The World's Oldest Profession and Mother's Day

I don't know how many times "whore" and "whoredom" appear in the first two chapters of Hosea, or how many references to "whoring", directly or indirectly, litter the text, but that may not have been my best choice for a Mother's Day text.

Made sense last summer when I was laying out my preaching calendar, Hosea commanded by God to marry, feeling the pull to turn to the Old Testament, closing the readings in 2 Timothy with the close of the pledge campaign the week before, it made sense.

Except for the fact that I did not do the close reading of the text I did the week leading up to Mother's Day. Wow.

I didn't try to justify the language in the sermon. Part of that is due to my theological interpretation of the bible. I believe that God inspired the bible, using the skills and abilities of the individuals that he called upon to write its various books. For example, Amos seems to have been a man of the soil. Paul has been interpreted as a man who doesn't like women. Perhaps Hosea has a little too much history in the sex trade. A sermon cannot speculate on the history and talents of biblical writers.

Besides, Hosea is a prophet, which means tons of fire and brimstone, punishment on the people of Israel for screwing up yet again and turning away from God, you know, all the violence and judgment that makes the Old Testament so difficult for many Christians. I tried to keep the focus there, any my friends in the congregation can tell you how well I did or did not make that work.

You'd think that in a culture like ours so obsessed with sex that the sex metaphors would go over better. Maybe not on Mother's day.

So what is next? There are a dozen more chapters. I've returned to the discipline of book preaching. The thought of ditching it for something else has crossed my mind...a few times. But the Old Testament is the bible of Jesus. It is what he fulfilled when he made the ultimate sacrifice on the cross.

And there are other translations where the translators were not as hung up on whores, whoring, and whoredom as these guys (a fair assumption in the world of bible academia).