November 12, 2006

23^rd Sunday after Pentecost

Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17

From Bitterness to Radiant Joy

By Leslie Kennard

Today our scriptures tell us of three women with incredible courage. Sometimes theirs is a deep and abidingly faith-based courage, and sometimes its courage based on desperation: just put one foot in front of the other and do what you have to do. In The Book of Ruth , we read one of the most well known dramas in history: the weaving of circumstance and the needs of the women, Naomi’s loss and bitterness, Ruth’s attachment to her mother-in-law and, of course, God’s never seeming to do anything other than just watch.

We remember from last week that Naomi and her husband–faithful Jews—fled Judah because of a severe famine. Famine is hard for us to imagine, because we’ve never experienced one in our country. But we’ve seen the heart-breaking television broadcasts from Somalia: orphaned children with stick-thin bones and distended bellies staring off into space, flies buzzing around their heads; groups of mothers clinging to babies who are clinging to life; people gathered in family clusters around the wells, surviving on a cup of water each day, others roaming farther and farther from home, looking for food. This was the kind of famine that sucked the life out of Judah in the days of Naomi and her family, and in desperation they fled to Moab, hoping against hope that Elimelech might find work. The Middle East was just as unsettled in those days as it is today, with fierce tribes (including the Jews) who did not accept foreigners into their lands, and anyone who did not belong to the local tribe was a foreigner. The religious fighting between dozens of Muslim factions in Iraq is a continuation of this very same tribalism that existed in Naomi’s day. So you can imagine the hardship the young family faced, financially and emotionally.

Naomi would have preferred to stay in Judah with her family, but she was a woman thousands of years ago in a land where woman were sold to their husbands between the ages of 8 and 13 or so. They had no rights as human beings. For ten years Naomi had been a stranger in a strange land: Naomi and her husband and their two boys and then, when the boys married, the two daughters-in-law. A mini-community, keeping kosher, keeping the Sabbath in a pagan land, keeping the faith. They were good Hebrew people in a time and place where being any kind of Hebrew people was not only hard, but dangerous.

Poor Naomi: if it weren’t for bad luck, she wouldn’t have much luck at all: her husband died leaving her a widow with no way of supporting herself, in a hostile land, and then her sons died--can you imagine losing your husband and both your children?--leaving her alone with two daughters-in-law who now were also widows. Naomi is beaten down, buried in grief and despair., and despite the danger, she packs up and heads back home to Judah–Bethlehem, actually, which is an important detail–with her devoted daughter-in-law, Ruth, in tow.

And this is where our story picks up this morning. We are beginning to have a sense of the desperation of the women. Imagine being a woman today in Afganistan or Niger or Iran. Now imagine being a WIDOW in Afganistan or Niger or Iran. Recently I’ve read two autobiographies by women who escaped from these countries, and their descriptions of extreme hungry, thirst (young children were sent to walk 35 or more miles in the desert looking for water), separated from family, alone in the desert, fair game for any slave trader: scared to death. This describes the conditions facing Naomi and Ruth as they traveled. Amazingly, the two women arrive safely in Judah, but even life in Judah is still dicey. They are still widows, women with no rights, no money, no way of supporting themselves.

Naomi gives a very poignant assessment of her plummeting fortunes:

Do not call me Naomi [which means “the sweet one”, or “the pleasant one”–and, by the way, it was the sweet Naomi whom Ruth vowed to stick with to death], call me Mara [which means “the bitter one”] for the almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi when the Lord has afflicted me and the almighty has brought calamity upon me? (1:20-21)

Naomi complained to God and about God. She was the prosecutor, the star witness, and the jury all rolled up into one. God is unfair, she lamented. (Of course, having just spent a month with Job, WE know that God is right there next to her, and that the best is yet to come.) But Naomi believes at this point that she can not trust God to run the universe any more. Naomi figures God’s obviously not going to take care of her, so she’s going to have to take care of herself. She may be a complainer, but she’s also a woman of courage. She is caught in the teeth of survival, and in the way of many, many people in times of desperation, she courageously scheme to gain a means of support. I say courageously, because had he plan failed, she and Ruth could both have been punished by death.

Naomi remembers the kind and generous Boaz, a friend of Elimelech’s, and she fixes Ruth up with Boaz, which is interesting because Boaz, being a Jew, shouldn’t have anything to do with Ruth who is a Moabite. (I wonder if God had anything to do with that.) But anyway, Naomi sets them up, thinking that, God willing (wiggle of the eyebrow...), she’ll have a new son-in-law to take care of her. And in fact, the plot works. Ruth and Boaz marry. Ta-da! But not so quick! That’s where Naomi’s plan ends, but now God steps in from the wings. (Hear the trumpets? See the angels? Hear the drum roll in the background. This is the moment!) Ruth and Boaz have a baby boy.

But this baby boy is not just another baby boy. In verse 13, we read that “The Lord gave her conception” (RSV) “The Lord made her conceive” (NRSV) Does this remind you of another baby boy born in Bethlehem? This baby boy is more than a delightful denouement to the tale of human travail. This is a baby for whom God has plans. God thought Naomi, who was too old to have her own children, ought to have a baby, and so the Hebrew women who were in charge of these things, came to the house where the baby had been born, and they named him as if he were Naomi’s own child- which somehow also makes him Elimelech’s son (even though Elimelech has been dead for many years), and as Elimelech’s son, Obed (as they named their baby) was slated to be the grandfather of David, who was an ancestor of our very own Jesus, the other baby boy born in Bethlehem. Only God could create such a wondrous sequence—from famine and death in Bethlehem to eternal life. The story of widows who have no living children becomes a story of birth and rebirth. A struggle to survive becomes the means by which God delivers hope—not just to these women, but to Israel’s unborn generations, and to us, and to our children, and to our children’s children.

All those years that Naomi prayed and kept kosher and followed God’s laws were followed by all those years during which Naomi struggled to survive, and during which God was silent. And Naomi thought that silence was absence. She thought God had abandoned her. How heartrending to go through all that Naomi went through, and to believe that God wasn’t even there.

We know what Naomi felt, because we, too, have had times when we struggled with life and God was silent. The experience of God’s silence is universal. David cried out, “O God, do not keep silent; Do not be still, do not be quiet.” (Ps. 83:1) And just recently we heard Job moan in the wreckage of his own life, (23:23) “…my complaint is bitter. God’s hand is heavy in spite of my groaning. If only I knew where to find him…”

How often have we moaned, groaning under the burden of our own travails: cancer or diabetes or heart disease; unemployment or, in some ways just as bad, underemployment that leaves our spirit arid and cracked; a loved one fighting in Iraq; a family broken; an unending vigil with aging family members or a premature newborn whose life might end before it begins. We’ve all been weighed down. Sometimes God is radiantly and strongly present. But sometimes God is silent.

“When we need a word from the Lord…sometimes God is silent. When we need an answer from the throne of grace… sometimes God is silent. When we need a word of hope in a hopeless situation… sometimes God is silent. When we need a message of mercy in a messed up set of circumstances… sometimes God is silent. When we need a grace note to transpose the jangling discords and dissonance that are heard all around us, a grace note to transpose all of that into the harmonious symphony of what is yet to appear, God is silent.” (J. Wright)

We’ve all been there. Some of us are there today. For Naomi, God was silent for ten years. She speaks to us eloquently from centuries ago. Just because God is silent does not mean that God is not here. Just because God is silent does not mean that God is not working to bring life out of death. Just because God is silent for decades does not mean that God is not building into our life stories a fullness beyond our wildest imagination.

On the wall over my computer, I have a page from a large calendar and it says, “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when I can not feel it. I believe in God even when He is silent.”

We all have times when we are alone or in terrifying circumstances and God is silent. Through Naomi, God says to us this day the words the women said to Naomi so many centuries ago: “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day.” Because in the end, the Bible is not a story about Naomi or Job or David. The Bible (lift it up) is about God. God at work with us and in us and through us and beside us. Blessed be the Lord, who has not left us this day. AMEN