(from Hosea 6:4): "Your love is like a morning cloud," – sounds good doesn't it? – "like the dew that goes ... early away." A morning cloud sounds so appealing—fluffy and bright and charming, set against a rich blue desert sky, sounds quite sweet. Turns out there is nothing admirable about the morning cloud in the Eastern Mediterranean. The morning cloud is a deceiver, a tease, a cheat. Into a parched and blistering land always desperate for rain, the Mediterranean Sea hurls almost daily, puffy white cumulus clouds, which, as they rise over the Judean hills, darken into the promise of refreshing rain. Then, still in the early morning hours, these clouds just suddenly evaporate, vanish. The prospect of cooling, life-giving rain is promised each morning and reneged on every day. The morning cloud promises much and delivers nothing. Even more short-lived than this fake promise is the desert dew. Sparse at best, it vanishes utterly and immediately with the rising sun. It was to a people all too-familiar with these tantalizing and disappointing phenomena that Hosea spoke when he said on behalf of God, that Israel's love toward her God was ... well ... like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. Hosea. An 8th century BC prophet, one of the so-called Twelve Minor Prophets, but in my opinion tied only by Isaiah himself for the sheer lyric beauty of his poetic prophecies, and matched by no other prophet at all in regard to the majesty of his abiding love. Indeed, his tender and poignant portrayal of a God who shares the feelings and agonies of men and women living out meager desert lives has led many people to see this book as one of the most heart-breakingly tender and moving books in the Old Testament. Hosea's own life, recorded in the first three chapters of his book, is a mixture of suffering and glory, joy and sorrow. Hosea chose as his wife one Gomer. To say that Gomer was a woman of ill-repute is to be too kind. From the evidence it seems that she was the worst woman in Israel, and simply loved being that. Far from making an honest woman of her, marriage just spurred her on to even more licentiousness. She gave birth to three children, all without the, uh, co-operation of Hosea. We're not taking immaculate conceptions here. We're taking about public spectacle. But through all of the pain, out of all his hurt and wounded bitterness, Hosea loved Gomer, and was utterly faithful to her. Taking her back, in love, with no recrimination, every time she chose to return for varying lengths of time. An astounding reflection of the love of a faithful God for his faithless people. Hosea showed in his own life the love of God and how it is expressed, and the hurt God endures when our return of that love ends up being like a morning cloud, like desert dew. The book of the prophet Hosea is one sustained, lyric lament on how unfaithful we are, and the hurt this causes God, and on how faithful God is, in spite of our ongoing sin, how steadfast his love is, while ours is like the morning cloud promising much and delivering little, like the dew that goes early away, evaporating almost as soon as it is noticed. Hosea, indeed the entire Old Testament, shows beyond doubt how far we all fall short of the mark. How we can do nothing but fail. How we promise much, intend much, but in the end deliver little or nothing in response to the love of God. But Hosea, for all his love, is not the whole picture. The full truth comes not in Jesus. Hosea and all the prophets, entire Old Testament, even that morning cloud, must be seen only through the light of the grace and glory of Jesus Christ. Some of you may be thinking: Oh dear, here it comes, that same old sermon about how we don't need to do anything, that it's all been done for us by Christ. Well, it has and of course that's what's coming. St Paul never gave up on it, and I don't intend to either. We are not saved or redeemed by our morning cloud love, or our good works or our good intentions that go away early. We are justified by faith in Christ Jesus, and are made righteous by him. The answer to our morning cloud love and our desert dew faithfulness is in the today's Gospel: "I came, not to call the righteous, but to call sinners." He did not come to call men like Hosea, he came to call women like Gomer ... and us. Those who are already fully righteous, whoever they may be, do not need him. But we do. He came to call sinners, not the righteous, came to call Gomer and you and me, and by that call to make us righteous. We are now in fact righteous now, but only through the action of Christ, not through our own actions, not in and of ourselves, but in through him. In him and through him, and because of him, our sin is as constantly forgiven as Gomer’s was, it is all redeemed and we are left righteousness. We offer up our sin in sorrow and repentance, he takes our sin in love and forgiveness, and gives us back his righteousness. Because he loves us, like Hosea loved Gomer. With a love that is steadfast and faithful. Our love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. Thanks be to God, his is not. Not like the morning cloud, more like the everlasting hills.