Making Waves
A Meditation on Hosea 5:15–6:6 for Proper 5A
WHEN WE WANT GOD TO “GET THEM”
It’s difficult to imagine it. What I would say is not a dogma of faith, but my personal thought: I like to think hell is empty; I hope it is.
These words were spoken by Pope Francis in January 2024 in an interview on Italian television.1 While his hope should not be particularly surprising, the reactions that followed from people of faith are shocking. That people who claim to follow the crucified Christ should be more offended by a pontiff hoping for an empty hell than by millions of people spending eternity in conscious torment is beyond me. But this is the world we have.
As a child, when someone did something we thought was questionable or against what we wanted, my friends and I would often jokingly warn, ”God will get you for that!” Tragically, the response to Pope Francis’ hope reveals that all too many of us say these words with deadly seriousness and even glee. As human beings, we have yet to evolve beyond our primitive need for judgment on our enemies and our fear that without retributive justice, evil people will “get away” with their destructiveness, leaving those they hurt without healing or closure. Balancing the scales has not given us the world we long for. It simply perpetuates the hell populated by all too many innocent people in this world.
The questions of judgment and justice, both in our personal lives and in our society, are spiritual issues. They speak to the health of our souls and of our humanity. And right now, in today’s world, they are deeply important issues to address.
LOVE, NOT SACRIFICE
When Jesus’ disciples were confronted by some religious leaders who were uncomfortable with his choice to socialise with Matthew, the tax collector, and his socially unacceptable friends, Jesus responded: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” (Matt. 9:12–13 NKJV).
The quote at the heart of this response is from the prophet Hosea, and Jesus repeats it later in 12:7, when another group of religious leaders are offended by his disciples picking grain to eat and by his healing of a man’s withered hand on the sabbath. Clearly, these words were extremely important to Jesus and his message.2
It is easy to assume that Jesus’ meaning here is simple, but even just a little scratching beneath the surface reveals some surprising insights. It is common to read Jesus’ words about “sinners” as referring to Matthew and his questionable friends. And it is common to read the words about the “righteous” as referring to the religious leaders. But the quote from Hosea tells a different story.
Hosea’s prophecy has God speaking these words through the prophet to the people of Israel who believed they were righteous because of their faithful religious observance. God, however, viewed them as sinful because they had failed to live with love and justice toward one another and toward the most vulnerable in their society.3 This was exactly the problem Jesus had with the religious leaders.
Many of those who were considered “sinners” in Jesus’ day were simply doing their best to survive in a world where, for various reasons, they were denied access to a sustainable life. And so, Jesus’ friendship with these outcasts was probably less about making them behave in more socially acceptable ways and more about exposing through his actions the injustice and lack of love that were inherent in the religious and social systems of his day.
Jesus was aware of the constant struggle to address evil, sin, brokenness, and cruelty in the world. He knew that the religious leaders would have been committed to defending God’s holiness and to preserving the laws and requirements that ensured an orderly and peaceful society. As we still do today, they would have been worried that a lack of retributive justice, of punishment for wrongdoing, would result in chaos and people doing whatever they please, regardless of the impact on others. God’s honour and human goodness could only be sustained, they believed, if people knew that God would “get” those who disobeyed. And Jesus also would have known that Hosea’s prophecy flowed from the prophet’s own struggle with these questions.
Hosea’s prophecy begins with the rather provocative narrative of the prophet’s marriage to a prostitute. The first three chapters describe her unfaithfulness to her husband, and his prophecies that Israel was behaving toward God in the same way. In Israel’s case, they were turning their backs on God and embracing the worship and values of the Canaanite gods, they were seeking safety from the rising power of Assyria in alliances with either Syria or Egypt, and they were ignoring the poor and vulnerable in their own society. And for this, Hosea preached, God would “get” them—they would be punished. Except that Hosea himself seemed to wrestle with what this meant.
The people were living destructively and doing harm to themselves and one another. This meant that they needed to be set right—and for this to happen, they needed to be punished. This was how God was seen, and this was how the world worked in Hosea’s time. For many people today, this is still how God is seen and how the world works.4
But Hosea wrestled with this, because he had begun to glimpse the vision of God that was revealed more completely in Jesus: that God desires love and not sacrifice. That, in the same way that Hosea kept taking his wife back, God continued to reach out to the people of Israel, seeking to forgive and heal them, while desperately calling them to live with mercy and kindness themselves.5
It’s not that God had a fragile ego and the people weren’t being adoring enough. It’s that their empty, false worship of God and their well-performed rituals that didn’t touch their hearts or lives, were killing them and bringing destruction on the whole nation. And when Jesus quoted Hosea, he was confronting the religious leaders with the same challenge. He was asking them to consider whether they could truly be faithful to God while ignoring the needs of the marginalised, and while living in ways that hurt themselves and others. He was calling them to consider that their worship meant to lead them to live with mercy and justice for all, that justice was the point of worship, and the best expression of it.
THE RIPPLES WE CREATE
In chaos theory, scientists speak of the butterfly effect.6 Essentially, this means that small actions can have a disproportionate impact, for better or worse. Mindless words, careless treatment of others, and even thoughtless votes (or no votes) in elections can and do literally change the world. We know this. The small ripples of care or chaos that we send into the world often become waves of creativity or destruction that reach far beyond our small circles of influence.
We tend to believe fairly easily that this is true for evil and destruction—which is why we become so anxious about the idea of releasing retributive justice. But the great challenge is for us to believe that this is also true of positive things. Careful, compassionate words, kind and generous treatment of others, forgiving those who have hurt us, refusing to ignore the humanity of those we resist, and voting for justice even when it seems futile can all shift the world and our personal lives in a positive direction. We just need to recognise and trust this enough to stay committed to love and justice even when it’s difficult—and to resist the urge to give in to our reptilian hunger for payback.
Hosea’s prophecy, and Jesus’ quoting of it when he was challenged for befriending outcasts, are a call to believe that the values and ways of God’s reign can sustain joy, creativity, love, friendship, beauty, and goodness in our lives even when the world is broken and ugly. And they are also a call for us to refuse to hide in performative religion, and to allow our worship to inspire, and be expressed in, lives of compassion, mercy, and fairness.
PRACTICING LOVE AND JUSTICE
As we meditate on Hosea’s prophecy, I invite you to engage in a sacred practice to bring the prophet’s message into your heart and life. Begin by identifying any others whom you would wish God would “get”, would punish. Consider what stories you tell about those people, what words you use to speak of them, and what images or symbols represent or describe them for you. Compare this with the stories, language, and symbols you use for yourself, and ask yourself how your natural stance toward these people might be ignoring or denying their humanity.
What would happen if you considered applying the stories, words, and symbols you use for these others to yourself? Where might they be true of you, too? And where might the stories, words, and symbols you apply to yourself also be true for them, even if only in a small way?
Finally, for the next week, consider making love and justice a ritual that you perform in the daily routines of your life. Be intentional about greeting others, even those with whom you struggle. Seek to serve even those people in your life that you deem unworthy of grace. And be aware of how small acts of kindness can send ripples of goodness and healing out into your world. Note how it feels to live this way, and mark any changes that embodying love and justice bring to your attitude, speech, actions, and relationships.
While it is natural and part of our evolutionary heritage to want God to “get” those who hurt us, it is not the way to build the world of justice and love that we seek. We have the world we have because we live the way we live. If we want a world of justice and love, let’s become people who send ripples of justice and mercy into our world, trusting that in time, it will become a wave that washes injustice and cruelty away.
Cindy Wooden, “Pope Francis says he hopes hell is ‘empty’,” Catholic News Service, January 15, 2024; https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/01/15/pope-francis-resign-interview-246936/.
Bo Lim, “Commentary on Hosea 5:15-6:6,” Working Preacher, June 7, 2026; https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-10/commentary-on-hosea-515-66-3.
Ibid.
David G. Garber, Jr., “Commentary on Hosea 5:15-6:6,” Working Preacher, June 11, 2023; https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-10/commentary-on-hosea-515-66-2.
Terence E. Fretheim, “Commentary on Hosea 5:15-6:6,” Working Preacher, June 8, 2008; https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-10/commentary-on-hosea-515-66.
John Briggs and David F. Peat. Seven Life Lessons of Chaos: Spiritual Wisdom from the Science of Change. (HarperCollins, 1999), Kindle, 31.
This feels like a profound exhale for a tired soul. There is so much comforting reality in the line, 'We have the world we have because we live the way we live.' Refusing to smooth over the rough edges of how hard it is to extend grace to people we deem unworthy, while still inviting us to try it for a single week, is such a validating and encouraging posture. Thank you for putting this calming, beautiful challenge out into the world.