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Rev. Mary Wilder Cartwright
November 8, 2009
“A Word for a New Generation: The Book of Ruth”
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
Sabbath is the seventh day – the day that God rested after creating the world. Of course, we are much too sophisticated to really take Sabbath seriously, because we know that creation didn’t happen quite the way of six distinct days of God speaking the world into being. We get stuck there.
But Sabbath took on its significance in the midst of slavery. Slaves work every day. They are under the command of their masters. Sabbath is a sign of freedom and of thanksgiving to God for the gift of life. Sabbath is a way of honoring God by acknowledging that our lives are not our own. We arrange our lives so that God’s grace and mercy are at the center, and Sabbath keeps us in that awareness.
To mark a “Children’s Sabbath” is to take note that children are a gift among us to be honored and respected as a gift of God. We are called to welcome them as Christ welcomes them.
Lonnie and her husband David are raising their granddaughter, Gina, who was four years old when this story was written. Lonnie was attending a dinner party when a woman asked her how the arrangement was working out. Lonnie replied that it worked fine, and they enjoyed the child a lot.
The woman said to Lonnie, “It must be very hard taking care of a young child at this point in your lives. You’re to be admired for taking your family obligation so seriously when you could be enjoying your middle years instead.”
“Hard?” said Lonnie? “Taking care of Gina? No, it isn’t hard. It is a gift to us.” She stood toe-to-toe with the very gracious and kind woman, baffled that anyone would think such a thing would be considered an obligation or a difficulty. She thought of the other grandmothers she knew in similar situations and how most of them agreed with her. The opportunity to raise a grandchild, while complicated and often painful, is overwhelmingly a joy. “We are grateful for Gina. She has never been a burden, and we count every day with her as a divine gift.”
Which surprises you more - the woman’s assumption that caring for a child was a burden, or Lonnie’s affirmation that Gina is a gift?
Increasingly in our culture, children are seen as a problem, as challenging and difficult, and as creating problems or inconvenience.
I was with someone yesterday at Lucas Oil Stadium for a marching band contest, and there was a lot of paper on the floor. My companion spoke a bit sheepishly about seeing the paper on the floor in the bathroom stalls and thinking, “Why are young people so messy?” Then she realized as she dealt with the paper dispenser that it was tight and stuck, and it was impossible to get paper without breaking off bits that fell in the floor. The mess had nothing to do with the inherent messiness of young people but with a mechanical problem in the paper dispenser. She confessed, “I’m ashamed of myself for automatically thinking badly of young people.”
A friend of my mine who is a priest, Father Michael, tells about his young niece who is one of the delights of his life. She is named Michaela after him, and they are very close. Her joy in life is a gift, and she gives blessing to everyone she meets. But not everyone is so welcoming of that blessing, because Michaela’s appearance makes it clear that she has Down’s Syndrome. Father Michael tells the story of an experience of Michaela’s mother who is a physician. When Michaela was a baby, her mother took her for a stroll to show off her beautiful new baby when one of her colleagues came up to her, took one look and said, “You know, we have tests now to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen.” His assumption was that all of us should be the same, having one kind of appearance, one kind of mental capacity, homogeneous and comfortable. No strangers allowed.
We are fearful of strangers and of people who are different from us. We even caution our children repeatedly:
“Don’t talk to strangers.”
“ Don’t take anything from a stranger.”
“Don’t let anyone know anything about you, where you live, what you do because they might come after you.”
The stranger is undoubtedly someone who is going to cause you trouble.
We lump people into groups of strangers: the other school, those people from Greene County, you know how people from Martinsville are. Or, we cast the net a bit wider to the homeless, the Hispanic community, or the Muslim community.
Yesterday’s newspaper (Indianapolis Star) reported that when Shariq Siddiqui heard there was a mass shooting at a Texas Army base, he immediately prayed that the shooter would not be Muslim. When it was confirmed that the suspect in the 13 deaths at Fort Hood was Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army major and a Muslim, Siddiqui’s heart sank. Along with concern for the dead and wounded, he couldn’t help but think what events such as these mean for American Muslims: “[Events like this] ruin everything we are doing. They are ruining the image of Islam,” he said. “They make it difficult for our kids to go to school. They make it difficult for everybody to live their lives.”
It is ironic, isn’t it, that today we hear the story of Ruth, a Moabite woman, a woman who would have come from what is now Jordan, a Muslim country, home of thousands of refugees – longtime Palestinian refugees, shorter-term Iraqi refugees. Here’s what Deuteronomy says about people from Moab:
No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord because they did not meet you with food and water on your journey out of Egypt…You shall never promote their welfare or their prosperity as long as you live (Deuteronomy 23:3-6).
Once upon a time, there was a couple who left their country behind to try to find a better life – a new place where they could have enough to eat and a good place to raise their children. The man’s name was Elimelech, and his wife’s name was Naomi. They had two sons. Unfortunately, Elimelech died, leaving his wife Naomi to watch out for the sons. The sons both found wives in this new country, but after they’d be living there about ten years, both sons died. They had no children, so it was just Naomi and her two daughters-in-law.
She’d had a very rough time over in Moab. Moab is today the country of Jordan, a Muslim country and like then, it is a country which is home to many refugees—refugees from Palestine who have been in Jordan for as much as 60 years or more and also more recent refugees from Iraq. Ironic, isn’t it? But Naomi heard that back in her home country (which is today the West Bank or the Palestinian territories) that the crops were better and that there was food again. Since things were very sad for her anyway, she decided to head back home.
Her daughters-in-law were going to go with her, but she told them to stay in their home country. After all, what good could possibly happen to them as foreigners back in Bethlehem? It was the custom and even the rule that if Naomi had other sons, those sons would marry the daughters-in-law and thus carry on the family name. But Naomi had no more sons and even if she had married that day and had a son in nine months, these young women weren’t going to wait around for that child to grow up, so they should stay back in Moab.
That probably made some sense to the daughters-in-law, and one stayed back with her family. But one of the daughters-in-law whose name was Ruth begged Naomi to go with her. “Wherever you go I will go,” she said. “Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God.“
So they went on to Bethlehem. When they got there, people, of course, talked about them. Naomi talked about her bitterness, and how bitterly her life had gone. “I went away full,” she said, “but I have come back empty.”
Naomi may have been sad and bitter, but she was also resourceful. She knew how to work the system and to take advantage of the resources that were available to her even though were limited and gave her no real security. She sent Ruth out to glean, to pick up the barley that was left in the field after the harvesters had come through. They couldn’t get it all, so whatever was left over was for the poor to pick up.
Interesting contrast to the tithe, isn’t it? The first 10 percent goes to God, and whatever is left over is for the widowed, the orphan, or the stranger in town.
Ruth in her gleaning catches the eye of Boaz, so he tells his workers to leave a little extra for her. Naomi recognizes his interest. She knows he is her cousin and a generous man. Even though he has no real responsibility for Ruth or Naomi, Naomi encourages Ruth to go to him and suggest that he give her security. Sure enough, he welcomes Ruth to his bed and throws his cloak over her. In the morning, he makes it clear that he thinks someone else has prerogative to watch over Ruth if he wants, but he also makes it clear that anyone who becomes Ruth’s husband becomes responsible for carrying on the family name of her husband. The kinsman doesn’t want to do that, so Boaz takes up the responsibility, marries Ruth, and soon they have a baby named Obed. Naomi welcomes Obed into the family as if he were her own grandson.
This could be just a nice love story. Boaz falls in love and goes against all expectations in marrying a penniless stranger. Or it could be the story of a decent man doing the right thing to help a young woman in his community. It could be story of a widow determined to make her way in the world, or the story of a young woman defying the odds to make a place for herself in a strange community.
The story of Ruth is a story of surprising and amazing hospitality. Ruth welcomes her mother-in-law into her life, clings to her, and agrees not only to remain with her but change communities and change loyalties. “Your people will be my people, your God will be my God.“
Naomi shows Ruth surprising and amazing hospitality. She doesn’t sit down under a tree and accept her lot in life. She introduces Ruth to a new community. She coaches Ruth in the rules and expectations. She claims Ruth as kin and arranges things so that the whole community claims her as kin as well.
Boaz shows Ruth and Naomi surprising and amazing hospitality. No one would expect Boaz to offer protection to these two women. It is made clear that it is not his responsibility. It is also clear that when someone goes beyond what is expected, amazing and wonderful things happen. Because Boaz takes Ruth as his wife, they become great-great grandparents to King David himself.
Naomi is an activist. She goes out of her way to find acceptance for Ruth. She coaches Ruth in the ways of the law that give her the right to glean and make a way for herself. She helps Ruth to gain the security that is possible for her. Naomi is an advocate for the stranger and the alien.
But Ruth is not just a good story. Ruth’s story challenges the status quo, the way things are, and the commonly accepted truths of a community. Without Ruth, there would be no Obed, the father of Jesse, who was the father of King David himself. Without Ruth, there would be no David, the father of Solomon, and all the way down to Jesus. The very people on whom we come to pin all of our hopes are directly the result of a woman born in Moab, a foreign country, the home of the enemy if you will.
We are a people called to welcome the stranger, to take a chance on someone different, to recognize the presence of God in those who we would prefer to keep at arm’s length. When we hear the story of Ruth, we are called to “go and do likewise.“
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