With Bands of Love - August 5, 2007
Hosea 11: 1-11“You can learn a lot sometimes, just by paying attention.” I think there was a commercial once that used that as the tag line. This summer seems to be a summer of transition for me and for some friends of mine, mostly transitions where our children and families are concerned. And my friends and I have been learning a lot, just…well, by paying attention. My friends and I seem to have reached the age where our kids are providing many of our life lessons.
One friend had a son who desperately wanted to attend a private music conservatory high school, and so he put the wheels in motion to make that happen. Another of her sons wants to be an actor, and so he is in New York this week in an off-off-off Broadway play. Another of my friends has a daughter who wanted to see what would happen when she tested the boundaries of the real consequences to her behavior. She tested. She saw what happened.
My own daughter is trying on some new things this summer as well. The lesson I’ve learned from watching her take risks, and try on new roles, and stretch herself, and relate in new ways is this: don’t blink. Not because she needs me to hover over her—because she will be the first to tell you that she does not need that—but because I don’t want to miss the good stuff. And there is lots of good stuff.
We return today to the prophecy of Hosea. If you were here last week you might remember that Hosea lives and serves in a pretty volatile place. Israel is about thisclose to being taken by the Assyrian army. The thing that Israel has done to provoke God is the way she has given herself over to the worship of other gods. Last week’s passage compared Israel to the unfaithful wife.
The metaphor shifts this week. Israel has now become Yahweh’s child—a son. In some of the most touching and beautiful imagery in all of prophecy Yahweh describes the relationship as a parent to an infant:
“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”
If you’ve ever taught a child to walk, you know that there is very little teaching involved. A child learns how to walk by seeing other people walk, and by seeing a place they wish to be and figuring out how to get there. Mostly the job of an adult in this process is staying close with the child, making sure that when they fall—and they will—there is very little around that they can hurt themselves on, and encouraging the child to get back up on its feet and try again after falling.
When our son was learning to walk, some nineteen years ago, we had just purchased our first house. It was a tiny townhouse, and he learned to navigate by holding onto the furniture in our crowded little living room. But the week we finished fixing up the house enough to move in, he discovered stairs—the young first time mother’s worst nightmare! It seemed like dozens of times a day, I was taking down the toddler gates at either the top or bottom of the stairs and hovering six inches behind him as he learned to crawl up, then crawl down backwards (feet first). It was exhausting, even though I was a very young woman then!
About that same time he decided that it was time to stop riding willingly in a stroller, and demanded to climb out of it while we were at the mall or in a store, or going to the library a few blocks from our house. Andrew was quick, and inquisitive, and quick! (Did I mention quick?)
And so I made a difficult decision. I bought a leash for him. Not a dog leash, but the kind with a long strap, a piece of Velcro around his wrist, and a handle in my hand. I had seen other families use these and had kind of turned up my nose at the idea of constraining a small child in that way. Then, of course, I became a mother.
The first time I tried this contraption with my child, I was nervous as I secured the strap around his wrist. I knew I wasn’t really hurting him, but I looked around to see who would be looking at me judgmentally. As soon as Andrew figured out that having this funny red thing on his arm meant that he would not longer have to climb out of the stroller over and over again to escape its confines only to be told “No.” repeatedly, he thought the new game was pretty cool. He could walk beside me and look at whatever he wanted to. And a few people did stare, just as I had before I was a mother. But he was happy, and I was happy, so I didn’t worry about the funny looks from strangers.
Of course, you know where this is going, don’t you? Eventually the band of love that kept my child within my sight and within easy reach became not quite long enough to suit him. Eventually he learned that this band had limits. He would want to walk one way, and I would want to walk the other, and I was bigger. I was not a mom following a toddler, he was a small boy attached to me. Just like he had been attached to me his whole life, in one way or another. First deep within me as the creative process that we cannot fully know, can only describe with feeble human terms gave him life, and caused a cord to grow that attached us literally to each other for his survival.
Then as I fed him. He was attached to me in a way equally mysterious, but powerful enough that the very sound of his cry triggered a response in me, setting the process in motion. The image of Yahweh bending to feed the beloved child Israel is one a clergy friend of mine described this way:
“Once at a hotel pool, I saw a woman speaking with subdued viciousness to her children while they prepared to swim and then tried to follow her many directions to not run, not splash, be nice to your sister. But when asked, she bent tenderly over the stick-thin arms of her little son and blew into the valve of his water wings, so he could float.
Ever since, I've wished I was a poet, so I could write a poem about it. About how the mother bent her head over the son, how the movement of her breath reminded me of the suckling that had sustained him once. If I was a poet, I would know if that was a good metaphor or not.
I would know how to write about how, even on the days when our resentment is deepest, we feed our children with our bodies, and then later hold them up with our own strong, ephemeral breath and then, last of all, send them out into the water to feed and breathe on their own.”
In the powerful imagery of our tending to our children, or the children of others within our sphere of influence, the temptation is to equate ourselves with God. “God is like a mother…” or ‘God is like a father…”. But in Hosea’s prophecy Yahweh brings us down to earth by reminding us that Yahweh is not a human being. The human bonds, the fragile bands of love that tie us to each other here on earth so often are too easily broken when they begin to feel to us like chains or handcuffs that keep us tied to each other, instead of life–giving cords, necessary for sustenance. Anyone who has ever been hurt within a relationship, who has suffered irrevocable loss of trust or experienced the profound failure of someone we loved who did not hold up their end of the bargain knows that earthly love is not always as strong as we want it to be.
The tether that kept my toddler son by my side eventually became too short for either of us. The comforting connection between us became like playing tug of war when we used it. He wanted, then needed to go farther and farther. I needed, then wanted, to let him. Israel wandered away from the one who had fed him, taught him to walk, and challenged the bands of love by turning to other gods.
In a human relationship, these might have been reasons to let go, to let the bonds break, to call the unfaithful one to account. But God reminds us that the love of Yahweh for Israel—the love of our Creator for us—stretches beyond human capabilities. God never lets go. God never lets go.
There is a measure of letting go that any parent needs to do. In watching my daughter this summer I have learned more about how long the tether is that keeps her tied to me. And believe me, sometimes it is longer than I am comfortable with. And eventually it is one thing of which I must let go. And if I were not sure that there in One who never lets us go, the One who never blinks, I’m not sure I would be able to attempt it.
My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call, but he does not raise them up at all.
How can I give you up, 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.
I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.
Thanks be to God.
