Neighbours Rev

neighbours Rev. Katherine Brittain, 4 November 2012 Ruth 1:1-18, Mark 12:28-34

“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”.

These are the loving, committed words from the book of Ruth that are often chosen as Scripture readings at weddings. They talk of total commitment, of binding one life to another. These words are taken from a story of insiders and outsiders, of vulnerability and death, of unrealistic faith and loyalty in the face of racism and xenophobia, all from one little book of the Bible.

This little story, just 4 chapters long, is about a family who has to leave their home in Bethlehem because there has been famine. They are hungry and see their only choice is to go to a neighbouring country,

Moab, just on the other side of the Dead Sea, in present-day Jordan.

Moab was on a major trading route between powerful kingdoms like

Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia, which made them very wealthy. The 2

Bible says the Moabites were descendants of Lot, Abraham’s nephew, so they were distant relations of the Israelites. But where the Israelites worshipped only one God, the Moabites worshipped many gods, as did most of the other nations in the area at that time. The Bible also says that the Moabites opposed the occupation of Canaan, the “promised land” , by the Israelites after the Exodus. So there was some animosity between these 2 countries. Not so much that it didn’t look like a good place to go for Naomi, Elimelech and their sons when they were hungry.

Not so much that it stops their sons from marrying Moabite women – Ruth and Orpah. This wasn’t so unusual, intermarriage. In fact it happened often enough that there are rules in the Bible, in

Deuteronomy, around what was and was not acceptable. Who could marry whom and still remain “pure”, because racial and ritual purity was very important to the new nation of Israel. The book of Ruth was probably written during the time when concern about “racial purity” was at its highest. 3

Israel had been conquered by Babylon about 597 BC, and the leadership, the brightest and the best of Israel, the people who could muster a resistance, were sent to Babylon to live under the watchful eye of their conquerors. They were expected to assimilate into

Babylonian culture –eat their food, worship their gods. For a mono- theistic culture, one who worshipped only one God, who had strict dietary and purity codes, this was a huge problem. For 70 years, 2 generations, the Israelites did their best to “sing the Lord’s song in a strange land”, remain true to their culture, to their God, resist assimilation while captive in Babylon. Finally, when Babylon itself was conquered by the Persians, they began to return home.

Home to a land where most of the people hadn’t had to cling so tightly to their culture, to their God, to their way of life because they were left alone so long as they sent their taxes and tributes to Babylon.

Home to a land where people from other conquered countries had been forcibly resettled to work the land, gradually believing it was their home, intermarrying with those left behind. 4

The destruction of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and the resulting Babylonian captivity was a huge disaster in terms of Israel’s history, and it is human nature to try and make sense of disaster. One of the prevailing explanations of “why did this happen to us” was that it was God’s punishment for the people who were not being righteous enough, faithful enough, pure enough. This combined with the fact the

Israelites in captivity had to cling so very tightly to their culture and faith, interpreting it more and more strictly in their desperation to resist assimilation, resulted in a culture that was obsessed with racial purity. They wanted to rebuild the altar, the temple, the defensive city walls that the conquering Babylonians had destroyed, yes, but their focus also turned fixing “social and religious problems, freeing the community of foreign elements, and establishing religious practice in stricter conformity to their understanding of [the laws of Moses].

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah both spend a lot of time talking about racial purity. “To the author [of these books] the returned exiles were a godly remnant with a religious mission”. When Ezra heard that 5

some of the faithful remnant married foreigners, including Moabites, he writes “I tore my garments and my mantle, and pulled hair from my head and beard, and sat appalled”. And then the men who married foreigners and their families were “sent away”. Cast out of their home by their countrymen. Shunned. Exiled.

I was talking with someone last week about how exclusion, shunning, leaving out is one of the most powerful forms of bullying.

The book of Ruth, like the book of Jonah, was most likely written about the same time as Ezra and Nehemiah. These books were written as a counter balance to the racism and xenophobia of the day.

Elimelech and Naomi make their home in Moab, driven out of

Bethlehem by famine, and their sons marry Moabite women. Then tragedy strikes and all 3 men die. We don’t know why, all we know is that these 3 widows are now very alone and very vulnerable. A widow was perhaps the most vulnerable person in society of that day. A woman was the property of her men – completely dependent on father, husband, sons or brothers for a place to live, clothes to wear, 6

enough to eat, safety and sanity. Widows were so vulnerable that the

Bible commanded that if a man died, his brother had an obligation to marry his widow and take her into his household. There are constant admonitions to follow God’s law by caring for widows and orphans.

These women are vulnerable and Naomi knows the only chance she has of survival is to go home to Bethlehem and hope her distant kinsman Boaz will take pity on her. She urges Orpah and Ruth to go home to their families. Orpah choose to stay in Moab, Ruth chooses to go with Naomi. Theologian Gary Charles writes “Leaving Moab, Ruth would face not only a language barrier, a food barrier, a social etiquette barrier and a religious practice barrier; she would also face the constant subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that she was ‘not one of us’”.

Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God, my God”. Even if it means going to a country that hates me just because I am not “one of them”. It’s commitment, loyalty and love for her mother-in-law. 7

Not everyone is so zealously racist. When Boaz, Naomi’s distant relative, sees Ruth gleaning that food left in the fields for the poor, he takes pity on her and insists the harvester leave even more. Eventually,

Boaz marries this outsider Ruth, and they bring Naomi into their household, so she is cared for. They have a son, Obed, who has a son,

Jesse, who has a son, David, who has a son, Solomon. David and

Solomon become the greatest kings Israel ever knew.

Rev. Kate Huey writes “Like Abraham and Sarah, Ruth takes that uncertain journey into the unknown and the unfamiliar, trusting in God, and in doing so, she becomes an important part of the story of the people she embraces as her own”.

Ruth, the Moabite, the outsider, the kind of person faithful, righteous and pure Israelites were supposed to cast out of their families and land – is the great-grandmother of David, their greatest king.

Ruth, the Moabite, the outsider, models the faithfulness of

Yahweh, the God of Israel, the God who accompanied these defeated, frightened, confused people into exile and back again. God clings to 8

the people with a faithful and tenacious love, even when we get it so very wrong.

It’s a powerful story, one that we need to hear today. There are so many countries in our world who are in economic distress and the first cry is to exile the outsiders, throw out the people who are “different” – immigrants, refugees. Keep our country pure. “Those people are taking our jobs”. Build a wall, to keep them out. The refrain is getting louder and stronger and much more frightening. It is everything that

God’s inclusive love shown through Jesus’ radical hospitality stands in opposition to.

The Gospel of Matthew includes Ruth as an ancestor Jesus. In today’s reading, a scribe asks Jesus “Which commandment is first of all?”, and Jesus replies with the words every faithful Jew would have recited morning and night, words faithful Jews to this day know by heart: “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all 9

your mind and with all your strength”. He goes on, though and adds a second “and you shall love your neighbour as yourself”.

In Luke’s version of this story, the scribe asks “who is my neighbour?” and Jesus responds with the story of the Good Samaritan – the hated minority who takes care of a wounded man when the established and righteous Jewish lawyer and judge cross the road.

Love God. Love your neighbour. Love yourself. That sums up all of the laws and the commandments, according to Jesus. With the book of Ruth we have a powerful reminder that our neighbour, the person who can model God’s faithfulness, commitment and love to us in ways we can’t imagine ourselves, may be the very person we are trying to push away.

God’s love is constant, faithful and unpredictable. It is also big enough to include us all. It calls us to look at all the places we turn away from embracing the outsider, to turn back, open our hearts and our lives to God’s transformation from the least expected places.

Thanks be to God. Amen.