B Proper 27 BFC 2015
Ruth;
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-11 (Pledge Sunday Theme)
November
8, 2015
We have
two Biblical stories before us today.
Both, I would argue, with the same lesson. In one of the more moving stories of the
Bible, before the Scripture Alicia read for us from the book of Jeremiah, the
prophet Jeremiah has been begging and imploring the leaders of Jerusalem to
return to the covenant God established with Moses and the Children of
Israel. As the Babylonian Empire sacks
Jerusalem, Jeremiah invokes one senseless, grace-filled, covenantal
practice. Using the right of redemption,
he buys ancestral land as a way to keep it in his family—a practice that was
intended to remember that the land and its resources were given as a gift to
sustain the people. Without land in one’s
family, a landless family would be vulnerable and might very well fall into
debt slavery. Allowing for the right of
redemption made sure that people with more economic power would not have the
ability to leverage debt and join estate after estate to one another without a
family member’s ability to intercede and buy the land on behalf of a relative
who was down on their luck.
Jeremiah buys this land to remember God’s will
to protect the poor and most vulnerable in the community as the Babylonian
Empire begins the wholesale destruction of Jerusalem and begins one of the most
horrific times in Jewish history—the Babylonian Exile. The Scripture before us from Jeremiah is
after the Babylonian Exile has led to the great hopelessness of the Jewish
people. After incredible devastation,
violence, warfare, and death, living now in oppression, utter hopelessness,
Jeremiah enjoins the people to continue the small, graceful practices that will
build the Babylonian cities in which they now reside. We can imagine the Jewish people asking what
they are now to do when their religious life is not the one that carries the
culture, dominates the spiritual landscape.
Live life. Grow vineyards. Raise your kids. Pray for the city. It is these small practices, Jeremiah
believed, that would reveal God’s plan, how God was working to sustain them,
build resilience, to infuse their everyday lives with grace.
In the
same way, Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah live in a seemingly graceless age. Famine and hunger make Naomi and her husband
Elimilech migrants and refugees who see themselves necessarily moving to
Moab. Famine and hunger kill Elimilech
and the two sons of Naomi and Elimilech.
The two sons are also the husbands of what was, back in that time, two
adolescent girls, Ruth and Orpah. In a
patriarchal culture, adolescent girls are probably the most dangerous of all
creatures. Their sexuality begins to show
and men, seemingly, have no control over that sexuality.
In
reality, Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah are three women without any public power. So Naomi tells Ruth and Orpah to go find some
nice Moabite boys while they are still young. Literally, in the Hebrew, Naomi
tells Ruth and Orpah to go find rest and peace[1], the passive form of
Sabbath practice. Go find rest and
peace, a life free of obligation to Naomi.
Orpah does leave to find a nice Moabite boy. Ruth remains with Naomi, without power in a
patriarchal society. Namely, they are
both without a man.
From this
point forward in the story, Ruth, one of those adolescent girls, is the
protagonist in the story. She builds
family and community through practices of honor, hospitality, gleaning and
redemption—all practices rooted in the covenant with Moses and the Children of
Israel, in short form, what we know as the Ten Commandments, many of them an
extend form of what Sabbath practice meant to Jewish faith and life. They are practices central to the health and
welfare of Ruth and Naomi and are practices which provide grace for the most
vulnerable in economic systems.[2]
In
contrast to what our wider culture teaches, that you judge a community and
nation’s sustainability and resiliency by its middle-class and rich, Jewish
teaching believed that a community and nation’s sustainability and resiliency
was to be judged by how things were going for its poor or its most
vulnerable. Practices of honor, hospitality,
gleaning, and redemption helped to make communities and vulnerable people
within their communities sustainable and resilient, practices of the covenant
with Moses and the Children of Israel that infuse grace into economic systems
against such things like famine, natural disaster, and war.
Rabbi
Binah Wing was one of my best colleagues when I served near Rockford,
Illinois. Rabbi Wing once shared with me
that Ruth is preached in synagogue as the first convert to Judaism. For, rather
than leading her husband away from his faith as a Moabite or foreigner, or
going back to her people after her Jewish husband has died, Ruth proclaims her
loyalty and allegiance to her mother-in-law in a profound and beautiful poem or
love song we read last week. “Where you go, I will go. Where you live, I will
live. Your people shall be my people. Your God shall be my God. Where you die,
I will die and may God do the very worst to me if anything but death parts me
from you.” Throughout the story, Ruth practices the Jewish faith in a way that
is righteous, resolute, and steadfast. Again and again, she demonstrates a way
of living out the Jewish Sabbath, ways of economic and ecological practice,
that are intended to preserve the most vulnerable and save the community. Ruth saves her mother-in-law, Naomi, and
herself by being . . . the righteous Jew.
She is a woman of honor, hospitality, accompaniment, welcome, hospitality,
and loyalty. Three times in the book,
Ruth acts with hesed, a Hebrew word we translate as steadfast love,
loving kindness, and loyalty. Hesed is most often used to describe the
actions of God.[3]
Remember
the rest and peace Naomi offered Ruth and Orpah at the beginning of the story? “Drop your obligation to me,” Naomi says, “so
that you may live lives of rest and peace.”
Ruth proves that sometimes the moral challenge of life requires
precisely the opposite of rest and peace.
In contrast to the patriarch Elimelech, Ruth chooses meaningful actions
and experiences that permit and demand growth from all those around her.[4]
Remember
that the land of Moab was historically associated with the land of
inhospitality—Sodom. In contrast to the
mythic legacy, how we traditionally reference Sodom, the Moabites provide
hospitality for Naomi’s family in the midst of famine. In contrast to the prohibition against
relationship with foreign women, Naomi welcomes the Moabite women, Orpah and
Ruth, under her tent as daughters. Boaz
then welcomes and provides hospitality to Naomi and Ruth.
In the
true spirit of the covenant with Moses and the Children of Israel, Ruth names
Naomi as her mother and honors her by refusing to leave her side. This is the true meaning of the commandment
to honor our father and mother. It
recognizes a time when our elders might be vulnerable in the land, and, rather
than leave them without protection and cover, honoring our parents is to not
leave them unaccompanied.
Without
proposal or prodding from Naomi, Ruth goes out into the fields to glean grain
for the both of them, reminder of the Jubilee code, within Sabbath mythology,
found in Leviticus. Gleaning was an
economic practice of rest and grace for the land, the workers, and for those in
the community who were most vulnerable. Gleaning
assumed God’s abundance such that some heads of grain would be left to those
who might be needy. Ruth was so bold as
to walk and glean at a time reserved for the men. But what are you to tell an adolescent girl
who confidently walks in a field knowing that she must provide for her mother?
When Naomi
sends Ruth back to Boaz to offer herself sexually, Ruth willingly agrees in an
attempt to redeem “family” for Naomi. In the Jubilee redemption process, the
closest male relative is to marry a woman whose husband or husbands die so that
the women have “protection” in a patriarchal culture—not unlike the way the
redemption of land functioned for Jeremiah.
Ruth challenges Boaz to do the
right thing, the moral thing. Though
Boaz is the one who will be referred to as the redeemer in this story, it is
Ruth who is making all this happen, creating a new family for everyone. Ruth
cuts across the patriarchy, ethnocentrism, and xenophobia of her time to
deliver a message that is at the core of Jewish social values, thought, and
theology. In the end, because Boaz does do the right thing, the child born from
the mixed marriage of Boaz and Ruth goes on to be the ancestor of the famed
King David and, finally, Ruth is one of three women who is included in the
Gospel of Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus.
We, too,
live in a largely graceless age. Fear of people who are not like us leads to
inhospitality, violence, and death in our political and economic systems. Fear leads to odd and strange law enforcement
decisions and mass incarceration and torture of people long known to be
innocent. Forgiveness of debt, an
important Sabbath provision, is ignored in favor of economic systems driven,
fueled by austerity and debt. What the
popular culture tells us is that we will be saved by some superhero who comes
to removes us from all danger and peril.
What Jeremiah and Ruth teach us, however, is that danger and peril are
part of human existence and that we are saved by God’s plan revealed through
spiritual practices that reveal God’s grace and accompaniment and kindness and
welcome and hospitality. We move through
an age that is “ruthless” to communities that are full of Ruth.
To finish
today, I want to end with the stewardship letter that was sent out to the whole
congregation this past week, because I hope you all heard in it my prayer that
we never care so much for the survival of this church that we lose sight of
God’s steadfast love for this earth.
We
are a great congregation. I have
remarked to several people over the last month that when I step into the pulpit
some Sundays, I look out and see incredible spiritual power. I see historic leaders from our congregation
and conference. I see people who have
been prophetic in the wider Billings community.
And I see people who span generations living out a public and quiet
courage.
You
have heard the budget report for our congregation. It sounds pretty dire. Not unlike many mainline congregations, we
will have to row against the tide to continue our faithful ministry in downtown
Billings. Biblical faith was lived in
such a context. True spiritual power was
seen as people of faith acted not from the center or the seat of influence but
from the marginal and forgotten places.
The
stewardship theme comes out of one of those places. The prophet Jeremiah tells a people who have
been decimated by imperial power that God yet has plans for them. Jeremiah encourages the people to continue
with spiritual practices, however small, that reveal the character of God as
one of steadfast love, righteousness, community building, and justice. In doing so, Jeremiah believes that the plan
of God will be revealed to the Jewish people.
So I
know this sounds crazy but I want us not to try and “save” our church thinking
that we can overcome our budget deficit with some miracle giving. We do not need heroes. Jeremiah did not expect that small spiritual
practices would turn back the Babylonian Exile.
Jeremiah encouraged small spiritual practices that revealed the
character of God. So begin the small
spiritual practices in your giving.
If
you have never pledged to the church before, start very small but begin a
practice of gracious giving. Do it as a
reflection of being part of a community that is rooted in steadfast love,
righteousness, community building, and justice.
If you already pledge to the church or have turned in your pledge, talk
to others about what you give and why.
Giving
has so long been built on guilt and shame that we have lost the joy of it. If you need to give less because of other
priorities or a tightening budget, share that with others so we all can
celebrate what you do give. It is not
about giving more. It is about building
generosity in all of us, sharing in our joys and struggles, so that we can
reveal what God has planned for us. For that to happen, we need to talk about
why we are even committed to giving one dollar to the church. I believe those conversations will build a hope
against hope.
We
are a spiritually powerful congregation.
I trust that God has a plan for us.
In a ruthless age, let us reveal that plan by building a community full
of the spiritual practices of Ruth to reveal the plan that God has for us. Adolescent girls can be darn threatening to
men who want to have it all under their control, but, what I’m finding, if you
listen to adolescent girls close enough, they challenge you in all the right
ways to be more kind, and graceful, and open to family and community and the
plan God seeks to reveal to all of us. Amen.
[1] Mira Morgenstern, “Ruth and the Sense of Self:
Midrash and Difference,” Judaism, Spring 1999.
[2] http://www.theotherside.org/resources/jubilee/index.html.
[3] Amy Jill-Levine, “Ruth,” The
Women's Bible Commentary, ed. by Carol A Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville,
Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), p. 78.
[4] Mira Morgenstern, “Ruth and the Sense.”
No comments:
Post a Comment