|
Twinbrook Baptist Church Rockville, MD First Sunday after Epiphany January 07, 2007 Pastor: Kip Ingram Kipi1@aol.com |
|
People who knew them both said it would never work. It was the last two people in the world that you could picture being together. Hosea grew up in a quiet, stable family on the solid, upper middle class side of town. He had worked hard in school, been supported by his parents, made good grades, although they didn´t come easy, and received yearly recognition for it. He had been heavily involved in his church and was an Eagle Scout in the local Boy Scout troop. With predictions from many that he would do well, he went off to college with love and support. He worked hard, took his obligations seriously while others around him were slacking off, and finished his degree a semester early. He then moved back to his hometown after graduating and got the good job he had always wanted, the kind of stable, solid job in which he could spend his life working. He rejoined his church to a great welcome, and bought a house in the old neighborhood. He carried himself confidently, was dependable with his word and behavior, and if he wasn´t quite handsome, neither was he ugly. He seemed to have a great deal going for him, yet he was also lonely. Gomer, on the other hand, was anything but ugly. She had always been strikingly beautiful, even as a child. She had been raised by her single mother in a low rent apartment just outside town, and no one in town had ever known her father. Gomer loved school, at least some of it. She never was any good at grades, but she seemed to enjoy the people. The students liked her because she was full of vitality, and she always seemed to be around a good time. And if she wasn´t quite homecoming queen material, she knew she could always turn the eye of any boy in her school. You see, early on she learned that her good looks could help her get along in life, and she learned to accentuate what she had been given. Don´t get me wrong, deep down she truly enjoyed people. In fact, she felt most alive when people were enjoying themselves around her. She loved nothing more than a spontaneous gathering of fun, and she enjoyed meeting new people. In her senior year of high school, she dropped out, packed her suitcase, and left town to go to work for Delta Airlines. ”To meet the world,” she said. She was back, however, in 6 months and working as a waitress at the Coffeehouse out by the Interstate. Several years went by, as did several jobs and a series of boyfriends, and she was a little older and weary, but still pretty. She also still loved a good party, but sometimes wondered to herself where her life was going. One night Hosea had a terrible headache and couldn´t sleep. He couldn´t find any aspirin around the house, so he went down to the 7-11, the only place open that late. When he got to the counter to pay, he realized he had left his wallet at home and had no money. As he struggled with what to do, in walked Gomer to buy a pack of cigarettes. She had just gotten off shift from the Tire Plant and was headed to a friend´s house. As they both stood at the counter, Gomer found out that Hosea had no money for his aspirin. Without a thought, she spontaneously offered to pay it for him. At first Hosea resisted, but then as he turned to look at her directly for the first time, she smiled at him, and he relented. Before he knew it, she had taken her cigarettes and was out the door. He, however, had been struck by lightning. It wasn´t just that she was so good looking, that was surely part of it, but it was more than that. He had been touched by the way she so easily offered a gesture a kindness to a person she did not know. He sensed some goodness in her that made him feel wonderfully strange. As he stood at the counter that evening, he knew that he would have to find her and figure out what had happened in those moments. As he headed out of the 7-11, the clerk reminded him that he had forgotten his aspirin, and it was then Hosea realized that his headache was gone. Hosea wasn´t the only one who felt something that night. As Gomer had left the 7-11, the image of Hosea lingered in her thoughts. Hosea had been several grades ahead of her in school, and she had seen him around town. She had heard he was a decent guy, although he always seemed to be so serious. For a few moments, she allowed herself to imagine what a life with him might be like, with a good man she could trust, a nice home instead of an apartment with noisy neighbors, a good way of life without creditors calling to hassle about overdue bills. Gomer felt a deep sense of peace when she thought about Hosea, but then she would remind herself how silly she was being and turned to something else. The next day, Hosea asked around and found out where Gomer lived. He made up his mind to go see her, and he would use the excuse of paying her back for the aspirin. He had never been very good with women in social situations, but something new and exciting inside was driving him on. He got over to her apartment after work, and she happened to have the day off and be at home that evening. Hosea nervously knocked on the door, and when Gomer opened it, they both realized something was going on between them. Well, they ended up talking at her place all night long. She liked that he listened to herBno feeling or issue was too small. She felt she could trust him in a way she had never known. He liked that she could bring out a kind of playfulness in him with her spontaneity. He felt deeply alive when he was with her. Before long they were seen around town, and you can imagine the gossip these two created. But even before the gossip had enough time to get a good dose of exaggeration, Hosea and Gomer had called together a party of their family and friends. They announced their engagement to the shock of most everyone present. People were shocked with good reason. Those who knew them both knew how very different they were. His friends were somewhat snobbish and refined; her friends were loud and boisterous. His favorite meal was lobster in a white wine sauce; hers was beer and pizza. He was obsessive about shopping with coupons; she liked the feel of a new credit card. Casual dress for him consisted of khaki pants and a button-down shirt; casual dress for her consisted of cut-off jeans and an old rock´n roll t-shirt. He liked opera, she liked soap operas. He liked to do crossword puzzles; she liked to look at the pictures in People magazine. He cherished the set order of his religious tradition; she could take or leave religion, although she did find herself praying sometime. They were so very different that when he announced at the engagement party that for their honeymoon, they would be going to the Holy Land, she thought he meant Las Vegas. When they thought about it, they both understood their differences. They knew it was a risk, but they figured they would find a way to make it work. So the wedding day came, and when they sealed it with a kiss, Hosea´s friends looked away in embarrassment and Gomer´s friends whooped and shouted. After the honeymoon, they moved into the quiet house in his old neighborhood. And things went pretty well at the start. They found ways to enjoy each other and live with their differences. You might even say that both did some growing as they changed with each other. But slowly, almost without their noticing at first, they began to feel and express some tension. He would try to explain to her for the 10th time why they needed to stay on his budget, and she would just roll her eyes. Whenever she wanted to have friends over for a party, he was too tired every time. Things began to escalate between them over time. They would argue back and forth about freedom and control and happiness in the relationship. He knew just what buttons to push with her about what he called her irresponsibility, and she knew his buttons about what she called his need for control. They increasingly stopped arguing at all, and silence grew in the house. Gomer began to go out at night to be with her friends. She told Hosea she was only meeting them at the bar downtown for drinks. Yet she would come home later and later in the evening and into the morning. Hosea knew she had a past, a reputation around town for being with men, but he had never asked her about it before, and he didn´t want to think about it right now. Even so, he didn´t like the person he was becoming with herBalways so angry, always saying just the wrong thing, then feeling lost and powerless at home alone. Finally one night she didn´t come home at all. Hosea had fallen asleep in the living room chair and was awakened when Gomer walked in the next morning. He stood up after a long night of worry and self-recrimination, and for the first time in awhile, he looked at Gomer. He really looked. Her eyes were red and puffy. Her makeup had been smudged, and her typical hair curls had fallen. Her breath was hard with the scent of liquor and smoking. Her striking beauty had given way to a worn down appearance. They sat down and talked and vowed to do better in their love for each other. And things did get a little better for a time, although they still remained bumpy and something somewhat distant. Several months later, Gomer found herself pregnant with their first child. The excitement around the birth of the baby kept them together, as did two more children in as many years. But after the third child, the chasm widened again, and they wandered apart. Hosea had heard some of the rumors around town that he was not the real father of Gomer´s children. He didn´t know what to do with that piece of information. The very thought of it made him sick. Gomer was staying out all night regularly, and although she would give herself to the kids each day as best she could, she had nothing but contempt for Hosea. Finally, she just quit coming home. Hosea heard that she had moved in with some friends in an apartment. He also heard that she was living at an intense pace of parties and drinking and men. Of course, Hosea had an intensity of his own. His emotions toward Gomer ran the full spectrum of anger and wishing her the worst to feeling sorry for himself to feeling out of control and miserable to wanting to move on with his life. ”If this is love,” he thought, ”I don´t ever want to know it again.” Slowly, slowly, things got a little more tolerable for Hosea. He tried to focus on his work and the kids and not on Gomer. He had every intention of avoiding her for the rest of his life. But late one night, he got a call from one of his friends, who also happened to be the deputy sheriff. His friend felt a little sheepish about calling Hosea, but he awkwardly explained that Gomer was in the city jail and not doing well physically. She had been picked up stumbling down the middle of a street just outside a bar earlier that night. Now she was lying in her cell, moaning and mumbling something about Hosea. There was a long silence on the phone. Hosea felt a lump in his throat, and he tried to take a deep breath. Finally, in a voice that didn´t quite sound like his, he said he would be down to bail her out in a few minutes. As he drove downtown, he thought to himself that he must be crazy letting himself get caught up in this. But he also thought about Gomer. He arrived at the jail, paid her bail, and went in to get her. When he first saw her he was shocked. She had lost a lot of weight, her hair was matted and her face was pale and emaciated. He helped her to her feet, and with a supportive arm, walked her out to his car. Hosea wasn´t even sure Gomer recognized him when she mumbled, ”where are we going?” Hosea found himself saying, ”I´m taking you home.” When they got there, Hosea set Gomer up in the spare bedroom next to his. He tucked her in as she fell into a deep sleep, and he quietly sat down in a wicker chair next to the bed. At the jail, he had hardly recognized her. Now, as she lay sleeping, thoughts and feelings began to stir in him. He remembered that night at the 7-11, he remembered the goodness he felt radiating from her which had melted something within him. He remembered how alive he felt when he was with her, how much she brought something good out of him. Of course, he also remembered all the hurt and pain as well, and he felt wrung out emotionally. He looked at her again, her face so very different now, hardened by harsh living. And yet, there was something he still recognized, something about her that he could not let go of. He couldn´t fully explain it, he only knew that in that moment, he loved her, he saw her in all her vulnerable goodness and terrible infidelity, he felt the heavy cost of love, and still, with it all, he loved her. As the night wore on, he thought about many things, about how he too had contributed to their breakup and to Gomer´s fall. He thought about how he had pushed her away, confusing love with control. He resolved in that long night that whatever happened next, he would work to honor her freedom, for he realized that love only has a chance where the goodness of freedom is present. In the days that followed, several of Hosea´s friends called to tell him he was crazy for taking Gomer back into his home. They told him he had every right to put her out, that the law was on his side. But Hosea was interested in a deeper law by now, the law of love. Day by day, he tended to Gomer and nursed her back to health. Day by day, they began to talk and listen to each other in ways that nursed them both back to a deeper kind of health. Gomer noticed that Hosea was different with her now, and she felt something drawing her out in small but good ways. These days she did a lot of thinking about her own life, and she realized that she wanted something more healthy and less self-destructive. She sensed the possibility of that deeper health when she talked with Hosea, and it felt like grace, like coming home to a place that had been there for her all along. To be sure, they both knew the risks. They were no longer naive about what love requires. But they both realized that their love had not died after all, and in those days of healing it felt like hope. One day, their oldest daughter came home from church to show them a picture she had made. It was a beautiful park with trees and flowers and people playing, and high above it in the corner was a brightly colored sun shining down on it all. But what really caught the attention of Hosea and Gomer were the words written next to the sun, words of scripture actually. There in deep blue letters were the words: ”God is Love.” It struck them both at the same time what God´s love could mean. They looked at each other with eyes that had seen a lot, eyes full of tears and happiness and God only knows what else. They looked at each other, and they both knew. This is the story of Hosea and Gomer and God and all of us. In the book that bears his name, Hosea gets a glimpse of the depths of God´s love as he learns to love and be loved by Gomer. Frederick Buechner writes imaginatively that when the prophet Hosea first begins his ministry, he wears a prophetic sandwich board which read on the one side, ”The End is at Hand,” and on the other side, AWatch Out.” After Gomer comes into his life, Hosea changes his sandwich board to read on one side ”God is Love,” and on the other side, ”There´s No End to It.” May we all find and embrace God in the mystery of love which comes to our lives in so many ways. i. I am grateful to Brett Younger and to Frederick Buechner for the idea of preaching Hosea and Gomer as a modern love story, although this version is my own.. |
|
