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 

permeance

In preparation for officiating at a wedding I consulted a long out-of-print book, The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary, and in the marriage rite I found a prayer that begins,

 

O ETERNAL God, Creator and Preserver of all mankind, Giver of all spiritual grace, the Author of everlasting life;  (1928 BCP Marriage)

Reflecting on that prayer, I realized that it applied well beyond that moment - that special moment indeed when we invite the blessing of the spirit upon the now-to-be wed couple. It applies to all sorts of occasions. And I noted that the spirit, the holy spirit, is there in the marriage rite, as it is in pastoral and episcopal offices of all kinds, from marriage to baptism to burial, reconciliation of a penitent and ministrations to the sick or dying, from confirmation to ordination to the celebration of a new ministry and the consecration of a sacred space. Some of these may come up soon in this congregation. 

And of course in our new (1979) prayer book all of these rites and offices take place in the context of the community that is gathered in the Eucharist. We are one body, and we are one in the Spirit. 

The Spirit gives us utterance in different ways, expressions in different gifts. The Spirit gives us understanding and inspiration in different ways and by different means. This is the one Spirit that God breathed upon the waters at creation, that inspired ecstatic prophesying - dancing and exclaiming in praise - inside and outside the camp on Sinai, that frightened the prophet Joel. 

This is the same Spirit that reversed the babble of the Tower into coherent speech for a diverse multitude on the first day of the church, the day of Pentecost.

It’s amazing! It’s as if you’ve been running around a foreign country and you’ve finally bumped into people who are speaking your language. 

We remember, as every school child must, that the feast of Pentecost expands for us the meaning of an earlier festival, the Jewish feast of Shavuot, that was a harvest feast at first, then became the day of thanksgiving for the giving of the Law to the people, through Moses, on Sinai. 

How is the gift of Law, of Torah, to a distant people at a distant time, almost mythical, to help us today? How is the experience of the gathered disciples and their hearers on the day of Pentecost, two thousand years ago, to make a difference to us now? 

Will we, gathered or scattered, hear, each in our own heart language, the word of God? Will we be inspired? Will we act - apparently crazy - as the Israelites did, dancing and singing and praising God? Will we - apparently sober - go out and do the things Jesus commanded us to do?

Will we visit the sick, pray with the despairing, speak out for justice, reach out to the lonely? Will we listen to each other in solemn assembly, seeking the guidance of the Spirit in our decisions? 

Will we have reason to? And how will we encounter the Spirit in our own life and times?

The Rev. Kaji Douša, senior pastor at Park Avenue Christian Church in New York City, traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, in 2018 to provide pastoral care to asylum seekers. Douša has said, “To reject a migrant is to cast away God’s angels, which I am unwilling to do.” https://theconversation.com/when-faith-says-to-help-migrants-and-the-law-says-dont-203087

On the border now they talk of encounters with migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and the desperate wanderers who lose their way. Encounters. Better perhaps than simply saying arrests, as many have entertained angels unawares. This week I encountered a man who asked directions to the bus station. I gave them to him. Then I thought, too late, that I could have given him a ride in the heat of the day. 

There is a story in the book of Genesis. In the heat of the day, while he was sitting in the door of his tent, Abraham encountered three men, strangers to him, who came to him at the Oaks of Mamre, and he offered them hospitality. The hospitality of his tent, his household, his family. 

Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7)

Sometimes all someone asks of us is directions. Sometimes we are offered the chance to do much more. If we have eyes to see. The three strangers were indeed grateful for the hospitality they received and in turn gave a blessing only they could give. Your wife, they said, will at last bear to you the child you both have sought. And that child - through its descendants - will become the host of the world.

We do not meet God in the person of three angels, dressed as strangers who wander through the desert. (Do we?) We do not meet Jesus in the flesh. (Though sometimes we wonder.)

The Holy Spirit is the God we encounter. We have not seen the Father, and Jesus, since his Ascension, has left us in the care of the Comforter, the Advocate, the Teacher; the one who comes alongside us, and yet remains unseen. Unseen, that is, except through permeance. 

Permeating through all of our encounters with each other, and, all unawares, with angels. Pervading too all our days, ordinary and especially significant. 

Look through the prayer book pastoral offices and you will see the Spirit landing upon the baptized, inhabiting the confirmed, blessing the married, consoling the bereaved and accompanying the sick even unto the death bed. And it is the Spirit of God that enables us in turn to comfort, celebrate, cajole, and encourage, the baptized, the married, the bereaved, the sick and dying, the joyous and even the oblivious. 

Look through the Episcopal offices and you will see the Spirit invoked upon the ordained, and the presence of the Spirit called upon to bless new ministries and sacred places.

Listen as we celebrate Eucharist, or say our daily prayers. You will hear the Spirit speaking. For the Spirit is here present among us, and through that invisible permeating influence God is here.

Hear the Word. Touch the cup. Taste the bread. Say “peace” to your neighbor. Come Holy Spirit. Come to us. Amen.

***

Sunday, May 28, 2023: for the Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, Tucson, Arizona.

permeance

'Cause I feel like I-I've been running around a foreign country and I've finally bumped into two people who can speak English.  (https://transcripts.thedealr.net/script.php/yesterday-2019-XtmS)

Veni Sancte Spiritus (Taizé) Come Holy Spirit... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8yOAxWyfvA 

A meditation based on this sermon appeared on the Arizona Daily Star website June 4th 2023: https://tucson.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/encounters-with-the-spirit-are-all-around-us/article_a00ae510-ff02-11ed-a83c-2788b4905516.html

The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Day of Pentecost (Whitsunday) Year A:

• Acts 2:1-21
• or Numbers 11:24-30
• 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
• or Acts 2:1-21
• John 20:19-23
• or John 7:37-39
• Psalm 104:25-35, 37

O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.Amen.

Arthur's Table

As was their custom on the feast of Pentecost the Knights of the Round Table gathered with their king at Camelot and regaled each other with tales of their adventures over the past year yet none took his seat until a new adventure had presented itself. And so it was that they not only looked to the past but cast their eyes ahead into the unknown yet eagerly awaited future.

My childhood copy of the tales of those knights and their kings contains several chapters that begin that way. As an early reader I was unsure where the idea of Pentecost came. Only to find out as an adult that it was a day fifty days after Easter that marked the beginning of the church. And to learn later that seven weeks after Passover comes the feast of Shavuot. The feast of the barley harvest and more importantly of the renewal of the covenant on Sinai with God’s people. 

One of my favorite Bible stories is the story of Naomi, Orpah, Ruth, and, eventually, Boaz. Boaz comes in to the story late, after Naomi and her two daughters-in-law become widows. Orpah stays in Moab but Ruth and Naomi trek across a famine-struck terrain to Naomi’s home town, Bethlehem. There they encounter, notably on the threshing floor, Naomi’s cousin Boaz.

The future becomes brighter; indeed Ruth becomes great-grandmother of David… and so this little family becomes the root of the royal family and indeed the holy one.

We might tend to look back as these ancient women might have; might have stuck with safety, as Orpah did; but we might also take a page out of their (four-chapter) book and look ahead.

Not a bad lesson for this spring day.

JRL+

Helen Cohn. "The measure of a people." Keeping the Faith, Home + Life, Arizona Daily Star. Sunday, May 9, 2021. E3.