| Scriptures: | Ruth 1:6-18 Mark 12:28-34 |
Three weeks ago I officiated at a wedding for a young couple, as ministers are wont to do, at the Springs Preserve (which apparently is a pretty popular place to hold weddings). The bride's family was Thai - even though her parents had come to Las Vegas from Thailand several years ago - and they were all Buddhists. The groom's family were Christian - in fact, his parents attend a United Church of Christ in Alabama, which is how they found me. Pretty interesting job - constructing a wedding service with elements that would appeal to those of the Buddhist faith. So, naturally we chose a scripture reading from the Hebrew Scriptures (actually, the Best Man, who read it, was Jewish, so that turned out all right) - this very familiar passage from the Book of Ruth, which you heard read a few moments ago. "Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God." Lovely words that have been read at many a wedding down through the years - even though they have nothing to do with a man and a woman (or two men or two women) pledging themselves to one another as a new household is created. No, as you heard, this story has to do with a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law.
This past week's Christian Century had an article about Biblical illiteracy - which began with this paragraph:
"Comedian Jay Leno has gotten lots of mileage out of exposing general ignorance, including biblical ignorance. He'll ask passersby a question such as 'On the first day of creation, God said, "Let there be_____"' and people will respond: 'Um, peace?' Or he'll ask, 'Who were Cain and Abel?' and get the answer: 'Friends of Jesus?'…..A Kelton Research survey in 2007 indicated that people know more about what goes into a Big Mac than they know about the Bible and can name members of the Brady Bunch far better than they can name the Ten Commandments. A 1997 Barna survey showed that 12% of adults think that Noah's wife was Joan of Ark….."
The article goes on in a somewhat more serious vein to raise the question "What encourages students to engage the [biblical] material despite its inherent difficulties?" And the answer that professor Dale Salwak comes up with is: "One thing is that the Bible tells powerful stories. In all of us there is a deep and instinctive need to spend a lot of time with stories - telling them, listening to them, reading them and watching them. In fact, storytelling, which feeds and exercises our capacity to imagine, is one of the most important features of our existence."
I would nominate the story of Ruth as one of the best stories in the Bible with which to begin. Unfortunately, for many commentators the Book of Ruth seems out-of-place in the biblical cannon. It's a slight book, and doesn't seem to connect with anything else. But it is one heck of a great story, and hearing it told gives us some insight into our decision-making.
It starts out as a downer. There is famine in the land of Judah, and so a man by the name of Elimelech takes his wife and two sons and goes to live in the land of Moab, which is indeed a foreign country for them, east of the kingdom of Judah, but separated by the Dead Sea. Moabites worshipped different gods, and at this time they tended to align themselves with the northern kingdom of Israel. So, people from Judah and people from Moab, though related, found themselves in quite different places - think Israelis and Palestinians in modern terms.
Nevertheless, Elimelech is able to make a home for himself and his family there. But the story continues to be a sad one. Elimelech dies; his and Naomi's two sons take Moabite wives, but after about ten years both of the sons die. Naomi is left with no husband, no sons, yet with two daughters-in-law, a stranger in a strange land.
Understand that this is a story about three marginalized people. In that society Naomi, Orpah, and Ruth are nobodies once their husbands die. They are among the least powerful, they have few resources except for their wits, their determination, their faithfulness to each other. The system collapses for them, and they really have no one to turn to except one another. But now the story begins to pick up on a happier note at least a little bit as we start our lectionary text. Naomi hears that the famine has lifted in Judah, and so she starts to make preparations to go back to her home country. But what about Orpah and Ruth, the two daughters-in-law? They are Moabites. They know nothing of Judah and Bethlehem. And so Naomi does a magnanimous thing: she tells the two women that they should stay in their home country with their own people. They are still relatively young; they could find new husbands among their countrymen.
Now it's Orpah's and Ruth's turn to make the grand gesture. "No," they both say, "we will return with you to your people." This was a big step; the two younger women had no idea what they would find in Bethlehem - how they would be treated. Kinda makes you wonder if Naomi knew something about the reception these Moabites would be likely to have from a people who were resentful of the Moabites traditions.
And so they set off together - two young widows leaving Moab and an old, now barren widow returning to Judah.
Yet somewhere down the path leading out of their country and into Judah, things change. Naomi again pleads with her daughters-in-law to return to their own land, citing her age and her barrenness, and her despair that "the hand of the Lord has turned against me". There is more discussion and more weeping and more arguing. And eventually Orpah relents. "Orpah kissed her mother-in-law," and turned "back to her people and to her gods". Her way is now reversed, her decision is to give up the going forward and instead turn back to the land and people and religious traditions she knows.
There remains Ruth - in the boundary zone, a border crossing between two lands and two loves. Behind her are Moab and her sister-in-law Orpah. Before her are both a new and strange land - Judah - and her mother-in-law Naomi. And so she makes her decision - one that Kate Huey calls an "incomprehensible and stunning declaration of a covenant commitment that puts many marriages, both contemporary and historical, to shame: she promises lifelong faithfulness, support, and care to this bitter old woman, not even her own kin, a foreigner to her and her people. Ruth puts herself second to the needs of this other woman, and promises to make a life with her in a land strange to her but holding the promises of a God she does not know."
And she does it in poetically beautiful words that we can make our own:
"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!"
Ruth has come to a border - both a literal one between Moab and Judah and the psychological one about where she will spend the rest of her life. And at every border there are choices to be made. You've been there. You know that feeling - this is a point after which everything will be different. Will it be for good or for ill? And, of course, often we don't know until the choice has been made.
Dag Hammarskjöld in his inspirational book Markings, writes, "There is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice, because all you have staked will be lost if you look back. Life's point of no return." (p. 82) Think back on the points of no return in your lives. I had already finished writing this sermon when I watched the end of a 1976 movie called "The Front" with Woody Allen. It's about blacklisting in the entertainment industry in the early 1950's. Woody's character, Howard Prince, fronts for writers who are blacklisted - giving scripts to the network with his name on them. But then he's called to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He thinks he'll be able to play them, but they back him into a corner where he has no choice but to betray the good name of his friend, Hecky Brown, who had committed suicide. Here is Howard's "point of no return". I wish I could quote the full line that he uses, since it's one of the great "out" lines in cinema history. Rising from the table Howard says, "Fellas, I don't recognize the authority of this committee to ask me these questions. Furthermore, you can all go f___ yourselves." A true kairos moment for Howard Price. Each one of us could offer our own examples - times that we sometimes like to call kairos moments because they shape all that has been past and all that is yet to come.
But Ruth's story and Dag Hammarskjöld's quote are not just about looking back at momentous decisions. Ruth's story points us to what lies ahead. What are the decisions we must make? What are the choices we have been avoiding? What burdens have we shirked hoping someone else would decide for us? Decisions are yet to be made, our destiny is yet to be determined; yet, at the border we must either cross or turn back and disappear. This is true for us as individuals and it is true for us as a church congregation as we enter the process of discerning whether we would better serve God in this place by joining with our sister congregation, Northwest Community Church, in a mutuality of ministry. This is a border that we will be approaching; potentially life-altering choices will be before us.
Jesus' border crossing with the choices he had to make began in that garden of Gethsemane. This was "life's point of no return" for him. Had he turned back we would not be here today. He knew that to choose for love of God and love of neighbor was the only way forward. He knew that others who made those choices were "not far from the Kingdom of God," as he tells his disciples. It remains the only way forward for us today.
Ruth's story has a powerful ending that reverberates down the years. By going with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to Judah she becomes a foremother of David, and, in faith, of each of us. No wonder, then, that Ruth's name means "Beloved." As we eat this bread and sip this juice this morning, let us think on the choices that Ruth made, that Jesus made, that we have made and will make -- and let us be truly thankful.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
November 1, 2009