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.

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

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

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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/

kernel mustard

Small, hidden, mysterious, potent, seed – mustard, cedar, soy, or sycamore – grows quietly, becoming only slowly what it will become in its fullness, and yet – the kernel is there, the seed is there, the DNA is there: and the seed knows how it wants to grow, knows what it wants to become.

That sounds a bit mystical: and yet even horticulturalists talk that way. When W. S. Merwin was growing his garden of 800 rare kinds of palm trees on 19 acres in Ha'ikū, Hawaii, he asked the biologist E. O. Wilson if it was silly to talk to the trees. And Wilson replied, no, it was not silly at all. “‘The tree’s gene code is much older than yours,’ he said. ‘It’s not withholding anything. If you know how to talk, it will tell you everything you want.’”

I trusted the tree in the backyard. We were friends. If I could talk to it, it would talk to me. But I didn't know how. I was talking to the biologist E.O. Wilson about that, and he said talking to trees was not silly at all. 'The tree's gene code is much older than yours,' he said. 'It's not withholding anything. If you know how to talk, it will tell you everything you want.'" Even, it seems, how to grow a forest.

Matthew Gurewitsch, “On the Palms From His Hands”, The Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304019404577418053772472254.html accessed June 16, 2012)

They know how they want to grow.

And it turns out, in the case of plants and trees, they often want to start out slowly, from small beginnings, growing in mysterious and hidden ways – and sometimes they increase and flourish.

The people Jesus knew were dry-culture farmers, meaning they had no irrigation in first-century Palestine. They would cultivate the ground, sow the seed, and, in time, harvest. But in the meantime, they knew, it was up to God.

One time I was talking to the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, and I ventured that he had had quite a success as bishop of Bath and Wells during a great renewal in the church. And he replied, someone else did the sowing; I was there at the harvest. Not just humility, but truth. And in between, they knew, it was up to God.

We’d like to force it, sometimes. We’d like it to grow the way we want it to grow, on our timetable, to our specifications. But the kingdom of God is – God’s kingdom. And God is the one who makes things grow.

We guide, nourish, co-operate; we are at best assistant gardeners; which, it turns out, is a pretty important job.

We are called to be part of the growth of the most extraordinary thing; we are called to be part of the growth of the most ordinary thing.

For the kingdom of heaven, Ezekiel said, was like this: God takes a small twig, a sprig, from the top of a cedar tree, and plants it on a high mountain. This sprig takes root and grows; and in time that cedar is the greatest and noblest of trees; birds rest in its branches. And yet – the kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, is like the smallest of seeds – a mustard seed. And you know what happens when you spread mustard seed around?

A bunch of small plants! Maybe four feet high! Covering a hillside or a field, or filling your garden, what you have are almost ordinary weeds – just something ordinary. Something not far away, not inaccessibly gigantic, not impossible to grow; something you can reach out and touch with your hands, flowers you can pluck, seeds you can taste.

The kingdom of heaven is close at hand. The kingdom of heaven is already among you. The kingdom of heaven is real – and not strange at all. It is growing – like a weed!

What do we learn from this? Patience, hope, vision. And those are not small things at all.

We know that growth of the kingdom is not obvious and not subject to our control. We know that God is responsible for what falls and what rises. We know that he will transform the world, that a new creation is coming into being, that we are part of it. We know that God’s glory begins sometimes as a small and hidden (Gk: krypton) thing.

We know that the kingdom is God’s doing – and our eyes will marvel at it in its fullness, in its glory.

Vision, and hope despite the odds; patience – these are not small things, but extraordinary things: things that make the kingdom grow. And make us grow with it.

How will we plant a mustard seed today? How will we have faith – put our trust in God?

How will we enjoy seeing it grow? Will we wait? Will we try to push it along?

The kingdom will come, is coming, in its fullness: it is already present in hidden, small, secret, potent form. How will we help it spread?

Where do you see it spreading?

June 17
Third Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 6

Ezekiel 17:22-24
Psalm 92:1-4, 11-14
2 Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17
Mark 4:26-34

sow broadcast at any time

If You Want Your Dream To Be...


If you want your dream to be
Build it slow and surely.
Small beginnings, greater ends
Heartfelt work grows purely.

If you want to live life free
Take your time go slowly.
Do few things but do them well
Simple joys are holy.

Day by day,
Stone by stone,
Build your secret slowly.
Day by day,
You'll grow too,
You'll know heaven's glory.

If you want your dream to be
Build it slow and surely.
Small beginnings, greater ends,
Heartfelt work grows purely.
If you want to live life free
Take your time go slowly.

(Donovan)


The seed catalog came today – a bit late, I grant you, for spring planting, but late summer and early fall are not far away, and then I will be planting – mustard seed!

The kind of mustard seed I will be planting is an “excellent cover crop often used in orchards and vineyards.” It “suppresses weeds, nematodes and soil diseases, cycles nutrients, and increases tilth.” It is also “a high protein forage. Sow broadcast at any time during the growing season. It can be harvested at any stage, but preferably just after flowering. Plant mid-August for winter cover.”

(Bountiful Gardens 2009 Catalog, p. 32.)

I will prepare the ground, raking and watering, perhaps, and then – I will sow the seed. Just fling it! Just plant it. Rake it in – and let it grow. I could get up day and night, worry about it, fuss with it – but it will grow of its own accord, automatically, without help.

Something will come up – and bear fruit after its kind.

When Jesus was teaching crowds gathered. They came to him by the lakeshore. He had the disciples embark with him in a boat, so that he could speak to the people on shore. He told them about the kingdom of God, the coming reign of God, but he spoke to them in parables. He told them stories – simple stories, but with a kick to them.

And they listened. And they heard something. Something we may not notice: echoes, echoes of the Old Testament glories of the prophets.

When Jesus spoke of a little seed that grew into a great big plant – he reminded them of something they’d heard before.

Nebuchadnezzar had a dream, of a tree that grew and spread, and carried in its branches the birds of the air, and provided food for all.

Upon my bed this is what I saw;
there was a tree at the centre of the earth,
and its height was great.
The tree grew great and strong,
its top reached to heaven,
and it was visible to the ends of the whole earth.
Its foliage was beautiful,
its fruit abundant,
and it provided food for all.
The animals of the field found shade under it,
the birds of the air nested in its branches,
and from it all living beings were fed.

Daniel told him it was an image of a king.

The tree that you saw, which grew great and strong, so that its top reached to heaven and was visible to the end of the whole earth, whose foliage was beautiful and its fruit abundant, and which provided food for all, under which animals of the field lived, and in whose branches the birds of the air had nests— it is you, O king! You have grown great and strong. Your greatness has increased and reaches to heaven, and your sovereignty to the ends of the earth.

Daniel told him it was the image of a king… but we know (and Daniel knew) what king is truly great, what Lord is really sovereign, and what kingdom really endures.

(Daniel 4:10-12, 20-22)


Ezekiel had a vision, and spoke:

Thus says the Lord God:
I myself will take a sprig
from the lofty top of a cedar;
I will set it out.
I will break off a tender one
from the topmost of its young twigs;
I myself will plant it
on a high and lofty mountain.
On the mountain height of Israel
I will plant it,
in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,
and become a noble cedar.
Under it every kind of bird will live;
in the shade of its branches will nest
winged creatures of every kind.

(Ezekiel 17:22-23)

So when Jesus spoke of a seed, and of a great plant that grew from it, putting forth branches so that the birds of the air could nest in its shade, his listeners knew, right away, that he was speaking of the kingdom of heaven. He was speaking subversion, of course – subversion of the Roman state, of the powers that be, of the rulers of this world – because he was speaking of the coming of the true king, the Messiah of Israel.

He was, however, speaking of the Messiah of Israel coming in a humble way, almost like – a king riding on a donkey or the foal of a donkey, instead of a great war-horse. He spoke of small beginnings, greater ends. Simple things. A secret, built slowly.

Like a little seed, the disciples were a little group. On the edge of empire, seldom seen. What grew from them – was great. It was the beginning of the new order of the ages, the kingdom they proclaimed: for they in their simple way, in their little band of brothers and sisters, carried the kernel, the nucleus, the seed-corn, of a great harvest to come.

When we in our turn do simple things – throw something out there, plant a seed, watch it grow – we take part in this kingdom’s coming. It comes in secret, quietly at first, not with great fanfare, but with joyous flowering – like the mustard seed in spring, just a first hint of what is to come.

Among us are people who spread the word, the good news, of Jesus – in their deeds and in their words. We all do it in our actions done for the Lord, and some times we do it in plain sight.

Each of us has had people in our lives who have ‘planted a seed’ – a word in season, an action of kindness, a lifelong dedicated struggle to bring something good into being.

Small or great, these efforts have been like mustard seeds for us – something started, that may grow into a great thing, a shelter for life to flourish in, and a simple symbol of God’s glory.

Today we honor a group of those people, the teachers in our Sunday school. The seeds they plant will we pray mature over time – and in the lives of the children of our parish, provide a place for the peaceable kingdom to emerge and to flourish.

As we rejoice in the gospel, we pray for all who spread the Good News, for evangelists and preachers, for Sunday school teachers, for all the laity in their sharing of the faith.

We pray for all who produce Bibles, and those who help us to understand your holy word.

Lord, may your church grow in holiness, in outreach, and in number.

Lord God, Almighty, rule in our hearts: direct our decisions, guide our actions, let your kingdom grow in us, that we may live and work to your praise and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord,

Who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

* * * * *

God give you grace to grow in holiness, to extend your vision, to increase your faith, to draw nearer to him; and the blessing of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rest upon you today and remain with you always. Amen.



Sources:
Donovan, song in "Brother Sun, Sister Moon", film directed by Franco Zeffirelli (Paramount, 1972)
Bountiful Gardens 2009 Catalog (http://www.bountifulgardens.org/)
David Adam, Traces of Glory: Prayers for the Church Year, Year B (SPCK, 1999)
Fred B. Craddock et al., Preaching Through the Christian Year, Year B (Trinity Press International, 1993)
David B. Lott, ed., New Proclamation: Year B, 2009 Easter to Christ the King (Fortress, 2008)
Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Orbis, 1995)
Herbert O'Driscoll, The Word Today, Year B, Volume 3 (Anglican Book Centre, 2001)
Marie Noonan Sabin, The Gospel According to Mark. New Collegeville Bible Commentary (Liturgical Press, 2006)
Scott Sinclair, A Study Guide to Mark's Gospel (BIBAL, 1996)
Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone (SPCK, 2001)

Ezekiel 17:22-24
Daniel 4:10-12, 20-22

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17
Mark 4:26-34


see also http://justgleanings.blogspot.com, http://godspace.wordpress.com, http://www.msainfo.org

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