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July 24 Ordinary 17C Hosea 1 2 10

“Every day some woman somewhere is being called a whore,” Wil Gafney wrote in 2018, explaining why she preaches on biblical texts some of us would rather avoid, like Hosea. Let that be my content warning. I can’t write about Hosea without talking about what it feels like to be called a whore.

I won’t try to redeem a noxious text that has for so long hurt women, but neither do I want to pretend it doesn’t exist, that it hasn’t formed our religious imaginations, that it doesn’t carry the authority of scripture.