Hosea 11.1-4,8-9; Psalm 79; Matthew 10.7-15
‘Out of Israel I called my son.’ For St Matthew [2.15] this verse is taken as a prophecy to account for the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt to escape the murderous designs of King Herod. For the prophets, though, it was the central metaphor for the life of Israel.
Creation is described not as forming and shaping, as if God had taken up someone else’s discarded materials and made something of them. Rather, creation is call. ‘Let light be’ God declares [Genesis 1.3] and in response to that unignorable summons light comes into existence. ‘By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made’ the Psalmist [32(33).6] declares. God’s Word (which is the metaphor the prophets customarily use for God’s very essence; cf John 1.1] is potent, creative and it imparts life.
Our relationship to God is well described by the metaphor of vocation, vocation not primarily meaning ‘what we do’ but ‘who we are’. {Cf Ephesians 1.3-14] God calls us out of darkness into light, out of slavery into freedom, out of all the counterfeits we think of as life into life worthy of the name.