Monday, July 6, 2020            (today’s lectionary)
How to save your marriage alone
This is not just about spouses. It is mostly about Christ and his church.
The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church.
Otherwise, what is Hosea doing? His prophet’s cloak is new and shining, but his husband cloak threatens to fall apart. He and his wife Gomer have three children, but only one of them is his. Gomer  has no interest in “espousing him in fidelity.” She becomes a temple prostitute for Baal. But within five cycles of abandon and restoration, Hosea and Jehovah work together to at last bring this holy family into unity and peace.
And so it is also with Israel, and so it is also with his Church, so it is also with God and with me. The promise rings out new every morning. Not my faithfulness, but God’s.
An Arkansas family physician named Ed Wheat wrote Lovelife for Every Married Couple, which I still use whenever I get to counsel with a married couple. In the book is a necessary, and intriguing chapter title, later excerpted into a pamphlet.
“How to Save Your Marriage Alone.”
There are psychological suggestions in the chapter, of course. But half the chapter recounts the story of Hosea, told in the first person. You can read the whole story here.
I felt a blight upon my soul. My ministry seemed paralyzed by the waywardness of my wife. My prayers seemed to sink downward. But then Jehovah stirred me.
My love (God’s love) flamed again for Gomer and I knew that I could not give her up. But the more I tried to love her, the further she ran from me. My ministry became a pilgrimage of pain, as I became the object of derision. I fell back upon Jehovah.
Just a year ago, on a blushing day at the start of spring, I found myself standing in the slave market, a place I loathed. Why was I there? Then my heart stood still. Gomer stark naked stood up on the block. She was broken and thin as a wisp of smoke. Her hair was matted and in her eye was the flash of madness.
I wept. God whispered to me. I hesitated only a moment. Ten shekels, a man bid. Thirteen! And then I entered the bidding. “Fifteen shekels of silver.”
Another voice shouted, Fifteen shekels and a homer of barley!”
I shouted too. I knew God’s voice inside me. “Fifteen shekels and a homer and half of barley!” And the bidding was done. The people knew me, they knew Gomer, they knew our story. I knew Gomer’s frailty mirrored that of the people watching us, God’s people, Israel. And standing there with Gomer on the block I brought a nearby merchant’s white robe and covered her with it.
My poetic prophetic voice came back to me in a rush. “You, my people, says the Lord, you will come trembling to the Lord in the last days. And my love will NOT GIVE YOU UP but pursue you down your days. I will forgive you and restore you.
And now we sit, our peaceful family of five, in the summer shade under an oak tree not far from my parents’ home. I love Gomer as I love my life.
And we sing the psalms in the morning, and in the evening, and in the morning once again.
Every day I will bless you o Lord.
I will praise your name forever
You are gracious and merciful
And compassionate toward all your works
Yes, Jesus, in all these ways you have destroyed death and even our own deaths, precious in your sight, are subsumed into your eternity.
Courage, daughter, your faith has saved you!
As Luke wrote about another time (Luke 5:17), the healing power was on Jesus that day. Leaving the no-longer-hemorrhaging woman, he came to an official’s house whose girl had died. Jesus hushed the paid mourners singing in their minor keys.
She is not dead but merely sleeping.
They laughed, they ridiculed, they mocked. But not the father, who sent them out. He looked with hope into the eyes of Jesus.
Jesus went into her bedroom and sat down beside this daughter who died.
He came then and took her by the hand
And the little girl arose
Up from the grave she arose!
(Hosea 2, Psalm 145, 2 Timothy 1, Matthew 9)
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