RVCC Pastor's Sermon

Sermon - November 8, 2009

“From Brokenness to Blessing”

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-18

Last week we left our two Old Testament women, Ruth and Naomi, at a point of deep loss. They were alone in a patriarchal world in the midst of a famine, having recently buried their husbands and so also their claim to security in a cruel world. They were about to journey to Bethlehem to find refuge and relief.

Apparently God watched over them as they traveled on the lonely and perilous road because they eventually made their way safely to the farm of Boaz, a distant male relative of Naomi – just in time for the barley harvest. That is where our story picks up today.

Boaz was kind and compassionate toward these two women – one old, one young and a foreigner to boot – these two women whom he did not know but one of whom was tenuously tied to his family tree. And so he allowed Naomi and Ruth to claim their right to glean in his fields at this harvest time.

Now gleaning is an ancient agricultural process that first involves winnowing, that is, throwing the reaped and threshed grain into the air on a windy day so that the wind will separate the grain from the chaff. There would always be some bits of grain left on the granary floor at the end of the day, and the gleaners were allowed to pick through these leftovers for themselves.

In a symbolic way, perhaps, this winnowing and gleaning were like the very lives of Ruth and Naomi. In a sense, they too had thrown their own desperate circumstances into the air to see what options might fall to the floor for them to pursue. Remember – they had nothing – except their faith in God and their will to survive. They needed a strategy.

As Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, "My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you” – and presumably well for herself too as they were by that time quite clearly a self-proclaimed package deal.

And so Naomi came up with a grand plan – and, like many such arrangements in our Old Testament stories, it was not exactly a G-rated plan. In the less than respectable tradition of Tamar (who posed as a prostitute and seduced her father-in-law Judah, enabling her to blackmail him into taking care of her), Rahab (who was a Canaanite prostitute and who betrayed the city of Jericho to the Israelites), and Bathsheba (who danced her way into King David’s heart and bed while she was still Uriah’s wife), our Ruth also seduced herself a husband, albeit a kinsman of Naomi’s and at Naomi’s bidding.

You see, it happened like this. In her own shrewd way, Naomi first told Ruth to wash herself – to scrub the dirt off her arms and legs, comb her hair, and clean the dust from the granary floor from her face and neck.

Then she was to anoint herself – to crack open the alabaster jar and liberally apply that bewitching Chanel #5. After that, she was to put on her best dress – perhaps the flimsy one with the bodice that tended to cling. Then she was to sneak quietly into the granary where Boaz was sleeping and protecting his harvest. There she was to uncover his feet and lie down.

Presumably when the wind tickled his toes, Boaz would awaken and see Ruth. The Chanel #5 would do its job – and the rest would be history.

And so it was that Ruth married Boaz and bore a son who was named Obed. Now the implication of that night and that marriage was far more than simply ensuring security for Ruth and Naomi.

Its significance also lay in the fact that Obed would one day father a son named Jesse who in turn would father seven sons, one of whom was David who, in his turn, would become the greatest of the Kings of Israel and from whose lineage Jesus himself would be born.

When you really think about this story, you have got to hand it to Naomi. She took a god-awful and desperate situation and came out on top. In a fell and sudden slap by the hand of fate, she and Ruth had been relegated to the status of widow, which was close to being the lowest of the low, slightly better than orphan or leper, but not much.

As we know from other Biblical stories and as Lutheran pastor, Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson, wrote, “Women without any male family members to ensure their security were most likely destined to live in poverty. Women without any children were also destined to live without honor in the community, for childbearing was regarded as a blessing. Such (was) the situation of Naomi and Ruth. Their future security was virtually non-existent without some male family relative.”

Not to be defeated by such dire predictions, however, Naomi had journeyed with Ruth on dangerous roads to Bethlehem, where her family origins lay, on a wing and a prayer. Naomi had somehow found Boaz, her distant male relative, and surely hoped that the ancient Jewish laws of marriage might be bent enough to come into play.

You see, the Mosaic laws written in the Book of Deuteronomy said that “it was a brother’s duty to marry his deceased brother’s wife. He and his deceased brother’s widow were to give birth to a first-born son. This son would be named after the deceased husband to perpetuate his name and family line.”

Ok – so Boaz was technically not a brother. However, maybe property law as outlined in Leviticus would apply – after all, wives were considered to be property: “If anyone of your kin falls into difficulty and sells a piece of property, then the next of kin shall come and redeem what the relative has sold.” Marriage laws or no, in the end, it took a little hanky-panky in the bedroom for it all to work out and for the women to find a home.

I guess one question to be raised by this story is whether the end ever justifies the means. However, because similar stories of deception and disguise are scattered throughout the Bible – both Old and New Testaments – I think we need to look deeper for the truth of this story - and when we do, two things emerge.

The first is that God expects us to take action in our lives. We are not meant to be spectators, waiting like puppets for the Almighty to pull all the strings. Instead, God conceived us as active participants in our own destiny – the doctrine of free will and all that.

There is a saying the people create their own luck – and I think there is a lot to be said for that. Look at Naomi. She did not hopelessly drown in her profound loss. She grieved over the death of her husband – yes. However, she did not despair endlessly. Naomi did not remain idle - despising the world, shaking her fist at the heavens, ruing her fate, and blaming some unseen force for her untoward circumstances.

Instead, Naomi moved on. She created a new life for herself and her daughter-in-law out of the one they both had lost. Perhaps we too are meant to do the same.

Maybe you and I are also challenged to affirm that we do have some element of control over our lives, that we are called to exercise our God-given ability to make good and worthy decisions, that part of the reason we are on this earth is to do the best we can with the gifts God has given us. God expects us to be active participants in life, in ushering in the Kingdom of which Jesus preached.

The second thing we can take from this story has to do with the shadowy origins of Jesus himself. Those fallen women I mentioned earlier – Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba – and even Ruth – are all mentioned in the genealogy that the Gospel writer Matthew recites in the first chapter of his narrative. In fact, they are the only four women mentioned.

From the outset, Matthew emphasizes that Jesus did not come from a pure and uncluttered line. There were skeletons in the closet. There were black sheep in the family. And that should be pretty comforting to each one of us.

As Naomi with all her underhanded schemes illustrated, once long ago God worked in the world through people with flawed pedigrees – and I would suggest that God still does that. God is still speaking through us, we who are also less than perfect stock. And that should give each one of us hope as we feel ourselves called to do God’s bidding and to be active participants in proclaiming the Gospel message that challenges us to love one another.

As Disciples of Christ pastor, Rebecca Littejohn, reminds us, “in declaring that this lineage of Jesus, with all its twists and turns, is a holy line, a blessed line, the gospel of Matthew redeems each and every one of us from our less-than-respectable situations. With his history of mixed marriages, out-of-wedlock births and adoption, Jesus welcomes everyone into the family of God. There is no shame any more; there is nothing to hide.”

God can bring blessing out of brokenness – whether that brokenness arises from profound loss – as it did for Ruth and Naomi - or from something else. God works with what is available – even if it is only you and me with all of our quirks and imperfections.

Surely that is what happened to Ruth and Naomi, both of whom took life into their own hands – trusting all the while that God would bring blessing out of the most horrible of circumstances, yet understanding the active role – imperfect that it might be – that they were called to play.

Sermon - November 8, 2009

“From Brokenness to Blessing”

By Rev. Nancy Foran Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-18

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-18