Spiritual Hiccups - God as Wounded Lover

How does God feel about the state of human affairs?  What does God think about a world that is filled with war, where some are fabulously wealthy while others starve, where even in a rich country such as America, thousands of children live in poverty and receive a substandard education that will leave them trapped in poverty?  How does God feel about a world that sees less and less need for God, that "believes" in God without that impacting people's behavior one whit?

One might expect God to be angry.  Indeed many religious traditions speak of an angry God who stands ready to punish, who doesn't blink an eye over sending people into eternal torment.

Certainly God is angry in today's Old Testament reading from Hosea.  It is the anger of a lover who has been betrayed.  God is the faithful husband who has lavished gifts on a beloved, yet that beloved has sought other lovers.  In pain and anguish, God threatens to lash out at this unfaithful spouse.


But then comes a most surprising turn.  Out of God's woundedness comes an improbable therefore.  "Therefore, I will now allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. From there I will give her  her vineyards, and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she  shall respond as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she  came out of the land of Egypt."  Though God is the injured party, though God is the one who has been wronged, God woos Israel.  God seeks to fan the flames of love and restore the passion that has been lost.


This is what God does in Jesus.  God's anger, God's upset at human folly and waywardness, at our continual chasing after things more alluring than God, issues forth in the surprising "therefore" of the cross.  It is heard in Jesus' longing as he weeps over Jerusalem.

God as wounded lover is an image that needs to be claimed especially by the Church.  For it is in the Church that God is most especially wounded.  Those who have never known any sort of relationship with God cannot wound God in quite the same manner we can.  For we are those who profess our love, but then sneak off to cavort with other lovers.  Yet even for us, God says, "I will allure you.  I will speak tenderly to you, so that we may once again know that love where each of us had eyes only for the other."

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