2024-11-11
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
Nov. 10, 2024 Homily Rev. Betsy Wooster Federated Church UCC
How is God present? How is God active in our lives? These questions that we often ask ourselves, are the same questions central to today’s story of Ruth and Naomi. Our scripture reading picks up part way into their story, one that begins with tragedy and suffering. Israel was wracked with Famine, and Naomi and her husband sought to save their family by escaping to the neighboring, and enemy, land of Moab. Their sons married Moabite women, Ruth and Orpah, and 10 years later tragedy struck again when Naomi’s husband and sons all died, leaving Naomi, Ruth and Orpah widowed. Naomi decided to return to her home in Judah and Ruth and Orpah started out with her, determined to live out their lives with her. Here is where the story picks up:
A reading from the book of Ruth, Chapter. 1: 8-18
8But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, ‘Go back each of you to your mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. 9The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband.’ Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud.
10They said to her, ‘No, we will return with you to your people.’
11But Naomi said, ‘Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? 12Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, 13would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.’
14Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.15 So she said, ‘See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.’ 16But Ruth said,
‘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.
17 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!’
18When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.
Let us Pray: Merciful God, Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. As we approach your Word, may we be ready to receive the message you intend for us today. Amen.
Homily
Our story begins around 1200 BCE with this life-threatening famine so devastating that people were fleeing in large numbers. Traveling was a life and death risk, though staying at home would have been worse, certain death. Our story ends with more tragedy ensuing after Naomi’s family had landed in Moab and in the years ahead, her husband and sons all died. Now a widow, alone in the dangerous world of 1200 BCE, Naomi was in great peril. Women of this time had no protection without their husbands and sons. There was no system to keep Naomi safe, and Ruth would not have it. She would not leave her mother-in-law. She would go with her and stay by her side no matter what. Ruth vowed to live with her, convert to the Hebrew God, to live and die in Judah with Naomi, an enemy country that was forbidden to the Moabites.
And that’s an important part of the story. Hebrews and Moabites had a bitter and violent history as enemies. Only desperation and famine could have led Naomi’s family to Moab in the first place. And while they were there, a wonderful and surprising thing happened. Naomi’s sons married Moabite women, and the walls did not come tumbling down. In one-to-one relationships, people of enemy nations became family. And when a new tragedy struck, and the three men of the family died, the Hebrew mother, Naomi, and the Moabite daughters-in-law Orpah and Ruth, looked to care for each other. Naomi encouraged them to go back to their own extended families for shelter and support. She would not be a burden to them, she thought, as she went back to Judah. Orpah agreed and parted with love. But Ruth did something daring and beautiful in her faithfulness to Naomi.
What does it mean to love someone so much that you commit to stay beside them in the midst of loss and danger, chaos and toil, embracing and choosing to go to an “enemy” country to save the person you love so much that choosing to go with them isn’t a choice, but rather a mandate of the heart. How is God involved here? How is God present? Was Ruth providentially led from her native country to Bethlehem of Judah? There aren’t any divine revelations in the story. We do not hear God’s voice give instruction. There is no angel messenger who gives them direction. Rather, God’s purpose is worked out through the hesed of these two women.” Hesed is a Hebrew word that means what we know as loving-kindness, faithfulness, and loyalty. It means healing, restoration, protection. Hesed means to extend yourself for the well-being of another person. Ruth and Naomi shared hesed.
While there are big issues in this story, like the threat of famine and the food available in the nation of Moab, we learn that it is hesed between people that is as powerful, if not more so, as those systemic forces. How was God present and at work, then? God was at work among Ruth and Naomi much the way that we find God at work in the world today: through the choices and actions that people take for one another. What could be more valuable today than to demonstrate hesed for another person?
What could be more valuable to do in the wake of this significant moment in the life of our nation, than to take the daring step of moving away from the place of our own comfort and familiarity to be with someone who is feeling vulnerable and out of place and in need of support? So many of us are exhausted from navigating divisiveness and hostile disagreement; So many of us are burdened by a future full of uncertainty and change; so many of us are in need of courage to move forward. Naomi and Ruth needed the saving grace of God, and low and behold, they found God at work in each other. Naomi’s dream of safety and longevity for her family fell apart in Moab, and she later returned home with her disappointments.
But Ruth held fast to Naomi and made the journey with her. Ruth let go of everything she knew: her Moabite family, her language, the kind of food she ate, her religious practice, her sense of belonging, the only country, culture, and landscape she knew. Just as Naomi and her family had arrived in Moab because of tragedy, so Ruth heads to Israel with Naomi because of the tragic loss of her husband, her brother-in-law, and their father.
Yes, Ruth could have stayed in Moab with the hope that her own family would take her back, but Ruth was devoted to Naomi. Naomi was her family now, so much so that she is ready to convert to Judaism and live out her life there. Ruth insisted she would go with Naomi even though traveling together would put them in a vulnerable place. She chose to extend herself for the well-being of Naomi. She chose hesed.
“Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you,” she said. “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge.” And so, 10 years after Naomi’s family escaped from the famine in Israel… together, these two women walked back to Judah, where God had brought food once again in the land. They likely encountered danger along the way. But somehow, together, they made it home. The heroine of the story is a Moabite, the outsider is the faithful one to the God of Judah, who lives her commitment not only to Naomi, but to God and God’s people. And here’s an interesting twist in the story. Ruth’s journey to Judah with Naomi has a direct connection to our lives today. In Judah, Ruth married Boaz and became the great grandmother of King David. And through David, Ruth is an ancestor of Jesus. Roughly 1,200 years after she migrated to Israel, Jesus was born. This means that we cannot tell the story of Jesus without the story of a Moabite woman who overturned all expectations of division in her hesed toward the Hebrew mother, Naomi, who had shared such hesed with her.
Hesed is at the heart of the ministry and the faith of Jesus, who taught people to practice love, devotion, and loyalty to others as the way of God. The ministry of Jesus includes not only faithfully practicing Jews, but also Samaritans and Gentiles. This is the Jesus we follow. When we remember Naomi’s family moving to the enemy nation to save their lives, and when we remember Ruth joining Naomi years later to make the journey back to Israel, we are celebrating their choices to embrace a profound inclusivity.
Inclusivity in which enemy neighbors become kin, in which they respect and seek to learn more about each other’s faith commitments, in which these acts of inclusivity are chosen and lived out in communion with one another. Their lives lead us to the kind of inclusivity that we embrace in our church. God’s purpose is worked out through the hesed, through the loyaltythat these two women have for one another. God’s purpose is worked out in Jesus, Ruth’s descendent, and our savior.
I have a painting of Naomi and Ruth, that was given to me by my mother-in-law, Donice, as a gift for my graduation from seminary. It is the painting that you passed in the narthex on the way into the sanctuary today; two women, one older, one younger, each holding grief and each looking into the light of their lanterns. And this stole I am wearing is a gift made by my daughter-in-law, Ann, which she made with the design and colors to reflect that same artwork of Naomi and Ruth in the painting. To me, these mother-in-law and daughter-in-law gifts are a reflection of a promise that I share to have the kind of commitment and loving kindness with Donice, and Ann, and Emily, my other daughter-in-law, that Ruth and Naomi shared with each other. Their story is a special symbol for mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, but of course, the example of Ruth and Naomi is not limited. Their lives show us how God’s work is made real between any people who share and care for each other. We can follow in their footsteps. We can practice the love, loyalty, and devotion known as hesed.
We can embrace this hesed, that is steadfast even when life is hard… within our families, with our neighbors, with those who are completely different from us, with those whose faith is different from ours, even with those who are fellow Christians whose faith is still different from ours. We will never find hesed among our differences alone, if we aren’t willing to start with what we share in common. How is God present? How is God active in our lives? It is in knowing one another, it is in hearing one another, it is in loving one another, and it is in our relationships that God shows up, and together, we will all find our way home. Thanks be to God. Amen.