31 October, 2021 – Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 26
The Rev. Dr. Richard Burden
Sermon preached by The Rev. Dr. Richard Burden
Below is a DRAFT text of the homily. It may vary considerably from the recorded version. Please excuse typos and grammatical errors, and do not cite without permission.
Three women stand on a desolate road. They have nothing in the world but the clothes on their backs and maybe a few small items that they hope they can trade. They are standing at the boundary between the known and the unknown…between a devastating past and an uncertain future….They stand in the dead land…the cactus land…They are refugees…migrants…grief-stricken and desperate…But they have each other.
Naomi has been called “the female Job” [source], and we hear the first part of her story today. “In the days when the judges ruled,” (sounds like a movie trailer…); it should really be more like: “in the chaos and turmoil of warlord rule”…there was a famine. Which caused even more chaos and massive disruption, and a devastating displacement of people. Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, and their sons flee—not just to the neighboring country—but to the heartland of one of Israel’s main enemies. They have no reason at all to think that the people of Moab will welcome them…Desperation is the only reason they would go there…But apparently they are taken in, and they stay for 10 years, and the sons married local Moabite women—Orpah and Ruth. But, Elimelech dies…then both sons die…and Naomi is left with no one to support her. The younger women might be able to find new husbands…but Naomi…like Job…is desolate; “Do not call me Naomi,” she laments a little later, “call me Mara—Bitterness—for the Almighty has made my lot very bitter” (Ruth 1:20). She is a lot like Job. And just like Job, Naomi never stops engaging with or believing in God.
God is not a character in Book of Ruth, the way God is in Job…God never shows up and speaks to Naomi (or anyone) from a whirlwind (or anything else)…yet, it is clear that God is working behind the scenes throughout the book. Naomi hears that the famine in her homeland has abated and she believes God is responsible…So, she returns home—providentially, it turns out—right at the beginning of the barley harvest. You probably remember the story from here: Ruth decides to go gleaning (picking up the grain left behind by the reapers), and “as luck would have it” (Ruth 2:3) just happens to do so in a field owned by Boaz—a member of Elimelech’s family. Boaz just happens to take a liking to Ruth, and what with one thing and another…Ruth marries Boaz and gives birth to a son, thus effectively restoring Naomi’s fortunes…just as Job’s fortunes are restored. Oh and the baby…he becomes King David’s grandfather.
All through the story…Naomi and Ruth follow the tiny glimmers of hope that God provides…They cling to each other…and trust in God. But we’re not there yet. Today, we are still on the way back. Today, we are still on the road…with nothing…trying to decide whether it’s better to turn and go back to Moab…or go forward to Bethlehem.
We can relate to that, right? Here we are …in a world poised at the boundary between the known and the unknown…between a devastating past…and an uncertain future. Between the world as it was…the world we thought we knew…and the world that has not yet come to be. We too, are grief-stricken…over all that we have lost…We are tired. And we also might feel a little desperate at times. And…we also have each other; and our faith in God.
And like Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah, we have still have choices to make. Do we move forward together, or do we turn back alone.
Naomi is going to a place she once knew…once called home…but it is a place that can not…will not…be the same…Even if we think we are going back to what we knew…we will still find ourselves in a place that we don’t recognize.
Orpah is devastated to leave the only people she can truly rely on…but obedient to her mother-in-law…obeying her own sense of “what’s right”…she chooses to return to a place that she knows…a place that is familiar but not necessarily friendly. We don’t know what happens to Orpah. Like all secondary characters she walks out of the narrative and into oblivion, but tradition has not been kind to her. In some rabbinic literature she becomes the mother of Goliath, and is killed by one of David’s generals. In other traditions, she is horribly abused. I hope that’s not true, but all we can say for certain is that by returning to “what was” she chooses to be written out of the narrative. If we try to go back…will we find comfort or only more grief at being left.
Because the book is named after Ruth, it’s clear that she is the one we are to emulate…that we are to follow God and cling to those we are close to…into this strange land of the undetermined future. But at this moment, I imagine Ruth is terrified, and brave…She is giving up everything she has ever known…everything she might believe she is…essentially giving up one identity to grow into another.…Ruth’s story is a story of conversion…a story of the transformation that happens when you follow God into the unknown.
So here we are in this in-between land…with the devastation of the past on one side, and the precipice of the future on the other. Orpah, Naomi, and Ruth all make choices…based on the information they have…their own beliefs, and the relationships they have with those who are with them. It’s all any of us ever have to make decisions. And like them we can choose to walk forward…accept transformation, and learn to see the seeds of hope sprouting into new life around us…or we can choose to turn back and head toward…well…we don’t know what, because that’s not part of the story…but we know that the past is not something any of us can return to.
Naomi’s lot is bitter…there is no doubt about that…but Ruth stays with her. There are so many Naomi’s in the world. And by sticking with them…by clinging to each other…being open to the transformations God can bring about…and walking into the future together…we too can learn to glean the seeds of new life that God is constantly sowing before us.
May we be able and willing to do so.
Amen.