Take Words With You
Facing the thickness and depth that is Lent, my head and heart was caught up in a tornado of memory, words, and the often uncivilized stories in the Bible.
Memory and Words. As a kid, I spent piles of time by myself, inviting the imagination to dance and talk and try to make sense of this one life. And as someone who feels intensely, I continue to run laps in my mind and heart as an attempt to find words to function as a hammock for the intense feelings.
This all crashes into my mind when reading this morning’s text, from the minor prophet Hosea, chapter 14. It begins with shocking and horrific imagery, to which scholar Robert Alter comments, “It is a sad historical fact that such barbaric practices are repeatedly attested to in biblical literature.” And then it springs into a plea for Israel to “Turn back to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled in your crime.” Shuv, which is the root of t’shuva, which we translate as Repent. A word with a lot of baggage, and yet it simply means to turn or return to the Divine. Turn from the path you are walking, and walk the path of the Divine.
The text continues, “Take words with you, and turn back to the LORD… and we shall offer our speech instead of bulls.” Robert Alter comments, “Words are to be the vehicles of repentance—not animal sacrifices or grain offerings but words spoken from the heart.”
Which sends my mind to a song about the heart, expressed with… words.
“Talk in everlasting words
And dedicate them all to me
It's only words and words are all I have
To take your heart away.”
Fascinating, on many levels. You don’t know what to do with The Bee Gees showing up in a writing alongside the depth and breadth of the Divine. Welcome to my mind.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, people offered blood and food sacrifices, and then the Divine demanded them to cease, for they are but a stench to the Divine’s sense of smell. Bring words. To further fill this in, the text says, “We will never again say ‘Our gods’ to what our own hands have made, for in you the fatherless find compassion.”
This is really interesting, because it speaks of no longer going the way of war and then pinning those actions to “We’re just doing what God told us to do, or what honors God.”
War, violence and destruction is not of God, so stop claiming it and naming it that way. Wow. This is HUGE leap forward in human consciousness, which is a lesson in moving beyond a flat reading of the Bible. Just because it said something in the book of Judges, it doesn’t mean we act the same way, then simply say, “It’s Biblical.” And people do it all the time, which is a giant yikes!
In fact, the Divine is not found in the wars that made kids fatherless, rather the Divine is found in compassion for the fatherless.
Whew, what a text. What a huge invitation. Honesty and transparency and turning or returning to the Divine. Putting away the warhorses and weapons and a barbaric sacrificial system, and offering sincere words from the heart.
The naked, honest soul, poured out in words.
