Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Love came down at Christmas #3: scandalous love Reinbeck UMC 12/14/14

Love came down at Christmas #3: scandalous love
Reinbeck UMC 12/14/14

John was home alone with the kids while his wife Doris was at the beauty shop. John was a pretty engaged father and he loved the times when his wife was gone and he had the kids to himself.
The baby was kind of cranky, but who wouldn’t be if they had diaper rash? John was looking for the ointment. He couldn’t find it. He looked in all the logical places like the diaper bag, the changing table, the drawers in the baby’s room and the medicine cabinet. He was sure they had some around. He finally went to Doris’ closet because she had the other diaper bag in there.
That’s when he found the shoebox tucked behind everything else, filled with a whole bunch of letters. He couldn’t help but notice that they were obviously love letters… and they weren’t from him. Curious he read a couple of the letters.
They were from a man named Stan. Stan was writing love letters to John’s wife. The top ones were dated as recent as a couple of weeks ago. The bottom ones were dated 7 years ago, shortly after John and Doris were married.
What’s more, these letters were not from an admirer from afar. They were the kind of letters written from one lover to another. There was no mistake about it. Doris was having an affair, and she had been most of their married lives.
Tears started to roll down his cheeks. Anger started to boil up inside of him.
John was startled by Kortney, their oldest daughter, saying, “What’s wrong daddy?” But he didn’t know how to explain, and didn’t think it was for children’s ears anyway. Suddenly John realized that he couldn’t even be sure that the girl standing in front of him was his child. He mumbled something about going to check on her brother, but he himself couldn’t move. He was paralyzed.
His mind fixated on the letters. John couldn’t stop reading them.
One referred to her beauty in a particular red dress… that John had bought for his wife for a special occasion.
One referred to being in Aspen. Now he knew that she wasn’t really tired when she sent him skiing by himself that day.
Everything was a blur when Doris returned home and he confronted her. She didn’t deny it. The conversation turned from tears to yelling and screaming. Yelling and screaming gave way to threats to leave, until John packed his stuff and went to stay with a friend.
One day John and Doris went to his pastor and told the whole story.
The pastor listened intently and finally turned to John and asked, “What do want to do next.”
With tears in his eyes, and a lump in his throat, John replied, “I want to win my wife back.”[1]
My first reaction to that story is, “Really? You want her back?” And listen to what he said; “I want to win my life back”
In most circles, a story like this would become fodder for gossip and whispering behind John and Doris’ back.
This is the kind of thing that, if John and Doris were famous, would be snatched up by the National Enquirer and turned into a scandal. The story is disgraceful, it is shocking, and it is appalling.
Most people would say the scandal is that Doris had a 7-year long love affair. I say the scandal is John’s decision to “win his wife back?”
You might expect to see that story made into a hallmark channel tearjerker, but you wouldn’t expect to find it in the Bible. Hosea’s story, however, is a lot like it, and is no less scandalous.

Hosea was a prophet in the last years before the Assyrians invaded Israel. God often had the prophets do strange things to make a point. However, this took the cake. God spoke to Hosea,
 “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.”  So he went and took Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
Now, I know that we are not used to hearing these kinds of words in church, but there is no nice way around this story. God tells Hosea to go to the seediest part of town, find himself a prostitute, and marry her. God send Hosea after a bimbo, or a floozy, or a woman of ill repute, or whatever you want to call her.
Hosea goes downtown and finds a prostitute names Gomer. When is the last time you knew someone who named their daughter Gomer? Maybe Gomer was a prettier sounding name in Hebrew.
Hosea courts Gomer and eventually pays the marriage price to her father who was only too happy to have someone marry his daughter who had gone down the wrong path. I don’t know if Hosea and Gomer were happy together or not. Unfortunately, Gomer didn’t just walk away from her lifestyle. She continued to have relations with other men, but Hosea didn’t divorce her.
Soon Gomer started having children- of course; no one could be sure who the father was.
The first child was a boy so God commanded that he be named Jezreel because “I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel.” Jezreel was a terrible bloody place where Jehu killed both the king of the northern kingdom and the king of the southern kingdom in order to take the throne himself. Jezreel is a very strange name for a child. It has been said that it’s like naming your child “Auschwitz.”
That was bad enough, but it gets worse. The next child is a daughter. Hosea is commanded to name her “Lo-Ruhamah” which means “Unloved.”
What a sad name for your daughter. “Unloved.”
But it gets even worse. The third child was a boy who was named “Lo-Ammi.” Which means “Not Mine.” God said this was because, “you are not my people, and I am not your God.”
That was Hosea’s family, his wife Gomer, and his kids, Auschwitz, Unloved, and Not Mine.
Even after the kids came, Gomer was more and more, turning her back on Hosea. In chapter three God tells Hosea to go down to the market again to get her back. “Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.” 
Therefore, Hosea goes to the market, finds Gomer, and, as if he was one of her customers, actually pays to have her back. “So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver, and a homer of barley, and a measure of wine.”

·        That’s just not right that Hosea would have to pay the prostitute’s price to have his wife back. That is scandalous.
·        That’s just not right that John has to feel like he needs to “WIN his wife back.” That is scandalous too.
A scandal is something that one person does that violates the expectations of how think they should behave.
Our culture is one that eats up scandals. People love to hear how the mighty have fallen. Think about the Kennedy assassination, Jim and Tammy Baker, Bill Clinton, or Bill Cosby.
Hosea’s story and John’s story are both as scandalous as any of those stories. I tell them, however, because they are parables of the divine scandal. Do you know the scandal about God? The Christmas story is a scandalous story. Let me tell you what I mean.
·        It just is not right that after everything we have done,
o   after all the sin people have committed,
o   after all of our unfaithfulness and
o   Running after other Gods- it’s just does not seem right that God would put on skin and move into the neighborhood. It is scandalous!
·        It just does not seem right that, that after everything we read in the Old Testament, God still loves us. It is scandalous!
·        It just does not seem right that after all that, God was still willing to pay any price necessary to get us back from our sin and guilt. It is scandalous!
The love that came down at Christmas was a scandalous love.
Jesus’ love was a scandalous love. Just think about the whispering in the corners and in the Sanhedrin.
·        “Look, he eats with sinners.”
·        “Look he is hanging out with tax collectors.”
·        “Look he is healing that leper.”
·        “Look at the way he says that sometimes gentiles see the kingdom of God before the Jews.”
·         “Look at the way he talks to those women.”
·        “Look at the way he argues with the scribes.”
·        “Look at the way he calls himself God.”
… The list could go on and on. To the people in Jesus day, it just was not right. It was scandalous.
Just as scandalous as John taking Doris back, or Hosea taking Gomer back, In Jesus Christ, God was making the move to get us back from our spiritual adultery.
·        Did we deserve it? Absolutely not.
·        Did we earn it? Are you kidding, no!
·        Did God have to give us any more chances?
o   No, but there is something about God’s character,
o   There is something about God’s nature, which made God want to give everything for you.
·        Why didn’t God give up on us and walk away? I don’t know.
·        Why didn’t John walk away from Doris?
·        Why didn’t Hosea have Gomer stoned for adultery?
I guess the only answer is LOVE. God’s love for us is such that there is
o   nothing we have ever done,
o   nothing we are doing now, and
o   Nothing we can ever do, that will keep God from loving us.
As I am fond of saying “Nothing, nothing, nothing, can ever separate us from the great love of God in Jesus Christ.”
And God will do Anything, Anything, anything, to have you love him back.
That is the scandalous message of the love that came down at Christmas.

SO… What does God’s scandalous love say to us?
It says that
o   If you feel like you don’t deserve God’s love.
o   If you feel like you can never do enough,
o   you are never good enough,
o   you are never strong enough,
o   you are always feeling guilty,
o   Or judged.
God’s scandalous love is for you.
The scandal is that you’re right-
o   you can never do enough,
o   you will never be good enough,
o   You will never be strong enough to earn God’s love. BUT GOD LOVES YOU ANYWAY.
That is the scandalous Love that came down at Christmas.
·        Emmanuel. God with us even though we don’t deserve it.
·        Emmanuel. God with us even though we don’t understand it.
·        Emmanuel. God with us even though we are sinners.
·        Emmanuel. God with us even though we are at times as unfaithful as Doris or Gomer.
·        Emmanuel. God with us always.
·        Emmanuel. God with us everywhere.
·        Emmanuel. God with us in the baby
·        Emmanuel. God with us in our lives today.



[1] Adapted from a story at http://www.spencerhope.com/sermons/gods-scandalous-love-1

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