©Suzanne Grimmett
‘Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom’
As one of the opening phrases of the first reading, that one may have caught you by surprise and left you with little comfort and many questions.
You might have questions about the repulsiveness of the language being used here, the obvious issues around violence and gender and about the rapid emotional changes that can be heard in these statements, all with the authority of “the Lord said…”
So it is important, I think, to address this difficult text today. As I do so, I want to state at the outset that nothing I say explains away or makes acceptable this language. It is, and is meant to be, I believe, difficult and offensive.
For some this story is scandalous because it involves the sexual union of the prophet with Gomer who is…what…adulterous? Promiscuous? A sex worker?
The imagery of this story depicts the whole land of Israel, supposed to be faithful and dependent on their covenantal relationship with God but “prostituting” themselves out to other gods and other foreign powers. This can lead many Christian commentators to receive this text in a wholly metaphorical way, as a parable told to speak the truth to God’s people about faithfulness.
Whether or not Gomer, wife of Hosea, actually existed, we are still left with a sensual and intimate metaphor. I would suggest that such metaphors are found woven through scripture and sacred writings, because humankind’s spiritual hunger is best articulated through the language of eros which is ever a powerful pulse and longing for life within us. The more we understand that it is human nature to desire and long for more than we can reach or attain, and that nothing in this life ultimately offers lasting and total fulfilment, the more we may understand our spiritual yearnings for union with the divine. So the use of such a narrative of intimacy and betrayal should not surprise us.
The other great offence is around the clear gender roles and the typecasting of Gomer with such offensive language as the source of the problem and a threat to male honour. There is no getting around the fact that this story relies on a patriarchal worldview and some culturally gendered notions around male honour and shame. Indeed, if we are to unlock some of the meanings of this difficult story we need to understand this is the air into which this story is breathed. Without knowing this context, there is potential for this reading to be dangerous – particularly where it is read with literalism and made into an allegory about morality and transplanted directly into our context.
Some things transcend contexts of ancient and modern and may be recognised as appearing in all human experience. Shame is a crippling and behaviour changing state of emotion and self-perception. It mutates and takes different shapes in every time and place, but we are still talking about human shame.
The Rev’d Dr Margaret Wesley very astutely identifies the place of shame in unlocking the meanings of this story. She notes;
“The book of Hosea employs extremely distasteful language and the sort of violent imagery that speaks to a culture that believed men have a right to use violence against unfaithful wives. The assumption of Hosea is that men in that culture considered it an unendurable humiliation for a man to beg an unfaithful wife to return to him.”[1]
To be ‘in shame’ can be excruciating, and Margaret Wesley goes on to point out that analyses such as Jess Hill’s See What You Made Me Do, tell us that shame is a key factor in most male violence against women. She says;
“When shame dissolves our rationality, it is hard to acknowledge it and choose not to act on it. It is easier to give in to violent impulses. It is also easier to pretend they are not there.” [2]
But scripture is ever about revealing the human condition and does not flinch when showing us our own capacity for violence. And God is a God who all through scripture is taking the initiative to address this condition of separation and sin and demonstrating a better way.
Justice and peace are ever to be revealed as this way. We may not think of justice in the context of our most intimate relationships, but it is there in that space between shame and violence. John Stoltenberg writes that;
“Loving justice between a man and a woman does not stand a chance when other men’s manhood matters more. When a man has decided to love manhood more than justice there are predictable consequences in all his relationships with women…Learning to live as a man of conscience means deciding that your loyalty to the people whom you love is always more important than whatever lingering loyalty you may sometimes feel to other men’s judgement on your manhood.” [3]
This is the stuff of shame and honour again, playing through cultural assumptions about gender in our own time and space. Where keeping up our appearances and status before others becomes more important that our relationships of love and our attention to dynamics of justice, we will always do harm to others and to ourselves. The story of Hosea illustrates a husband put in a place of dishonoured manhood whose response is not to self-defend or react in violence.
Whoever we decide Gomer is, we might see that she occupies the place of humanity before God. That God would be like that husband who would continue to love and care for the wife who brought only shame and dishonour would have been a scandal in the ancient world. Without this backdrop of patriarchy and the acceptance of male violence as a response to being shamed by a woman, it is hard to make sense of the shock of this story.
God seems here to experience all of the passionate emotion, from anger to heartbreak, but then interrupts the knee-jerk violent response to shame. What do we make of a God who endures, pleads, forgives and loves and loves some more? What do we make of a God so careless of honour that the prophet Hosea would be called upon to live out this shame-filled narrative so that the depth and vulnerability of that love might be revealed? What do we make of this depiction of a lovesick God, heartbroken, passionately, fiercely longing for reunion, and apparently not caring about the dishonour of this unrequited and spurned love? Here in this text God seems to be speaking from a place of rejection and heartbreak, with changing moods and judgments. Wasn’t God meant to be impassible…not swayed by our feelings or subject to the winds of strong emotion? It surely is not proper behaviour for the divine…it’s scandalous even!
Scandalous is exactly what the good news is about, and if we are getting a whiff of it now, we are close. St Paul names it scandalous – foolishness- that God would be willing for the sake of unfaithful, beloved humanity to become one of us and walk all the way to the pain and humiliation of the cross. And yet this scandal will become our salvation. Through the prophet Hosea we hear the same word. Through this shame endured and the steadfastness of God’s love, where the word had been “You are not my people”, the promise and longing of God wins out. You shall be ‘children of the living God.’ Next week, we will hear some of the most beautiful utterances from God through the mouth again of Hosea, using not a spousal metaphor this time but a motherly one.
“I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love. I was to them like those
who lift infants to their cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them.” (Hosea 11:4)
God seems to need a whole range of story and metaphor to self-communicate. God is like a tender mother. God is like a woman who has lost a valuable coin and will search tirelessly to find it. God is like a Father running down the road to hug his wastrel of a son. God is like a shepherd who will go up hill and down dale to find the one sheep who has wandered astray. And maybe, God is also like the husband who is so careless of his honour and heedless of the shame, that any scandal and humiliation is worth it for the salvation of a bunch of faithless scoundrels like us.
+Amen
[1] Margaret Wesley “Gomer, Caught between Shame and Violence”
https://faithofourmothers.substack.com
[2] Margaret Wesley in the same piece, https://faithofourmothers.substack.com
[3] John Stoltenburg, The End of Manhood: Parables on Sex and Selfhood, (Routledge Press, 1999) p 24