Israel” was sometimes used to describe just the northern tribes, and sometimes to describe both north and south).

Now look at the map for a second. You can see the major powers in larger letters, Assyria, Babylon and Persia in the middle of the map, and Egypt down towards the bottom. These were the superpowers of the Middle East during the time of the minor prophets. In many ways, the tiny countries of Israel and Judah had the misfortune of being on a freeway that these superpowers used in battling each other for expansion. There were three main events that defined God’s people during these centuries.

First, in 722 BC Assyria came from the East and took the northern people of Israel. In 587 BC Babylon, swept in and conquered Judah in the south, destroyed the capital of Jerusalem with its temple and exiled many of the people to other places. And then some 50 years later, Persia took its turn in controlling the region and allowed the exiled Jews to return to their land.

You can see then, where Hosea fits into this mix. Hosea is a prophet to Israel in the North, in the years just prior to Assyria capturing that land (the same time as Isaiah).

In some ways, God’s Word through Hosea’s will be repeated over and over in these next weeks, by each of the prophets we read. Hosea speaks difficult words, words that foreshadow the attack that will come from Assyria, and the loss of freedom. He calls people to account, calls over and over for them to hear God’s desire. It is not a new word for them. Nor, I suspect for us. God says: Return to me. And in four ways, Israel says no, according to Hosea:

• they worshipped another god, Baal, a fertility god. they erected shrines invented rituals, gave sacrifices designed to acquire material blessing, had temple prostitutes and credited Baal for prospering them. Baal is the lover that Hosea’s wife runs to. There is a struggle for the soul of Israel, and Baal is winning.

• Israel was fascinated by their royalty and thought that their kings and court somehow made them the equal of other nations.

• Israel’s leaders invested mightily in international strategy, figuring out which alignments to pursue, which partners to drop, who to pay bribes to. Politics consumed the nation.

• military power. Israel was a small country, very interested in military might and often fell into thinking that military might would be their salvation.

Israel put its trust in the wrong places. It’s not that far away from us, is it? What does someone see when they look at us, as individuals or a community or a nation? What do we trust? Money? Political system? Science? Technology? Education? Through Hosea, God says “Trust me. Do the right thing.”

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr Day. Each January I try to read a different book about him, and this week I was reading one about him as a preacher. Sometimes we can look back at MLK as a politician, as a civil rights activist, as a speaker…and forget that he was a Christian, and a preacher. Actually I think he was preaching most of the time he was speaking. His faith in Christ showed through everywhere. In a sermon from 1966 he picked up this theme of “do the right thing:”

“The acceptable year of the Lord is any year when men decide to do right…

The acceptable year of the Lord is any year when men will stop throwing away the precious lives God has given them in riotous living

The acceptable year of the Lord is that year in Alabama when people stop killing civil rights workers…

The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess the name of Jesus, and everywhere (men) will cry “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! (Praise God!)”

Israel is not doing the right thing. Israel is not crying Hallelujah, Praise God. Israel has broken its covenant. Chapters 4-14 of Hosea are full of the terrible things about to happen to Israel: the land cursed, barren, oppressed, many things that if you read them by themselves might make you say “is this the God I know? He seems angry, He’s leaving. But it’s not the whole word. Or the last one.

How will the Word of God come through Hosea? For us it will come first through a story, a picture. Hosea will embody God’s word. His life and marriage will represent the relationship between God and Israel. Remember the words Frank read earlier…God says to Hosea “Go, take an adulterous wife…” How ridiculous. Take a spouse who is unfaithful, untrue to the point you are constantly ashamed, embarrassed. Hosea does it, he marries Gomer. She is unfaithful. She goes after lovers who will make her feel secure just like Israel goes after other gods and international alliances to find security. The story goes on and on. It’s a nightmare.

In the middle of it all, three children are born, each with symbolic names baring testimony to the unfaithfulness of Israel. The first son is named “Jezreel,” the name of a place where a great deal of political bloodshed was committeed earlier in Israel’s history. “Not-Loved” is the daughter’s name, and her little brother “Not-My-People.” All three reflect the disappointment of God, the sense that things are not the way he designed them. Israel, in fact, has totally broken its covenant, God is no longer obligated to His commitment. Infidelity defines Israel. They have earned the name “Not- My-People.” They had, in fact, chosen it. Much later in Hosea (11:1) God says “Out of Egypt I called my son…but you went away from me.”

And yet. God is not finished. It’s ridiculous. It makes no sense at all. God is not obligated, but stays. God has turned away, disgusted at what His people have become. It’s crazy. Why doesn’t God just leave, go find some people who will know who they are, who will be faithful. And yet…God longs for their return. Longs to love. Longs to forgive.

Twenty years ago I was in business, and traveling a fair amount. Once each year, I had to spend a whole week in the beautiful city of Las Vegas. We were early on in our marriage, my traveling was hard on Anne trying to single parent, and we weren’t exactly rolling in money. We were on a pretty tight budget. When the Vegas trip came each year, Anne and I would budget out a very small amount of money that I would go out with my work colleagues and use at the casinos.

I’m not recommending you do this, or even go to Vegas, it’s just what we came up with. I think it was that I’d play blackjack with $20, and when I lost it I’d leave. The first few years I was there, it worked perfectly. I’d play for awhile with my workmates, if I lost my $20 I’d leave and go find something else to do.

One year, I went out with my traveling partner and we played a little blackjack and then he went to bed. But I was winning. Instead of milking $20 over an evening, I was rolling and at one point I got up $300-400. Exhilarating. I kept playing, obsessed with how easy this was. Until about midnight. Then I started to lose. Over the next hour, I lost all the way down to the $20 I had started with. I couldn’t take it. I kept playing, knowing I was such a good card player I’d win it back. I went to the cash maching. I kept losing. $100. $200 $300. My heart was beating, I was sweating, I was panicky. At 2:00 am I went to my room, having lost $350. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, but at the time, for our budget and our priorities it was huge.

I sat there in my dark hotel room. I felt terrible. I felt dirty. I felt like I’d let Anne down horribly, lost money we had never agreed on, felt like I’d let God down. Wondered who I was when I could do something so unlike me, like maybe I didn’t know myself, had lost my identity. I was weeping. At 2:00 am I called home. Woke Anne up, and in one of the worst moments of my life had to explain what I’d just done. She listened to me for awhile and then said, “It’s OK… I forgive you. Go to sleep and we’ll figure it out when you get back home.” Ridiculous.

God says to Hosea: Take her back. Infidelity defines Israel, but not finally so. In the end, God’s Yes counts more than Israel’s No. It’s what has struck me all week. In the midst of doom, gloom, tragedy, anger, everything else…God’s heart keeps rising to the top. Drought, desert, occupying armies all become an almost desperate attempt for God to get his people back. The word of judgment is always followed by the word of hope, God’s heart resurfaces over and over again.

I don’t know where you are this morning. Maybe you feel you’ve been a long way from God, or you’ve let your trust in other things crowd God out. Maybe you’ve done something crummy and feel dirty and like you can’t go back to God. God wants to forgive, God turns away and yet does not walk away. God says to me, to you…I take you back. I want you back. God stops at nothing. He will stop at nothing.

700 years later, that’s what we see in Jesus. It’s what the cross says. It’s what the resurrection says. God stops at nothing: comes to earth, lives on our behalf, dies on our behalf, defeats death on our behalf. For those who believe in Jesus Christ, Hosea’s very word of judgment is flipped on its ear and points to hope. Listen to the echo of Hosea in I Peter:

In Christ… “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God…once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

What Hosea does with his spouse…What God does with Israel…What God does in Jesus for us is totally…Ridiculous. Ridiculous.