A few months ago, during our Confirmation Sunday School class, Ned made a jokey statement to Crystal when we were learning about the parts of the worship service. He asked her where she thought we got the scripture readings from – the answer is the Narrative Lectionary – a 4-year cycle of readings developed by the theologians at Lutheran Seminary. But, Ned teased Crystal and asked her if she thought that every week I just randomly picked a scripture from my list of favorite texts?! And, if so, wouldn’t it be boring to only hear my favorite scriptures?
These questions got me to think that yes, it would be boring to hear a selection of my favorite scriptures every week, but it wouldn’t be boring to hear a selection of your favorite scriptures. So, since the Narrative Lectionary takes a break over the summer, I thought this summer would be the perfect opportunity to hear from you, the people of Trinity Christian UCC, what your favorite scriptures are – so, this summer, we will focus each week on the favorite scriptures of our church family….and we will also invite you to share a little about your favorite hymns – what they are and why you like them.
I have several scriptures and stories from the Bible that I consider favorites. I love the stories in the Bible – stories about real people who faced hard choices and difficult challenges…stories about people who didn’t always do everything right…stories about people like you and me.
One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the tale of Naomi and Ruth. My maternal grandmother’s name was Ruth, and at her funeral, my family thought it was important to hear a reading from the book of the Bible that shared a name with her. A portion of the book of Ruth that we read from this morning was read at her funeral….it speaks of Ruth’s loyalty and devotion to her family – and to her mother-in-law – more of a family-in-love than a family by birth or obligation.
Listen now to the first chapter of the Book of Ruth….
The Scripture Lesson Ruth 1
In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab.
The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.
Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons.
They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years,
both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there.
With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.
Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me.
May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”
Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud
and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”
But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands?
Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons—
would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”
At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.
“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”
But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.
Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”
When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”
“Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has mad my life very bitter.
I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”
So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.
Here ends this reading of the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Let us pray….
The Message Wherever You Go
Names are important. We want other people to call us our own names….not just “wife” or “Lucia’s mom” or “hey you.” We want to be called by our names.
My name, Amelie, comes from the Germanic root word “Amal” which means “vigorous, active, and work.” But, when my name was chosen for me, it was chosen because my parents liked it, and I had a great-great-grandmother named Amalie Mueller Kruse, one of the German variations of the name. My name was not chosen because my parents wanted to add a child into the family who would do lots of housework and be a hard worker.
In the Bible, and especially in the book of Ruth, all of the names of the people and the places have meanings. People in that period were very tuned into what their names meant, and would sometimes choose to be called new names if their name’s meaning did not match their life’s circumstances.
The names in the first chapter of Ruth are descriptive. The husband of Naomi was named Elimelech, which means “My God is King.” Naomi means “Pleasant.” Their sons' names were Mahlon, which means “Sickly,” and Chilion, which means “Vanishing” – and Sickly and Vanishing both fittingly died. Ruth’s name is apparently not a Moabite name but is a Hebrew name that means “Companion.” I wonder if Ruth was renamed Companion because that is what she became – the companion of Naomi.
When Naomi returned to Bethlehem after she left Moab, she told the women of her hometown to call her Mara – “bitter.” She was no longer Pleasant, she was bitter.
And, in the story, Elimelech and Naomi left Bethlem, which means “the house of bread” because, ironically, there was a famine there and no bread was in the house …. Or the town…
When Elimelech and Naomi fled to Moab to escape Bethlemen’s famine, they made a very weird, illogical choice in picking their destination. Moab, and the people of Moab, were at that time the enemies of the people of Israel. The people of Israel believed the Moabites to be their distant relatives – but from unsavory origins….they thought the Moabites were descended from the offspring of Lot and his daughters – after Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, Lot had some children with his daughters. So, the people of Israel thought the Moabites were their in-bred cousins.
They were also mad at the Moabites because they wouldn’t provide hospitality to the Hebrew people when they were wandering in the desert for 40 years.
And, just before the story of the book of Ruth took place, the land of Israel had been conquered and ruled by the Moabite king for 18 years.
So, there was bad blood between the people of Israel and the Moabites.
Yet, Elimelech and Naomi, and their sons, moved to Moab during a famine. They were that desperate….
When this story occurred, Naomi was a widow. Her sons had died. She decided to return to the land of her birth.
Initially, she planned to bring both of her Moabite daughters-in-law with her to Bethlehem. But, while they were walking on the road to Bethlehem, Naomi had second thoughts. She told Orpah and Ruth to return to the homes of their mothers – they could remarry and start over again. And, Orpah made the logical choice – instead of moving to a foreign country full of people who hated her people, she kissed Naomi “goodbye” and went home.
But, Ruth refused to leave Naomi. And she made a beautiful statement as she committed to go with her. Ruth said:
“Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.
Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”
Ruth was willing to give up everything to be with Naomi – her family…her friends….her homeland…her language….her religion. She was such a good daughter-in-law, such a good friend, such a good companion she gave up everything to go with Naomi to Bethlehem.
There is a word in the Bible used to describe the kind of love Ruth had for Noami – it is called “chesed.” Hesed is found more than 240 times in the Hebrew Old Testament. It doesn’t just refer to a feeling – it is a combination of Love, commitment and action. It is the love that stays when there is no logical reason to stay. Hesed is often translated as “steadfast love” or “mercy” when it is used to describe God’s attitude towards the people of Israel. We traditionally translate it as “loving-kindness.”
God loves the people of the earth in the same way Ruth loved her mother-in-law Naomi – Chesed love. Ruth’s love for Naomi was not logical….she would have been a lot safer if she went home to Moab. God’s love for us is also not always very logical – we do things all the time that break God’s laws and are disappointing for God. Ruth’s love for Naomi led her to move to a foreign environment, where the people hated her kind of people, to a place where the two women had no protection, no place to live, no food to eat. God’s love for us is a little reckless too – God knows we are going to disappoint God by our words, our actions, and our choices again and again, yet God loves us anyway.
Ruth and Naomi were not related to each other by blood – and Naomi released Ruth and Orpah from any obligation they may have felt towards her. She told them they were free to return to their families and their homeland. But, Rut loved Naomi so much that she chose to potentially go to Bethlehem and suffer along with Naomi. Her love was generous, loyal, and unexpected – she chose to return to a foreign country with a sad, bitter, widow woman.
Our faith encourages us to love like Ruth loved Naomi, to love like God loves us. We are called to be loving and supportive to people the world overlooks and rejects: people who are sad, people who are grieving, people who are poor, people who are refugees, people who are old, people who have disabilities or illnesses or addictions, people who are not like us. Like Ruth, we can make the choice to overlook the things that separate us and love each other in spite of our differences. Like God, we can make the choice to love people who we suspect will disappoint us. We can make the choice to love other people without expecting anything in return.
The names in the story of Ruth are important – Ruth is a companion, Naomi is Pleasant, Bethlehem again became a house of bread for the little family of Ruth and Naomi. After a few ironic twists and turns, Ruth ends up married to Boaz, whose name means “In Him Is Strength.” Boaz was a faithful man whose spiritual strength called him to marry Ruth because he was distantly related to her former husband. Ruth and Boaz lived happily ever after, and welcomed Naomi to share a household with them. Boaz and Ruth became the great-grandparents of King David – and Jesus was descended from them as well. So, a woman from the hated Moabite people became the ancestor of the greatest king in Israel and became an ancestor of our messiah. A woman who chose to extend chesed love, loving-kindness to others, ended up being a cherished ancestor of all of God’s people.
Let us work to be like Ruth, and embody Hesed-loving kindness is our words and deeds today and forever. Amen.
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