Compassion or Wrath?
SCRIPTURE TEXT: Hosea 11:8-9, Rev. Monte Marshall
I first took a serious look at this morning’s text from the book of Hosea in the summer of 1982, and it changed my life. It changed my life because it radically altered my understanding of God’s love. Let me explain.
In 1982, I was a student at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D. C. I was also working as a youth director at Mt. Olivet United Methodist Church in Arlington, VA. During that summer, Mt. Olivet’s pastors were doing a sermon series on the Old Testament prophets. The senior pastor gave me a rare opportunity to preach on one of the Sundays of that series. My assignment was to preach on the prophet Hosea. I was even given a sermon title: Hosea: A New Way.
Now the first thing I did in preparing the sermon was to read an introduction to the book of Hosea. One of the things I learned is that the book is attributed to an 8th century prophet from the northern kingdom of Israel whose name was Hosea. I then proceeded to read all 14 chapters of the book from beginning to end. I had never done this before.
As I read the book, it seemed to me that Hosea was wrestling with a fundamental theological question: How does God deal with sin? Does God respond with compassion or wrath?
Actually, this was an issue I had already been struggling with on a personal level. I wondered if God’s love for me was conditional. I wondered if my inability to live up to God’s expectations for me would kindle God’s anger against me.
Some people told me that God would indeed punish my sin—perhaps even for all eternity! Similar voices can still be heard today explaining events like the recent mass killings of LGBTQ persons in Orlando, FL as expressions of God’s wrath against a people labeled as “unrepentant sinners”—or worse.
To be honest with you, after my first reading of Hosea, I was utterly confused about the prophet’s response to that fundamental theological question. But after a great deal of anguished study and no small measure of prayer, I finally concluded that Hosea provided three distinct perspectives on the question that are all mixed up together and in no coherent order, in this one book. And as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get these three different perspectives to harmonize with each other.
So here’s what I found: First of all, the prophet said that Israel’s sin of idolatry was so great that God actually began to hate Israel. The prophet said that God’s love, pity and forgiveness had come to an end—that the covenant with Israel was dissolved—and that Israel would have to be destroyed by an act of divine wrath. Speaking for God, the prophet wrote: “I will destroy you, O Israel; who can help you?”
Second, the prophet announced that God’s wrath was only being executed as redemptive punishment. According to the prophet, death, destruction and exile would befall Israel, but not with the intent of destroying Israel forever. The purpose of God’s wrath was to compel a rebellious people to come to their senses and return to their God with a promised restoration if Israel would only repent.
Well, as history attests, in the period 722-721, BCE, Israel was indeed destroyed by the Assyrians. Thousands died. Thousands more were exiled. And in the minds of some, God’s wrath had indeed been executed against Israel because of Israel’s sin.
Finally, I discerned a third perspective. In the two verses read for us this morning from the 11th chapter of the book of Hosea—the prophet sounded a word of grace that stands in sharp contrast to the other two perspectives. The prophet spoke for God and addressed Israel, also known as Ephraim:
How can I abandon you, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I make you like Admah!
How can I treat you like Zeboiim!
[two cities destroyed with Sodom & Gemorrah]
My heart is aching within me;
I am burning with compassion!
No, I can’t do it! I cannot act on my righteous anger!
I will not turn around and destroy Ephraim!
For I am God—no mere mortal—
the Holy One who walks among you!
I read these two verses over and over again. They were like an oasis in an otherwise vast desert. And then it dawned on me: This was God’s new way. In these two verses, the prophet moved beyond conventional theology to envision God dealing with sin in a new way—not through a violent and destructive display of wrath that is more akin to what “mere mortals” would do—but through an aching heart that burns with compassion. This is what the Holy One does!
And then I made the connection: This is what God was doing in Jesus Christ. When Jesus was rejected, arrested, brutalized and crucified, the gospels are clear: God didn’t say: “I hate you.” God didn’t say: “I forgive you and love you no more.” God didn’t say: “I will destroy you.” In fact, in Luke’s gospel, Jesus says from the cross: “Abba forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.”1 Imagine that, words of forgiveness spoken before the guilty even know that they have done anything wrong! This is grace and this is how God deals with sin!
A British Methodist preacher of the last century named Leslie Weatherhead once said that we see in the cross “a revelation of God’s reaction to human sin. To be hurt and hindered by it, but to go on loving, and go on loving, and go on loving, without reprisal or answering violence until [human beings] see what sin is and what sin does, and turn with loathing from that which has so grievously hurt the greatest lover of the human soul.”2
Well, thanks to a sermon I wrote back in 1982 with the title Hosea: A New Way, my life changed. My life changed as I saw that there are limits to God’s anger, but never to God’s love. My life changed as I began to view myself and my failures more compassionately as if through God’s eyes, and to view others through that same lens. My life changed because I no longer fear the wrath of God. I no longer heed the voices of those who declare that God will punish my sin and the sins of others. I choose instead to place my trust in a God of infinite compassion whose love is unconditional and never-ending. And for this I say: Thanks be to God! Amen!