Eugene Peterson describes the book of Hosea like this:

Hosea is the prophet of love, but not love as we imagine or fantasize it. He was a parable of God's love for God's people lived out as God revealed and enacted it – a lived parable. It is an astonishing story: a prophet command to marry a common whore and have children with her. It is an even more astonishing message: God loves us in just his way – goes after us at our worst, keeps after us until he gets us, and makes us lovers of men and women who know nothing of real love. Once we absorb this story and the words that flow from it, we will know God far more accurately. And we will be well on our way to being cured of all the sentimentalized and neurotic distortions of love that incapacitate us from dealing with the God who loves us and loving the neighbors who don't love us. (Intro to Hosea, The Old Testament Prophets; Eugene H. Peterson page 436)

The text is a metaphor for the relationship between Israel and God when the prophet Hosea was preaching. Israel has fallen far from the status of being the chose people. Written after the reign of Jeroboam II, Hosea writes to a time plagued by intrigue, wars and assassinations. It is also a time of great religious apostasy – Israel is dabbling with the gods of the foreigners – for one they give credit to the Canaanite storm god Baal for the life giving rain. Hosea accuses the Israelites of forgetting the God who created them and brings about all things. The book is introduced with a metaphor describing Israel's current relationship with God. The relationship is likened to God being the faithful husband, Israel the unfaithful wife caught again and again in adultery. A large part of me protests the imagery used – the male dominated culture of Hosea's time shouts loudly through the centuries. I want to say these are "fightin' words." Another part of me protests the creeping wonder that God is playing games here. Remember the child's game "MERCY?" You know the one where you bend another's hand back further and further until they are finally forced to give in and yell mercy. I want to yell and ask God what kind of mercy is God going for here. Will God keep heaping calamity after calamity on Israel in the parable of Hosea's life until finally they bend so far and are forced to beg?

All the protests … but then I read on: "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.'" And the words our Psalm shout through the universe: "Surely God's salvation is at hand for those who fear God, that God's glory may dwell in our land. Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky." And when I read those words I know this text points to a truth that is more than worthy of our attention. The text is worth a second look: While we may not like the particular metaphor Hosea uses … and are reminded that as with all metaphor they can not be pushed to literalism … we still find truths in this text that are telling about God's relationship with us and our relationship with others.

I find the first truth in the names the children are given – Jezreel, a place where the Israelites will experience defeat; Lo-ruhamah, meaning no pity; and finally Lo-ammi, you are not my people. In those names are wrapped the horror of what it is like to try and live apart from the love of God. It is the parable of Hosea's life – being in relationship with someone who continually chooses to live outside the covenant to which they are bound. It is Israel at the time – playing deadly politics, dallying with foreign powers, mixing religions in with their own to hedge all their bets. It is the church at times when we begin to take ourselves too seriously and think we have all the answers. It is us – for we all know what it is like to live with secret and not so secret wrongs that eat away at us and leave us feeling as if we truly are in a place of defeat where we can not be pitied or named. The judgment found in Hosea is our indictment – and it is to reach that place where we feel we are beyond the mercy and love of God because we have strayed so far away.

The most enduring truth in this text speaks of the nature of God. Beyond the messy metaphor Hosea uses to speak of God – we find the enduring nature of God's love and mercy. It is not the kind of mercy found in the children's game that uses force to bend one to the point of breaking and begging. It is rather a mercy bound in the cords of love that are so strongly tied I believe God can not bear to break them. Even we humans can glimpse that kind of mercy and love. For parents it is bound in the love we have for our children. How many of you have known for yourself, or watched the pain of a parent whose child continually strays? Over and over again a parent will open their arms to welcome back a stray child, even when all around them are telling them it is time to give up. A glimpse of this extra-ordinary, some might even say crazy, love is found there. And God knows us, both individually and corporately, as a parents know their children. Hosea uses imagery to remind us of that kind of love later in this book. He speaks of God being unable to execute judgment, asking – how can a parent who has taught their children how to walk and nurtured them let them go. It would be like cutting off a part of oneself. In chapter 11 Hosea writes: "How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel! For I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst." (Hosea 11:8-9 NRSV) In his book "Peculiar Treasures," Frederick Buechner describes Hosea as wearing a sandwich board that says "God is Love" on the one side, with the other side proclaiming: "There is no end to it." (Peculiar Treasures, Buechner, page 44)

The words of Hosea stand to warn us and to send us out to the world. A warning to mind our behavior – that we can not repeatedly stand outside the covenant that God calls us to and expect that nothing will happen to us. The horror of the children's names are more than enough to warn. The sending forth is that we are to go forth to extend to others the love and mercy of God that Hosea speaks of. Yes, it is a lifestyle that makes no sense to those who have not yet found God, but nonetheless the lifestyle to which we are called. For with Jesus Christ we are sent as co-conspirators with God to be those who bring about the time when in the words of our Psalm: "Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other."