A sermon preached at St. Mary’s (Iffley, Rose Hill and Donnington) by Graham Low on 10th July 2024

Our first reading today comes from the prophecy of Hosea, one of so-called minor prophets, minor because of the brevity of their books compared with Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Hosea follows the prophet Amos who speaks to a prosperous and peaceful Israel. Now Hosea speaks to his people, suffering from war with Assyria, and living in virtual anarchy. Four kings of Israel have been assassinated. Their land is being overrun by the Assyrians, so Damascus and then Samaria fall.

Hosea’s way of life is not entirely clear. However, the first three chapters indicate how Hosea deals with the prostitute Gomer, who has forsaken God. Instructed to by God, Hosea marries her, with three children born of previous relationships, and then treats her, unfaithful as she is, as God deals with his people. Hosea’s personal life is an embodiment of God’s redeeming love. Today’s passage is prophecy in the form of the divine compassion and redeeming love that will not let Israel go. This is the hallmark of this book.

The Old Testament is very rich in texts which are prophetic about many issues of the times. But it is not always clear what marks out a prophet. It has been said that prophecy consists in catching the beat of God’s thoughts and in telling them. In general we can see that this accords with the prophets of the Old Testament, and it may also be said of our Lord, in whom God’s qualities are made supremely manifest. The lives of the early Christians were founded on prophecy. But we may ask: what has happened to prophecy in the last two thousand years? Have we turned our ears away from this tradition? Do we expect to hear prophetic voices? It may be that the institutional church has become so set in its ways that we have ended up, as a commentator has said, as God’s frozen people. Others ask if theological study has become so academic that it no longer reaches ordinary people. Have we wrapped up the best of God’s ways within the biblical texts, and not let them speak to our troubled world? Do we sometimes fail to stop and miss the still small voice? We are a people called to live in hope. Hope has a prophetic element.

The fundamental challenge about prophecy is identifying true from false prophets. There is no sure criterion. The theological understanding of prophecy is that it is done in God’s name and expresses a judgement on the contemporary from a divine and disinterested standpoint. Prophets are not necessarily aware of their role. They are often difficult people, apparently over-committed and repetitive in their insistences. Prophecy is not essential for life. Its utterances are not necessarily appropriate or right. Prophecy must be very well informed to carry weight. Prophecy is in part predictive, and in that sense may not have a theological link. There is a great danger of naivety if the context and the source of the inspiration for prophecy are not clear. The most convincing prophecy is marked by passionate clarity about the human predicament and its ultimate destination and wellbeing. It is a striking characteristic of Christian prophecy that it is normally directed at both the ecclesiastical and the political bodies of the world, which are always linked.

And so prophecy can be a critique of the institutional church for failing to proclaim a relevant gospel of justice to the world and to live that gospel itself. Equally, prophecy may be a critique of civil society for cruelty and discrimination of many kinds.  

Christian prophecy may point to the reality of tragedy, but it also expresses hope. It is thus emphatically future-oriented. At times, tragedy may seem absolute. Indeed, there is little mitigation of tragedy in much of the prophecy in Hosea or in the other Old Testament prophets, denouncing Israel in the harshest terms. And yet the prophet always insists that there is another way, the way of the living God, and the future remains open. It remains hopeful. True prophets may sound gloomy, but the are far from merely prophets of gloom. Indeed Hosea and the other prophets of his time have left an indelible stamp on later thought about God and about human history.

May we always have the grace to listen to prophecy prayerfully and thoughtfully and to respond as the spirit leads us. Amen.