July 28 2013“WANTED : Love” Hosea 1.2-10 Pastor Jacqueline Hines

 “Love is a many splendored thing,” so goes the song from the 50’s. ‘It is like a touch that makes the heart sing, like a rose that blossoms early. Love is a reason to be alive.’ “It’s what the world needs now!” says another songwriter. God knows these songs are true! Love is the perfect and most pleasant solution to all our problems, the answer to all our questions. Love is the foundation upon which all good things are built. Love is bigger and better than we will ever know. God is love!

There is no doubt that we all want and need an abundance of love in our lives. We especially need to receive God’s love and to give God’s love to others. The book of Hosea which we have read this morning is about love. It’s about how to get all the love we need. It’s about how to give all the love that someone else needs.

Hosea was a spokesperson for God. He was a preacher, a teacher, a leader of spiritual things. God guided him in his marriage to Gomer, but the relationship required more love than he had to give. Hosea had to go deeper into divine treasures if he was going to give all the love that his woman needed. Hosea had to go deeper into divine treasures if he was going to get all the love that he needed. Love is a God thing.

True love comes from a relationship with God, being close enough so God can love us, strengthen us, guide us, heal us, and bless us so we can love one another, strengthen one another, guide, heal and bless one another. The world has its own brand of love, and if you have lived long enough, you have had the unfortunate experience of finding love in all the wrong and ungodly places. The world has fake love. It looks so real and shines so bright, sometimes we don’t even mind. God’s love is real, genuine, and worth a million. God’s love is worth the price we pay. It’s worth the effort, worth the worry, worth the sacrifice, and worth the struggle.

Part of our covenant with one another in the family of God is that we respect the fact that some days we have to struggle if we are going to be stronger. You have heard the story of a family that brought in two cocoons that were about to hatch. They watched expectantly as the first butterfly squeezed very slowly and painfully through a tiny hole that it chewed in one end of the cocoon. After it came out it was exhausted and lay flat for about ten minutes. Finally, it got up and flew out the open window on its beautiful new wings.

The family decided to help the second butterfly so that it would not have to go through such an excruciating ordeal. So, as it began to emerge, they carefully cut the cocoon open, but instead of sprouting wings and flying away like the first butterfly, in about ten minutes, it just quietly died. Our human struggle also makes US strong, beautiful and helps US to soar.

Hosea struggled in his family relationships. It was not easy. His wife was content to be far away from God’s love. She was not even trying to be a faithful wife. It is no wonder their first child was named after a historic, bloody battlefield called Jezreel. Their second child was named “unloved” and “unforgiving” in the Hebrew language, and the third child’s name was called “godless,” “no kin to God”

Each of us is known for something. We get a name, a reputation, a label for our activities and our attitudes – the great ones and the not so great ones. We can all relate to being called a spokesperson for God like Hosea. We have testified of the goodness of God in worship, coffee hour, or over the phone. We have shared the Good News with others. We have given a word of wisdom and comfort in due season.  We may also know what it is to be named the one who turned our back on God, who loves to fight, who has issues with a certain person and desperately needs to forgive in order to move on with their life. We may have even had a year or two when we were named the one who acted like everything but a child of God.

Whatever name we have been called, this life is not about our name, for there is a name above all names. His name is Jesus, savior, the lily of the valley, the bright and morning star, comforter, giver of life, matchmaker, mind fixer and heart regulator. This short journey we are on is about the perfect love God has available for us and for each and every one of our relationships. God’s love is in us and around us, always ready to blossom. With every breath we take, we know God’s Spirit is living in us. With every beat of our heart, we hear his love calling our name. God’s love is a forever love, a love that grows as we grow, struggles as we struggle.

We know God’s love best when we pray, when we serve, when we fast, when we read and study scriptures. Love grows when we do good deeds and follow the Ten Commandments, when we honor the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion where the Lord is present in special ways to heal, forgive, guide and strengthen us if we want to be healed, forgiven, guided, and strengthened for the journey.

One way God shows love to us is by putting prayers in our hearts that help us grow. Years ago, the Holy Spirit gave me this prayer to pray and help the body of Christ to grow. “Lord, deliver us from crying, craving, and criticism.” I have reflected on that prayer over the years. “Lord, deliver us from crying, craving, and criticism.

Love delivers us from crying. There are times when we feel sorry for ourselves and we cry and complain when love is urging us to step up our game and seek God with all our heart until we hear with our spiritual ears a plan of action. Love delivers us from crying when it’s time to act on God’s plan.

Love delivers us from cravings. The world is full of temptations and alternatives to God. It is very easy to be deceived, to get caught up in Satan’s traps and tricks. Jesus says his way is easy, and it is. The way of the world is shiny and shallow. Jesus’ ways are holy, powerful, full of richness and depth. If we take one step in the right direction, God will take two to help us. It’s a matter of choice. As we trust God, day by day, love delivers us from craving the world’s temptations that have no power to bless us but are bound to steal, kill, and destroy.

Love delivers us from criticism. Most of us know what it is to be criticized, to be doused in someone’s contempt and rejection. Criticism can be an easy art to learn and a bear to unlearn. Just as we are created for water, food, and family every day, we are created to give and receive affirmation and acceptance, care, comfort, consideration and kindness every day. Holy things happen when love delivers us from criticism, when we overflow with affirmation to others and from others, when we overflow with acceptance to others and from others, when we overflow with care, comfort, consideration, and kindness to others and from others.

Whatever the struggles in our relationships, God still has a purpose and a plan. Whatever our need, whatever our situation, God’s plan begins and ends with a covenant that Hosea had with God and his family, to love those who may not be 100% faithful, to love children of God who are just as prone to fuss and fight as to exercise their faith, who hold grudges though they want to humble themselves and forgive, who have cause others to suffer during their seasons of rebellion against the will and way of God.

So, the lessons Hosea learned about love are the same lessons we are learning. The prayers we pray for love are the same prayers Hosea prayed, “Lord, deliver us from crying, craving, and criticism” that your love can flow from heart to heart and mind to mind, so that we can step up our game, grow deeper into a love that is Holy, overflow with comfort and care for ourselves and for others all day long, and we will forever be called children of the living God.   Amen.