Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, "Liminal Lent: Ruth & Naomi," Ruth 1:1-2:12

Sermon 3/29/2020

Ruth 1:1-2:12

Liminal Lent: Ruth & Naomi

Today is the last Sunday in Lent before we move into Holy Week, and so it is our last week to focus explicitly, at least, on this theme of Liminal Lent, even as we suspect our global liminal season will last for some time yet. As a reminder, or for those of you who are joining us for the first time today, liminal literally means threshold, and is meant to refer to the in-between-ness we experience sometimes, that place between endings and beginnings, the seasons of transition when we’re between there and here. We’ve been spending this Lent studying stories of liminal seasons in the Bible, because even though these in-between, liminal seasons can be disorienting and uncomfortable, they can also be seasons when it is easier for us to hear and respond to God’s call on our life. 

Today, we turn our attention to the book of Ruth. Ruth is a short book of the Bible, and I encourage you to give the whole book a read this week. We’re told at the opening of Ruth that during the time when Israel was ruled by judges - before the people clamored for a king - there was a famine in the land. So a certain man from Bethlehem named Elimelech goes with his wife Naomi and their two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, to live in Moab. Maybe there was rumor that Moab had food to spare? For some reason, Elimelech thinks things might be better in Moab. Moab, which in present day is where Jordan is located, was a neighbor to Israel, and sometimes relations between Israel and Moab were good and sometimes they weren’t so good. At any rate, Moab had its own culture and religious practices - they weren’t part of the covenant between God and Israel. Mahlon and Chilion both marry Moabite women. 

At some point, Elimelech dies, and then both Mahlon and Chilion die, leaving behind their wives, Orpah and Ruth. This happens over some length of time, but the cumulative result is still devastating to Naomi. As a widow with no living sons, Naomi is in a precarious, vulnerable position socially and economically, and so are her newly widowed daughters-in-law. In the culture of the day, women didn’t inherit - men did. Naomi needs to figure out how to survive. And so she decides that the best thing to do is to return home to Israel, because now she’s heard that God has “considered God’s people” and given them food in Israel. And she’ll send her daughters-in-law back to their families in Moab, where they can try to start over and perhaps marry again. 

At first, both Orpah and Ruth protest leaving Naomi. They care for her - she’s family, and they’ve been with her for years. Naomi pushes, and eventually Orpah concedes and departs, but Ruth persists. She makes a declaration: “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die - there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” These are words of covenant, a beautiful act of commitment, of love. In fact, they’re often read at weddings. With these words, Ruth commits to the Jewish faith, making the God of Israel her God too. 

So Ruth and Naomi return to Bethlehem. Naomi tells people to call her Mara, which means bitter, instead of her own name, which means pleasant, because she feels that God has dealt bitterly with her. She says, “I went away full, but God has brought me back empty.” Have you ever felt like that? I think our liminal seasons might often find us feeling that way at first. A season of life has ended, and we feel a deep sense of loss. Significant parts of Naomi’s identity - she was a spouse, a parent - they’ve been snatched from her. And although she’s returned home, Moab was her home for many years. 

Ruth, of course, has suffered her own losses. She’s lost her husband, and now she’s in a new country, a place she’s never been before, far from her family of origin. But she immediately sets about trying to care for Naomi. Ruth asks Naomi to send her to glean in the fields of a kinsman of Naomi’s, a man named Boaz. Ruth clearly knows the law of Israel. There are provisions in God’s commandments that say farmers are not to gather every last bit of food to harvest from the field. No, whatever is left behind in the harvest is to be offered to those in need to glean. The vulnerable are protected in this way. And so Ruth goes to glean in the fields of Boaz. Once there, we see that Boaz repeatedly shows Ruth hospitality: He makes sure she is protected from anyone who might bother her. He makes sure she has water to drink and food to eat. Boaz follows the commandments for hospitality to strangers, for care of the vulnerable, for welcoming foreigners. But he doesn’t just follow the letter of the law. He acts with loving-kindness, with compassion, with care. And he lets Ruth know that he has heard about Ruth’s acts of loving-kindness too. He says, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. May the Lord reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!”

Eventually, after our text concludes, Boaz and Ruth marry. We sense genuine relationship between them, but Boaz also acts, again, to follow the commandments of God, which include provisions for caring for widows like Ruth by connecting them to family again through marriage where possible. And in the surprising and unsurprising ways of God, Ruth eventually becomes the great-grandmother of a man named David, and an ancestor of Jesus. A foreign woman, a widow with many losses, far from home, becomes part of the genealogy that shapes Judaism and Christianity. 

There are so many opportunities in this story for people to justifiably take other paths, choose other actions. In the face of loss, Orpah returns home to her family. Her actions weren’t wrong. No one would have faulted Ruth for doing the same. But she chooses to stay with Naomi, to care for Naomi, to stick by Naomi’s side in this liminal season. Naomi, in turn, despite the bitterness she feels, cares for Ruth, and makes her people, her connections, her country Ruth’s as well. Boaz could have ignored Ruth - just another person come to glean in his fields. That would have been generous enough. But he sees how faithful she has been, and seeks to be a vessel through which Ruth experiences God’s blessings. 

We’ve been having our weekly Bible Study online for the past couple of weeks, and I think we’re getting the hang of it. It’s open to all - Wednesday night at 6pm over Zoom, and again, you can find the link to that in our email newsletter or on our facebook page. We had a great group this week, and we spent time studying the scriptures from Ruth for worship today. After class, Karen Brungard messaged me with something she’d been thinking about. She said that in thinking about Ruth and Boaz, she realized that each of them chose to do what was right, but unlike some more dramatic stories in the Bible, neither Ruth nor Boaz recounts God speaking to them directly. That’s such a good insight. I found Karen’s observation reflected in some of the commentaries I read this week too.Kathryn Schifferdecker writes, “God does not speak from burning bushes in this book; nor does God divide the sea. Instead, God acts through circumstance, and through the faithfulness of ordinary human beings. God’s [loving-kindness] is embodied in human action.” (1) Although we don’t hear God’s voice directly in Ruth and Naomi’s journey, we see God at work through Naomi releasing Orpah and Ruth from staying with her, and through Ruth choosing to go with Naomi anyway, holding fast to a faith she had learned from Naomi and her family. We see God at work as Naomi sends Ruth to glean in Boaz’s field, trusting that Boaz will be observing the law that has bound the Israelites to God for generations. She does this even though she feels like God has dealt her a bitter hand. In spite of her pain, she acts with the loving-kindness God calls her to show.  We see God at work as Boaz welcomes Ruth, a refugee from another country, without hesitation, again, something God’s commandments champion: welcoming the stranger, demonstrating hospitality. We’re following Ruth and Naomi through the most painful season of their lives, marked by loss and upheaval, the death of spouse and children, the loss of country and home, with widespread famine just the icing on the cake. And in the midst of such potential for ongoing devastation, we see in the book of Ruth faithful act after faithful act, not because God breaks forth from the clouds and makes grand pronouncements, but because of the everyday faithfulness of people like Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz.

God acts through the faithfulness of ordinary human beings. God’s love, God’s compassion - the qualities and character of God are embodied in human action. I know in these hard days, we’re listening for the voice of God. That’s always a good idea! But we don’t need to wait until God’s voice bursts forth from a burning bush, or a dove comes down from the sky, or any other dramatic sign. We already know what God calls us to do in this season: we love God and we love neighbor. We try to reflect to others the heart of Jesus. What we can do is seek to understand what that love of God and neighbor looks like in our unique experience. In this liminal season of pandemic, when we don’t get to welcome visitors into our church buildings, what does it mean to provide hospitality and welcome the stranger? In this season of pandemic, who is most vulnerable? If we can’t invite those who are hungry to glean in our fields, what other ways can we serve right now? If we can’t gather physically around those who are grieving, whose worlds are turned upside down, what other ways can we show our support? If our love and commitment can’t be demonstrated in literally journeying side by side right now, how can we join together in a journey of the spirit? Sometimes, most times perhaps, God isn’t calling us to dramatic gestures that will make headline news and win us accolades. Most times, God isn’t calling us to be Moses, leading a nation, or Joseph, becoming right hand to a king. Instead, most days, God just calls us to be faithful. To persist in doing what is right, what is loving, what is just, what is full of compassion. Ordinary faithfulness changes lives and changes the world just as certainly as extraordinary gestures.  

God is faithful to us, even in, especially in these days when we are anxious and afraid. And knowing that we are gathered in by God, under whose wings we come for refuge, we can be faithful to God and to one another too. In these days, friends, may God bless you for your faithful deeds, for your loving-kindness. May your days be full of blessing from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge! Amen. 

(1) Schifferdecker, Kathryn M., “Commentary on Ruth 1:1 - 4:22,” The Working Preacher, 

 https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2123

Sermon, "Women of the Bible: Ruth and Naomi," Ruth 1:1-18, 3:1-5, 4:13-17

Sermon 7/23/17

Ruth 1:1-18, Ruth 3:1-5, Ruth 4:13-17

Women of the Bible: Ruth and Naomi

            The most common passage people ask me to read at their weddings is 1 Corinthians 13: Love is patient, love is kind … love never ends. For obvious reasons, it makes a good text for folks starting out in marriage together, as the apostle Paul calls us to love in a way that puts the other before the self, always. Of course, I remind folks when I’m talking to them about this text that Paul wasn’t talking about love in a way that was meant only for married couples to share. Paul actually wants us to love everyone in this selfless way, not just spouses!

            One of the next most-popular verses for weddings comes from our text for today. “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die— there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” Often, when I’m sharing with couples possible verses for their wedding, I’ll read this passage, and the couple will say, “Yes, that’s the one, that’s the passage we want.” And then I have to explain that again, this text isn’t about love between spouses. This text describes the relationship between a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. It’s unusual, certainly. Still, though, most couples I meet with recognize that this kind of devotion and commitment is indeed something they want to find in their married life together.

            So what is the story of Ruth and Naomi? The opening verses tell us that Ruth’s story is set in the time of the judges, the time period we talked about last Sunday, between the Israelites coming into the Promised Land and the time when they were ruled by earthly kings. During this time, there is a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem – yes, that Bethlehem – leaves Judah to go live in Moab. Bethlehem literally means “house of bread,” and biblical authors were not blind to irony, certainly. There’s a famine in the House of Bread. So this man Elimelech from Bethlehem leaves to live in Moab with his wife, Naomi and his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion. Mahlon and Chilion’s names mean literally “diseased” and “dying.” Yes, this is biblical foreshadowing! Mahlon and Chilion marry women from among the Moabite people. The Moabites haves a common heritage with the Israelites, but they are a different nation, with different religious traditions. They worship different gods than the Israelites. The Moabite women are named Ruth and Orpah (not Oprah!) But after about 10 years in Moab, Elimelech, Mahlon, and Chilion all die. Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah are all left widows.

            Naomi, an Israelite, hears that at last there is food in her homeland again – the famine has ended, and people are saying that “God has considered” the people and their plight. She sets out with her daughters-in-law to head back to where she was living before she left home with her husband. She, Ruth, and Orpah are vulnerable, at risk as widows in a patriarchal society. They have little to no social standing as they are, no one to provide for them, few legal protections. And as Naomi thinks on that, she encourages Ruth and Orpah to return to their families in Moab, to find security in the home of a new husband. “Go back each of you to your mother’s house,” she says, “May God deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.” They weep together, and both women say they will stay with Naomi. But Naomi insists she cannot provide for them. If Naomi were to remarry and have more sons – could her daughters-in-law wait until they were grown to marry them? Of course not. It would be foolish for them to not remarry. Naomi feels like God has turned against her. Her husband and sons have died. In a culture where a family line means so much, Naomi feels bitter, like a failure. In fact she will eventually adopt the name Mara for herself, which means bitter. Orpah decides to go back to Moab. But Ruth still chooses to remain with Naomi. And that’s when she says the words that are a vow, a commitment: I will follow you. I’m going where you’re going. I’m making my home where you’re making your home. I’m making your people my people. I’m choosing your God as my God. And if I don’t honor this vow, let God do to me what God will!

Ruth honors her vow, and she and Naomi return to Naomi’s home, where Naomi works hard to secure a good life for Ruth, and where Ruth remains focused on making sure Naomi is cared for too. Naomi helps Ruth connect to a kinsman, Boaz, who fulfills his role as “redeemer,” for the family line, marrying Ruth. And when Ruth gives birth to a child, Obed, Naomi serves as wet nurse. The women of Naomi’s community say to her: “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin … He shall be to you a restorer of life … for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne [a son].” They say of the baby Obed, “A son has been born to Naomi.” Our reading closes with the author letting us know that Obed becomes the father of Jesse, father to David, most beloved of the kings of Israel.

The Book of Ruth is a favorite book of many Bible readers. After all, compared with the violence of war and Jael and her tent peg we read about last week, Ruth’s story has a lot to recommend it. No wars. A bit of romance. A story of devotion and commitment. A young woman, devoted to her mother-in-law. A man willing to step up and protect those who are vulnerable. But even though the story is drastically different than last week’s, our driving question still is the same: what’s the good news in the Book of Ruth? Some biblical scholars think Ruth was written to counter books of the Bible like Ezra and Nehemiah, which include serious statements against intermarriage, a marriage between Israelites and people of other faith traditions. Here is Ruth, a non-Israelite, who nonetheless commits her life to following the God of Israel, who becomes the great-grandmother of King David. And certainly, I think there’s something to the hopefully-now-unsurprising fact that God works through the story of an unexpected figure like Ruth. We talked last week about God using unexpected people to accomplish God’s work. Here, we find a Moabite, a foreign woman, a refugee, a widow, and her commitment Naomi leads to her being the right person at God’s right time to continue God’s covenant for generations to come. Phyllis Trible (1) notes that Ruth’s story is a bit like Abraham’s story in the degree of their radical life-changing decisions. Both leave home and country to go to a completely new place. Abraham has an explicit call from God to do so. Ruth doesn’t have an explicit call from God. But throughout the text, Naomi and Boaz both note that Ruth behaves with loving-kindness. The word has a sense of practicing loving-kindness toward someone even when they have no rightful claim on your compassion. The call on Ruth’s life that drives her to a new place is the call of loving-kindness, of compassion, and it changes her life as much as God’s more direct call changes Abraham’s.

But I am most moved by Ruth and Naomi’s move forward in spite of what can only feel like utter disaster and failure in their lives. For Naomi, everything is lost. Where once she had a whole family, now she will have no descendants at all. For Ruth, though, there’s an escape plan. She can leave. This wouldn’t do anything for Naomi, but for Ruth, how easy would it be to just go back home and start over again? I don’t mean to malign Orpah’s decision. It was certainly a sensible choice, and Naomi didn’t seem to begrudge her path. But what on earth motivates Ruth to persevere and stay with Naomi despite what seems like a dead end?

Samuel Wells preached on this passage at a Baccalaureate service at Duke several years ago (2), and it struck me as an odd choice of text at first. But Wells in his message speaks to the students about failure that will inevitably be part of their lives. He writes, “I’m thinking right now of young man who left college 10 years ago. He went into consulting work on the East Coast. He spent a bit of time on Wall Street, and … [three] or four years ago he and a couple of others set up their own company. It was tough at first but soon it became quite a success … That company was his life, his identity, his pride, his joy.

“January just past it all went wrong. The company slid into bankruptcy like a sandcastle engulfed by the incoming tide. The young man saw his dream disappear and his security, prestige, and self-esteem melt away with it. Four months later, to my knowledge, his mother and sister have yet to find a way even gently to refer to the subject with him. His life is shrouded in silence and dominated by the f-word: failure.”

Wells continues, saying that in our culture, where we judge and are judged constantly, there are “a thousand ways to fail. We come to fear earthly failure in the same way we fear death -- in fact failure becomes a kind of equivalent of death -- which is why the young man’s mother and sister found they couldn’t even mention the subject to him. Our earthly successes become our quest for immortality, and if we fail, it’s like a double dose of death.”

But Ruth, in the face of “poverty and possible death says that, for her, there’s something that means more than self-preservation and survival. That something is loyalty and love. In showing such steadfast love against all expectations, she shows us the face of God in a way we might never have seen it if she’d been lucky and successful.” It’s the same perseverance that we find in Christ’s death, and the ultimate victory of life over death. Who would continue to have hope after the seeming failure of Jesus’ death on the cross?

            While Wells was spending time in Northern Ireland, he spoke with a priest there who had dedicated his life to working for peace after decades of strife and violence. The priest had experienced failure after failure. But he persisted, dedicated to his work. He told Wells, “It’s better to fail in a cause that will finally succeed than to succeed in a cause that will finally fail.”

            Ruth and Naomi experience utter devastation. But they bind themselves to each other, and to a path with God’s people that will last them beyond the hopelessness of their present circumstances. I can only imagine that when Ruth makes her decision to stay with Naomi, she makes her choice not only out of loving-kindness, but also with her eyes set on the horizon, into a future longer than her immediate suffering, into a plan and path that is grander than she can see in that moment.

            What about us? What is God’s call to us in the midst our failures, in the midst of our suffering? Without a doubt, we will encounter times in our lives, seasons when it feels like we have come to a dead end, and the only thing we can do is go back to the beginning and start all over. When we find ourselves in such a place, what will we do? Like Ruth, maybe we can turn our pain into compassion, into loving-kindness that keeps us thinking of others instead of ourselves, even in our pain. And like Ruth, we can remember that we have committed our lives to serving God’s cause, and even when we are failing, God’s cause is the one that finally succeeds. Let’s stick with that path, even if we can’t see that far down the road just yet.

            Remember, I told you that Naomi asked to be called Mara, which means bitter? No one ever calls her that. Because the bitterness is for a season. The toughest season of her life. But Naomi means pleasure. And through Ruth’s loving-kindness, Naomi holds a child in her arms that brings her joy beyond the future she could see. Thanks be to God. Amen.  

(1) Phyllis Trible, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/ruth-bible

(2) Samuel Wells, Baccalaureate address to Duke in 2009, https://www.faithandleadership.com/sermons/the-word-we-don%E2%80%99t-mention?t-mention%3Fpage=0%2C0