“I will heal their waywardness
and love them freely,
for my anger has turned away from them.”
– The Lord speaking through Hosea to Israel, Hosea 14:4
The words of the prophet Hosea were poignantly delivered to me in the form of a ministry charge during my ordination service. It is a powerful charge – heal their waywardness and love them freely. The two-pronged charge has become a guardrail in terms of my ministry as pastor and as chaplain.
First, to heal their waywardness speaks to one of the most foundational functions of the pastoral office – healing. How does one heal waywardness? Some of the people that I encounter in ministry don’t even know that they are sick or in need of healing – sure they know that something is not right, but they often refuse the curative movements that are necessary. Some of those who have sat in my office or across the coffee shop table have been carrying a brokenness of the soul that has, like a bone break that has mended wrongly, left them disfigured and disabled. Sometimes, healing means another breaking so that the bone might be set properly. Sometimes, I am not the person to offer the healing – if the wound is beyond my skill, I must pass them to a specialist. Some receive the referrals, others do not. Often, healing involves a lengthy process – if someone is dealing with grief and loss or with trauma, or with sin – there can be a process of healing and rehabilitating that needs intentionality and companionship. Not everyone is willing to endure the process or apply themselves to the work of healing.
The second component to the charge is to love them freely. This can be incredibly difficult – to watch people hurting others or themselves by their choices, their decisions and knowing that they cannot (within their own power) heal themselves. It is hard, at times, to love freely – I would rather fix, I would rather just tell them to “get over and on with it.” So, whilst this is sometimes the difficult of the balance act – it is a check and balance. I certainly cannot love freely, out of my own self, but only through the strength of the Lord. And, as I am called to represent God to so many different people – people who are near and who are far from the Lord, it is this part of the character and nature of God that is so vitally important. When people are loved freely it opens them to the Divine possibilities of healing and restoration – because this is not how the world treats people. The world is always asking something of us, demanding that we give and give and we rarely receive.
This work, both in healing and loving, can be extremely costly at times – but it is all a part of God’s redemptive process. Consider Hosea – he marries a woman (Gomer) who is prostitute. They begin a family – but Gomer returns to her life of prostitution . Hosea goes and pays a hefty price to redeem his wife – 15 pieces of silver and a portion of grain. Hosea’s price would have been equal to that of the monetary value associated with a person’s life in ancient times (see Leviticus 27:4, Exodus 21:32). Scholars believe that Hosea may not have been wealthy enough to redeem Gomer for the full monetary price (30 shekels of silver) and so he pays the difference in an agricultural fashion. In terms of my own ministry, I understand this to mean that God is asking me to spare no expense in this activity of healing and loving. So many times, I feel that I am piecing together all that I have to redeem, to restore, to heal the waywardness and love freely, but this is the activity and love of God that he calls us to. And it should not be lost on us, that Jesus was betrayed by Judas for 30 pieces of silver. Here, we continue to see the interplay of God’s redeeming love throughout all time – that he would command Hosea to pay the price to redeem Gomer (who also served to illustrate Israel’s relationship with God) and that God’s own Son, Jesus would be betrayed for such a price. But still, God chooses to love. Still God chooses to heal. And so must we.
Blessings,
Rev. Brad Kenney
As I continue in this work of serving as a chaplain in the world of sport, there are many times of “sharing the cloak” with a person in need – sometimes it was in leading a funeral service, other times in offering a listening ear, some times in simply being with someone in the midst of their pain.
During seminary, I recall a particular moment when I was contemplating what future ministry would look like: one scenario, meant fundraising for salary and ministry to work with the Colorado Rapids as chaplain; the other scenario, meant working and doing the chaplaincy within the “margins” of life and work. As I relayed my fear and aversion of trying to raise money to my best friend, he simply said, “Oh, you must be an Ezra.” His statement caught me off-guard and I begged an elaboration. He proceeded to share that in looking at different personality types, it had been helpful for him to compare the contemporaries of Ezra and Nehemiah. Both men of God, they both made a return to Jerusalem in different ways. Nehemiah went and asked the king, Ezra was simply sent. Thinking I had discovered myself, I proclaimed, “Yep, that’s me, Ezra. Just send me, Lord!” However, my friend didn’t let me off so easy – sometimes within ministry we need to be like Ezra and sometimes we need to be like Nehemiah. But I don’t like the whole asking-for-money thing, I explained to my friend. It doesn’t matter, if God lays something on your heart…
Today, I have come to know that part of God’s call on my life has been the ministry that serves as CrossTraining. Direct chaplaincy ministry to the Colorado Rapids of Major League Soccer and an indirect, yet continuing ministry to hundreds of alumni that are now scattered around the globe for me this community are the “returned exiles” that I weep for and am heartbroken for before God, much like what is described in 
The evangelist, D.L. Moody once said, “Character is what you are in the dark.” Who are we when no one is looking? Who are we when no one is around? Perhaps, for the professional athlete, this question seems irrelevant – much of the professional life is spent in front of cameras, events and comments are captured by smartphones, minutia is tweeted, facebooked, instagrammed and more. Is there any dark in an athletes’ life? Is there any moment when the crowds or coaches, family or friends aren’t watching?
Through the course of my life’s work, there have been many moments in which I have been confronted with death. Perhaps this has made me more melancholy as I age; however, there is for me a realization that many of these places – difficult as they may be, are sacred spaces or “thin places” as the Celtic people use to call them. Thin places were those places where heaven and earth seemed to touch – there is a solemnity to many of these moments and sometimes there is a strange sense of relief, even joy for those that are present when someone they love dies.
2. Rest in the Midst of the Drought – The story of the prophet Elijah features a major drought and famine in the land. There is time when Elijah, hiding and on the run during the drought, was fed by the Lord by ravens (I Kings 17) and another time at the end of the drought period (I Kings 19) when an angel of the Lord cared for Elijah who was at the point of utter desperation. The vitally important reminder is that there are periods when we cannot go on in and of ourselves and we need to be cared for by others – especially in our faith. We need to receive Divine “assistance” and sometimes a direct touch from the Lord. Many times in the midst of the drought and slump as people we tend to try and “push through” or we change routines over and over until we can rediscover or find that rhythm or success. We fail, though, to rest in those periods and to realize the benefits of resting in the midst of the slumps of life.
