Remembering Truthfully--July 1, 2020

Remembering Truthfully--July 1, 2020

"When Israel was a child, I loved him,

    and out of Egypt I called my son.

 The more I called them,

    the more they went from me;

 they kept sacrificing to the Baals,

    and offering incense to idols.

 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,

    I took them up in my arms;

    but they did not know that I healed them.

 I led them with cords of human kindness,

    with bands of love.

 I was to them like those

    who lift infants to their cheeks.

    I bent down to them and fed them." [Hosea 11:1-4]

How do we learn to tell the truth about ourselves?

Both as individuals and as communities, how do we get to the place where we can be honest about our past, about how it has shaped our present, and then to decide what role we will allow our story-so-far to have in directing our future?

See, it's really not a question as being "pro-history" or "anti-history."  Everybody tells some version of their own story to the world around them, and to themselves.  Everybody holds some picture of "how it happened" in their minds, and that becomes the story through which we view the rest of the world and our daily lives.  So despite the many voices these days that seem to get upset at what they call "erasing history," there is really nobody trying to forget or delete the past--rather, the question is whether we can remember honestly about ourselves, even when the picture that emerges from the past makes us uncomfortable.  No one is trying to erase history--but the job of the prophets has always been to help us to remember our history truthfully, rather than through the haze of selectivity we often use to filter out the things we wish to ignore.

That might not be how we usually think of "prophets."  Often, we think that the job of prophets is to predict the future, not to re-teach the past.  But in the pages of the Scriptures, that's often exactly what the prophets did: they helped the people to look again, honestly, at their own history, so that they would remember both who they were supposed to be, and so they could come to grips with the failures and sins of the past that continued to have ripple effects in their present.  The prophets, like Hosea here in the verses above, know that the only way we can be fully alive right now is to be as honest as possible about the mess-ups, the misdeeds, and the dead-ends we have chosen in the past.  Like James Baldwin famously said, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."  And the work of the ancient Hebrew prophets was just that: to help the people to face their own histories honestly... even when that meant tearing down the untruths, false stories, and official party-line about "the way things are."

This passage from Hosea is a case in point.  In the eighth century BC, the kingdom of Israel thought it was doing pretty well.  Business was booming.  The economy was roaring.  The army was strong, and their territory was expanding.  And part of the official accepted reason for all that good business was that at some point one of the kings of Israel had set up some monuments with golden calves on top (yes, literal golden calves) as shrines for worshiping God, along with other altars for worship the gods of the surrounding nations (one popular one was named "Baal," and you could find a shrine to Baal as easily as you can find a gas station today).  So, the official palace-approved version of history went something like this: "We were a struggling nation, until we started putting up these monuments and shrines with our golden calves and Baal statues.  These various statues and idols represent the god(s) who helped us to become so great.  And when you support these shrines, you are helping us curry the favor of the deities who keep us that way."  And, of course, the often implied coda to all that party line from the palace was, "We have always been a pious, faithful, and righteous nation--as these many shrines and temples will attest--and it is that deep devotion to God (or gods) that has yielded the rewards of prosperity we now enjoy."

Well, the real and living God raises up a prophet like Hosea to speak up and say, basically (like Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi), "Amazing--everything you just said was wrong."  Hosea, and the other prophets of Israel and Judah's history, have to help the people to tell their story--their history--truthfully again.  And that means helping them (even if it makes them squirm) to see the ways the stories they have been telling themselves were built on illusions, or outright lies.  So, for example, Hosea has to retell the history of Israel's ancient past--he has to remind the people that, for one, the Canaanite god Baal had nothing to do with their rescue from Egypt (it was YHWH, the God of Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam).  And furthermore, Hosea has to remind the people that they weren't righteous and devout in their past--they were constantly turning away to idols throughout their history, in fact!  So the accepted version of history in ancient Israel ("We were pious, and these many shrines to many deities are both proof of our religious devotion and the source of our material blessing) had to be dismantled.  That's what Hosea does--he's not attacking or removing Israel's history--he is committed to remembering it truthfully!  And when he does that, it becomes clear that Hosea's criticism of the many altars, shrines, and golden calf statues to Baal is not because Hosea hates history, but because they themselves are a distortion of history, and he wants to tell the truth clearly without illusion anymore. Hosea sees that every altar to Baal, every golden calf (yes, even the ones erected by the king's decree), is a willful distortion of the true story of the people of Israel--they weren't rescued by Baal from Pharaoh, and no golden calf brought them through the Sea.  And in fact, the God who did do all those things (YHWH) didn't rescue them as a reward for their piety or devotion, because in fact, they kept complaining, doubting, and running back to Egypt in between bouts of golden-calf-casting even back in the wilderness.  

If you lived in Hosea's day, you would have likely been upset at what he had to say, because it felt like he was attacking the way you had always been told your national story. Folks would have accused him of trying to destroy their national heritage and history when he came out criticizing the altars to Baal and golden calves (and believe me, to read the rest of Hosea's book, he comes out swinging!)  Hosea, however, would have said he wasn't trying to destroy or erase history, but to get the story straight, because the altars to Baal and the golden calves themselves were distortions of how they had come to be in the place where they were.  Hosea was all for studying history--he just wanted to make sure the people remembered that history truthfully.

I know that's a lot of very ancient history to cover in a morning's devotion, but it seems to me that we are wrestling with very similar challenges in this moment, and in this time and place.  And if we allow conversations today to be framed in terms of "These people over here are in favor of history, but THOSE people over there are anti-history," we will be colossally missing the point.  Much like was the case in Hosea's day, it's not a question of whether you are "pro-history" or "anti-history," but rather a question of how we tell those stories truthfully, even when the stories we have to tell bring up skeletons we would rather leave in the closet, or cause us shame for what we and our ancestors were complicit in.  When Hosea called for the golden calves to come down, or spoke against giving positive praise to the god Baal, he wasn't in any way, shape, or form, asking for Israel to forget its history--he wanted them to remember their history truthfully, and that meant acknowledging Israel's habitual sin of turning away from the slave-liberating God and toward the convenient gods of the nations around them, or the idols of their own power and wealth.  And when people heard him say things like that, they clenched up and got defensive, because they did not want to consider that they had been retelling their own story wrong, and they certainly did not want to allow the possibility that they had made villains into heroes by praising the kings and priests who had led them to worship Baal in the first place.  Nobody ever wants to admit they were wrong, and nobody ever wants to admit they have been duped.  And frankly, it is always a little bit scary to consider new information--even if, like in Hosea's case, it is only "new" in the sense that everybody had collectively forgotten the truth.  So you can understand why prophets like Hosea were met with hostility, and why Jesus himself regularly makes the the point that you can tell the true prophets from the false, because the real ones were the ones run out of town for upsetting people, while the fakers only said things that would play well with the palace.

But Hosea, along with all the other prophets in Israel and Judah's history, were convinced that it is worth the discomfort that comes with telling our stories truthfully and remembering honestly.  They were convinced that when we remember rightly, we can own our failures, our sins, and our hurtful choices, and then turn from them.  After all, worshiping a golden calf only sounds like a bad idea if you can let go of the idea that the golden calf is the one who brought you out of Egypt and gives your fields enough rain.  

I wonder if, in this moment, we find ourselves getting defensive rather than taking the risk of being brave enough to listen to the parts of our collective story that we have not wanted to listen to.  I wonder if, when I have that gut-clenching reaction to someone else telling me a version of my history that "doesn't go the way I was taught it," if I can muster the courage to consider what they have to say, and maybe at least to ask if there are parts of the story I have not remembered rightly.  And I wonder if we can, together, reframe the conversation we are having nationally right now and see it for what it really is--not a contest between wise and saintly "pro-history" people and wicked and foolish "anti-history" people on the other, but rather a search for the way to remember truthfully... even when the truth is difficult to hear again.

For Hosea, remembering rightly meant giving the rightful credit to YHWH... which also meant an all-out attack on the shrines, monuments, and statues of Baal and the golden calves of his time.  And he kept calling for a right truth-telling, not because he didn't love his people, but precisely because he loved them... and because he knew the real and living God had loved them from the days of Egypt onward and ever since.

If we dare to tell our stories--individually and corporately--with honesty, in the end, we will find ourselves brought to life more than we ever have been.  But it may well mean that we have to let voices like Hosea's help us rethink what we have always assumed was true.... and we may need to consider the possibility that letting go of an illusion is part of how you get to see clearly.

May the God of life and truth raise up the prophetic voices we need for this moment of our lives... and may that same God give us the courage to listen when they speak.

Lord God, teach us the truth about ourselves, and make us brave enough to remember our own stories and histories truthfully.