December 8, 2024
Ruth 1
Intro - What does home mean?
-places of safety, comfort, being ourselves
-places where we form habits
-visited my hometown recently
-fun to see familiar places and share fried rice and eggrolls with mom at favorite
Chinese restaurant
-Not the same place
-New buildings, parks, fast food options, additions to the university
-even Chinese restaurant was in a totally new location and building
-staples still survive - Walmart, local coffee shop, my home church
-but they’ve all been updated
-hometown is where I grew up but it isn’t home anymore
-home is part is here at NMC
-now one of the places I feel most myself
-habits around parking, sitting, coffee mug, Craig’s water cup
-Bigger part of home is my people
-As commentator Chris Burton observes ”It is something more to find a home in a person.”[1]
-”to know wherever you go, whatever comes your way, you are not a stranger because that person, your person, goes with you.”[2]
-I am fully at home with Erich, my girls, and our dogs
-Suspect the same is true for you
Transition
-Also suspect this connection to home is why both passages read at weddings
-not “inherently romantic or specific to romantic partnerships.”[3]
-So what is home to Naomi and Ruth?
-Naomi “in the full grip of her despair”[4]
-everything is lost
-home she had in her husband and sons in gone
-very real way her physical home and safety are gone
-renames herself Mara because “the Lord has dealt bitterly with me”
-has nothing to offer Ruth and Orpah
-they should “cut their losses while [Naomi] spends her days counting hers.
Exegesis
-As we know Orpah does as Naomi instructs
-for which she gets a bad rap
-Ruth refuses. Doesn’t listen. Isn’t having it.
-As Chris Burton says, “Her agency is entirely invested in her unity with Naomi.”[5]
-Said another way, Ruth chooses radical commitment
-But not merely about devotion or love for Naomi
-Rather formation of a new family “built on kinship”[6]
-”on the daring belief that our lives are better intertwined.”[7]
-some of the most beautiful language of commitment in biblical text
-KJV: And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for 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: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.
-The Message: But Ruth said, “Don’t force me to leave you; don’t make me go home. Where you go, I go; and where you live, I’ll live. Your people are my people, your God is my god; where you die, I’ll die, and that’s where I’ll be buried, so help me God—not even death itself is going to come between us!”
-Ruth’s dedication to Naomi and their journey together parallels our journeys with God
-Difficulties and tragedies leave us feeling like Naomi
-maybe don’t call ourselves bitter, but do use words like “unloveable” or “unwanted”
-Yet God clings as tenaciously to us as Ruth does to Naomi[8]
-Reminds us that Jesus promises to be with us “day after day after day, right up to the end of the age” (Matt 28 - The Message)
-These women show us that “as tantilzing as the idea of home can be, there is nowhere…like where God has called you.”[9]
-They model what it looks like not to shrink into ourselves when sorrow beckons
-not to give into the lie that “solitude is safer than the vulnerability of connection.”[10]
Loneliness and Disconnection
-Recent studies show that 1 in 2 Americans struggle with social disconnection
-not a huge surprise in post-Covid world
-has lead former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy to call loneliness an “epidemic”[11]
-feeling isolated hurts our mental and physical health
-research found loneliness can effect body as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day[12]
But as Gospel legend James Cleveland once sang, “I’ve Come to far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road would be easy. I don’t believe He brought me this far to leave me.”[13]
-Not only is there love “avaialbe to us that can turn what seems to be nothing into something worth living for”[14] - there is an antidote to lonelines
-cultivating compassionate community
-because we’re better together
-Ruth knew this deep in her bones
-it’s why Naomi’s grief doesn’t deter her
-”Ruth keeps moving toward Naomi, embarking on a journey to a new beginning. As much as Naomi [needs] Ruth, Ruth [needs] Naomi”
-they aren’t meant to go it alone and neither are we
-And their journey to Bethlehem mirrors a future trek to the same town by Mary and Joseph
-both trips are uncomfortable and uncertain
-yet the travelers “take it on together”[15]
-”This kinship echoes through the lineage of Jesus himself, as Ruth, a woman who embodied the strength of connection over isolation, is named among his ancestors.”[16]
Good news
-Chris Burton: We reach a point at which going backward isn’t an option. “A nexus point where turning back is far too costly. As tantalizing as the idea of home can be, there is nowhere like where you are supposed to be. Nowhere like where God has called you.”[17]
-Like Ruth we have the opportunity to find kinship, find home in each other. In this community. To hear God’s call to move forward together. To face whatever is coming next arm in arm.
-Following Ruth’s example we can do more than exchange pleasantries we can share our messy, holy, complicated lives. We can can embrace the lonely and make it clear that “in God’s family, no one has to face their sorrows alone.”[18]
-As Ecclesiates reminds us, we are stronger together. And not only can we not go it alone, we aren’t meant to. It’s simply not how God created us to be.
-So as we share in each other’s companionship, “may we find the reflection of the One who, in becoming flesh, chose to be with us, to share in our humanity, and to show us that we need each other.”[19]
Blessing: “Beloved, you are not alone on this winding journey. May the companionship of fellow sojourners reflect the love of the One who…[chooses] to journey alongside us. May the quilt of life warm you from the chill of isolation, and may the Spirit move you to compassion as you cultive community, even in times of uncertainty.”[20]
[1] Chris Burton, “Home and hope in Ruth,” via The Presbyterian Outlook, December 3, 2023.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Sanctified Art, “Words For the Beginning, Sermon Planning Guide,” page 9.
[4] Burton, ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Sanctified Art, ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Burton, ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Sanctified Art, ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Burton, ibid. This is a quote from the hymn “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired”
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Sanctified Art, ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
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