March 28, 2021 ~ Palm / Passion Sunday ~ Zoom Worship Meeting, Sermon & Sermon Video Link

Zoom Worship link

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/7GDMN-FyfkwyaXHQ28jmH-wNdozYE2Y_Q7Pph8fM6dZsk0-VXgRcXaG2_VK0eci2.juRkMXmMFbIX9igM

Palm/Passion Sunday                                         03/28/21—Highland—Meute

“God Laments”

Hosea 11: 1-9; Luke 19: 41-44; Matthew 23: 37-39

Series based on Horizons Bible Study “Into the Light: Finding Hope through Prayers of Lament”

Pearl: God laments to the object of his love.

Function: To lead listeners into encounter with the relational nature of God such that it “breaks God’s heart” when we depart from his and her ways, so our response should be confession and repentance (return to God/God’s ways).

There is a way of speaking about God which comes out of scripture which has always struck me and stayed with me. It finds its ways into my prayers and in how I address God. It comes from God’s holiness.

1. It is described in Hosea 11:9: “…for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst….”
   1. Indeed, God is without beginning or ending, and we believe is the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of everything.
   1. God is big…and so radically different from us. Remember, God is Creator and we are creature.
2. I am reminded of Job which we read a couple of weeks ago when we considered “lamenting life.” When God finally revealed himself it was in complete holy otherness (Job 38-41 selected verses):
   1. “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
   1. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
   1. Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb…and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors?
   1. Have you commanded the morning since your days began?
      1. In barrage after barrage of impossible question after incredible question all the way through the long chapters 38-41, God reveals the nature of his holiness and absolute unequaled status as Creator and Sustainer of all things.
      1. The questions come one after another. It is no wonder that when God finishes, Job simply, meekly withdraws his many questions and demands saying, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know…I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:3-6).
      1. He is satisfied with the response of the One Holy God who is Almighty over all! He is satisfied and he is humbled beyond measure through his encounter with the One Holy God.

The One Holy God is almighty over all! At the same time we also are aware that this One Holy God relates with creation with deeply strong, steadfast love. We know this from the way in which God also laments. God laments at the separation that exists between Godself and creation, you and me.

1. This is clearly apparent from the prophetic book of Hosea.
   1. God instructed the prophet Hosea to take a wife to himself who was a prostitute. God told Hosea to do this as an object lesson to the people that would illustrate how God feels. God felt as though his people were like prostitutes. They were being unfaithful. They were running after other gods who were not God.
      1. Through the tragic prophet Hosea God was demonstrating his feelings of being betrayed by his people. He was their God. And yet, they chased after other gods.
   1. It is clear in the Lord’s lamentation as recorded in chapter 11:
      1. “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
      1. The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.
      1. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.
      1. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them” (11: 2-4).
         1. God’s lament is that of a parent dealing with beloved children. God relates to us like a father and like a mother. This is not the only place where we have this image.
         1. Of course, Jesus referred to God as Father, all the time. Jesus sealed the notion that God relates to us as a parent with children.
         1. And one thing we know about parental love for children is that it is very strong indeed. It is a most powerful love. The image of God as parent is probably the best analogy we have for our relationship with God.
            1. Incidentally I like the Pope’s comment the other day on Twitter: “Mary is not only the bridge joining us to God; she is more. She is the road that God travelled to reach us, and the road that we must travel in order to reach him.”
            1. I know we differ theologically and mainly think of Jesus as being the “bridge” but we can join our Catholic family in revering Mary as an avenue to God. It really won’t hurt anything to have another avenues to God!
         1. As parents suffer when their children run away from them and seek to distance themselves from them, so does God suffer when we seek different gods and choose to depart from his ways of goodness, justice, and wholeness.
            1. God wants to be deeply connected to us at the heart level. In Hosea 7:14 God laments, “They do not cry to me from the heart…”
            1. God doesn’t want some cheap imitation of intimacy with her people. She wants the real thing. She wants our whole hearts!
            1. It is apparent from God’s lament that we have the ability; that is, we have the power to break the heart of God.
         1. The nature of God’s steadfast and faithful love toward us is “unchanging” as is stated in Hosea 14:8c, “I am like an evergreen cypress; your faithfulness comes from me.”
            1. The artwork for this week’s installment displays the mighty redwoods to illustrate the nature of God’s unchanging and everlasting desire to walk with us and to have us live according to the ways of God.
               1. Most always the reason for God’s displeasure with us has to do with our wandering from the law of God and the ways of God.
            1. The beautiful and ancient redwoods are powerful reminders of God’s long-lasting, steadfast love and faithfulness toward creation and the stability of his just and righteous reign.

God’s people have always wandered away and strayed toward other beings and other things that cannot hold a candle to God. Nonetheless we do it. What exactly does the Lord desire for us?

1. The answer comes in part from Hosea 6:6, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
   1. God lamented, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…and…have forgotten the law of…God.”
      1. They were not familiar with the ways of God. God was not pleased with the priests due to the people’s lack of the knowledge of God. That gives me a shiver as a pastor charged with the responsibility of imparting the knowledge of God to you.
   1. So God wants people to be in relationship with him and he wants us to live according to his righteous and just ways.
      1. Basically God wants our true devotion.
      1. God wants our whole-hearted, faithful devotion which is the same love that God has for us.
      1. Just as we want mutual love so does God want it with humanity.
2. God lamented that people’s devotion was hot and cold, that it was fickle.
   1. This is what is so hard when friends and family become estranged.
      1. You find yourself saying, “Bob, it’s me. Talk to me. This is Ray. Come on, it’s me! You know me.”
         1. You are basically saying, “Come on, and remember our friendship. Remember all the history we have together. Are you forgetting all of this?”
      1. This was the nature of what God said through Hosea, “Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.
         1. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them…How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender” (11: 3-4, 8).
            1. A wonderful image for God. God holding us up to her cheek. God bending down to feed us as mothers and fathers feed their children.

We lament to God. The question is who does God bring lamentation to?

1. God brings his lamentation to us. God laments toward his people.
   1. This amplifies and makes clear the real and true way in which God relates with us.
2. God laments the way in which his church:
   1. Strays from justice and righteousness;
   1. Fails to care for the needy;
   1. Runs away from the poor;
   1. Worships cheap imitation gods which are not gods.
   1. Looks the other way when people are being targeted with hate;
   1. Worship money and sex and power;
3. So the question is what can we possibly do for our God who laments our estrangement and waywardness?
   1. We can go to confession and we can repent. It is a matter of returning to the Lord. In Hosea 6:1 is the summons, “Come, let us return to the Lord” and later in 10:12: “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness on you.” Think of today’s rain as God pouring righteousness on creation.
   1. This is the avenue to the One Holy God who loves us like a parent: confession and repentance.
      1. Frederick Buechner wrote about confession in his book Wishful Thinking, “To confess your sin is not to tell God anything God does not already know. Until you confess them they are an abyss between you. When you confess them they become the Golden Gate Bridge.”
   1. Our Bible Study author said, “Confession is what we do to keep ourselves connected to God.”
      1. Our continual response to God who laments our estrangement is to confess and repent.
   1. There is a banner someone posted on both ends of their property near our home a few months into the pandemic and is still there which reads: “Repent quickly; the Messiah is coming.”
      1. It annoyed me right away. It still gets on my nerves. I have an idea what they are saying by putting it up and I think I might differ theologically.
      1. But then again, it is a good message. It is a reminder that we constantly need to return to the Lord and to redirect ourselves to God’s ways of justice and righteousness in order to realize God’s kingdom on earth!

It wasn’t only God through Hosea who lamented our estrangement. Jesus himself wept often enough at the people’s dullness, their persistent missing of the point, that some thought he was Jeremiah, who was known as the weeping prophet.

Jesus wailed, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! (Matthew 23:37).

Holy Week is a good time to “repent quickly; the Messiah is coming!” Confess and redirect your way to the Lord who loves you and to God’s ways of justice and righteousness.