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It seems that we have developed a tabloid mentality. That is
to say, we seem to have developed an overzealous fascination for
information about the private lives of public people. The real or
supposed exploits of actors and actresses, politicians,
entertainers, athletes or business moguls appear in lurid
headlines on papers and magazines that are more interested in
sensation than news. Photographers stalk the rich or famous to
catch an image of an unguarded moment. Fact blended with fiction
becomes the means to enhance or discredit; to glorify or defame.
The popularity of this material in tabloid papers, magazines and
talk shows indicates that the public seems to have an insatiable
appetite for it. Probably most of the subjects of the scandal and
gossip, half-truth and innuendo would far rather be left alone
than to see their names and pictures, and the supposed details of
their lives, paraded before the public.
The prophet Hosea, however, used the painfully lurid details
of his own personal life to reach people. It was an attention
grabber all right. If there had been copies on the newsstands, so
to speak, one can imagine them being grabbed off by the gossip-
seekers. The story told by Hosea himself is that he married
Gomer, a woman with a past, to put it politely. To put it not so
politely, she was a prostitute. She probably

plied her trade in connection with the Caananite fertility cult
of the Baal gods which used prostitutes as a form of worship. But
Hosea loved Gomer and their marriage covenant provided her a new
beginning -- a new life -- and he took her away from that past.
Gomer became his wife. There were children, too, but here some
other issues are raised, as to whether they were even Hosea's
offspring or not. Can you imagine the headlines over all this?
But there is still more to come.
Gomer apparently got tired of the marriage and left Hosea, and
returned to the life of a prostitute. Hosea urged the children to
plead with their mother to return, but she did not. Eventually
Hosea found Gomer in a slave market and bought her freedom --
redeemed her -- and declaring his love for her took her home once
again to be his wife.
It is at once a shocking and a beautiful story. It is shocking
in the painful revelations of domestic tragedy that it portrays.
It is beautiful in that it expresses a love that redeems. One can
imagine that those reading it would think Hosea had been foolish
in taking Gomer as his wife in the first place, let alone buying
her at the slave market and taking her as his wife a second time.
Perhaps in their eyes what they saw as Hosea's apparent
foolishness and poor judgment would even disqualify him as a
prophet of the Lord. Hosea was sure the match was one, if not
made in heaven, at least still bound by a sacred covenant, and
more than that by his love for Gomer. Surely it was after the
full force of his marital troubles struck him that he began to
see in it how he imagined God must feel at Israel's failure to
fulfill its part of the covenant with Yahweh.
Hosea was not a professional prophet by any means. In fact he
was a farmer who liked to write poetry. The book of Hosea, as we
have it, represents several of these poems which he may have
written on the road, on marketing trips to Samaria and Jezreel.
One often has a lot of time to think on a long trip. And Hosea
had quite a lot to think about, considering the sad state of his
home life, and the equally sad state of the nation. He apparently
saw some striking similarities, and put his prophecy in the form
of poems designed to call people

back to their obligations of their covenant with Yahweh. Lest
anyone doubt the power of poetry to move people, Bible historians
hold that Hosea's prophetic work was instrumental in saving
Israel from absorption into the Baal cults, the indigenous
sexually-oriented fertility cult religion of the Caananites,
which would have meant the loss of the very thing that
distinguished the Israelites as a people.
The one thing that set Israel apart from all the other peoples
around them was their covenant with Yahweh. That Israel would
break that covenant surely must have pained Yahweh, in the same
way that Gomer's breaking of the marriage covenant pained him.
Hosea saw in Yahweh a God of infinite love, who loved Israel
despite its disobedience, and who would no less pursue and redeem
Israel than Hosea pursued and redeemed Gomer as his wife.
A covenant, of course, is an agreement of mutual benefit
whereby each party agrees to certain obligations. Covenants were
the legal arrangements which made society work, and by which
peaceful relationships were established between peoples and
tribes, and even individuals. Deals were struck and a covenant
arrived at, and there were often symbols that were to serve as
reminders. Sometimes tokens were exchanged -- as a wedding ring is
used today -- to symbolize that covenant. But in those days a
cairn of rocks might be set up, or a single large stone, and even
anointed as a witness, or a sacrifice might be made to formalize
the sacred vows that constituted the covenant.
Israel was bound to Yahweh not just loosely and casually, but
by a covenant, whereby Yahweh chose Israel to be his people, and
Israel in turn chose Yahweh to be its God. Keeping the covenant
with God, or failing to keep it, was the determinant of
prosperity, of life or death, of blessing or curse. The scripture
narrative is essentially the story of the fortunes of the people
in regard to how faithful they were to that sacred covenant. So
anything from drought and failure of crops, to defeat in battle
and captivity by another nation, was attributed in some way to
Israel's unfaithfulness to Yahweh. Likewise

Israel at its best was interpreted as due to its faithfulness and
righteousness before the Lord.
When the prophet Hosea came upon the scene about 740 B.C.E.,
things were becoming rather chaotic. The nation's unity and
prosperity had given way to factionalism and conflict, and even
civil war. The fragmented and weakened nation, then, was a
sitting duck for Assyria in its westward campaigns. Hosea was
much saddened by this turn of events. He was sure that it was
because Israel had turned away from the holy covenant with
Yahweh, and put its trust in alliances and might. Just as Gomer
had abandoned him, he saw that Israel was abandoning Yahweh, so
he tried to unify and save his nation, principally by calling the
people back to the covenant. The dramatic means he chose to gain
attention was by the revelation of his own very painful domestic
tragedy.
It was that tragedy which so deeply affected his own life that
became the means of insight into what he supposed were the
feelings of Yahweh toward the faithless nation of Israel. Gomer
abandoned him, but he continued to love her through the pain of
feeling deserted. Thus he posited the idea that Yahweh's love for
Israel would cause him to seek and redeem and restore Israel.

Therefore, I will now allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
From there I will give her vineyards,
and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
Then she shall respond as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
-- Hosea 2:14-15

The promise is that the remembrance of the sins of the past,
symbolized by the reference to the Valley of Achor, will not be
an eternal reminder of the sins of the past, but a door of hope.
Achor, you remember, was the place where, upon entering the
Promised Land, Israel sinned and acted contrary

to the word of the Lord. (Joshua 7:20-26) Hosea hopes, then, that
Israel will realize its faithlessness and return to Yahweh, and
be faithful to the covenant. Again he uses the image of marriage.

On that day, says the Lord, you will call me, "My husband, " and
no longer you will call me, "My Baal," for I will remove the
names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by
name no more. I will make for you a covenant on that day with the
wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of
the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from
the land; and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will take
you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in
righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I
will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the
Lord. -- Hosea 2:16-20
Here, a poetic prophet 750 years before the time of Jesus,
reveals his own painful marital woes before the people in order
to also reveal a God of infinite love. The foolishness that some
might have perceived in Hosea, in continuing to love his wayward
wife, illustrates the wonderful love of God, whose love is not
shortened by human disobedience. That love still extended to
Israel in its abrogation of the covenant relationship, and even
when it abandoned Yahweh, whoring after the pagan Baal gods. And
the love of Yahweh would even redeem Israel from the lowest
degradation, to be restored again in the family, and the covenant
renewed. That is the very theme that Jesus portrayed in the
parable about a prodigal son. The so-called foolishness of God is
love that knows no limits.
Jesus portrayed in his life this loving and redeeming God.
Mark's gospel, in the reading for today, tells first of Jesus
teaching by the sea, and then as he passed by the place where
Levi the son of Alphaeus was sitting and collecting taxes, Jesus
said to him, "Follow me," and Levi rose and followed him.

That Jesus would call such a man to follow him was scandalous
in itself, for Levi was a renegade Jew. That is, he was one who
deliberately chose to separate himself from the Jewish community
and become a collaborator with the Roman occupation forces,
serving as a tax collector. It was a way of getting rich, and we
are familiar with the fact that principles and ideals are often
compromised for personal gain. In the understanding of the
Judaism of the time he had knowingly separated himself from the
precepts of the covenant, and add to that what they saw as
disloyalty to Israel, and for all of that there was no
forgiveness. He was hated and shunned by the Jews. But Jesus came
along and called him away from that, saying, "Follow me!" And in
that call, and Levi's response, is the very incarnation of
forgiveness and redemption. The clear implication to Levi was,
"Your sins are forgiven." For Levi, at that very moment, there
was a new covenant in force. The very thing which he did not
deserve, he received as a pure, unconditional, and unqualified
gift of God.
The gospel, though, is not just a "once-upon-a-time" story. It
is contemporary. It is the context in which we can behold what is
available now, to each one of us. What happened to Levi can
happen to anyone. The story of Levi is an invitation to follow
Jesus and receive the new life that is offered to us.
Jesus apparently went home with Levi, and there in his house
he ate with Levi and some of his friends -- other tax collectors.
Shunned by the Jewish community, the tax collectors had only
themselves with whom to associate. Of course Jesus was roundly
criticized by the righteous Pharisees and scribes for eating with
tax collectors and sinners. In fact, these persons were not just
distasteful for what they did, but were considered culticly
unclean. In other words, they were unfit for God's community. For
Jesus to sit at table with such people, in the Pharisees' view,
was to defile himself.
The human tendency is to divide people from one another.
Though not stated in the terms my high school English teacher
would approve, we divide people into categories of them and us.
Like the Pharisees of Jesus' time, who divided people

between the righteous and the sinners, clean and unclean, Jew and
Gentile, we do the same thing. One of the sad commentaries on our
own day is that we continue to build more walls of separation
than bridges of acceptance. Like those Pharisees even good church
people can come to believe they have a corner on truth and
goodness, and that others, by reason of belief, or race, or
sexual orientation, or a host of other reasons, are somehow less
worthy and less acceptable in the community of faith. In every
age, even good people are blinded by their own self-righteousness
and deafened by their own self-protectiveness.
Jesus on the other hand, in sitting at a meal with those
people, erased those commonly held lines of distinction. The new
covenant operates on an entirely new assumption, that there is no
such thing as ritual uncleanness, but that we all have in our own
way been unfaithful. "The kingdom of God is at hand," said Jesus,
and forgiveness is the sign that the new order -- the new covenant
-- is already present and operating, and so new patterns of
behavior are mandatory.
The ancient prophet Hosea declared that God's love would
redeem the people, from the forces of rebellion and disobedience.
Jesus declared that all people -- even the hated tax collectors
and sinners, and any other category you want to name -- are
offered forgiveness and entry into the kingdom. Judgment and
grace operate together in this new order. Judgment declares that
all have fallen short of the glory of God, and grace offers the
gift of undeserved forgiveness. Jesus ate with Levi and his
friends because God's grace included all of them. When people
come to church to receive the sacrament of the Lord's supper that
same idea is at work. We do not receive Christ because we deserve
to do so, but because we do not deserve to, and not because we
are righteous, but because we recognize our need to be forgiven.
Jesus' enigmatic statement that, "Those who are well have no
need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call
the righteous, but sinners," should raise questions in our minds,
as undoubtedly it did in the minds of the Pharisees.

Just who are those righteous ones, and who are the sinners? At
first glance the distinction may seem clear, but upon closer
examination we must confess there is no clear distinction at all.
Jesus shares the meal with sinners because there is nobody else.
Nobody is excluded from his presence except those who choose to
exclude themselves.
The idea of the out-reaching, forgiving and redeeming love
that was planted as a seed by Hosea found its full growth and
flower in Jesus. Hosea risked the ridicule and embarrassment of
public scrutiny of his personal life to reveal the aspect of love
that was to become the foundation of the new covenant. Jesus
risked the criticism of the Pharisees, and eventually gave up his
life in showing the extent to which the love of God reaches, even
to people who despise and reject him. That we are invited to
accept that love and live as people of the new covenant is cause
for joy. Hosea promised that the Valley of Achor would become a
door of hope for a whole people. Jesus opens the door of the
kingdom wide and bids everyone enter. Yes, even those avoided and
shunned and condemned by pharisaic self-righteousness. Wherever
and whoever we are, Jesus offers new life not just patched up
with the religious legalisms and practices of the past, but
completely made new, and as effervescent as new wine.