Ruth 3 : cloaks

 “Spread the skirt of your cloak over me”

“Take the cloak you are wearing and hold it out”

She came up behind him and touched his cloak.

“His banner over me was love”

    Same cloak? It would've been cool if the cloak Boaz filled with grain for Ruth to take home to her mother-in-law was the same cloak he had spread over her. It does seem that in both cases he is offering her exceptional protection and providing. His cognizance of her, his concern for her, has gradually raised her in his eyes. And he responds generously and thoughtfully. This developing relationship between them grows from respect and dignity, grace and gratitude,  to trust and a warmer current. I don’t know if we can fit it into modern romantic-love plot lines, but we can see for certain an arrival on common ground. Ruth is no longer dependent, in the same way as she was before; she has come into her own. She who referred to herself as servant is called by Boaz daughter, and warmer terms await. It is a shift of status  much like that of Jesus’ followers of whom he said, ‘I do not call you servants any longer, …but I have called you friends.’ (John 15:15)  Before we rush on to the happy ending it is well to pause the movie a moment and reflect on the cloaking device. “Spread the skirt of your cloak over me” says Ruth, bring me under your protection, and act as my redeeming kinsman. The garment is a symbol of the gesture that is much larger: bringing under protection, as under the wings. 

    I am reminded of a song we sang at a coffeehouse gathering in high school, with the refrain “his banner over me is love” - it is from the Song of Songs, the Song of Solomon. It is a bride’s song of her beloved, so it will fit well with the fate of our once-lonely once-stranger; but it is more; it is a symbol and manifestation of coming under the protection, as under the shadow of the wings, of God. There will be found shelter, there will be found mercy, there will be found protection, there will be found - home.

    The whole point of Ruth’s journey for us may be that we too may find ourselves bereft, widowed or orphaned, and in need of a new home. We may discover in the depths of loss a newfound dignity in continuing to care for another, and eventually to receive care. Dignity and respect are restored; the story of Ruth is a story of restoration, in the sense of coming home to a place she has never known. In his Christmas oratorio, in a passage that has been worked into a hymn, W. H. Auden foretells, “You shall come to a place you have never been before and they shall welcome you home.” 

“He is the Way.
Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.
He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.
He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.”

― W.H. Auden, For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio

    Like the weary travelers in our tale, who have traveled through an unlikely land, from Moab to Bethlehem, at a time of deep anxiety, we can find a new life, a new home, as we are received into the family of the people of God, a family like no other, one that welcomes us without kinship ties but with kindness, that recognizes in steadfast loyalty and kindness a true affinity deeper than blood relations.

    The seeking of protection, of healing and wholeness, of restoration to a place in common life, in community, is what the woman with hemorrhages seeks from Jesus. He is never just about physical healing, even when that is what is sought and given; there is a healing of the whole person, and a wholeness of community, that comes from his actions. His acts are both practical compassion and symbolic manifestation. Something is going on here: the coming of the kingdom of God.

    The kingdom of God, which turns out to be much more than the kingdom of one nation, is known to us through the truth, character, compassion, dignity, wisdom, and piety of its people.* As we grow into those gifts we grow into his kingdom. 

The takeaway for Ruth in chapter 3 was more than the grain she could carry in the cloak she had borrowed; and the takeaway for us is more than romantic expectations. She found under the shadow of the wings of the Lord, and in the care of a near kinsman, provision and care. We find, as we place ourselves within the circle of the covenant of God with humankind, that we are now explicitly part of something greater than human community: we are part of a kingdom of loyalty and steadfast caring that is exhibited most fully in the person of the one whose garment the lady with the hemorrhage touched, the embodied love of God that is Jesus.

Woman touching Jesus' hem, fresco, Catacomb ofSaints Peter and Marcellinus, 3rd century

Suzanne Guthrie: “I love the profound simplicity of this catacomb fresco. Here is the image as it appears in the woman’s memory: no pressing crowd to obscure her, surrounded by silence, the background washed away by insignificance, she reaches forth to touch and knows immediately that she’s healed.  Here is a picture of the inside of prayer - intimacy magnified.”

http://edgeofenclosure.org/proper8b.html

*(See jimwallis.substack.com June 27, 2024 https://jimwallis.substack.com/p/six-ways-to-prepare-for-the-first)

Ruth 3 : the Hallmark version

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b7/4a/0b/b74a0bbe0399aa226b694f5253496b3b.jpg

June 30th 2024, Santa Cruz Lutheran Church, Tucson, Arizona.

First Reading: Ruth 3

Canticle: Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Gospel: Mark 5:21-43

In the third chapter of Ruth, she asks Boaz to ‘spread his cloak’ over her. In the fifth chapter of the gospel of Mark, a woman with a hemorrhage touches the hem of Jesus’ cloak and through her faith she is healed.

[In both cases, what is really going on is that the people in the story are under the protection, that is, covered by the sheltering and healing garment, of divine providence. Can this be our story too?]

—-///-////-//

Back in New York years ago, I used to be the standards and practices screener for the Odyssey channel. It doesn’t sound like much except it means I was the enforcer of standards, the censor, for what is now the Hallmark Channel, which meant I watched the television programming, especially the religious programming, but also other programming on the Odyssey channel, which became Hallmark Channel, which is now best known for the Hallmark movie, especially the Hallmark Christmas movie, which is shown over and over beginning around Halloween or possibly the Fourth of July. 

In that movie, titles vary, as do actors and characters, but the essential story remains the same. If you tune in to the Odyssey channel, excuse me, the Hallmark Channel, five minutes before the hour you see that she has finally met the right guy, there will be grandchildren and grandma is happy; now you go off for five minutes to wait through the commercials and the movie begins again; and there is what is called a ‘meet cute’: you introduced to her, the woman who it’s high time she got married, and the guy, and they have some sort of connection which can be fairly eccentric. 

Then you can go to dinner, then come back nearly 2 hours later for the last five minutes and you see the happy ending again. In between is a mild conflict or complication that must be resolved. Eventually that is resolved, there will be grandchildren, and grandma is happy. So: boy meets girl, boy gets girl. 

This ‘boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back’ formula, in the famous words of the Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn, is a tried and true way to tell a story.

Well here we are in chapter 3 of Ruth and it is definitely the in- between time, because we’ve had at last the ‘meet cute’ but unlike the Hollywood version or the Hallmark version, they had actually known something about each other before and developed some respect, her for him and him for her. 

Attentive readers will recall the story so far: Ruth accompanied her mother-in-law Naomi back to Naomi’s hometown after both had lost their husbands. They hope to find a home again where once Naomi lived and had family. It is harvest time. Ruth begins to glean in the fields to gather something to eat. Providentially, she gleans in the field of Boaz, a near kinsman of Naomi, who notices her. He admires Ruth’s steadfast loyalty and care for her mother-in-law, and extends his protection to her, allowing her to glean in the field he owns, then sharing the noonday meal with her, and finally undertakes to execute the duty, and exercise the right, of a near kinsman, and takes her to wife.

Now, it occurred to me that this is not the least weird nor the most weird of all the many ‘meet cutes’ - or courtships - in the Old Testament. If you look at the way the relationships begin, look at the guy who labored seven years for the daughter he didn’t get and then another seven years for that daughter and then another seven years… so he ended up with both sisters, Rachel and Leah. And don’t get me started on Samson. 

These are descendants of those people. It all seems crazy, but somehow God works with these people. God works in these people, through these people, and the result is something beyond just their relationship or even just a romantic movie. 

In fact it has a meaning for all of us. I think the ‘takeaway’ for the book of Ruth generally is the inclusiveness of God: you’ve got in this case the redemption, but basically the takeaway is that God includes them and you and me and everyone in  his family. And as Samuel Goldwyn might say, “Include me in.” 

We see this total outsider, Ruth, who becomes a member of the family that is the people of God: in her case it’s the people of God who are ancient Israel. 

Sarah and I just watched an old movie called ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ which begins when the guy and the girl are already dating and have been dating for at least a year. They have passed the ‘meet cute’ moment whatever that might’ve been. They have met each other, they are someone involved, but they have yet to encounter that necessary complication, that conflict, which drives the plot forward to the happy ending, so that there will be grandchildren and grandma will be happy and it’s about time. 

[To our joy many characters who decorate the story are actually a lot more fun than him and her, couple number one. This is often the case: when you watch “Much Ado About Nothing” by Shakespeare, you realize that couple number one is nowhere near as much fun as the comic relief, couple number two. Not to mention the supporting characters. Often, it’s just like that.] 

The main point is that God loves us and all the rigamarole in between meeting and the resolution, the conflicts and the complications, shows us just how it is that God loves us. How it is that two total strangers can become family, and not just their own small human family, but part of the whole wide family of God. 

It is much more difficult for us outside the story, which after all, we know, ends happily, to get ahold of and to trust the promise, in that we are just learning to see the length to which God will go and has gone and has succeeded in going, to invite us and incorporate us and bring us and welcome us into the family of God. 

God has brought us into his family. That is the best story; it is a true story. And we are here today to celebrate because it is true. 

Woman touching Jesus' hem, fresco, Catacomb ofSaints Peter and Marcellinus, 3rd century http://edgeofenclosure.org/proper8b.html Mark 5:25-34 Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Immediately her haemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?” ’ He looked all round to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’

Ruth 2 : a harvest home

Rembrandt - Boaz Meeting Ruth in His Fields

https://www.pubhist.com/works/20/large/rembrandt_boaz_ruth_fields.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Rembrandt_Christ_in_the_Storm_on_the_Lake_of_Galilee.jpg

“Don’t you even care?” “Have you no faith?”

And yet when the storm waters are still, there is still need for faith, perhaps a quieter kind. Impoverished and far from home, our faithful Ruth shows a quiet confidence, a faith that means she persists; she persists when she is among the poor and hungry who follow the harvesters as they reap and gather the grain. 

Whatever her status was back home in Moab, now in Bethlehem she is serving and servant, a faithful daughter, though daughter-in-law, and will not give up. She quietly continues in her service ministry to her mother-in-law. What benefit the day’s work may yield beyond a nightly staving off hunger she probably cannot know. 

There is a prayer, For Quiet Confidence:

O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we will be saved, in quietness and confidence will be our strength: [Free us from want; free us from fear.] By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This is one prayer we each may need from time to time. Sure sometimes “sit down, sit down, you’re rocking the boat!” may be what we need to hear (or sing) but there are quieter times, even more desperate times, when hope takes quieter forms, love takes quieter forms, and faith is in the quiet work of a humble task. 

As we have taken note in the past, gleaning was a custom, even a law, among the people of the ancient Bethlehem community in which Ruth found herself. Mandated in the Torah books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, it was common custom enough to figure in the writings and the prophets of later Israel. A simple practice, it was not straightforward charity, not a hand out or a hand up, as the saying would have it. Gleaning was as much about not-selfishness, about not taking it all for yourself as if it was yours by right; and as much about abundance and dependence on God, in good times and bad, as keeping the Sabbath. 

Remember the story of Elijah and the widow and her son? In later times than the time of Ruth and Naomi, another famine had come to the land, and the fugitive prophet Elijah had fetched up at the humble, hardscrabble home of a widow. They were desperate for food: the story goes on to indicate that God’s provision alone kept them alive. 

But isn’t that always the case? Are we not always dependent on God for - our daily bread? In times of prosperity we may not feel so need-driven dependent but we all always live by the grace of God.

(Perhaps Boaz realized that, and lived that way. He certainly doesn’t seem to think the harvest all belongs to him, and that he should run off anyone in need. Certainly Ruth is an exemplar, modeling the best behavior of a gleaner; not all are so attractive in piety or persistence.) 

But it is there all the same. Deserve has nothing to do with it; except all deserve as all depend. We all live by the grace and generosity of God. Give us today our daily bread, as you have given it to Ruth and Naomi, Boaz and the harvest hands and gleaners, from their time and before, to this day.

In the food banks of the church and of our community organizations, the custom and practice, the blessing and benefit, of gleaning continues; whether we are donor or recipient we take part in this ancient happy custom.

(In Tucson: Interfaith Community Services, Community Food Bank - and its many partners, and gleaners! at Iskashitaa Refugee Network.)

“Grief is love without a place to land” – Jennifer Harvey, ‘Grief and Love in a Difficult World: A Public Theology of “Now What?”’ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB3TJZrDdeY&t=1490s]

What does love look like when it lacks a place to land? 

That would seem to describe Naomi well enough as she was left without husband or sons - menfolk - in Moab, in exile from her homeland. She is grieving. But she is not alone. She has two daughters-in-law; one does the conventional thing and goes back to her mother’s house; the other does something extraordinary, heroic: she accompanies her mother-in-law back to a land that is foreign to her and to whom she is foreigner. 

As Pastor Bob Jones pointed out in his June newsletter to Santa Cruz Lutheran Church, she becomes more than friend, she is adopted into full membership in the community. 

Witness how Naomi keeps referring to Boaz as “our kinsman” - not “mine” but “ours” - something is afoot. Naomi and Ruth cling, or cleave, to each other, even after the menfolk who initially bound them together are gone. Grief is love without a place to land. 

And so in contrast the grief they share becomes love that does have a place to land: with each other, with community, with family reformed and renewed. 

"Justice is what love looks like in public" – Reggie Willams, ‘MLK, America, & Abolition’ [https://youtu.be/rj4I_bmV8bo?feature=shared] quoting Cornel West [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGqP7S_WO6o]

And one step toward that is the public embodiment, enactment, of justice, in the gleaning. It is a custom and a law, here followed with love. "Justice is what love looks like in public." Gleaning is a public revelation of what love looks like: justice. 

‘When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings.’ (Deuteronomy 24:19)

That is justice. And beyond justice, as indeed we learn with Jesus. A full measure, tamped down and spilling over, of not just what convention and custom, the letter of the law, demands; but a generous overspilling abundance of the spirit of the law. God provides; providence is God’s business. 

We join in that holy task as we support or patronize food banks, and other sharing services, as we work for a world free from want, free from fear.

There is an old word from the old world we may want to revive: harvest home. Harvest home is both the work of gathering and gleaning, the threshing and winnowing, and the festival celebration when day is done.

As the parable of the sower taught us last week, the seed germinates and grows, the farmer knows not how: God tends the tender plant. And we rejoice in the harvest-home.

** ** **

JRL+

Santa Cruz Lutheran Church, Tucson, Arizona. Sunday 23 June 2024. https://www.facebook.com/1236072680/videos/1623012738554437/

https://www.iskashitaa.org/

https://www.communityfoodbank.org/

https://www.icstucson.org/ 

2024 June 23 Hymn of the Day: ELW #597 “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less”  

First Reading: Ruth 2. Psalm: Psalm 147. Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 6:1-13. Gospel: Mark 4:35-41 

Ruth 1 : the least of these

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0029V1962?

Ruth 1: The Least of These

 

Ephesians 2:19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God…

 

The book of Ruth has been called an idyllic, romantic story. It just begins with famine, exile, and death.

As the story begins, it is a time of famine. From Bethlehem, their home, a couple travel with their sons east and south across the Jordan Valley and down to the land of Moab east of the Dead Sea. There they live, with their two sons, for ten years. During that time both sons marry; but then all three men die. Left alive are one mature woman and two younger, who are apparently as yet without children and young enough so they can remarry and find safety and refuge in new homes with new husbands, in their native land. That is what their mother-in-law urges them to do. 

One takes this sensible and commonplace advice and turns back to her family home. The other goes beyond the call of duty and stays beside her mother-in-law. Now who is the exile? And what hope does she have? 

She is not the first to find herself on foreign soil, unknown and unfamiliar.

Abraham had said to the Hittites “I am a sojourner and foreigner among you.” (Gen 23:3-4) When Zipporah and Moses had a son, his father named him Gershom, (ger means stranger) saying, “I have been a stranger in a strange land.” (Ex 2.22) Now Ruth, without husband or home, is going to be the stranger.

For Naomi arriving in Bethlehem is a homecoming. Ruth ‘returned with her’ - but for Ruth it is to a land unknown. She is the stranger now.

What we know, that Ruth may not, is that this people to whom she has come has a tradition, a law even, about looking after the stranger and the widow, “for you were strangers once in Egypt.” (Ex 22.21, Lev 19.34)

She could not have come to a better place. Where she arrives as a foreigner - spoiler alert - she will find a home such as she has never known, thanks to the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings she has come for refuge. (Ruth 2.12b) He shall cover you, says the psalm, with his wings and you shall be safe under his feathers. (Ps 91.4a) 

And the people of Bethlehem will soon say to Ruth, you are no longer a stranger nor an alien, but you are a member of the household of God… (Eph 2.19)

As the first chapter closes, the barley harvest begins. That means it is spring, around the equinox, about seven weeks before the wheat harvest festival that we will hear more about in future chapters.

Let’s take some time to think about the place where Ruth is arriving. It is at about the same elevation as the base of A mountain, where Tucson’s Birthplace Mission Garden stands. The climate was different. Here the traditional feast of the wheat harvest falls on San Ysidro day, in mid-May; while in ancient Israel, and therefore among Jews today, the wheat harvest festival, called Shavuot, begins on an evening in June, this year on the 11th. Ruth and Naomi have come to Bethlehem, before that festival, about seven weeks earlier. 

Drawn by hope, or driven by fear, many people today travel across the desert places of the world: they may seek refuge, they may seek opportunity, but the journey is made every day, across the expanse of the Mediterranean (“water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink”) or through the desert south of Tucson. The people who reach us aren’t always in good shape. A young family could be comforting each other, husband and wife, as they mourn the loss of a daughter or son who just barely survived the journey but dies in a Tucson hospital; or a single woman who miscarried is left alone – and so an opportunity is lost for two people, a chance lost to start a new life. 

In our story in the first chapter of the book of Ruth we see three women left without the protection of a husband or a safe place to live, in the midst of a famine that has lasted for 10 years. The story of Ruth is called an idyllic romance, but it begins with famine, exile, and the tragedies of death; it becomes a happy story only later, and later we will talk about those latter parts of the story, when the corner turns from trouble to glory, from past loss to future abundance. The empty shall become full, the foreigner family.

We may have crossed deserts of our own. We may have been accompanied, or we may have been alone. Or we may have been among those greeting others as they arrived. 

What the challenge is for us is to become one people, one family; all under the protection, under the wings, as it were, of one God. Whether we begin as refugees or hosts, we are all called to come together as one. And to care for each other as one.

There is a strange story, another journey story, of journey away and then back again, that has long been in our common cultural heritage. I was not thinking of  “The Hobbit” - though a good guess. I have been reading “The Odyssey” in a new translation. In it a veteran of the Trojan War, Odysseus aka Ulysses, is making his journey homeward. It is not easy: shipwreck, cannibals, the lure of satiety, and the loss of companions, all slow him down. Meanwhile his son has grown up and his wife is left to fend off suitors - who are after her not least for the land and wealth that would come with her hand. 

Odysseus has limited trust in the gods he knows, the gods he knows too well to trust entirely. One accompanies him from time to time, in strange and shifting disguises that he slowly unpeels, and others appear from time to time as helper or obstruction. One in particular has it in for him, and others are neutral. This is the pagan world - and to us worldview - in which this ancient Greek operates. It is really all up to him. “You dogs!” he says to the suitors hanging around his wife, “You thought I’d never make it.”

For the women in our story, it is not all up to them. By their own efforts they would never make it. But they are never alone. They are reaching a community - a community of kindness - that is imbued with the gifts and graces of the knowledge of a living God. God is with them, not in disguise, but in the way in which people treat each other. In the laws and customs, and practices and choices, of the people they come to live among.

As in the story of Naomi and Ruth, so in parables of the sower and of the mustard seed, the good news is that small beginnings lead to greater ends. 

Insignificant in its size a seed in the right ground germinates, and properly tended - by the unseen hand of God - yields abundance. God’s kingdom is present in minute, hidden form as seed … and therefore as already present. Unpromising beginnings, great endings.

The people who first relayed these stories to each other, with their simple symbolic pictures, passed on to us, carried the message to us, that there is hope for the future. 

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. (Jer 29.11)

It is into that hopeful future that we, like Naomi and Ruth, shall journey together.

It is into that hopeful future that we, infused with faith and walking in the Spirit, shall arrive.

***

Sermon Series: Ruth at Santa Cruz Lutheran Church, Tucson, Arizona. 

https://fb.watch/sUdy79sLwy/ June 16th 2024.

JRL+

June 16  ELW #681 “We Plow the Fields and Scatter”(Wir pflugen)  

First Reading: Ruth 1 

Psalm: Psalm 146

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:6-10 [11-13] 14-17

Gospel: Mark 4:26-34

June 23 ELW #597 “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less” 

First Reading: Ruth 2

Psalm: Psalm 147

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Gospel: Mark 4:35-41

June 30  ELW #612  “Healer of Our Every Ill” -

or ELW #733  "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" (one of these as closer?)

First Reading: Ruth 3

Canticle: Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Gospel: Mark 5:21-43

July 7  ELW #676  “Lord Speak to Us that We may Speak”

First Reading: Ruth 4

Psalm: Psalm 127

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Gospel: Mark 6:1-13

First reading is from the Revised English Bible [REB] (Cambridge/Oxford, 1989).

Santa Cruz Lutheran Church, Tucson. June 16th 2024. https://fb.watch/sUdy79sLwy/

community of kindness

This Sunday’s readings include the passage in the first book of Samuel when people ask the prophet Samuel to ask God for a king like other nations to fight their battles for them; and when Samuel brings this request to the Lord, he’s told to tell them what to expect when they have a human king instead of relying on God is their king. They’re going to find themselves being taxed and required to work for him and have their sons and daughters serving the royal household.… and so the period of the Judges ends and the period of the Kings is about to begin.

There’s a short story in the Old Testament that fits in right at the end of the story of Judges, just before the beginning of the story of the Kings, and it is called Ruth.

Jewish communities chant the story of Ruth as part of the celebration of Shavuot, the wheat harvest festival, which begins, this year, on June 11th. 

Ruth is at the outset a foreign widow, destitute in a time of famine, but by the end of the story, the community is hailing her as a matriarch named in the same breath as the wives of Jacob.

And indeed, in the epilogue to this four chapter story, we see that her grandson becomes the second king of Israel.

What ties these stories together for me is the net importance of loyalty, steadfastness, and kindness, over ethnic or other identity.

Who is my family? Who are my kin? In the gospels, Jesus says whoever serves God is his family. They are those who with me are obedient to an authority higher than any earthly authority. They do justice, love kindness, and care for both friend and stranger.

So here is a brief summary of the story of Ruth:

At a time of famine, a husband and wife set out from Bethlehem across the Jordan Valley to the land east of the Dead Sea called Moab.

This is somewhat unexpected. Moab will probably be sharing in the famine while Nile- watered Egypt probably will not.

But off they go and with them their two sons, who there in Moab find wives.

But tragedy hits the family. The mother of the two sons, Naomi, loses her husband and then her sons so she and her two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, are left widows.

She says to the younger women that she plans to return to Bethlehem; however, they should probably stay in their own homeland and find new husbands - and homes - there.

They are probably fairly young as there is no mention that either had had children.

One stays, takes that advice and stays in Moab; the other, however, exhibits an extraordinary character.

Ruth declares to her mother-in-law that she will go with her to Bethlehem and make her mother-in-law’s people her own.

Of course, this is not entirely up to her mother-in-law as the community will have to accept this foreigner, this widow from a foreign land, into their community.

They do, to make the story short. 

When the two women arrive in Bethlehem, Naomi is welcomed home. They arrive at the time of the barley and wheat harvests. To provide for them both, Ruth begins to glean in the fields. She follows the harvesters and picks up the grain that they miss or drop between the sheaves, and brings the food home. 

Her behavior, observed, leads to respect and to love, and she finds herself an honored wife of a new husband, and an honored mother and grandmother of what becomes an important family in the people of ancient Israel.

The virtues she shows, steadfast loyalty, and loving kindness, not race, are what people see, and prove to be more important than any ethnic origin.

And indeed the community to which she has cleaved has shown its virtues of loving kindness in the custom of gleaning, and of respect for the rights of the widow, both part of the Torah law. In addition we see the care for the widow and the stranger in their behavior, led by Boaz, toward the women newly arrived as refugees from across the Jordan Valley. 

To us this story tells us something about how community is formed, in this community which becomes the nation of ancient Israel.

Not everyone who was of the people of God called ancient Israel were descendants of the people who escaped from slavery in Egypt. Some were descendants of the people who were already in the land and some were incorporated from other nations, but all became welcome in the tent of Abraham that is in the household of God that became known as Israel. 

In our own day, our country, like many nations, has a sense of identity, and of common values that bring us together.  As President Obama said in his second inaugural address, “what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names.  What makes us exceptional -- what makes us American -- is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”  

All of us are created equal. That is our country. We do not claim to be ‘the people of God’ in the way that the ancient Hebrews - or others - did, as we affirm the separation of church and state; that is, the distinct allegiances to country and to the source of all being, the higher power that Christians, among others, affirm as God.

But we can learn from this ancient people. What binds us together, as it was what bound Ruth to her new identity in a nation new to her, is not national origin, race, or ethnic origin. She had not traveled with the newly emancipated from Egypt to the promised land. Her father was not a wandering Aramean. But Ruth became a child of Abraham, and more important was always and already a child of God, because she affirmed and embodied the steadfast loyalty and loving kindness that were core values of the people she became part of: indeed, becoming a matriarch among them.

By the end of the story of Ruth recounted in our Bible she is welcomed not only as friend, but as member, as one in the royal lineage that began with Sarah and Abraham, continuing through Tamar and Perez, Leah and Rachel, and through her beyond to her grandson David - and his heirs.

This is a story that shows identity and inclusion not as a result of surface attributes but from a deeper reality: the embrace of an all-loving God, and its embodiment in a people that seek to reflect that love in their behavior.

All of us are created equal. All of us are loved by God. All of us are called to show it.

June 9th 2024 JRL+

Third Sunday after Pentecost, BProper5 : 

1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15)
Psalm 138
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
Mark 3:20-35

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp5_RCL.html

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/21/inaugural-address-president-barack-obama

An edited version of this meditation appeared in the Arizona Daily Star on Sunday June 9th 2024, E3.

https://tucson.com/life-entertainment/local/faith-values/choose-loyalty-loving-kindness-above-all-else/article_b891113c-2296-11ef-9e05-cf2d57c0cf91.html

See also the YouTube video of the service for the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost at the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew in Tucson. Sermon (17:51-30:33). 

https://www.youtube.com/live/qWa5zURvIes?feature=shared

Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz: forming an 'us'

The great Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explained the difference between the sort of contracts that flourish in the world of individual choice and covenants that flourish best in those realms that are deeper than individual utility: “A contract is about interests. A covenant is about identity. It is about you and me coming together to form an ‘us.’ That is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform.” (David Brooks. The New York Times. May 18, 2024. A22.) 

This modern reader of the Book of Ruth finds a bit of a challenge in one ancient custom. Spoiler alert for those who haven’t read this far. “Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging: to confirm a transaction, one party took off a sandal and gave it to the other; this was the manner of attesting in Israel. So when the next-of-kin said to Boaz, ‘Acquire it for yourself’, he took off his sandal.” (Ruth 4:7-8)

This kind of contract memorandum strikes one as odd today. I have never taken off my sandal to anybody, nor received same. Nor has a real estate transaction been concluded in this way, recently, to my knowledge. 

And of course what went along with this particular sandal-handling was another exchange, one with much wider implications. We first met Ruth with her mother-in-law Naomi in chapter one of her book, in a time of distress and famine. She proclaimed to Naomi that “your people will be my people and your God my God”. 

This was more than a contract, it was a covenant. A covenant based in love. Much as were the covenants the people of God made with their Lord. 

Keep that in mind as we look at what was happening in this land sale. Boaz, receiving the land, was also claiming and accepting that by acquiring the land he was also acquiring the happy obligation of marrying the daughter-in-law of Naomi, yep, Ruth. 

They had already met in the context of the wheat harvest. And he knew what he was doing. Not only was he making a deal for a patch of land, he was entering into the fulfillment of a sacred relationship. Sure, another relative could have taken precedence in the property transfer. But only Boaz and Ruth together with Naomi could fulfill the larger covenantal purpose. The land would remain in the right hands for God’s plan.

For once the property changed hands, Boaz gladly took on the duty and joy of marrying the young widow. This, in those ancient days, was part of the deal. There was a widow to be provided for, an ancestral obligation to fulfill, and with the land came the widow.

“Boaz said, ‘The day you acquire the field from the hand of Naomi, you are also acquiring Ruth the Moabite, the widow of the dead man, to maintain the dead man’s name on his inheritance.’” (Ruth 4:5) That would be the contractual obligation; what was, on the surface, happening. What was going on, on a deeper spiritual level, was something greater. 

“A contract is about interests” - and a relative who had right to the land might well be interested. 

“A covenant is about identity” - and Ruth had already pledged her allegiance to the people of Naomi, the people of Israel. 

She was making for herself and taking upon herself a new identity: no longer the Moabite widow, she became the wife of a man of Israel. 

And she became the mother of redemption for her people, for her great-grandson was David who would be king. And among his descendants would be Jesus. (Matthew 1:1-17)

The relationship between Ruth and her new husband was beyond contractual; it was covenant. It was the formation of a new family, an identity, a redeemed and renewed relationship within the covenant people.

“A covenant is about identity. It is about you and me coming together to form an ‘us’. That is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform.”

And the transformation goes beyond two individuals; it goes to the heart of what it means to become part of the people of redemption, the people of God.

Just as personal relationships can go from contract to covenant, so can those of a people – with each other, and with God. The relationship is not then transactional, but one of mutual self-giving. “Love does not keep account of wrongs but finds its joy in the truth.” (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:5-6)

How then shall we as citizens of a common city and country and cosmos treat each other: not with grudge-keeping but with grace-giving; not as parties to a transaction but as partners in creating common good?

***

REFERENCE NOTES:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/opinion/trump-liberals-authoritarians.html

“Shavuot is the festival when we celebrate our greatest gift: the Torah, our constitution of liberty under the sovereignty of God, our marriage contract with Heaven itself, written in letters of black fire on white fire, joining the infinity of God with the finitude of humankind in an unbreakable bond of law and love, the scroll Jews carried wherever they went, and that carried them. This is the Torah: the voice of heaven as it is heard on earth, the word that lights up the world.”-- Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Koren Sacks Shavuot machzor, Introduction, lxxxi https://rabbisacks.org/quotes/

An edited version of this meditation appeared in the Arizona Daily Star on Sunday May 26th 2024 page E3. https://tucson.com/life-entertainment/local/faith-values/the-difference-between-contracts-and-covenants/article_454b641c-16dd-11ef-ae0a-4b26dc3b1a14.html

JRL+

A Harvest of Loving-Kindness

“Since wheat was adopted as a valued crop here in the 18th Century, it has been harvested on Saint Isidore's Day, May 15. It was an opportunity to remember the saint—San Ysidro, the patron of laborers and farmers—and to harvest the wheat.”-- Mission Garden at Tucson’s Birthplace.
 
  
Among the books of the Hebrew Scriptures that I frequently return to is the book of Ruth. It’s a good story, and it has a lot to tell us about the providence of our Creator and the loving-kindness which we can receive and share.
 
Jews read the book of Ruth at the time of the Jewish festival of Shavuot, which begins, this year, the evening of June 11th. Shavuot is both the wheat harvest festival and a celebration of the gift of the Torah to the Jewish people.
 
The corresponding Christian festival is Pentecost, the giving of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps Christians are celebrating abundance and providence as well as the gift of the Spirit. At this time of year we often sing the hymn that begins, “We plow the fields and scatter” - earworm courtesy Godspell.
 
Both festivals celebrate abundance and providence, and gifts from the Creator. And underlying both festivals is the holy gift of love, and loving-kindness.
 
What the Jewish festival gives us, in its customary reading, is a background to the celebration, an act, and a series of acts, of loving-kindness. Loving-kindness, often attributed as a characteristic of the Almighty, is here a practice of human beings.
 
Notable among them, but not the first or only, is Ruth, the widow from Moab east of the Jordan, who travels with her widowed mother-in-law Naomi, from Ruth’s own homeland through the wild lands across the river and up into the hill country of Naomi’s ancestral people, indeed, to the city called the house of bread, Bethlehem.
 
It is there they hope to eke out a living in the midst of famine, and hope beyond hope that Naomi’s long-distant relatives will accept them. Naomi is returning from exile; Ruth is embarking on a one-way journey away from the only home she has known.
 
Naomi, a woman of Israel, has been living east of the Jordan river in the land of
Moab, married to a Moabite man, and with her two sons married to Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. The men all die, leaving the three women widows, and without the support that marriage and husbands could give them. And then famine comes.
 
Naomi releases her daughters-in-law from their customary obligation to look after their mother-in-law, and one, Orpah, decides to stay in familiar Moab. Ruth, on the other hand, leaves her home and cleaves to Naomi, out of loyalty and loving-kindness. She thereby begins to establish a new identity. She finds her self among a new people, and becomes the mother of … well, that is a story of its own.
 
Ruth says to Naomi, “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.” (Ruth 1:16-17)
 
Ruth and Naomi fetch up in ancestral Bethlehem at harvest-time, and Ruth begins to glean between the sheaves in the fields, to find something to eat for her mother-in-law and herself. This gleaning and this kindness and loyalty do not go unnoticed. And one evening Ruth finds a place to bed down at the threshing floor where the workers of the harvest have gathered. A new story is about to begin.
 
Ruth will become a mother, of Obed, and a grandmother, of Jesse, and a great-grandmother, of David: that same David, of whom Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, is called ‘son of David.’
 
But let us pause here and realize what has happened. Out of disaster a daughter has come, once a stranger, now a loving family member. Out of desperation a hope for providence has come. Out of the abundance of the Creator new life has sprung.
 
“We plough the fields and scatter/The good seed on the land,/But it is fed and watered/By God's almighty hand. He sends the snow in winter,/The warmth to swell the grain,/The breezes and the sunshine,/And soft, refreshing rain.
“All good gifts around us/Are sent from heaven above;/Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord/For all His love.”
 
###
 
The Rev. John R. Leech, D.Min., is priest associate at the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, and a frequent guest preacher at Episcopal and Lutheran churches in southern Arizona.
 
###

REFERENCE NOTES:

The Hymnal 1982 #291
Author:            Matthias Claudius (1782)
Translator:      Jane M. Campbell
Copyright:       Public Domain
 
https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-isidore-the-farmer/
 
https://www.sefaria.org/topics/shavuot?sort=Relevance&tab=sources
 
“Bethlehem’s designation as the “House of Bread” reflects its historical and cultural significance as a center for agriculture and food production. The fertile lands surrounding the city have long been conducive to the cultivation of crops, particularly wheat and barley, contributing to Bethlehem’s reputation as a source of sustenance. This association with agricultural abundance has shaped the city’s identity and played a pivotal role in its development over the centuries.”
https://www.chefsresource.com/why-is-bethlehem-called-the-house-of-bread/


An edited version of this meditation appeared in the Arizona Daily Star on May 19th 2024, page E3 https://tucson.com/life-entertainment/local/faith-values/a-harvest-of-loving-kindness/article_56260582-1249-11ef-8548-cf3023871250.html

https://www.missiongarden.org/blog/remembering-san-ysidro-festival