Daily Prophets
Day 25
“Come, let us turn back to Adonai; For God as torn and God will heal us, God has wounded and God will bind us.”(Hosea 6:1)
Hosea is calling to Israel to turn back to God, to return to God without fear of being rejected. Hosea is reminding us of God’s Pathos towards for humankind. Hosea is reminding us of God’s deep feelings for Israel and all of humanity. I hear the call of God towards each and every one of us to ‘do Tshuvah, return, come back, I miss you, I will care for your wounds and welcome you home’ is what the prophet is saying. Adonai’s love of and for people is so great, it can withstand any and all betrayals, if we will return in love and responsibility, is what I hear the prophet saying. Hosea is reminding us how much God cares.
Rabbi Heschel uses this passage to show divine pathos, divine concern and divine love as well as divine anger. In his book The Prophets on pages 282-283, Rabbi Heschel speaks of divine anger as a “secondary emotion, never the ruling passion, disclosing only a part of God’s way with man”. Earlier on 282, he says “The anger of God must not be treated in isolation, but as an aspect of the divine pathos, as one of the modes of God’s responsiveness to man. Rabbi Heschel uses this verse to show how the prophet turns terror into a song.
What most of us see as anger, Rabbi Heschel is telling us that it is a way of responding to us. It is not wrath for the sake of wrath, Adonai is not a ‘vengeful God’ as portrayed by many who don’t understand the relationship between God and us. Rather, Adonai is in a relationship with humankind that reveals “an intimate accessibility, manifesting itself in God’s sensitive and manifold reactions” and in speaking about “anger” he goes on to say: “the biblical term, however, denotes what we call righteous indignation… it is impatience with evil”(The Prophets, page 283). Oh how much I want to have this experience and then I realize we all can and many of us do. We get afraid of our anger so we let it either go inward (depression) or egocentric and it becomes rage and wrath (bullying/power).
Our elected officials and many prominent Clergy need to understand the difference and hear the call of God to stop practicing evil by repeating past errors. Our officials are wrapping themselves in some ‘holier than thou’ cloth and perpetrating evil rather than being impatient with it. They have used the Words of God to bastardize God and humans. Black Lives Matter, the Women’s march, the different social justice movements of my youth and my adulthood are all examples of expressing our righteous indignation. We need to support them and correct them when they get too full of themselves.
And what a wonderful teaching for all of us, ‘come back, I want you home, I know that I sent you away after you turned your back on all that was important to Me and I still want you to come back to me, come home. Come back, I know that I tore you apart, I know that you are hurting, come back and I will heal you and we will be closer than before. Come back, I know you are wounded and afraid, I know you think that I was wrathful for punishment, I know that you don’t understand that it was the only way you could hear, come back and I will bind your wounds and bind us together even stronger.’ This is the divine pathos that I experience from this verse and from the call of Hosea and God.
I have been engaged in a battle with anger for most of my life. In recovery, I believe that it has been mostly righteous indignation, when something is wrong, and there have been times when it is about ego. I can’t help myself as I see the evil coming to the doorstep. I know that to some it has harmed their sensibilities and their sensitivities, for this I am sorry. I also know that for some (many I hope) it has shown them how much I care and it has broken through their armor to have them hear the call of “Come, let us return to Adonai”. I also know that I have turned the anger against me, especially in this last year, and I have been depressed and resentful and lost. I am grateful to many people for helping me through this period and I am hopeful, joyous and free of resentments and egocentric anger.
I am sitting here with so many thoughts. I am grateful for all of my wounds, my tears and, most of all, my healings and my being welcomed back by God. I am also unrighteous indignation that we don’t teach our young people these messages of the Prophets and God. It is because so few of us want to immerse ourselves in the words, the pathos, the experience of the prophets. I was blessed to begin to live these words some 34+ years ago and I continue in my imperfect way to still live them.
The great teaching here is that Adonai wants us back, accepts our imperfections and will bind us to Adonai a little stronger each time we return. I know this to be true with Adonai and with many of you-we are stronger and better each time we ask for and grant forgiveness and healing. How has your anger been righteous indignation and with whom can you effect healing with?