Faithfulness Seen Through Ruth

 PROPERS:          PROPER 26, YEAR B  

TEXT:                RUTH 1:1-18

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2021.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The relentless love of God is seen in the story of Ruth.

 

            A week ago, I assisted in the wedding for a family friend in New Jersey.  It was a Roman Catholic wedding, and I was treated quite graciously.  Sometimes, other denominations are not so welcomed in Roman Catholic services.

 

            But I was. It was a beautiful and touching service.  Having presided at many weddings, I was surprised by the chill in my spine I felt in that service.  I appreciate being granted leave to be there.

 

            There was one thing I noted, though.  The first lesson for that wedding was also our first lesson today – the opening verses of the Book of Ruth. The sentiment in those verses – “entreat me not to leave you” – is beautiful and touching.  But it is wholly inappropriate in a wedding. The devotion being expressed is not between a husband and wife, but between a daughter-in-law and a mother-in-law.

 

            Still, it tells us much about the nature of God.

 

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            The story is essentially this:  Naomi has a husband and two sons.  Her husband was Elimelech and her sons were Mahlon and Chilion.  Because of a famine in Judah, the family had moved to where there was food – across the Dead Sea, to Moab. Her sons’ wives – Moabites, that is, non-Jews – were Orpah and Ruth.

 

            Sadly, Elimelech, Mahlon, and Chilion died – leaving the three women without husbands and means of support.  Naomi decided to return to Judah. She encouraged Ruth and Orpah to remain with their people, the Moabites.

 

            Orpah agrees.  But Ruth responds with words that have been passed through the ages:

 

“Do not press me to leave you 
or to turn back from following you!

Where you go, I will go; 
Where you lodge, I will lodge; 

your people shall be my people, 
and your God my God.

Where you die, I will die— 
there will I be buried.

May the Lord do thus and so to me, 
and more as well, 

if even death parts me from you!”

 

            Those are touching words. They have meaning for us today.

 

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            You know, life takes us on many roads and in many directions. Both for better and worse, our hindsight is 20/20, unless we are in a deep state of denial.

 

            I know that all of us here are essentially good people. As the Hollies sang many years ago, “The road is long, with many a winding turn.”

 

            All of us – if we look honestly at our lives – can see the places where we have made mistakes, errors, or made assumptions that were off-the-mark.  Sometimes those mistakes have led to broken relationships. Sometimes they have led to failures in life. Maybe they have caused others to steer clear of us. Or, maybe, they just led to personal regrets or insights of mistakes made.

 

            We all can see those… if we see life as it has been.

 

            Jesus’ teaching about the Prodigal Son gives us an excellent example.  The son had greedily asked his father for the inheritance he would receive on his father’s death.  This was a self-centered request made long before his father died.

 

            His father graciously acquiesced. The son went far away and squandered his inheritance, ultimately leading to a life of slopping hogs – an especially despicable circumstance for a Jew. Broken and lost, the son returned home.

 

            You know the rest of the story.  The father receives him gladly, celebrating his son’s return.  All is forgiven; all is past.

 

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Ruth’s gracious words to her mother-in-law are God’s gracious words to us.

 

            We are like Ruth and the Prodigal Son.  Once we come to grips with our condition… once we realize how alone we are, how broken we are, how our efforts to portray ourselves have failed, we are never abandoned.

 

            Ruth promised to stay by Naomi’s wide.  In Jesus’ parable, the loving father embraced his rebellious son. No matter when we realize the erroneous pathways we may have taken, God greets us with open arms: “Come, you that are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world…”

 

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            We are unlikely to know the long-term effects of our turning back toward the faithfulness of God. Ruth is an excellent example.

 

            She was a gentile, a non-Jew, a Moabite – from modern-day Jordan. Yet by her faithfulness to Naomi, she ultimately married Boaz.  And she became the great-grandmother of the greatest king in Israel’s history, David.

 

            A gentile ancestor to great Jewish king. The faithfulness and wonder of God.

 

            And now you know the rest of the story.