The Wondrous Cross: Where Love and Justice Meet by Ridley Hall

Hosea 2.14-23 14

‘Therefore I am now going to allure her;  I will lead her into the wilderness  and speak tenderly to her.

There I will give her back her vineyards,  and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.  There she will respond as in the days of her youth,  as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

‘In that day,’ declares the Lord,  ‘you will call me “my husband”;  you will no longer call me “my master”.

I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;  no longer will their names be invoked.

In that day I will make a covenant for them  with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky  and the creatures that move along the ground.  Bow and sword and battle  I will abolish from the land,  so that all may lie down in safety.

I will betroth you to me for ever;  I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,  in love and compassion.

I will betroth you in faithfulness,  and you will acknowledge the Lord.

‘In that day I will respond,’  declares the Lord –  ‘I will respond to the skies,  and they will respond to the earth;

and the earth will respond to the grain,  the new wine and the olive oil,  and they will respond to Jezreel.

I will plant her for myself in the land;  I will show my love to the one I called   “Not my loved one”. I will say to those called “Not my people”,  “You are my people”;  and they will say, “You are my God.”’

13 April 2014 Holy Trinity Morning Service Hosea 2.14-23

The Wondrous Cross: Where Love and Justice Meet Well good morning everyone. Today, as we approach Easter, we’re continuing our series on the wondrous cross, and this morning we’re looking to understand the cross as that place where God’s love and justice meet. And to help us, we’re going to be thinking through our reading from Hosea. In particular, we’re going to be thinking through the idea of a covenant - both in Hosea’s prophecy and then again in relation to the death of Jesus. I chose the reading from Hosea because I think it helps us get to a Biblical understanding of love and justice. To be honest, I think the title of our sermon can lead us into a bit of predicament. Because it suggests to us that there are these two things ‘love’ and ‘justice’ that somehow get connected on the cross - and this is a problem because in every day life we tend to think quite different things about love and about justice. So, thinking about love for instance. Love can of course, mean all sorts of things, but I suspect for us today it centres on the heart love takes us into a world of relationships - of romance, feelings, of warmth, caring, kindness, excitement, fulfilment. Care and concern. Perhaps, if we wanted to summarise, we could think of love as being, above all things, personal. It’s about people and their relationships. When we think about justice, we find ourselves in a different world - a legal world, a world of laws and those who make and

then uphold the law in the face of those who break it or who are tempted to break it. My experience of the legal world is rather limited, but to be honest that’s not going to stop me making a few observations on the country’s justice system! And my limited experience has led me to believe that the way justice is administered in the current system is rather impersonal. I used to work in financial services marketing and one of the things I used to do on a fairly regular basis was review the terms and conditions of the credit cards we offered. Our Ts & Cs were a neatly folded insert of several thousand words in tiny print that laid out the legal obligations of the credit contract the bank was undertaking with the customer and the varying penalties that would be imposed should either party break their obligations. If you have a credit card you will have signed a piece of paper that says you have read and understood such an agreement. Of course, you’ve all read it, haven’t you. Otherwise you wouldn’t have signed to say that you had. So, we would issue credit cards under this legal agreement, that everyone had obviously read, and then proceed to enforce that agreement. You forgot to make your monthly payment? £20 fee. You overran your credit limit. £20 fee. You lost your card and you’d like a new one? £20 fee. You’ve borrowed £5,000 and now you can’t pay it back - we’ll take you to court so we can get our money back. All perfectly legal - it’s in the contract. All utterly impersonal. Now, when we come to consider the ideas of love and justice meeting in the cross, I think most of us begin with something like the views I’ve just outlined. Love is personal and caring, justice is

impersonal and punitive. And then we take these apparently

They are of course words from the wedding service - a covenant

opposite things and try and squeeze them together in an

service - a service that marks the start of a new and particular

understanding of the crucifixion of Jesus.

kind of relationship. And the promises and statements of the

And it doesn’t really work.

service define the covenant of marriage - they tell everyone what

There is another way of looking at both love and justice - a way we have heard about in our reading from Hosea, and that’s through the idea of covenant. A covenant brings together both love and justice, but in a very different way to the ways we usually think about them. In our reading today we hear God speaking, through the prophet Hosea, explaining how he is going to relate to Israel (vv18-19): In that day I will make a covenant for them… I will betroth you to me for ever… I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. In these words, God promises to start a new relationship with Israel - a relationship that lasts forever, that is loving and just and compassionate.

sort of relationship this is going to be. They lay out what each person can expect from the other. And when we look at it, we see that the covenant of the wedding service is quite different to our usual ideas of love and justice. On the love side, there’s no mention in the wedding vows about feelings, or romance, or excitement. The vows lay out what each person intends to do, regardless of how they feel at any given moment. On the justice side, there’s no mention of specific obligations, and because of this there’s no mention of any penalties if you don’t meet the obligations. There are no inherent £20 fees built into the marriage vows. Some people of a more legalistic disposition may feel that is a failing on a part of the marriage service, but thankfully they’re not in charge of writing the vows so we can

But covenant is more than just another name for relationship, it’s

ignore them. It’s one of the few instances when we can quite

a particular sort of relationship. You may be sitting there

safely ignore a lawyer’s opinion!

searching through your mental dictionary trying to find the entry

So, in Hosea we read of God promising to start a new relationship

for ‘covenant’, but I can save you the trouble. Here are some words from a modern covenant that I think you may be familiar with… I Rob, take you Anna, to be my wife. To have and to hold, from this day forward; for better, for worse; for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us to part. According to God’s holy law. In the presence of God I make this vow.

with Israel - a new covenant - and this new covenant, like the marriage service, changes the relationship between the two parties. First, the covenant will change the way Israel speaks of God. ‘In that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘my husband’ you will no longer call me ‘my master’. In this covenant, God will not appear as an impersonal master, as someone who lays down laws and issues commands. Israel will know God in a much more intimate way - not as master - but as husband.

And from this change, many other things follow. This whole

Remember the words from the last meal Jesus shared with his

relationship will be one of righteousness and justice, love and

disciples - we still say them today - he took a cup of wine and

compassion.

said this is my blood of the new covenant.

And, finally, the new covenant will draw new people into

At the cross God makes a new covenant - a new relationship

relationship with God: ‘I will say to those called ‘not my people’

between people and God.

‘you are my people’ and they will say ‘you are my God’.

And the new covenant changed the way people spoke about God.

All of this is wonderful - it is a great thing for God to begin a new

Remember the Centurion standing at the foot of the cross,

covenant with Israel, one that changes the whole way God and

overseeing the execution of Jesus. Remember what he said at the

Israel will relate to each other.

moment of Jesus death - ‘truly, this man was the Son of God.’

But there’s a problem - for in Hosea, the new covenant is

At the cross God is known by a new name - Jesus Christ.

promised, and promised for a time in the future. All through our

And in this new covenant, many new people are drawn into

reading we hear the words ‘In that day,

In that day,

In that

day,’ God promises a new covenant, certainly, but for Hosea it has not arrived yet - that day that God speaks of is still to come. When we turn to the New Testament, we find the Jewish people of Jesus’ time still waiting for that day to come. They were waiting for the day when God would fulfil his promises to his people. They were waiting for God to act, to renew the covenant with Israel. They were waiting for Hosea’s words to come true. And when we read the gospels in particular we sense a great and growing excitement - because in the person of Jesus, all sorts of people start to wonder if God might act through him. There’s the sense that God is about to fulfil his promises, and he’s going to do it through this amazing travelling teacher and healer. And the first Christians believed that God did indeed fulfil his promises to Israel through Jesus - but in the most unexpected way. They believed they were fulfilled somehow in Jesus death.

relationship with God. Remember the words from John’s gospel for God so love the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. At the cross God’s love is shown to the whole world. What about us? In Hosea’s day, God’s people lived as if God wasn’t there. The image Hosea uses is of an unfaithful spouse the people strayed away from God, they loved other things, they turned their back on God and rejected God. Maybe we can say the same thing about ourselves. Maybe we too are living as if God doesn’t exist, or doesn’t care, or doesn’t matter. And if that’s true for any of us, let us for a moment consider the cross of Jesus Christ - the place where God renews his covenant with the world. And if we need to, let us ask God to begin a new relationship with us today… Amen