Choose Your Stories


We are told that Ruth was King David's great grandmother.  Her story was not incorporated in scripture till five hundred years after it happened when the Jewish exiles were returning from exile in Babylon to rebuild Jerusalem. Their struggles are told in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and there was plenty of tragedy, and bitterness, and fear. The tiny remnant had just returned home to a capital city that was a pile of rubble.  They were surrounded by foreigners. How could they keep their identity and their God among strangers?  

A "homeland security order" was given:  Jewish men must “put away” foreign wives and their children, to stay faithful to God and country.  “Put away” is a nice word for divorcing your wife and abandoning your children.  In the face of this cruelty, the old story of Ruth was dusted off and told anew, to remind the people that chesed (steadfast love and mercy) transcend borders and nationalities, and God’s chesed is sometimes given to us by foreigners, and the chesed of a foreigner shaped Israel's greatest king, David. 

What was that “homeland security order” meant to accomplish, anyway?  To protect the nation, the religion, pure, free of outside influences.  (Remember, no separation of church and state back then.)  They had important values to protect.  But I wonder.  Acting out of fear, using intolerance and cruelty, breaking promises, mistreating women and children, which values do those acts protect?  No values I want.  Might this have resonance in our day?

We are surrounded by bitterness, and fear.  That bitterness will never heal by drawing lines that divide.  No wall or prison or exclusionary law is strong enough to protect people who live by fear and demonize others.  Our values as a nation and as Christians are strong enough to provide welcome to strangers and make them part of us. In welcoming strangers, our identity will shift, but our values will prevail.  In fact, those values require that we welcome strangers, as so many of us were once welcomed. 

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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ                                        
July 15, 2018

Chesed: Love Heals Bitterness

Excerpts from the Book of Ruth
            1:1  In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife [Naomi] and two sons. 
            4…When they had lived there about ten years, 5her two sons died, so that the woman was left without her two sons or 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. 8But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back each of you to your mother’s house. May the LORD show steadfastlove to you, as you have shown to the dead and to me.  9…Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. 
16But 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!” 
            1:22  So Naomi returned together with Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, who came back with her from the country of Moab. They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. 
            2:3[Ruth] came and gleaned in the field behind the reapers. As it happened, she came to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of [Naomi’s husband.]
            2:8 Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women.  9… I have ordered the young men not to bother you. If you get thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn.”  10Then she fell prostrate, with her face to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found favor in your sight, that you should take notice of me, when I am a foreigner?”  11But Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before.  12May the LORD reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!”  
            2:19  Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!” Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said. 20  “The LORD bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his steadfastlove to the living and the dead.” 
            Ruth 3:1  Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, “My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you….  3Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing floor; but do not make yourself known to [Boaz] until he has finished eating and drinking.  4When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do.” 
            Ruth 3:6  So [Ruth] went down to the threshing floor and did just as her mother-in-law had instructed her….8At midnight [Boaz] was startled, and turned over, and there, lying at his feet, was a woman!  9He said, “Who are you?” And she answered, “I am Ruth, your servant; spread your cloak over your servant, for you are next-of-kin.”  10He said, “May you be blessed by the LORD, my daughter; this last instance of your steadfastloveis better than the first; you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich.  11And now, my daughter, do not be afraid, I will do for you all that you ask, for all the assembly of my people know that you are a worthy woman.
            Ruth 4:13  So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the LORD made her conceive, and she bore a son. 17… They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David. 

Some people consider the bible a book of rules. I do not.  Its greatest power lies in its stories.  We tell ourselves stories in order to live.  And which stories we tell can determine how we live.  Ruth’s story is a story of steadfast love, but not conventional love.
            Where you go, I will go; where you stay, I will stay; 
            your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 
This reading is used at weddings, but it was not spoken by one young lover to another.  It was spoken by a young widow, Ruth, to her mother-in-law Naomi.

The backdrop of this sweet love story was bitter: famine and death.  Famine had brought Naomi to the land of Moab ten years before.  Death, of her husband and then her two grown sons, was sending her back to Israel.  Naomi has no close relatives back in Israel; she simply hopes she can find food in her native land.  The name Naomi means ‘pleasant.’  But, she says, "Don't call me 'Pleasant.'  My name is now Mara, 'Bitter,' because God has dealt bitterly with me." Naomi's bitterness is a natural response to "when bad things happen to good people." I do not believe God caused Naomi's tragedy, or anybody else's. I do believe God is acting in every situation to bring forth good out of the most unlikely circumstances.  Frequently God acts through people, people with loving and generous hearts, like this young foreign woman Ruth. 

Love is the great commandment:  to love God, and love our neighbor as ourselves.  What do we mean by love? Not an easy question.  The original Hebrew word for Ruth's kind of love is chesed.  Chesedis not a feeling.  It is love in action.  The NRSV translates it here as "kindness", but that is too weak.  God’s chesedis mentioned many times in the psalms, and it’s not translated kindness: NRSV says his steadfast love endures forever. So we read it as "steadfast love".   Greeks translated chesedas "mercy," love that is not required or earned. Chesedgoes way beyond "nice" or a gift of a few dollars. Chesedis big, takes risks and becomes vulnerable, as Ruth became vulnerable when she promised to stand by Naomi in her abject poverty, in a foreign country, no matter what.  

Any real commitment to steadfastlovemakes us vulnerable. Think about it.  Our love may not be returned.  Our loved one can be taken away from us.  The one we pledge to love may come with bitterness, emotional baggage.  And any commitment takes time, and money, and puts a curb on our individual freedom. Yet we are made for love and commitment. We are made to give and receive chesed.  We are made in the image of God, and what does God do?  God loves, generously, hoping for return, but not demanding it and frequently not getting it either.  

Jewish tradition tells the story that God's first act of chesedwas to create a world, and us– an act of generosity we will never repay.  Our Christian tradition tells the story of God becoming human in Jesus, vulnerable in flesh like ours, so he could better show his love for us, and then what happened? He was rejected and killed, by people. But his love for us could not be killed. We are not always good at this kind of love, this chesed. Yet we need to commit ourselves to give love, and open ourselves to receive it, to be whole, to be who God made us to be.  Even in the face of tragedy and bitterness. Maybe especially then.

So in the face of tragedy and bitterness, Ruth made her commitment of love to Naomi, they traveled to Israel, and how did it go?  Ruth camps with Naomi and gleans in a field.  This is begging, the early version of a food shelf, relying on God's chesedthat was written in the law of Israel:  Leviticus 23:22. When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.This field turns out to belong to Naomi's distant male relative, Boaz.  Boaz treats the beggar Ruth with respect and kindness and generosity, In fact he feeds her lunch, and he sends her home with her apron overflowing with grain. At hearing this good news, Naomi praises the chesedof God; her bitterness is beginning to heal.  Also, she’s not going to starve, something most of us can take for granted.  

Naomi determines to make a match between Ruth and Boaz.  I'm sure she checked it out with people close to him, before she set him up. So when Ruth uncovers his "feet," wink, wink, on the threshing floor after a lot of wine at the harvest party, Boaz will do the honorable thing, and marry Ruth.  His response to this entrapment is to praise Ruth for her chesedin wanting to marry an old man like him.  Ruth is a foreigner, could be labeled a golddigger, but he knows he can trust her, because of what she did for Naomi.  By this time chesedis bouncing around that barn so fast and furious that the hired help will all be married soon too.  

In the end Ruth's devoted love heals Naomi's broken heart.  Steadfast love was the seed.  Joy is the harvest.  Or, as Jesus said it,blessed are those who show chesed, for they shall receive chesed.  You probably have heard this saying from the Greek translation.  Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

We are told that Ruth was King David's great grandmother.  This story was not incorporated in scripture till five hundred years after it happened when the Jewish exiles were returning from exile in Babylon to rebuild Jerusalem. Their struggles are told in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and there was plenty of tragedy, and bitterness, and fear. The tiny remnant had just returned home to a capital city that was a pile of rubble.  They were surrounded by foreigners. How could they keep their identity and their God among strangers?  

A "homeland security order" was given:  Jewish men must “put away” foreign wives and their children, to stay faithful to God and country.  “Put away” is a nice word for divorcing your wife and abandoning your children.  In the face of this cruelty, the old story of Ruth was dusted off and told anew, to remind the people that chesed(steadfast love and mercy) transcend borders and nationalities, and God’s chesedis sometimes given to us by foreigners, and the chesedof a foreigner shaped Israel's greatest king, David. 

What was that “homeland security order” meant to accomplish, anyway?  To protect the nation, the religion, pure, free of outside influences.  (Remember, no separation of church and state back then.)  They had important values to protect.  But I wonder.  Acting out of fear, using intolerance and cruelty, breaking promises, mistreating women and children, which values do those acts protect?  No values I want.  Might this have resonance in our day?

We are surrounded by bitterness, and fear.  That bitterness will never heal by drawing lines that divide.  No wall or prison or exclusionary law is strong enough to protect people who live by fear and demonize others.  Our values as a nation and as Christians are strong enough to provide welcome to strangers and make them part of us. In welcoming strangers, our identity will shift, but our values will prevail.  In fact, those values require that we welcome strangers, as so many of us were once welcomed. 

Ruth’s story of steadfast love from a foreigner, or Ezra’s story of cruelty in response to fear, which will it be?  Stories remind us of who we are and what we value.  If we tell ourselves stories of the evil outsider, the dangerous other, we create fear, and we become cruel.  If we tell ourselves stories of mercy, steadfast love, generosity, providing protection, building kinship, we can make these things happen. 

It is much harder work to build up than to tear down, to heal instead of remain bitter, to unite instead of divide.  We might need God’s power to do it.  But is there any better work? And what if we don’t succeed in accomplishing what we hope? Maybe our accomplishment will be that in a time of bitterness we remember and live the values Jesus shows us, in the face of fear and bitterness and intolerance.  May we tell each other stories of chesed, steadfast love and mercy, and live by them. Amen.



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