Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Hosea 11:1-11


Last week, in the Gospel reading, Jesus told a story about the friend at midnight. You remember this one, it's the story where, when his neighbor came knocking, the friend finally got out of bed not out of love but because the other, basically, annoyed him into doing so. Despite the fact that it sometimes feels like this is the most effective means of prayer, this story was never meant as an allegory for how God relates to us.


Today's reading from Hosea could be said to set us straight in that kind of thinking. Amidst the prophecy, there is something important revealed about the Divine character. You see, says the Holy One, it is God I am and not a human being. I don't act the way you act. I don't react the way you react. I know you think that I do, but that's because you're limited by your experience as human beings. And, naturally, that's how you think I am—just like one of you. So, since you're sometimes so drained by the needs of others, since, at times, you don't want to get out of bed to answer the door, since there are moments when you are grumpy and irritable, naturally, you think that I am as well.


But, God says, I'm not like that. You don't drain me. You don't have to convince me to get out of bed and give you what you need. I'm not going to give you scorpions when you ask for eggs or stones for bread. Though, because I can't always explain what's going on, it can seem like that's exactly what I'm doing. Remember, though, that I'm not like that. I'm not like mortals.


And yet, by the mystery of the Incarnation, the One-who-made-all-things does know intimately what it is like to be mortal. In Christ, the immortal knew what it was to be few of days. During those thirty-odd years on earth, the one who is not bound by the limits of time and space knew the past as memory, the moment as fleeting, and tomorrow as uncertain. In that brief miracle when the Divine walked among us, the self-sustaining-one knew what it was to be drained, exhausted, and irritable.


This, in itself, is a miracle. But the even greater miracle is that the experience of humanity was not just a brief, fleeing moment—an experiment that met its close. No in that mystery called the Ascension, humanity became a part of God's continuing existence. And we are given the assurance that the Immortal did not just know what it means to be mortal, but remembers and continues that experience.


"God I am," Hosea's prophecy declares, "and not a human being." But, this doesn't mean that I don't understand what it means to be human.


Immortal Love, your ways are not our ways nor your thought ours. But I thank you that you understand my thoughts, moods, struggles and mortality.