Ruth 1.1-17
In our lesson today, we are learning part of the story of Naomi, who having left her homeland with her husband and sons to escape famine and started a life in a new land has found herself a widow, and with no one left to care for her. Both of her two sons and her husband have all died.
Her daughters in law grieve with her and she tries to send them away, back to their families where they might be welcomed back and taken care of. At least if they return to their families they may find food and shelter and a chance at a new life. Orpah goes back to her family but Ruth declares she will follow Naomi wherever she goes even until death. She clings to this grieving woman who has lost her husband and sons, who is returning to her homeland poor and broken. She says “do not press me to leave you, where you go, I will go.” She leaves her birth family, her home country and follows this broken woman into a foreign and strange country.
We as Christians are called to the same compassion and dedication. Not only to following Jesus, but to serve all of God's children as well.
Jesus says 33 “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
In this story, we have three very different people, reacting to the same hand that life has given them in different ways. Each of us lives out these same stories and perspectives in our own lives. The hope we have today is that we might learn to recognize our own actions for what they are, and use every opportunity to serve and glorify God.
First, we have Orpah. I will be the first to confess that I often default to the way Orpah thinks and reacts. She is grieving with her mother in law and says she will go along with her, that she will stay with Naomi, but when Naomi urges her to go back home, she agrees. Orpah knows that Naomi is suffering and needs companionship, but she is also aware that she needs to think about what she will do now that she is a widow and has no financial security. Like many good mothers would, Naomi urges Orpah to take care of herself first.
Like Orpah, many of us offer condolences when someone is suffering. Sometimes we are grieving with them. We offer to help in any way we can, “just let me know how I can help” we say, along with a hug or handshake.
Just like Orpah, we want to help. The problem is that we are leaving it up to them to ask for help, and that makes it easier for us to go back to our own life, worrying about our own troubles. What happens next, is they never ask for help, because most of us also play the part of Naomi when we are the one who is suffering.
Naomi is the one who has it worst off in this story, perhaps discounting the three men who were sick and died young. Naomi is now a widow, and probably too old to have much success at finding a new husband. She is in a foreign land with no relatives or family other than her two daughters-in-law, who are also recent widows, with no financial means to help or support her, let alone themselves. Her only choice is to head back home and hope for the kindness of a distant relation, or at least the comfort of a familiar place. Her daughters have come to know and love her and don’t want her to go alone, they want to go with her and share her burden, but she tries to convince them to think of the future instead. She tells them there is still hope for them to remarry and to have a happy life if they go back to their own families. She doesn’t want to burden them with her own troubles. After all, they have enough trouble of their own. They have no property, no money, no husband, and the proverbial clock is ticking.
Naomi, wanting to spare her daughters the hardship ahead pushes them away and tries to carry her burden alone, just as we often do. Especially in the Midwest.
Here, people will ask you how you are doing and before you respond they know that they will hear,
“I’m good, How about you? How ‘bout this weather?”
This is so ingrained it is almost automatic, but I know we can do better. And I know we really do care about how the other person is feeling. I know this because of something called the Minnesota good-bye. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, that is a ritual that takes at least 30 minutes where you start dropping not so subtle hints that you are about to depart, and inch closer and closer to the door, culminating in a conversation half way out the door that ends by stopping and turning around to talk every 5 steps as you are literally walking away from each other. Sound familiar now? As peculiar and elaborate as the Minnesota goodbye may be, it serves to show us how loving we can be, and just how meaningful these conversations are that we can’t just end them and walk away. We cherish our time together and value this person before us so much that we want them to know with absolute certainty that we wish we could talk more but simply can’t.
We are capable of having these great conversations and sharing our troubles with each other, but more often than not we hold it in, trying to do what is best for the other person. We don’t want to bother them with what we have going on, so we say “I’m good, and you?”
And then there is Ruth, who throws the Minnesota Goodbye out the window, taking it to a whole new level. She doesn’t just linger in the door, she simply will not hear of this conversation ending with a kiss and heading home. She says I love you so much that you are absolutely not doing this alone. She doesn’t say “let me know how I can help” but instead she takes action and says,
“It’s not up to you, I am carrying this burden with you, whether you like it or not.” And then she does even better, setting the perfect example for us to follow. She doesn’t tell Naomi how to fix her problems, she doesn’t tell her that she is over-reacting, she doesn’t pass any sort of judgement at all, she just digs in her heels and says “Where you Go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. If you die, I will be buried next to you, and even then I ask that God would not separate us.”
Ruth is determined to walk alongside this woman who seems to be cursed by fate. Naomi claims that God has even set Himself against her, and yet here is Ruth, showing the real hand of God. The one that holds on tightly no matter how hard we try to shake free. When told to go back to her family, she lives out the words that Christ would speak so many years later when he said
“Who are my mother and my brothers? Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
How can we do that? How can I live like Jesus, and follow the example of Ruth? Do we really have to drop everything and follow someone even to the grave?
We are called to start acting like family. Each of us is a child of God. Each of us is called by name and loved by the Creator. Each of us is expected to love one another as Jesus first loved us. But how do we show someone, a stranger even, that they are valuable, they are not alone, and that God loves them even when they feel like He is working against them? Consider this:
I think the Kingdom of Heaven is like a woman you have never met sitting in her doorway at the nursing home asking if we have a moment to talk. We have the opportunity to say many things in order to keep moving along. How busy we are or how we wish we could because staying to talk is dangerous in its own way. You don't know where you will end up. This conversation could take you to unfamiliar places where you have no control over the outcome, and that is truly scary. Not only is this new for us, but we would be leaving ourselves open to any emotional baggage she might place on our shoulders and hearts. Into the complete unknown. All for a stranger.
Martin Luther says
"Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. My comprehension transcends yours. Thus Abraham went forth from his father and not knowing whither he went. He trusted himself to my knowledge, and cared not for his own, and thus he took the right road and came to his journey's end. Behold, that is the way of the cross. You cannot find it yourself, so you must let me lead you as though you were a blind man. [It is]Not the work which you choose, not the suffering you devise, but the road which is clean contrary to all that you choose or desire--that is the road you must take. To that I call you and in that you must be my disciple.”
He is saying that in order to follow Jesus, we have to be open to the unknown. And that is why we must stop and listen to that woman in the doorway tell about how she wants to go home. How she doesn't feel the same as when she was at home. How she misses her family. About her father, long since passed away, and the struggles her family went through when he was sick.
When you look back you will have no idea what you were even supposed to be doing instead, but you will absolutely remember her holding your hand as you prayed for her. I hope each of you will take the time to walk with someone, even for 20 minutes and see the difference in their eyes, and remember later what it’s like to hold their hand.
What can we do to be like Ruth you may ask?
Why don’t we start by lingering in the door just a little longer?
Amen.
John Odegard is Minister for Discipleship and Faith Formation at Grace Lutheran Church, Mankato, MN. He preached this sermon October 18, 2015.
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