“The Sorrows of God” – Dr. C. David Matthews from RLBC Media on Vimeo.

Hosea 11:1-11 [show]Hosea 11:1-11 The LORD's Love for Israel [11:1]When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. [2]The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. [3]Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. [4]I led them with cords of kindness,(1) with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them. [5]They shall not(2) return to the land of Egypt, but Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. [6]The sword shall rage against their cities, consume the bars of their gates, and devour them because of their own counsels. [7]My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all. [8]How can I give you up, O 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. [9]I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.(3) [10]They shall go after the LORD; he will roar like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west; [11]they shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria, and I will return them to their homes, declares the LORD. Footnotes 1. [11:4] Or 'humaneness'; Hebrew 'man' 2. [11:5] Or 'surely' 3. [11:9] Or 'into the city'

It isn’t difficult to describe God, even for agnostics and atheists. We all know that God is the Supreme Being. We know that God is immortal, invisible, and wise. From the ancient Greeks we’ve borrowed impressive adjectives such as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. From our biblical heritage we have kept words such as sovereign, almighty, righteous, and holy. You will think of others – - transcendent, immanent, eternal. For two thousand years Christian theologians have included the “impassibility” of God. This does not mean “unable to be passed,” like those people on the highway who drive in the middle of the road twenty-five miles under the speed limit. Impassible means unable to feel pain or suffering. This, too, may be the influence of the ancient Greco-Romans, whose gods and goddesses were superlative in power and in function, unlike human creatures, who are weak and pathetic. In the ancient world, but not exclusively there, God tends to have all the qualities and attributes we wish we had. When for thousands of years God has been described as the ultimate super-hero, it seldom occurs to anyone to ask if God suffers.

Some of you remember the 1960s and the Death of God theology. “God is dead!” even made the cover of Time magazine. Beneath all the contradictions and sensationalism, the claim that was actually being made was that meaningful talk about God had become impossible for two reasons. First, modern people require empirical or scientific evidence in establishing truth. Second, the idea of God was morally repugnant in the light of twentieth-century events such as world wars and holocausts. In short, the classical idea of God as the all-powerful, miracle-working, benevolent ruler of the universe was dead in the modern world.

Then, in 1965 from the East came a book from a Japanese-Christian theologian titled, Theology of the Pain of God. Kazoh Kitamori was born in 1916 in a small town in Japan. In high school he was inspired by an article on Martin Luther and later went to Tokyo to attend the Lutheran Theological Seminary. He became a major post-World War II theologian in Japan, as well as serving as a pastor for forty-six years. Kitamori actually published his book in Japan in 1946, shortly after Hiroshima, but it was not published in the U.S. until the 1960s. Kitamori’s saw his work as a shift from a “theology of glory” to a “theology of the cross.” The cross reveals, not only the suffering of Jesus, but of God.

Other books on this subject appeared, written by Western theologians. Jurgen Moltmann, as a seventeen-year-old German soldier, had read the Bible for the first time in a prisoner of war camp. Years later, as a theology professor influenced by Kitamori’s book, Moltmann wrote The Crucified God. We also owe Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings, at least partially, to World War II and its atrocities.

Probably none of this is exactly shocking to you. Why? Most of us, far more than we realize, have been imbued with the biblical tradition. You may think you know nothing about the Bible, but, in the cultural history of most of us, biblical thinking has been a powerful influence. The Greek philosophers and their modern counterparts may be silent on the suffering of God, but the Bible is not. And it did not begin with the cross of Christ. Consider, for example, today’s text from the Old Testament book of Hosea.

Hosea was not a firebrand prophet like Amos and some of the others. He was a gentle spirit, the kind of person other people take advantage of. Gomer, his wife, left him to become a prostitute! So, Hosea becomes the prophet who personifies the broken-heartedness of God over the unfaithfulness of Israel. Listen to God’s words as Hosea heard them: “When Israel was a child, I loved him.” God speaks as if the nation were a child. “Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms . . I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. . . My people are bent on turning away from me. . . How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I had you over, O Israel? . . My heart recoils with me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger . . for I am God . . the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.” Then Hosea says, “They shall go after the Lord, . . his children shall come trembling from the west. They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the Lord.” And imagine this. God sends Hosea to buy back Gomer from her harlotry! God didn’t say, “If she comes back, forgive her.” God said, “Go get her.”

Could we have ever actually forgotten this God of suffering love? Imagine us needing a Japanese theologian who had just lived through Hiroshima to remind us of the pain of God. You don’t suppose we somehow prefer a macho God who doesn’t suffer, maybe some of us who were taught that big boys don’t cry?

Years ago Clyde Fant put me on to an English preacher and poet named G. A. Studdert-Kennedy. He had worked as a British chaplain in World War I. The horror and death in the trenches of that war left no doubt in his mind about the suffering of God. A poem he called “The Sorrows of God” he put in the mouth of a cockney sailor:

“The sorrows o’ God must be ‘ard to bear / If ‘e really ‘as Love in ‘is ‘eart, / And the ‘ardest part i’ the world to play / Must surely be God’s part. / And I wonder if that’s what it really means, / That Figure what ‘angs on the Cross. . . . [And] they say ‘e were jus the image o’ God. / I wonder if God shed tears, / I wonder if God can be sorrowin’ still, / And ‘as been all these years. . . .”

Then he reflects on the sin and evil in the world, the wars and the ways we treat each other. But he also thinks about his own son, who rebelled and ran away to the sea, and about his own struggle to understand.

“Well, maybe that’s ‘ow it is wi’ God, / ‘Is sons ‘ave got to be free; / Their wills are their own, and their lives their own, / And that’s ‘ow it ’as to be. / So the Father God goes sorrowing still / For ‘is world that ‘as gone to sea, / But ‘e runs up a light on Calvary’s height / That beckons to you and me. / The beacon light of the sorrow of God / ‘As been shinin’ down the years, / A-flashin’ its light through the darkest night / O’ our ‘uman blood and tears.”

That God suffers is crystal clear in the shortest definition of God in the Bible. “God is love.” You have found, I am sure, that love and pain are never very far apart.

Forgive us, O God, the pain we have brought to your great heart. Indeed, you have. Amen.

C. David Matthews  /  Royal Lane Baptist Church  /  Dallas, Texas 75230  /  8.1.10