First Reading
Hosea 1:2–10
When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take to 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, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
And the LORD said to him, “Call his name Jezreel, for in just a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel.”
She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the LORD said to him, “Call her name No Mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the LORD their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen.”
When she had weaned No Mercy, she conceived and bore a son. And the LORD said, “Call his name Not My People, for you are not my people, and I am not your God.”
Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.” (ESV)
Second Reading
Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)
Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
(Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.) (ESV)
Gospel Text
Luke 11:1–13
Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” And he said to them, “When you pray, say:
“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread,
and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”
And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (ESV)
Comments and Questions for Discussion
First Reading
Hosea is to me perhaps the most fascinating of the prophets. I love Jeremiah for his struggles and Isaiah for his vision, but Hosea lives with constant inner conflict, deeply aware of God’s unshakeable love for His people and yet equally aware of God’s wrath, inspired by the people’s infidelity.
And so his story begins. As with several other prophets, Hosea enacts his prophecy, provides a visual image of what he sees God revealing. And so he takes a prostitute as his wife. And he gives names to the children of that union, demonstrations of the fruits of Israel’s unfaithfulness. “Jezreel,” a reminder of the sin for which recompense will be required, “No Mercy” for the absence of mercy when Israel’s faithlessness comes due, and “Not My People” for the way that the house of Israel shall be seen when they go into exile.
Stop for a moment and consider the man, Hosea. What it must have cost him to love a woman who ran after other men, to give such awful names to his children. Imagine his anguish. Now imagine the anguish he sees in the heart of God as the consequences of the Israelites’ actions are revealed, and he called to make them known.
This man knows the heart of God, the heart of a father. He sees the immediate result of the way that Israel run after the Baals, but he also sees beyond that to the heart of a father who cannot turn away.
Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.”
This is the God who also says through Hosea,
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
The more they were called,
the more they went away;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals
and burning offerings to idols.
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk;
I took them up by their arms,
but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of kindness,
with the bands of love,
and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws,
and I bent down to them and fed them. (Hosea 11:1–4, ESV)
And,
How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
My heart recoils within me;
my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my burning anger;
I will not again destroy Ephraim;
for I am God and not a man,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath. (Hosea 11:8–9, ESV)
Yes, our faithlessness has a cost. But if we read without filtering it through the Father revealed in Jesus, we will see punishment where there are consequences, withdrawal where there is agonizing patience. Without the revelation of God made perfect in the Son, Hosea struggles courageously to hold the pain and the love that he foresees in tension.
Second Reading
I know I often sound like a one-trick pony, coming back again and again to the way that Jesus removes the veil as we read the Scriptures, reveals the Heart that lies behind them all. All. And I know there’s a risk with that. Emphasizing the love of God and the way that “mercy triumphs over judgment” can lead us to forget the huge cost of mercy, of forgiveness. The truth that Jesus satisfies the demands of the law can cause us to want obliterate those demands, act as if they’d never existed, or that they no longer do, that they just stopped at the Cross. It’s not hard to understand why we’d want to do that. Facing the way that we’ve fallen short of the glory for which we were intended can be crushing. Indeed, it is crushing apart from the Cross.
And so a lot of preachers and theologians have tried to side-step the cost God paid to restore us to relationship with Himself. They’ve come up with a lot of philosophies to make it easier to look at Jesus and the Cross and say to ourselves, “Yes, He loves me, but my sin isn’t really why He’s hanging there. It’s just a demonstration of His love…” or some such. And if I seem short here, I suppose I am. But our reading today says it plainly. God nailed my guilt to the Cross, and all the legal demands that came with it. Jesus died to set me free, but free from the debt I owed the Father because I sinned, because I sin.
I understand how guilt and sin have been misused to manipulate Christians for centuries, and that might cause us to want to cast aside any mention of them, but if we do that we rob the Cross of it’s glory, it’s power. Paul even seems to be dealing with some kind of similar preaching in the portion of our reading for this week that is made optional. (The part in parentheses.) This is the truth about who you’ve become. “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” But that identity you’ve been given cost God dearly.
The other important thing about maintaining the link between my sin and the Cross is that, as a pastor, I need it if I’m to set people free from crushing guilt. People come to me carrying age-old condemnation for things they’ve done, and they crave freedom. They don’t just need someone who loves them in spite of that burden, they need Someone who loves them enough to bleed and die to break the chains that bind them to their sin. And the person so set free then becomes the one who sets others free, who hungers to see the light of that freedom spring up in the eyes of the people they meet. We just can’t take the blood out of the Cross.
Gospel Text
There’s a lot to write about in here. Of course there’s Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, strangely shorter than the one we find in Matthew 6. Then there’s that funny parable about getting your neighbor out of bed to help you out when unexpected guests arrive. Finally there’s that bit about we who are evil knowing how to give good gifts to our children, and how much more the Father will give the Holy Spirit. Wait. What?
So as not to get caught up running down too many rabbit holes, I’m going to try to group what I have to say about this week’s Gospel text into two segments.
The first I’ll call “shamelessness” in prayer.
Jesus follows up teaching the Lord’s Prayer immediately with this parable of the person asking for help from a neighbor in the middle of the night. And He goes on to suggest that even if friendship is not reason enough to get the neighbor out of bed, “impudence” will be. I’ve read that translated as “importunity,” and “persistence.” Anaideia certainly carries those meanings as well, but my favorite translation of the word is “shamelessness.” I heard Graham Cooke preach on this text once, and while he didn’t go into the Greek, he suggested it in the way he described the one person at the door asking for help. Always with a smile in his voice, “Come on, I know you love me, I know you’re going to do this. Please, just a few loaves or whatever you have. You know you love me!” He was almost laughing as he went on and on in utter confidence in the love in which he was held. Utterly shameless!
And that’s what I find so powerful in the Greek of the Lord’s Prayer, no matter whether in Matthew or Luke. When Jesus teaches us to pray, He teaches us to pray shamelessly! He teaches us to pray to the Father in the Greek verb mood called “imperative.” That is, we sort of order God to do what we’re asking! That’s what imperative mood is for. (Looks like the word emperor, right?) If we were asking less confidently, we’d probably use the subjunctive mood, or even the optative, in Greek. But no, Jesus teaches us to pray shamelessly, to speak to the Creator, the Source, the God of Heaven and Earth by ordering Him around! I don’t think He really means us to treat God as a person under our command, but He does want us to pray with the same certainty that our prayers are heard!
Then we get to the second part for me.
Jesus talks about asking and praying shamelessly, then He goes immediately into naming the Holy Spirit as the “good gift” that the Father will give because He’s better at giving gifts than we are.
And this is important. Luke sees something, and he tells us the story of Jesus and the early church (Luke and Acts) in a way that emphasizes the role of the Holy Spirit and ties both halves of his narrative together. I will go into that in much greater depth when I get into writing my own (not terribly scholarly) commentary on Luke soon, but I want to land on that very firmly here.
The Person of the Trinity that animated the early church was the Holy Spirit. And Luke is very intentional about showing how the same Spirit was active and visible in the life and ministry of Jesus, even going back to the generation before Him. He wants 1) to make sure that Gentile Christians who are living among the blessings of that Spirit don’t lose track of the fact that the Spirit whose gifts they enjoy is inextricably rooted in Judaism, and 2) to make sure that Jewish Christians who see Gentiles enjoying the intimate Presence of God through the Spirit also see those Gentiles enjoying what has always been theirs, not something new and foreign.
So Luke is sure to include in his narrative the moment that Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as the most desirable of gifts.
And this is why this is so important today: God is working to revive the Church through new infusions of the Holy Spirit, especially in the last century or so. These outpourings haven’t always been well received, but they keep happening. And they’re bearing fruit, bringing healing, breaking down barriers.
If we, who are evil, know how to give good gifts, how much more with the Father give us the Holy Spirit if we ask?
