Life Imitating Art . . . Imitating God

A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Patricia Rowe-Jones

Poland Community Church

February 18, 2001

There must be something worth talking about because artists the world over have taken the stories found in scripture and put them to music, painted them on canvas, they have chiseled them in stone and wood, they have even cast in gold the stories of Holy Scripture.   Obviously, there must be something of great worth hidden in the pages of scripture a wisdom so old that even though the places talked about in scripture are now in ruin it matters not because the power of the word of God lives on in art and, more significantly, in the human heart.   There must be something of great worth of stunning beauty and profound grace. There must be some reason that artists the world over have attempted to imitate in art the word, The Logos, which we call God.   Hosea was a man of God, his life was God’s art a painful and poignant creation used by God to show God’s Chosen People the harlotry of their ways.   The story is a strange one it is the story of a man who marries a prostitute Mostly for God and partially for human love; Hosea marries Gomer Unfaithful Gomer Who leaves him with their three children as she hurries off chasing the thrill of other men.   But in the end Hosea redeems his fickle bride financially, as was the way and unfaithful Gomer and Faithful Hosea are thus reconciled.   This was Life Imitating Art . . . Imitating God What a creative and wonderful God we have A God that knows how to speak to us with out words, but in other ways For God made it plain to Hosea in 4: 1, 12 “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land . . . A Spirit of prostitution leads them astray; they are unfaithful to their God.” Yet, if the Israelites were willing to repent, they would find God to be loving and forgiving, just like Hosea was loving and forgiving towards Gomer.   And this is our God who speaks to us time and again by taking on the attributes of humans The word of God doesn’t tell so much as it shows God shows his chosen people that they are not in touch, that they are spiritually idolatrous and that they are in extreme danger because of it. He shows them this through the life of Hosea; He shows them how love and mercy can bring them back to God.   God spoke to his Chosen People by showing them the struggles of Gomer and of Hosea And then God spoke to all of us later by showing us the life and earthly struggles of a man called Jesus who God tells us, is God’s Son God in the flesh A God of love and mercy who became manifest in the flesh A God of love and of mercy who we subsequently killed on a wooden cross because we were unable to recognize God’s living breathing Cross Road to us, his gift of new choice and direction in the person of Jesus We were unable to truly see and truly hear For, like Gomer, we wanted what we wanted we were busy chasing earthly thrills   but the manna from heaven had arrived and yet we pushed our ways clear to Calvary and today we are still drinking of Jesus innocent blood and we are still gaining nourishment from a broken body that was broken for us, for all of us.   It was a precursor to Christ that Hosea forgave Gomer for Jesus would similarly forgive us Not because he had to; namely out of love God knew that our hearts were hardened with sin But Still God Loved Us! He sent the Lord, who was and is and is to come, and who was willing to be our Hosea; to win all of us Gomer’s back despite ourselves.   The Lord came to melt our sin with his own tears of travail for he knew that our very hearts were capped with the veil of our own tears.   One thing is clear from all of this: That God believes in His love for us God believes that he can woo us back to a life of fidelity and teach us to once again be able to distinguish between that which is good and that which is evil.   But we must be willing to feel the sting of the truth No one wanted to hear about Hosea/Gomer.  No one wished to look at the harsh realities that this picture painted for the wayward people of Israel. And still today- not many of us wish to be stung with the harsh reality of our own infidelities. Like the story of the preacher from Vermont.  She had lambasted the lack of racial diversity in the town, the high property taxes, the insensitivity of the merchants, the lack of caring in family relationships.  This all proved to be too much for her congregants to bear, so an adhoc committee met & assembled to set her straight.  The gathering took place in the church parlor right after worship.  “Preacher, we are a little worried about the effect your preaching is having on the congregation.  When you rail up against materialism, the bankers and merchants find that hard to take.  And when you talk against the television preachers pursuing religion for profit, a lot of our folks send money to those people.  And you start talking about family values, why, a lot of our people are busy and commute to Boston and can’t just communicate with their children like you envision.  And heck, you make us feel bad about being white and wealthy.  Can’t you find something else to preach about?” Totally exasperated, the preacher asked: “Well, what do you people suggest I preach about?” From the back of the room came a clear voice:  “Why don’t you preach about the communists? “But we don’t have any communists in our town, in Vermont.” he answered. “Exactly”, preach about them!”   You know what is interesting, is that both Jesus and Hosea had to preach to the hardest audience known:  TO THEIR OWN PEOPLE. Hosea was the only prophet to preach to the N. Kingdom of Israel who was actually born and brought up there and Jesus was a Jew who was rejected as the Messiah by the very people who claimed and believed that God would send one.   People don’t tend to want to hear the truth and this is why it is so powerful that we have, in Hosea and in the person of Jesus; Art imitating Life . . .. Imitating God.  Sure, we are told lots of stuff in the bible, like in proverbs all of that wonderful wisdom. And yet, the most powerful messages of God’s word to us involve the lives of people who lived, who walked in faith with God.   God, after all, God didn’t just tell us that he loved us; he shows us that he loved us by sending to us a wonderful and gentle Lord that willingly died on the cross so that we might finally get it. And that is what is important to understand about this morning’s scripture reading from Hosea. Hosea speaks to his people - his own people, with his life.  His acutely personal experience is used to illumine a conception of God’s ability to reconstitute the entire people of God. It’s an odd story, but despite it oddness, it is not removed from our world of harlotry with other God’s of wood, stone, metal, plastic or our world of the pursuit of religion for profit. We are a part of that story, We must cling to history in order to see specifically that the OT story of Hosea ends at a table surrounded by 13 men, in an upper room, with one of them holding a cup and saying  “This is the new covenant” The story also ends with some women running from tomb to tomb telling disbelieving disciples, “He is risen” The word became flesh, just like it did when Hoseas life served as God’s Logos not so much imitating life, but informing life; and this is God’s art We are God’s creatures We are flesh and we are each of us invited to become God in the Flesh as we share in the communion of Christ;  as we share in his baptism and as we believe in his resurrection. Our lives are invited to also become Life Imitating Art . . . Imitating God For as God knew the message is always better shown than told so let us be Hosean models Let us Walk with Christ so that others can read our lives and learn how to become art for God.