From Mockery to Mercy

Take a look at the Book of Hosea for a message about living in our divided times.

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Transcript

Sermons from 

Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

September 21, 2025

“From Mockery to Mercy”

Hosea 11: 8-9 – Common English Bible

How can I give you up, Ephraim?
         How can I hand you over, Israel?
     How can I make you like Admah?
         How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
     My heart winces within me;
         my compassion grows warm and tender.

9 I won’t act on the heat of my anger;
         I won’t return to destroy Ephraim;
     for I am God and not a human being,
         the holy one in your midst;
     I won’t come in harsh judgment.

Hosea is not your typical kind of prophet.  He is not quotable like Micah: “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly.”  He’s not like Jeremiah, the weeping prophet.  He’s not like Amos, shouting accusations: “You who trample on the poor.”  Hosea’s power isn’t in his words; he doesn’t just preach the message—he becomes it.

It was a few years after Amos, and Israel was still chasing wealth, still trampling the poor, still bowing to false gods.  Hosea tried different tactics.  For example, he gave provocative names to his children.  Imagine saying, meet my son Gettysburg.  Yes, his first child, Jezreel, was named for a blood-soaked valley.  As for the next two—imagine calling Thug inside for dinner.  “Hey Illegal, throw me the ball.”  Every time he spoke of his children, it was a sermon to the nation – an indictment. 

In addition, Hosea gave mocking nicknames to Israel.  He called Israel stubborn cow and withered vine—names meant to sting, to pry them from their own flattering labels, We are prosperous, we are blessed.

The “best” name — Hosea called Israel half-baked cake. Burnt on one side, raw on the other.  A people that looked good from the outside but were undone inside.  It may seem like a silly image, but Hosea knew that sometimes ridicule cuts deeper than rage, and so, if Israel thought of itself as so powerful and wise, Hosea’s nickname erased that illusion so they might see themselves clearly.  But here’s the key:  He mocked them not to belittle, but to jolt them awake.

But even more provocative than his names-as-messages was his choice of a wife.  He married a woman he knew would leave him for other lovers.  However, cast as the unfaithful wife, the stand-in for a wayward nation, she was reduced to a symbol of betrayal.  Hosea’s wife and children serve as metaphors for Israel’s sin — but, in so doing, their pain doesn’t count.  Isn’t even noticed.  That should trouble us.  

Dr. Katie Cannon names this for what it is:  too often theologians have taken women’s bodies and turned them into symbols of sin and shame, while refusing to reckon with their lived wisdom.  Theology should insist on hearing their voices, celebrating their survival, honoring their truth — not erasing them.

And Gomer is far from the only woman to suffer such disgrace.  Starting right from Eve, named deceive.  Think of Bathsheba –  named seductress instead of the object of a king’s lust,taken without her consent.  Jezebel, her name weaponized into shorthand for dangerous, for all outspoken women who refuse to shrink before male power.  Her story told entirely by her enemies.  And others endure far worse:  the Levite’s concubine, unnamed and voiceless, brutalized, her body cut into pieces and mailed out as a national warning.[1]  

Scripture presents her suffering as though it were simply a detail, like noting the color of the sky, rather than the outrage it is.  Each of these women was not only wronged but also remembered by names meant to shame them rather than by their truth.  That’s why Gomer does not deserve to be ignored when we tell this story.  We can’t just pass her by – metaphor or not.

So, Hosea begins in scandal — a marriage meant to send a message, children with names of judgment, and nicknames that mocked Israel.  But then, after all that heaviness, in Hosea 11, the whole book shifts.  God is no longer pictured as a betrayed husband demanding his wife’s return. God is pictured as a tender parent:  “I taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms, I bent down to feed them.”

The difference matters — in part because it’s subversive.  It overturns the ancient expectation that gods exist to be served and feared.  Hosea reveals Israel’s God as One who stoops in love, who chooses care over control — because their covenant was never about ownership.  The claim “I am your God and you are my people” is not about domination; it is protection and care.  Love means serving the other — even God, who tenderly bends down like a parent.

And yes, Israel wanders, rebels, betrays.  The grief is real, and God wrestles with it like a parent:  ‘How can I give you up?  How can I hand you over?’  But in the end God says: “I am God and not human.  I will not destroy.  My compassion grows warm and tender.”  The promise:  I will not let you go.  Isn’t that just what we all want to hear?

When Chris came out to their family, they longed to be received as they were.  Instead, “We love you, but…”  That little word holds a thousand conditions.  We love you, but when you fit our expectations.  We love you, but as long as you play the part we assign.  That is human love with strings attached.  That’s not God.

Or think of workers in the field, straining under the hot sun.  They are told their worth is what they produce, how many hours they can endure, how much profit they can generate.  Their value rises and falls on a ledger.  That is human love reduced to output.  That's not God.

God’s love doesn’t come with a “but.”  Or on a balance sheet.  No — it’s like a parent stooping down, “You are mine. I will not let you go.”

It’s the same image Jesus draws on with the woman who lost a coin.  Everyone else might have said, “It’s just a coin.”  Well, she was poor, we might say.  But she kept sweeping and sweeping until she finally found it.  Jesus says, that’s what God is like.  The Woman who refuses to let us go.

Hosea used names, even harsh ones, to restore covenant.  Others use names to erase, to diminish, to control.  For example, authoritarianism loves nicknames because they are efficient.  With a single word, whole communities are branded and diminished, reduced to something less than human, because: 

• If you call immigrants invaders, it becomes easier to cage them — erasing the mother risking her life for her child.
• If you call Black leaders animals, it becomes easier to militarize the police — erasing the gifts and dreams of young Black men.
• If you call women hysterical, it becomes easier to erase their rights.
• If you call a whole people vermin — well, that’s just dangerous.  And it becomes easier to justify violence and erase them completely.

Hosea also used cutting names — calling Israel stubborn cow, half-baked cake.  But Hosea’s intent was not to erase.  It was to shock the people awake, to return to covenant love.  That is the difference:  Hosea calls us back to life; authoritarians drive us toward despair — and away from each other.

And that is why Hosea’s vision matters.  Because after all the harsh names, after all the betrayal, God’s final word is not mockery but mercy. 

Some of you know the personal truth of nicknames that cut to the bone — names that mocked your body, your family, your faith.  Maybe you still carry those words like scars, but hear me:  God will not let mockery have the last word.  God’s name for you is Beloved.  God’s name for you is Free.

It makes me think of Bayard Rustin – a man the world tried to erase with a nickname.  A brilliant strategist of the civil rights movement, he absorbed the lessons of Gandhian nonviolence and trained a new generation — including Dr. King — to make nonviolence the foundation of the struggle.  He persuaded King to ground the Montgomery Bus Boycott in nonviolence – that’s why it worked.  Did you know there were Freedom Riders before the 1960s? In 1947, Rustin helped lead the very first “Freedom Ride” on interstate buses.  And most famously in 1963, in just eight weeks, he pulled together the March on Washington — where King delivered “I Have a Dream.”  Without Rustin’s genius, it might never have happened.  

But Bayard was openly gay in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s — and that meant constant suspicion and smear campaigns.  In 1953, he was arrested in Pasadena on a so-called “morals charge,” the kind of law used in those days to target gay men.  He was set up, part of the FBI’s campaign to bring him down.  Even a decade later, just two weeks before the March on Washington, Strom Thurmond stood on the Senate floor and read Rustin’s entire arrest record into the Congressional Record, trying to smear him and the whole movement with a single word: pervert. 

Allies named him a liability and urged Dr. King to cut him loose. The risk was real — standing beside a man branded in that way could have tarnished King’s leadership, already under attack.  But King refused.  He trusted Rustin’s leadership, and in doing so, he staked his own credibility on a man given a name the world used to try to erase.  But God’s stubborn love gave him another name — not pervert but Treasured, not liability but Prophet, not erased but Architect of Justice.

When 20 of our members travel tomorrow to Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma, we will walk streets where Bayard Rustin strategized and where ordinary people carried extraordinary courage.  We will walk the bridge where John Lewis and Hosea Williams led marchers across on Bloody Sunday, but Bayard wasn’t there because he was busy with the logistics of the 50-mile march to Montgomery that was to follow.  He was always building bridges — between dreams and reality, between vision and logistics, the hard, practical work that makes any movement possible.

King’s refusal to let go and Rustin’s refusal to be erased shows us what covenant love looks like in flesh and blood.  It points us back to Hosea’s God, who will not let go.  And illuminates our current challenge because authoritarianism works to mock, not only to wound but to silence.  It brands whole communities with a single word and demands people like King look away to avoid retribution.  And the rest of us.  Which is why we must see clearly, and why we must refuse to let go when authoritarianism sets the agenda by calling teachers’ indoctrinators so classrooms will grow timid.  Calling pastors woke radicals so pulpits will go quiet.  Calling neighbors who march for justice agitators or enemies so that suddenly whole communities will hesitate to stand with the wounded.  Frightened into silence, pressured to let go.

But God shows through the prophet Hosea not to let go.  To become the message by holding tighter and standing stronger with those mocked and diminished.  To embody Bayard Rustin and build bridges strong enough for dreams and justice to cross over.  

Until all this mockery is turned into mercy.
 Until every word meant to wound is undone.
 Until we all share the same name: Beloved.

[1] Judges 19