Ruth 1:1-18 1 In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of in went to live in the country of , he and his wife and two sons. 2 The man was named Elimelech and his wife was , and his two sons were ; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. 3 But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was and the name of the other . When they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. 6 Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had considered his people and given them food. 7 So she set out from the place where she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back to the land of Judah. 8 But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back each of you to your mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. 9 The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband.” Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. 10 They said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.” 11 But Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? 12 Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, 13 would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.” 14 Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. 15 So she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” 16 But Ruth said: “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 17 Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” 18 When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.

Ruth 1:1-18 05/09/2021 – Saginaw First U.M.C. “Your People Are My People; Your God My God” Rev. Amy Terhune

A certain pastor overheard two conversations in one day. The first was a conversation over the breakfast table between his wife and their four-year-old son. His wife asked the boy: “Did you say your prayers last night?” To which the little boy responded, “Well, I got down on my knees and started to say them and all of a sudden I thought: I bet God gets awfully tired hearing the same old prayer over and over. So I crawled into bed and told Him the story of the three bears.” And then there was a conversation over the table at a United Methodist Women’s luncheon. Some of the older women in the group were discussing elaborate burglar alarms at great length, weighing the pros and cons of systems that connect directly to the police station and those that produce shrill electronic sounds. During a lull in the conversation, one of the women asked one of the young mothers in the group what she would do if a thief broke into her home. She shrugged and replied, “Well, you know, I have four small children. If some burglar came into my bedroom, most likely, I’d just get up, take him by the hand, and lead him to the bathroom.” [2 ¶s adapted from Lowell D. Streiker, Nelson’s Big Book of Laughter, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 2000.] Well, whether it be to the bathroom, the school room, the dorm room, or the board room, a mother’s leadership and influence sticks with us for a lifetime, does it not? They’ve nurtured us, loved us, worried about us, fought for us. For many of us, moms hold a precious and sacred place in our hearts. But not for all of us. AS the video at the beginning showed, this is hard day for so many. For some, the grief is old and deep, for others, it’s fresh and agonizing. For all of us, it shadows this day, and so we pause in this moment to acknowledge the realities we cannot run from, and to acknowledge the presence of a compassionate God here with us now, who laughs and weeps with us, who knows our every need. When we turn to our scripture for this morning, we encounter words second in popularity only to I Corinthians 13 for weddings: Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following 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. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you. Beautiful words. Stirring, committed, romantic, even. “But let me set the record straight. That was spoken by a daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law. I know we don't usually make such radical commitments to our mother-in-law. We just tell jokes about them. As in: two men were talking at a bar. “My mother-in-law is an angel," says one guy. “You're lucky," replies the other. “My mother-in-law is still alive." [from “Ruth: The Problem of Grief” by J. Howard Olds, www.Sermons.com.] But truthfully, you don’t get to be a mother-in-law without being a mother first. We know very little about what kind of mother Naomi might have been. We can only speculate. But we know she was a very good mother-in-law. And we know she has lessons to teach us this morning. Let’s begin with some background. Our story opens with a family. Father, mother, two sons living in Bethlehem, which means “House of Bread”. Moreover, they’re Ephrathites, which means they descend from Ephrath, the wife of Caleb. It’s one of the only sub-clans in all Israel named after a woman. The root word of Ephrath is fruitfulness or fertility. But ironically, there’s no bread in the house of bread. There’s no fruitfulness among the Ephrathites. [Information/exegesis here and below gleaned from Kathleen A. Robertson Farmer, “The : Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s , Vol. II (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998) pgs. 891-912.] There’s famine. Starvation. Suffering. And so this little family flees their homeland in search of security and provisions. They go to Moab. Now Moab, according to Genesis 19, is a nation descended from a man named Moab, who was the result of an incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughter. Thus, the Children of Abraham look on the Moabites with some contempt. Of course, we might say that it is completely understandable that this family would uproot in a time of crisis. Good parents the world over will go to great lengths to alleviate their children’s suffering. Elimelech and Naomi are putting their sons to bed hungry every night, their mouths as dry as the dust in the fields. People are dying. They’re desperate, and desperate people do desperate things. Yet, the clear implication from this scripture is that this is a bad move. To abandon the promised land – the country that God gave them – for a land of dubious repute is just despicable in the eyes of the author. And Naomi seems to sense it. She says, “the hand of the Lord has turned against me,” but there’s a sense of resignation, or even guilt there, as if the calamities that have befallen her are justified because she turned against the Lord in leaving and failing to trust God’s providence. Now remember that names in the Hebrew Scripture nearly always mean something. Any good Jew hearing this story thousands of years ago knows as soon as he hears their names that no good is going to come of this move. Elimelech means “God is King”, but he’s abandoned his King and his homeland, and he dies soon after the abandonment. Mahlon means “sickly one,” and is phonetically similar to the word that describes the illness visited on the Egyptians during the plagues before the

2 Exodus. Chilion means “perishing” or “wasting away”. Nobody in their right mind would actually name their children Mahlon or Chillion. Today, it would be like naming your child Cancer or Atrophy. The only thing those names tell you is their ultimate fate. Naomi means “sweet” or “delightful”, but she doesn’t really come across that way, does she? She hardened and bitter and angry, as anyone in her circumstances would be. She is a foreigner in a strange land. She’s lost her husband. She raised to teenage boys to adulthood on her own, which could not have been easy on any of them. They’ve assimilated into the culture, taken local girls as wives, and then they both perish as well, leaving Naomi with no husband, no children, no grandchildren yet, and two daughters-in-law that don’t share her faith, her language, or her culture. Moreover, word comes that there’s bread again in the house of bread. There is nothing holding her in Moab now, and as one might well understand, the memories of her homeland and her childhood community begins to beckon to her. And yet, for all that, she has come to love these two young women who married her sons. Now, the text doesn’t give us any details, but somehow, they’ve bridged the differences between them. Maybe it’s living and working together. Maybe it’s shared grief. Maybe they have things in common. Whatever the case may be, Naomi has accepted them. The first lesson of the text is this: Naomi accepted them. Do the people around us find acceptance? One doesn’t have to approve of everything one does in order to demonstrate acceptance, love, grace, kindness. J. Howard Olds recalls “…going with a mother to visit her teenage son in a county jail. He had done some things that he ought not to have done, and then made the mistake of running from the police which landed him in jail. The next day we walked into that dark, dingy, hole in the ground to visit him. I watched in silence as that brokenhearted mother walked slowly up to the bars, then, putting her hands through them, pulled the face of her son as close as she could. Then, leaning against his cell she said, “Son, no matter what you have done, I want you to know that I love you, and I want the best for you.” Then, both of them began to cry. [from “Furnishing It With Love” by J. Howard Olds, www.Sermons.com.] That’s the kind of love God has for us. But back to our lesson… When word comes that there’s bread again in Bethlehem, the three of them start off together heading for Naomi’s homeland. However, at some point not too far into the journey, it occurs to her that she has nothing to offer her daughters-in-law. They’ll be hated foreigners in her homeland. Deuteronomy 23:3 bans Moabites and their descendants out to the 10th generation from entering the Temple. That gives you a sense of how despised the Moabites are. If Orpah and Ruth travel back with Naomi to her homeland, she’ll condemn them to the same misery she’s known in Moab. Naomi wants her daughters-in-law to have peace and security and a chance for a better life. So what does she do? First, she acknowledges their ḥesed, a word which is elsewhere used in Scripture to describe God’s unmerited love, kindness, and compassion for humanity. Ḥesed is to love beyond the call of duty, which tells us something of the character of these two daughters-in-law. They’ve been good to Naomi, and so she blesses them. In fact, she essentially prays that God will follow their example – how’s that for a reversal! That God will treat them with the same kindness, compassion, and love that they’ve shown to her and her sons. And then she lets them go. She sends them home again. And Orpah, whose name means submission or obedience, lives up to her name. She submits. She obeys. Weeping and grieving, she obeys Naomi, honors her request, and returns to her family of origin. But not Ruth. There are two schools of thought as to what Ruth’s name means. Some say it ,(re'ut) ראות rea'), meaning friend or companion. But others say it derives from) רע derives from meaning to see and/or understand, implying a sort of wisdom or insight in matters of importance. They both fit. Ruth is Naomi’s friend and companion. She is also wise. You see, the lesson doesn’t tell

3 us in so many words, but despite Naomi’s disappointment with God, it is clear that Naomi has faithfully practiced her faith in a foreign land. She has undoubtedly served the seder every Friday night. She’s sung the . She’s fasted, prayed and observed the customs of her people. And she had shown her daughters-in-law a God who loves his people. Ruth has watched Naomi, learned from her, listened and followed the stories of this incredible Yahweh, and ultimately, she has come to believe. We know this because when Naomi presses her to leave, Ruth offers one of the most beautiful statements of commitment anywhere in scripture. Our translations put it in future tense, but I’m going to read it the way the scholars say the Hebrew should be translated: Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I go; where you lodge, I lodge; your people are my people, and your God my God. Ruth has internalized Naomi’s faith, you see. She’s a believer, a convert. Naomi may not have been perfect. She was understandably bitter and grief-stricken by the losses she endured. But Naomi had shared her faith openly. She’s lived it authentically, and Ruth could see how that faith carried her through doubts, questions, and hardships. So much so that when those things overwhelmed Naomi, Ruth had enough faith to share it back again. They fed one another, upheld by a choice to love each other, to live into the commitments they’d made. And in spite of the brokenness and pain of their situation, that mutual faith and ḥesed carried them. The same is true for us. Faith that is authentic, that grapples with the questions, doubts, and hardships, that values kindness and compassion in a tough world – this is the faith we’re called to share with others. Naomi shows us how to do that. And one final lesson. The word redeem or redemption appears 23 times in the 85 verses that make up the book of Ruth. It’s a major theme. To redeem is to cash in or buy back. Let me let you in on the rest of the story: After arriving in Bethlehem, Ruth goes to glean grain in the fields of fellow named , who turns out to be a relative of her dead husband. Gleaning was a protected practice in scripture – farmers were not supposed to go back and glean their fields, but to leave what was left for the widow, the orphan, and foreigner. Which Boaz does. Moreover, Boaz likes what he sees in Ruth. There's a steamy night on the threshing floor. And when all is said and done, Boaz chooses to redeem the land of Elimelech for Mahlon and Chillion, meaning that he buys the land from Naomi and takes Ruth to be his wife, thus protecting both women. And both women experience redemption when a child is born in Bethlehem. That should sound familiar. Naomi is redeemed from her bitterness and given new hope, experiences a new sweetness and fullness to life. And Ruth unites with her new husband to have a son named , who is the father of and the grandfather of King , from whose lineage Christ Himself is born. “Woven into this story of sexual innuendoes, strange customs, and men's rights, there is a principle of a kinsman-redeemer who gives us a forward glimpse of Christ our Redeemer” [from “Ruth: The Problem of Grief” by J. Howard Olds, www.Sermons.com.] It is not religious or racial pedigree, but because Ruth embodied God’s ḥesed, that makes her a memorable ancestor of King David. The book of Ruth teaches that the people of God are known by their ḥesed – their loving kindness and compassion. It teaches that the true heirs of the covenant are those of faith, not blood. And it may well teach that the redemption of Israel will not take place the way the people expect it. God will use uncommon means, and unexpected people to inch us towards the Kingdom – Moabite women, Samaritan travelers, teenagers from Nazareth, Magi from the East, Roman Centurions, Ethiopian eunuchs, a Pharisee breathing threats and murder, a disillusioned monk teaching bible classes in Wittenburg, Germany, a black woman who won’t give up her seat on the bus, an average person like you or me. Naomi accepted into her heart those who were different. She lived her faith authentically. And she opened herself to God’s redeeming grace in unexpected ways. And so this mother-in-law goes down in history as an example to us, and all she asks is that we go and do likewise. Amen.

4