VOL. 6, NO. 46
HITCHING WAGONS, HEDGING BETS
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Scripture: Ruth 3
1.
Naomi, her mother-in-law, said to her, ‘My daughter, I
need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you.
2.
Now here is our kinsman Boaz, with whose young women you
have been working. See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing-floor.
3.
Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best
clothes and go down to the threshing-floor; but do not make yourself known to
the man until he has finished eating and drinking.
4.
When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then,
go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do.’
5.
She said to her, ‘All that you tell me I will do.’
Ruth 4
13.
So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came
together, the Lord made her conceive, and she bore a
son.
14.
Then the women said to Naomi, ‘Blessed be the Lord,
who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; and may his name be renowned
in Israel!
15.
He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of
your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than
seven sons, has borne him.’
16.
Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and
became his nurse.
17.
The women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, ‘A
son has been born to Naomi.’ They named him Obed; he became the father of
Jesse, the father of David.
Mark 12
38.
As he taught, he said, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like
to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the
market-places,
39.
and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places
of honor at banquets!
40.
They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance
say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’
41.
He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd
putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.
42.
A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins,
which are worth a penny.
43.
Then he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I
tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing
to the treasury.
44.
For all of them have contributed out of their abundance;
but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live
on.’
W
If the
book of Ruth were made into a movie, it would play well at the Rialto but probably not at the
Roxy. I say this because, unlike many of
the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures, this one is not action-packed or violent,
and the romance and sexual content is discreet. Though it has calamity,
heartache and a happy ending worthy of Hollywood, most of the storyline is
low-key, sort of understated. In case
you’re not familiar with it, let me give a brief summary:
Elimelech,
Naomi’s husband, is a resident of Bethlehem who takes his family to
nearby Moab to escape the famine in Judah. Elimelech soon dies, leaving Naomi with two
sons who eventually marry Moabite women.
After ten years, both of the sons die too, leaving no offspring. Naomi is bereft. In those times and places, an older woman
would have very little choice but to return to whatever family might remain in Judah.
NAOMI GOES HOME
And so,
since God had restored the harvests after the famine, Naomi heads home. Her
daughters-in-law intend to go with her, but Naomi urges them to return to their
own families of origin, stating the obvious – that she was too old to produce
more sons for them to marry, and they wouldn’t want to wait for them to grow up
anyway! (This is not quite so much of a
“Duh!” as you might think, because there were pressures on women to continue blood
lines of the families they married into, and often widows were married to older
or younger relatives of their husbands’ families.)
The
daughters-in-law evidently love Naomi very much, as the thought of separation
causes them all to cry bitterly. Yet
Orpah takes her advice and returns to her family. Ruth, on the other hand, clings to Naomi with
the words often quoted at weddings:
“DO
NOT PRESS ME TO LEAVE 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.”
So
eloquent, so devoted. We may wonder what
motivates such unusual determination, but the text is silent on Ruth’s inner
thoughts.
The text does
tell us how others viewed this action. Back in Judah, as the barley harvest
begins, Ruth takes the initiative and goes to the field of a relative to
glean. (For those of you who don’t know
this term, gleaning is following those who reap the grain and retrieving what has
fallen. Ancient Hebrew law protected very poor folk, like the widows Ruth and
Naomi, by allowing them to glean.) When Boaz, the wealthy field owner, sees
Ruth among his reapers, he pays special attention to her. He tells her to stay
in his fields, ordering the male workers not to bother her, and giving her
permission to drink from his wells. She is surprised at such kindness to a
foreigner, yet Boaz explains, “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.” He speaks a blessing over
Ruth, asking God to reward her for her deeds.
Hebrew law encouraged such generosity, but Boaz outdoes
himself, telling his workers to leave larger amounts behind for Ruth, and she’s
able to take a huge amount of food home to Naomi. Emboldened, they devise a plan that allows
Ruth to skirt convention and offer herself, without scandal, to Boaz as a
prospect for marriage. You heard this
part in the first reading -- huge stuff for a young widowed foreign girl! Obedient, modest, unassuming, Ruth goes to
Boaz, who has partied heavily and is startled in mid-slumber to find a woman at
his feet! Because he is upstanding, he
sends her away before dawn to protect her reputation, and then goes through a
lengthy process of allowing the next-of-kin first dibs on both Elimelech’s
property and Ruth. The man forfeits his
claim, and to everyone’s delight, Boaz is granted to what was called “the right
of redemption.” And the rest, as they
say, is history.
I know this is
a long story, and you have already heard the ending. But in among the twists and turns are so many
rich lessons, that I didn’t want you to miss the chance to see how God opened
ways for Naomi and Ruth, because it really looked like pretty much all was lost
for them. Nevertheless, Ruth would not
leave her beloved mother-in-law, even if her prospects in Moab
may well have been brighter. I like to
think that living ten years with a Hebrew family convinced Ruth that they had a
better way to offer. I like to think
that the love she found with Naomi, Elimelech, Mahlon and Chilion allowed her
to know the love of their God, and that that was partly why she clung to
Naomi.
Even if it doesn’t say so in the story, I like to think these
things. Of course I admire Ruth and
Boaz, and even Naomi though she is pretty much of a grump, but she had lost so
much. Reading commentaries, I am told
that these characters represent types, so I hold the idea of them as real
people loosely. If she is a type, I
would call Ruth not just a courageous, loyal, obedient, optimistic type, but
also a trusting and faithful type. And I
would call Naomi a faithful type, even though she is very angry with God. I
would call Boaz not only a trusting, faithful type, but I would call Boaz a
radical redeemer. He defied convention by honoring and marrying a foreigner,
allowing God to use him to turn around a seemingly hopeless situation in a huge
and magnificent way. Who would ever have
thought?
GOD WORKS THROUGH FAITHFUL PEOPLE
Today I
want to lift up the fact that this is exactly how God works, through faithful
people, and even through those who can barely trust at all any more because of
the pain and loss they have suffered. I
don’t need to tell you Naomi suffered.
But she trudged home anyway, with hope at her side, when she couldn’t
hope herself anymore.
And now I want to fast-forward several hundred years, to a
story that would not make any kind of a good movie. We see Jesus and his disciples, in the last
scene of Jesus’ public ministry, as he is teaching in the temple. Through his eyes, we see the religious
leaders looking kind of like strutting peacocks – enjoying their long robes,
their respect in the marketplace, their seats of honor in the synagogues and at
banquets; in their greed, they take over the property of widows; and they put
on shows of piety with their long prayers.
As a clergyperson, it makes me just a little uncomfortable….
Then, as Jesus and his
disciples move over to the treasury and watch the deposits, he sees large sums
donated by many rich people. Suddenly a poor widow comes – I guess she was recognizable in her extreme poverty
by filth or tattered rags. In any case,
this woman puts in two small coins, equaling perhaps a penny -- the smallest
coins known in that culture. Jesus
speaks those challenging words, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in
more than all those….For all of them have contributed out of their abundance;
but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live
on.” Few, if any of us will have had the experience of owning so little as this
widow; Jesus knew it was all she had.
She gave all she had. I
cannot imagine either having so little or giving it all. Can you?
When I
try to imagine such a thing, this is what I feel: I feel that she was devoted to God with a
sense of complete trust, growing out of the knowledge that she was utterly dependent
on God. At one time, presumably before
her husband died, she may have known the luxury of depending on some amount of
riches. Would that have distracted her
from total dependence on God? I don’t
see how it couldn’t. It is my experience
that having property and money is seductive.
It is the same with education.
Even as these bring with them a sense of security in our culture, they
lure us from depending on God. They bring with them a sense that we are really
masters and mistresses of our destinies, at least to some extent. There are circumstances that bring us back to
the memory that we are mere creatures and not little gods, but usually these
circumstances are extreme.
WIDOWS IN OUR CULTURE
In our
culture, a widow is not necessarily without resources, as were Ruth, Naomi and
this widow in the temple. I think in particular this weekend of the many very
young widows of veterans who have fallen in the last few years, and their aging
counterparts throughout our nation’s recent history. Widows are often recipients of benefits that
are legislated in our country. And yet, if a widow falls prey to addiction,
illness, or some other catastrophe, she too can find herself homeless and
destitute, which may bring her to a hard-won dependence on God alone. The good news is that God is so good,
that she can depend on God.
Societies which honor God will be responsive to the plight of widows and
orphans, and God will use those who are open, like Boaz, to minister to these
ones of low situation.
It is
more as pastor than as prophet that I stand before you today; for that reason,
I highlight another dimension of the story of the widow in the temple and her
so-called “mite,” which by the way refers not to a tiny organism but a coin,
two of which equal a farthing. The widow
is herself a type of Jesus, as her act of extravagant giving foreshadows the
gift Jesus is soon to make of his life on the cross. She seems to give with abandon, though she
may well struggle with her decision the way Jesus did. I know in her shoes, I would probably have
saved for myself at least one of the two small coins, if not both.
Which brings me to my conclusions from these two stories. As I consider these women, I try to imagine
their spiritual states and compare my own.
As one who came of age during the women’s movement, part of me recoils
at the obvious truth that Ruth and Naomi were always going to be dependent on
marriage to a man of means in order to survive well in the ancient Middle
East. Yet I can set this modern perspective
aside long enough to see God at work in those very different social
conditions. The society in Judah
cared for its poor in its own way, as does ours. Ruth, Naomi and Boaz took the hands that God
dealt them and stepped out in trust, stepped outside of conventional
patterns. Ruth hitched her wagon to
Naomi’s God and to Naomi’s people. As
she courageously sought her own and Naomi’s way, she risked shame and potential
humiliation, humbling herself and taking the form of a servant, as would the
one whose ancestor she became.
AND WHAT WAS
IT LIKE TO BE
THE WIDOW IN THE TEMPLE?
JESUS
KNEW HER HEART AND HONORED
HER
ABOVE ALL THE
RELIGIOUS LEADERS.
SHE
HITCHED HER WAGON WITH ALL SHE HAD
TO THE GOD OF ISRAEL,
HOLDING BACK NOTHING.
Part of me
always asks, “Wouldn’t it really be more prudent to keep one of those coins?”
Some of you know what I mean, don’t you?
I have to wrestle with that voice, because my inclination is somehow to
try to hedge my bets.
I was
privileged this past weekend to have attended the annual Youth Specialties
National Youthworkers’ Convention in Anaheim. We had some amazing, inspiring speakers and
worship leaders, and one of them was a very young man in pretty raggedy clothes
and dreadlocks under a bandanna. His
name was Shane Claibourne, and he had been Tony Campolo’s student at Eastern Baptist Seminary. (If you haven’t
heard of Tony Campolo, he has long been a major evangelical voice for social
justice, and like Jim Wallis of Sojourners fame, he is one of a newly
christened bunch of Red Letter Christians who identify themselves with the
words of Jesus above all.)
Anyway,
at one of his workshops Tony exhorted us to listen to Shane, so I did. He talked about his gradual awakening to the
radical call of Jesus to preach good news to the poor. He talked about wanting to go to Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa,
and of after much fruitless pursuit, getting an inside phone number from her
Sisters in the Northeast. He phoned Calcutta and got a gruff, raspy voice
on the line. It was she, herself. Shane said he and some friends wanted to come
over, and she said come on over. “But,”
he stammered, “Where will we stay?” Her
reply, as he reported it, began, “Consider the lilies of the field….”
How many of us trust God
enough to go that way? Listening to
Shane report on his time in Calcutta, and his later times with
the poor in Philadelphia, without even thinking, I
heard my rationalizing self say, “Oh, it’s so much easier to be radical when
you’re young, without kids to support, etc. etc. etc.” You know that
voice? It helps to acknowledge those
voices we struggle with…self-examination is an important discipline that has
fallen out of favor in the church, I fear.
Without it, we hide from ourselves and from God exactly those areas God
would transform.
TRUSTING GOD
I want to close by encouraging us in the area of trusting
God. We who have so many resources are
inclined rather to trust in material things. We belie the motto, “In God We
Trust” that is emblazoned on our currency.
We trust in physical beauty, in education, in cleverness, in athletic
ability, in talents, in so-called strength.
A personal example from my life:
as a child I believed I had to rely on my wits and emotional fortitude
to survive challenges in my family, even while I knew that God was my bedrock;
so I got good grades, I was a model student and achieved great student-like
things; I was as obedient to God and parents as I could imagine being. Then, as I became an adult, things in my life
eased up, but I had become so defended, ready to face crisis, that I was only
partially open to God’s transforming love. Defenses were still erected that
were no longer necessary. I’m sure you get the picture. Unlike Ruth, who in her humility was open to
the kindness of strangers and trying risky new things, I continued to rely on
my own resources too much. Who knows what blessings I have missed?
BECOMING MORE OPEN TO GOD
We never
know how ready God is to breathe new life into us or through us, until we become
open to God. We can encourage each other
to grow in trust and openness, simply by talking more about the ways God has
answered prayers, about the surprising and unexpected ways God has redeemed
seemingly hopeless situations. Remember the end of Ruth’s story? Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife, and
the Lord made her conceive, after ten years of barrenness with Mahlon! Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the
Lord, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin, and may his name be
renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a
restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who
loves you, and is more to you than seven sons, has borne him.” That child was
Obed, father of King David, and in Matthew’s famous genealogy of Jesus, Ruth
the Moabite is one of four women named.
May we all be
more like the lilies of the field, secure in the love of our trustworthy
Provider. May we be more open to God, the One who restores life. Amen.
Rev. Kate Clayton
Presbyterian
Church of the Roses
2500
Patio Court
Santa
Rosa, CA 95405
November 12, 2006
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