Scripture readings: Hosea 2: 5-8,
14-16, 19-23; Luke 15:1-10
More than once, I have heard guys
use a certain line to describe how they courted and won their wife. Their line
is this: “I chased her till she caught me.” Unfortunately for me: the times I
tried this, it never worked.
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| Walking along Lower Crab Creek, Starting at Lake Lenice North of Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA: April 2016 |
In Hosea, the prophet the Lord
chasing after his unfaithful wife, Israel, while she is chasing around with other
gods. These other gods promised to give her all the things she wanted if she
chased after them. But they didn’t give her anything, in the end, because they were
false as well as false-hearted. The Lord kept sending her what she needed to
live, and she thought it came from the gods she was chasing.
The Lord kept the chase going because
he loved her. Just so, God keeps going after us, and God keeps us going, and we
don’t even know it or admit it. God gives us what we need (and more so), even
when we want anything but him. Yes, he loves us that much.
Israel was chasing around because
everyone (all the nations around her) were all doing the same thing. The gods
you could chase after were the gods who wanted you to think that you could make
deals with them.
These gods were called baals. Baal
isn’t a name. It means lord, in the sense of being a master: a master of slaves.
These masters claimed to be able to give you lots of the kinds of success you
wanted, whatever it was: money, sex, being in control, getting your way,
getting good crops, putting down your enemies, safety and security.
The list of such things goes on and
on. There are so many gods; so many baals; so many things that we make our
masters.
These are the masters we are tempted
to make deals with. They take charge of us. They become our false gods and we
slave after them. All our best relationships suffer because of these masters:
including our relationship with God who made us, and loves us, and would come
to our rescue in Jesus.
False gods: the more you chased them
the less you had, until you found that you had gotten caught, in a bad way, and
really had nothing that truly satisfied you.
In those old times, when Israel was
chasing around, she didn’t realize that she was being chased, herself. The Lord
was chasing her, prowling for her, hunting for her. The Lord would put barriers
and roadblocks in her path to discourage her from doing all that running and
slaving.
Speaking for the Lord, Hosea said:
“I will block her path with thorn bushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot
find her way.” (Hosea 2:6) Just so the Lord puts up roadblocks to make our lives
harder and harder for us, when we want something besides him.
Then the Lord says: “I am now going
to allure her; I will lead her into the desert, and speak tenderly to her.
There I will give her back her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor (the
Valley of Trouble) a door of hope. There she will sing (or respond) as in the
days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.” (Hosea 2:14,15)
In “The Message” (Eugene Peterson’s
paraphrase translation) Hosea says: “And now, here’s what I’m going to do: I’m
going to start all over again. I’m taking her back out into the wilderness
where we had our first date, and I’ll court her. I’ll give her bouquets of
roses. I’ll turn Heartbreak Valley into Acres of Hope. She’ll respond like she
did as a young girl, those days when she was fresh out of Egypt.” Hosea gives
us the picture of God chasing his people: God romancing his people.
Jesus says that God is like a
shepherd looking everywhere for one, single, lost sheep, or like a housewife
turning her house upside down, looking for one lost coin.
Most people talk about a search for
God, a search for the truth, a search for meaning and purpose. People search
for spiritual experiences. They search for harmony or enlightenment. Most
religions, especially the Eastern or New Age religions, are all about this
search.
The God of the Bible is not a God
who can be found; unless he lets us chase him until he catches us. God playfully
pretends to give us the grace of letting himself be found by us. The truth is
that he gives us the grace of our being found.
The God of the Bible is a God who
finds you. So the message about the God who came into the world, in Jesus, is
not about wish fulfillment. It’s not about pursuing your dreams.
The God of the Bible does not
fulfill our wishes. God confronts our wishes and our dreams. God overwhelms our
wishes and dreams, and transforms them, and gives us something better than we
wished for.
Who is in charge of a hunt? Who is
in charge of a search? It is true that, in certain lakes and streams, there are
special fish, old and wise fish, who are smarter than most fishermen. That’s
what some fishermen say.
Maybe there are deer like that, too.
But normally we think that the hunter is smarter. At least, that’s what the
hunters would like to think.
The Bible begins our story in the
Garden of Eden and the story tells us about a search. The first problem came
when there was a contest between who would be in charge. Adam and Eve decided that
they would be in charge, and that was their big mistake. It’s a problem we
still live with. We’ve inherited the mistake.
We search for the truth that we can
claim for our own, and when (and if) we find it, we decide whether it was the
truth we were really looking for, or whether we should keep on searching for
something else.
When I was a kid, we would go
camping every summer in the mountains, in the forest, and we would do some
day-hiking. When I was a child, my Dad would remind me that, in case I got
lost, as soon as I realized I was lost, I should stop and stay put; because, if
I was lost, and kept on looking, I would just get more and more lost.
If I was lost, my job was to stop
and let myself be found. If I got myself lost, that meant I was not smart
enough to find myself. And I would not be smart enough to find the people who might
be searching for me. I had to let someone find me who knew the forest and the
mountains.
Little kids don’t know how to hide
very well (unless they are truly lost). When little children are deliberately
hiding, even when they find a good place, they give themselves away. When you’re
a parent, or an older brother or cousin, you know exactly where those kids are.
Maybe the truth is that a little
child is smarter than any grown-up in at least one way. A child is smart enough
to hide in order to be found. Older kids and grown-ups aren’t that smart.
We live in a world where God knows
where we are, no matter how well we think we are hidden, no matter how
completely we think we are lost. We are not hidden or lost to God.
There are times when a searching
parent can’t see everything, but God sees everything. God knows where we are,
even when no one else does.
Jesus told the parables about the
lost sheep and the lost coin, because he came to seek the lost. There were
people who thought so highly of themselves that they thought they didn’t need
Jesus to find them. They didn’t know, or they wouldn’t admit, that they were
lost.
Some of those lost people looked
down on others whom they thought were not as good as they were. They thought
these so-called inferior people were the ones who were really lost; but they
had no intention of hunting for them or finding them. “Let them stay lost,”
they said.
They looked down on Jesus, and they thought
they were better than he was, because Jesus searched for little things. Jesus
searched for those whom the self-righteous people thought should just stay
lost.
Jesus came to be the great seeker,
the searcher, the hunter, the rescuer. Jesus is God in the flesh. So he is a
really good hunter. He knows what to do. He knows how to track his prey. He
knows how to flush us out of hiding. The cross shows us who Jesus is hunting
for: those who need mercy and forgiveness.
When people met Jesus, and judged
him, they demonstrated that they didn’t know their way around the kingdom of
God as well as they thought they did. This was because they were really just as
lost as anyone could be.
When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden
fruit, the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it was because they wanted
to be in charge of their own search for truth and meaning. That was when they,
and we, got lost.
We are lost children searching for
ourselves in the forest. We are generally getting more and more lost; until we
give the job of finding us to the Lord: letting ourselves be found.
When Adam and Eve hid in the Garden
of Eden, they didn’t want to be found, and they didn’t want to admit that they
were lost.
If they let God find them, or if
they admitted they were lost, then it would be the same thing as admitting that
God was right; that God should be in charge of them. That’s why they got
themselves in so much trouble. Most of the bad and the terrible things that
happen in our world are the work of people who don’t want to admit to being wrong
and lost. They don’t want to be flushed out of hiding by any truth that they
are not in charge of.
In Eden, and in the Israel of Hosea,
and in the Gospels, it’s the people of God who are lost along with everyone
else. Even God’s people need to stop and let the Lord be their hunter and
finder. They need to let themselves be found.
Sometimes, in the gospels, there are
people who think they have found the Lord. In the end, though, they realize
that they were lost and found.
Jesus is God come in the flesh, just
as he is. The people he met didn’t have an easy time with this.
In the Garden of Eden, in the Israel
of Hosea, in the gospels of Jesus, whenever someone was found, they were not
given what they were searching for. They were given a new relationship with the
Lord where the Lord was in charge.
This wasn’t what they were looking
for. It was something different, something that would take them places they had
not thought of before, something better.
The key to the Christian life is not
in finding Christ, but being found by Christ. Suddenly this huge bloody and
scarred shape comes crashing through the undergrowth, and there is Jesus. There
he is. There God is. And he says, “Now what are you going to do with me?”
I see in God a glory, and a
holiness, and a beauty that are so high, so magnificent, and God says, “What
are you going to do with me?” Again, I see Jesus bloody, and bruised, and
crucified for me; sacrificed for my sins, and for the whole world, and he says,
“What are you going to do with me?”
I haven’t been given this choice
because I am the one who is in charge. I have been given this choice because Jesus
is the one in charge. I need to decide that, yes, this is so. Then I will let
myself be the one who is found, and no longer the one who insists on doing the
finding.
This is what God is all about. This
is why Jesus came. And he says, “What will you do with me? Will you let
yourself be found?”
good post
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