I can still remember the magic of some magical words I learned as a boy, King’s X. In our games, as I remember, it meant instant protection. It meant the rules were set aside at least for the moment, so that some onrushing fate of the game was not allowed to gobble you up. I’ve often wished it still worked in my experience of life, the way it used to work in our games. If life is a game, it’s played by a pretty tough set of rules. There are all sorts of onrushing fates threatening to gobble us up and we would dearly love to be able to say King’s X, the rules don’t count in my case. You can’t catch me, at least not now.

King’s X had a lot to do with the way I used to think about kings in general. What a marvelous being a king must be to have an X, whatever that was. Some superb power to say the rules now cease to apply. A power so great that a mere child could get the same effect just by mentioning the words. Am I mistaken, or do I hear God himself saying kings X in the 11th Chapter of Hosea? The rules of the game going on in this text are fairly clear. God is like a father and the part of his dearly beloved son is played by Israel. It’s God’s responsibility to free the child from hurt and danger, which he does for Israel by setting them free from Egypt. It’s Israel’s part to hear God calling to answer him as a loving child might answer by shaping all of life in response to the Father’s love.

But now we hear that Israel breaks the rule. Instead of answering love with love, the more of the Father calls, the further and faster Israel runs away. Of course, this is no game. What’s at stake, is the dead serious reality of Israel’s rejection of the very love of God. No one who take seriously the God of the Bible, whether Christian or Jew, can take that lightly. Nothing less is at stake in this game than the very shape and purpose of human life. Whether life is to be lived out as a joyous echo of love and gratitude to God, or whether it’s to be lived out in the greedy and deadly attempt to find some other way. Hosea accuses Israel of trying to find that other way by worshipping the bales.

Essentially, for Israel, I believe that meant worshiping the gross national product, the gods of production. And I don’t find that to be nearly so long ago and far away a piece of idolatry as one could wish. People still demonstrate every day that the God they really worship is the great God of what’s in it for me. We all know that and we recognize it in ourselves, but somehow, we can’t seem to grasp the fact that this is the deadliest threat to what is human in our world today.

We ought to be able to see it as no other human community in the history of man. Air, water and soil are threatened by death from pollution on a global scale. And that’s a direct result of worship of the great God, what’s in it for me? What happens to other people or other generations or the human community is unimportant, so long as I get mine. Not just whatever I need, but whatever I happen to want. And we could go on. What injustice or what vice, what violence, or what war or threat of global catastrophe does not root back somewhere in the grinning sneer of people asking what’s in it for me?

We are just now beginning to see the deadly reality of all this for human existence in our own times. But nearly 2,800 years ago, Hosea proclaimed these consequences to Israel in an even deadlier way. In rejecting the love of God, he says, you have rejected life itself. In choosing to worship the gross national product, you are worshipping death. The rules of the game are now clear in the 11th Chapter of Hosea, Israel has rejected love and chosen death. The consequences are obvious and apparently unavoidable.

They will have to go back to Egypt, says the text, back to that slavery from which love freed them. Assyria must be their king because they have refused to return to me. The sword will rage through their towns wiping out their children, blooding itself inside their fortresses. But again, this is no game. As few other texts in the Bible. The 11th Chapter of Hosea reveals the heartache of God when his people choose death instead of life. Listen to what I would call a lover’s soliloquy. God’s soliloquy of rejected love in Hosea 11.

The translation is somewhat free. When Israel was a child, I loved him. And I called my Son out of Egypt. But the more I call to them, the further they went for me. It was I myself that taught them to walk. And when they went, boom, I took them in my arms. Yet they did not understand that I was the one looking after them. I guided them in a toddler’s harness, whose straps were kindness and love. I was like one who lifts an infant close against his cheek. But now look, my people are diseased through their rejection of love. They cry out to all sorts of gods and gimmicks to cure them, but none can cure, really cure. Oh my people, how can I give you up? How can I watch you become like Sodom and Gomorrah, my heart recoils within me, my very bowels, lurch at the thought.

That’s how deeply God cares. That’s how deeply he is in this thing with us. By the way, the next time someone tells you that the Old Testament God is a vindictive God of wrath, suggest that they read the 11th Chapter of Hosea. The whole Old Testament is one great story of God’s search for people, his relentless will to restore and reconcile and heal. But that turns out to be a deeply painful search. Because death is just not the same thing as life. Hatred is not the same thing as love. And self-seeking is not the same thing as justice.

When we choose death, and hatred and self, there is heartbreak and anguish with God. So deeply is God in this thing with us. So deeply is this world, beloved. But the rules of the game are that God must now confront his people with that violence and death which they have chosen. That’s the logic of the game. It surely is the logic of our human experiences of love, love offered, and love rejected. When you’ve said yes to someone over and over again, when you have cared for someone at great cost for a long time, and all you have received is rejection and contempt. What is there to do, finally, but turn your back?

And we’ve simplified the rules even more than that. You hit me and I’ll hit you. I may even hit you first if I suspect you’re out to hit me. If I don’t get mine, you will take it from me. Those are the rules of the human game apparently. That’s how we worship the great God, what’s in it for me. In that way lies death for the human community. But God says Kings X in Hosea 11. Listen.

I will not give rain to my fierce anger. I will not destroy Ephraim again. For I am God and not man, I am the holy one in your midst, I will not come to destroy. God claims the royal right to love those who reject His love. Kings X, the rules by which we play, the rules of vengeance and retribution do not bind God. For He is God and not man. And his Holiness, his Holiness burns nowhere brighter than in his invincible will to love even those who reject love.

And of course, that kind of love is costly. Christians see that kind of love made flesh in Jesus Christ. From his cross, he cries out for the people who nail Him to it and mock Him upon it. Father, forgive them. Kings X. Kings Cross. I am the Holy one in your midst, I will not come to destroy. The rules of the game are that love like that is always a loser. That way lies death at the hands of those who worship the great God, what’s in it for me?

But the gospel of God, the good news of Easter, says Kings X in God’s royal purpose for this world love like that never loses. It alone has life and gives life in a cross shaped world. The future belongs to the love of God in Christ and even now the tide of that future is sweeping through this world, however invisible it may seem to the eyes of power, lust, and death. And the marvel is that even we who have rejected love, are free to share in that future of God.

Right here and now. We can say Kings X, I no longer have to hate people who hate me, or despise people who despise me, or return evil for evil. I no longer have to worship the great God, what’s in it for me, the god of death. Kings X, Kings Cross, breaks that power, those deadly old rules no longer apply.

The New Testament makes it clear that saying Kings X like that is still a very costly affair, that X is cross shaped. And there is no doubt about that. And it is a matter of taking up one’s cross daily. But it all depends on where you think the victory is. Where you think life is. Whether you want to worship death or not. Faith says victory lies with the one who dared to love even those who reject love. Who sets us free to love like that. Love one another, he said, as I have loved you.

Old Samuel Rutherford once said these words about those little x’s, those little crosses that Christians carry, he that will take that crabbet tree and carry it cannily will yet find it to be such a burden as wings are to a bird or sails to a boat. And that’s where the future of this whole world lies in the purpose of God. Kings X.