St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
July 27, 2025
Year C, Proper 12: The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Hosea 1:2-10
Psalm 85
Colossians 2:6-15
Luke 11:1-13
Deeply Rooted
Well, that was quite the Old Testament lesson, wasn’t it?
It’s not every Sunday that you hear words like that in church!
Obviously, a lesson like today’s reading from the Book of the Prophet Hosea requires some explanation, some background.
According to the Bible, King David and his son King Solomon ruled a unified kingdom.
But, after Solomon’s death, the people in the northern part of the kingdom rebelled against harsh leadership and heavy taxation, and they created a new kingdom, called Israel, while the southern kingdom, centered around Jerusalem, was called Judah.
As you might expect, there was ongoing hostility between the two kingdoms, and differences developed, especially around worship.
The Book of the Prophet Hosea is set during the 8th century BCE, when the northern kingdom of Israel was defeated by the Assyrians. Many thousands of Israelites were deported and other peoples were brought into Israel.
By the way, the descendants of the people of the northern kingdom will be later known as the Samaritans – related to the Jews but with differing religious ideas and customs, and, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, with ongoing hostility between them.
Anyway, the Prophet Hosea declares that it was the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel – their worshiping of other gods – that led to this disaster of invasion, defeat, and dispersal.
And, whatever the historical truth of his own marriage, Hosea uses the image of marrying a promiscuous woman to represent faithful God’s relationship with unfaithful Israel.
And although the Book of Hosea is mostly about the northern kingdom, it is also a pointed warning to the people of Judah, to the southern kingdom, to remain rooted in God, to not lose their way, or disaster will befall them, too.
You don’t have to know a lot about the Bible, or history - and you don’t really even have to be an especially insightful or attentive person - to know that it is very easy for us to lose our way.
It’s all too easy for us to get uprooted from who and what is most important.
It’s all too easy for us to get uprooted - to uproot ourselves - from who we are meant to be, who we really are.
Sometimes this uprooting is caused by sin, by deliberately turning away from God’s way, by rejecting God’s love.
But sometimes this uprooting is caused by just mindlessly bouncing along from one event, one challenge, one opportunity, one news cycle, to the next.
And then, maybe without even realizing it, we’ve lost the thread of our own lives, we’ve gotten uprooted.
This uprooting can happen to any of us, very much including clergy.
One of Bishop Carrie’s expectations for us clergy is that we all have a spiritual director.
A spiritual director might be better called a spiritual guide or spiritual companion.
A spiritual director is someone specially trained to have conversations about faith, about spirituality, about looking for God at work in and through our lives.
Having a spiritual director is a very good thing but I confess that it’s something I’ve often “not gotten around to,” maybe because self-care isn’t always my strong suit, maybe because I’ve arrogantly thought I didn’t really need one, or maybe because I thought I was just too busy – there’s always so much to do.
All of the above, probably.
Well, I now have a spiritual director – she’s a Roman Catholic nun and I’m so glad that I found her. She is very wise, down-to-earth, and funny.
At one of our recent sessions, we were talking about, ahem, my age and my career path, how it feels like I’ve been on the move for so long, rolling along from one thing to the next.
And she suggested that maybe I’m entering a transition time, beginning to shift from a time of doing to a time of being.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot – transitioning from a time of doing to a time of being.
Now, I’m not ready to call it quits and spend my days sitting under a tree pondering the mystery of it all – not yet anyway.
But I’ve heard my spiritual director’s observation as a call, as a call to a healthier balance between doing and being – a call, like Rev. Amelia reminded us last week, to become and stay rooted in prayer – prayer, which makes all the “doing” possible.
Of course, today’s gospel lesson is all about prayer.
At the start, we get a glimpse of Jesus praying, a reminder that Jesus is a man of prayer, sometimes praying with others and sometimes going off by himself, to get away from the crowds and even his own disciples, for some alone time with the Father.
This time, after Jesus finished praying, we’re told that one of the disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
When it comes to prayer, we don’t know how or what John the Baptist taught, but Jesus teaches a very simple prayer, a very Jewish prayer, one that doesn’t require any special training or skill, a prayer for everyone, a prayer that is so deeply engraved on our hearts that often it is remembered even when almost everything else is forgotten.
A prayer that proclaims that God is holy and that we long for God’s kingdom.
A prayer that reminds us that we depend on God for everything, every day.
A prayer that acknowledges that we lose our way and that we are meant to forgive others when they lose their way.
A prayer that recognizes that life is hard, but God is holding us in our worst moments, with us always.
A simple, beautiful prayer meant for everyone, no special training or skill necessary.
And then Jesus talks about God’s love and generosity.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve met a few new people – community organizing is very helpful for that – and as we’ve gotten to know each other, I’ve told them some of my story and especially my experience here at St. Thomas’.
And whenever I talk about this place, I always highlight your generosity – the abundant giving that I mention in sermons all the time, caring for the Afghans and the children at Owings Mills Elementary School, the countless hours so many of you give to lots of other ministries – the cemetery, Sunday School, Confirmation class, Sacred Ground, and on and on.
To put your incredible generosity in New Jersey terms, there are more than a few of you I know that, in a pinch, I could ask you for a ride to Newark Airport!
But, as loving and generous as you are, God is even more loving and generous.
God is the Source of love and generosity.
I know that we all know this, but we forget, I forget.
For all sorts of reasons, some good and not good, I get uprooted, we get uprooted.
And sometimes, maybe we even place our ultimate trust in other would-be gods – our own abilities, our money, certain leaders.
As Hosea warned long ago, that is a recipe for disaster.
Finally, in today’s epistle lesson, the author of the Letter to the Colossians writes, “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”
So, praying together, we will not lose our way.
With God’s help, we will remain deeply rooted.
Amen.