Hosea: Systemic Sin and Seeking Redemption

Message for worship on the seventh day of the Sixth Month, 2026 given by Elizabeth Terney

Willing to Weep - Melanie Weidner

Hosea 5:15-6:6

From the Inclusive Bible Translation. This translation uses the tetragrammaton – the four letters YHWH – used to indicate the proper personal name of God in the Old Testament. I will pronounce YHWH as Hashem – which is Hebrew for “The Name”

Then I will go back to my lair

until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face.

In their suffering

they will make haste to seek me

“Come! Let us return to Hashem –

The One who has torn us asunder

will make us whole;

the One who struck us down

will bind our wounds.In two days, God will bring us back to life

and on the third day

God will restore us

so we will live in the presence of the Most High.

Let us come to know Hashem intimately,

and pursue that knowledge zealously.

And as sure as the sun rises in the morning,

God will come,

and will return to us like the rains of winter,

like the rains of spring that water the earth.”

Oh, Ephraim, what am I going to do with you?And Judah, what am I going to do with you?

Your devotion is like the morning fog,

like the dew that vanishes!

So, I hack them to pieces through my prophets

and slay them with the words of my mouth.

My judgments flash

like lightning before you.

For I desire kindness towards others, not sacrifice,

acknowledgment of God, not burnt offerings.

The first question that may have occurred to you as I read the scripture is –Who is Hosea? Hosea is one of the 12 minor prophets of the Old Testament. He was famously ordered by God to marry a promiscuous woman, Gomer. Their marriage didn’t go well, as you might imagine. This marriage of the prophet to a promiscuous woman is an allegory for God’s covenant with Israel. Throughout the Old Testament, Israel turns away from Hashem and turns to false gods. The Israelites are fickle and inconstant. God casts them out, and then after a time, the light of the love of the faithful God will shine on them again. Then God’s people will rise, changed and contrite, and loved by God even in the likelihood they will stray again.

The main theme of Hosea is that God punishes unfaithfulness to bring back His unfaithful people.

Hosea is writing during a time of upheaval. It’s the mid- to late eighth century BC in the Northern Kingdom. The Assyrians are threatening to invade (they will successfully conquer in 721 BC, sending the Israelites into exile). The leaders of Israel are caught in a struggle not entirely of their own choosing over collaboration with the Assyrians. The Assyrians were eager for Israel's grain, wine, and oil and wanted to control access to Egypt and beyond. The Northern Kingdom could not refuse. They tried to make relations as peaceful as possible. However, Hosea believes that the leaders are also seeking their own comfort at the expense of the poor. He criticizes their violations of decency in their eagerness to abuse the poor to meet their international obligations.

The prophet speaks as if he is God's voice, using the first person. The divine voice Hosea describes is very emotional. The language is hard to read because God comes across as irritable, unsure, and, sometimes, even manipulative. It feels like a vulnerable God reaching out to humans, much like we do when love feels broken or threatened. This can be tough to hear. We each have our own ideas of God, and we rarely picture God as needing help.

However, we also learn that God does not punish to destroy, but to heal and scar. The wrath of God, though searching and painful, is gracious

But what does it mean for us today? It seems to be about sin and grace.

We don’t talk much about sin, but we do talk about grace and there are problems with that. Many denominations, and indeed other faiths like Judaism, include the confession of sin as part of their liturgy. Confession of sin is the first step toward repentance of failures and offenses against God. It opens believers to other movements of worship, such as hearing God’s word of judgment, mercy, and challenge; responding in gratitude, thanksgiving, and praise; and drawing close to God and each other in love and communion. However, other denominations often make this confession by rote, avoiding reflection on sin and punishment.

In our liturgy (our order of worship), Quakers do not include this step. Doing that reflects and shapes our theology. Perhaps we disagree with the idea of sin; perhaps we focus on grace and the forgiveness of God, believing it to be universal and unearned.

I know I have often relied of theologies of God’s Grace and Forgiveness, glossing over the idea of sinning and repenting.

Mainline Christians and Quakers have created safe and manageable Gods for ourselves. Our concepts seem housebroken and companionable. They don’t demand anything; they only ask how they can meaningfully enhance the lives of those who they serve. Are we creating God in our own image – focusing on Grace and forgetting entirely about punishment, penitence, and forgiveness?

We don’t often think, as contemporary Quakers, about a punishing God. God is Love, we say. God is Love, I will not deny that, but there are two metaphors are helpful with thinking about punishment for sin: Parenthood & Standing for Justice

In the Parenthood metaphor, parents must confront their children's inappropriate behavior. Parents want to promise their children that their love for them is unyielding. However, they also need to make sure that the children understand that their actions have consequences, and that the parent may need to supply those consequences. Without a compass of what is right and wrong (good and evil), a child may hurt themselves or others – intentionally or unintentionally. Inappropriate behavior must be addressed.

Using the metaphor of standing for justice, we may need to oppose a family member, community member, or member of our Meeting to promote the greater good. This requires stepping outside our comfort zones since we've been taught to be polite and pleasant. Still, defending justice and the greater good demands inner strength. Among us are activists and organizers who encourage others to stand up for justice. While it can be uncomfortable for them and for us, justice is more important than our comfort.

So, a parental, justice-seeking God may seek to correct and, at times, punish. What might this look like?

Early Quakers talked of being convicted by the Light. Here is one quote from Margaret Fell, “Now Friends, deal plainly with yourselves, and let the eternal Light search you, and try you, for the good of your souls. For this will deal plainly with you. It will rip you up, and lay you open, and make manifest all which lodges in you; the secret subtlety of the enemy of your souls, this eternal searcher and trier will make manifest. Therefore, all to this come, and by this be searched, and judged, and led and guided. For this, you must stand or fall.”

Does this not sound like the One Hosea describes who tears us asunder, making us whole? The One who strikes us down that will bind our wounds?

But what is being opened up in us and searched and judged?What is Sin?

We often think of sin as a series of behaviors to be avoided: stealing, cheating, harming others, and infidelity. Some lists include swearing, gambling, drinking, and smoking.

These sins have been and still can be used as a cudgel against one another. Also, there is no broad agreement on what constitutes a forbidden behavior under Christ. Matthew, later this morning, will be talking about the scripture passages used to clobber the LGBTQ community. These passages cause great pain and suffering.

We’re also told that all men and women sin and fall short of the glory of God. Teresa of Avila said that we cannot be free from sin, but we can at least let our sins not always be the same.

But sin is not only personal. And that definition overlooks the reality of evil. Making sin solely about individuals diminishes the seriousness of evil. Evil seems less significant when seen as just personal actions. We create the false idea that evil is controllable when we only focus on fixing our own lives.

What’s evil, you might ask?

Systemic sin can be called evil – human trafficking, racism, patriarchy, economic exploitation, environmental degradation, rape warfare, genocide, and lynching. These cannot be understood or addressed in purely personalistic terms. Certainly, people are involved, but they are involved in a force or power beyond the individual. And these systemic sin are also used as cudgels against individuals. How many times have you labeled someone as a racist – either inside or outloud? This individualization of systemic sins divides and distances us from one another.

One of the more interesting things I found in my study of sin was a verse from Colossians, Colossians 1:24, where Paul says, “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.”

Paul was completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of the church? The afflictions of Christ are ongoing? Is Paul, through his suffering, participating in the redemption of the world?

John Woolman thought he was. John Woolman was an 18^th century Quaker abolitionist and writer. Woolman read this passage to mean that at the social level, the world is profoundly unredeemed. Slavery and other forms of injustice prevailed during his time, resulting in widespread suffering. In our time, we bear our own injustices.

To participate in the ongoing work of the cross, Woolman believed one must enter a feeling state of the condition of the oppressed. To embrace every opportunity to become inwardly familiar with the hardships and difficulties of fellow creatures and to labor in love to spread universal righteousness. John Woolman experienced a deep echo of the suffering of both the oppressed and the oppressors. The oppressors, through their actions, cause God's seed, the Christ within them, to suffer. Cutting ourselves off from God’s guiding presence brings us pain.

Woolman applied the cross to himself, causing the death of his own will by renouncing selfish desires. By taking on suffering, he labored for the redemption of the oppressed through the suffering seed within the oppressor. Therefore, he worked for the oppressor's redemption. Through the oppressor's redemption, the oppressed can be saved.

While they’d deny it, slaveholders knew that slavery was not morally justifiable, just as we know today that degrading the environment and buying from oligarchs whose practices cause suffering for our own convenience are wrong. We may try to rationalize, saying we are but one of many and that we cannot do everything. But deep down, we are not fooling ourselves. The truth gnaws at our comfort: we are unhappy.

He believed there was a witness in others that could be reached. To do this, gentleness and empathy are most likely to reach them. He wrote that Friends must “be kindly affectioned” toward slave-keeping friends, while opening their eyes to the suffering of those they enslaved and reminding them of the goodness within each of them.

Can we use this example to help the oppressed and oppressors today? How can we reach the suffering seed of Christ within the oppressor so we may redeem them? How can we acknowledge the reality of evil as a systemic sin and participate in the redemption of the world? How can we address sin in society with compassion and grace instead of with an angry cudgel?

To follow John Woolman’s example, we must have a felt sense of the condition of the oppressed. Use that knowledge and a respect for the seed of Christ in the oppressor to free them from systemic evil. We must teach them to open themselves to the Light which will search and judge them, guide and lead them.

We must work on our empathy and our persuasive tools. There is a reason the powerful decry the ‘evil of empathy’ – it is with empathy that they can be reached.

Sin is a difficult topic; one we avoid but must acknowledge to address the evils that remain in this unredeemed world.

As we enter waiting worship, I invite you to open yourselves to the Light. Be searched and judged, led and guided. Let God rout you of your sins and prepare you with empathy and a sense of justice as you again encounter the world.