Sermon Cloud

Ruth Act 1
5-18-08
Been on the bestseller list for quite some time, nearly 2-3 thousand years. You can find it in the Bible, which has 66 books for the price of one, which with these gas prices makes it quite a bargain for your summer reading. I recommend that you get a copy and read through it this week. Its only 4 chapters; you can read through it in one sitting. Its more of a novella, a short story. You could read through it several times this month, it gets richer every time you ponder it.

Start with first two verses: Ruth 1:1-2
In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man's name was Elimelek, his wife's name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.

This is in the days of when the Judges ruled Israel: bad days for the people of God. The book of Judges ends like this: "in those days there was no king in Israel, everyone did as they saw fit in his own eyes." Sound like a lot of fun, right? Yeah, anarchy! Down with the man! The kids in youth group like to say that, only there baby boomer parents know where it comes from. We've got a whole history of that in our country. But if you actually read the book of Judges, the situation was pretty gruesome in Israel the land of God. If you actually read it, the book of Judges ends with this really gruesome story about a rape, and the tribe of Benjamin saw fit to cover up this gory rape, other 11 tribes were so enraged that they make a rash vow never to let any of their daughters marry Benjamite men (essentially cutting them off forever); a vow like this can't be broken. What do they do to undo what they've done? The other 11 tribes saw fit to kill the men of a neighboring village and give their wives to the tribe of Benjamin in forced marriage. Problem solved!

You hate to see the people of God make the pagans look good! But it happens. Happens in churches.

Some of you have stories like that of church...Its sad that sometimes the people who are supposed to represent God act the least like God. That's a painful thing, isn't it? I remember a time as a kid when my parents got involved in the Vineyard - my friends mom standing out in the parking lot telling my mom that the devil had gotten a hold of her (in the form of John Wimber the founder of the Vineyard) and that they couldn't be our friends anymore. Some of you have gone through bad times like that with other Christians, other church people and the loss is deep. You take your worst memories of church, you multiply the violence and debauchery, that's the days of the Judges.

One of the things we've always been at the Vineyard is a place where people who have been turned out and burned up by religious establishment can find hope and healing. Even in a city of churches like GR there are so many that have been scared off, run off and thrown off by people that liberally use Jesus' name.

The background to the story of Ruth is homesickness and heartsickness. The family of Elimilek and Naomi and sons leave their home in the Promised Land to find a better life somewhere else. Things are so bad in God's country they go in search of food and they end up in Moab, despite the fact that Moabites are sworn enemies of Israel. Cause Moab is an even darker place, its religious rituals include child and human sacrifice - its a dark, evil place. In Ruth chapter 1, this is where we find them, the land of Moab.

Now Elimelek, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband. So she lost her homeland, she lost her husband, then she lost her adult sons, leave 3 widows. This is our introduction to Ruth.

Hard for us to appreciate the vulnerability of these 3 women in Moab: the ancient world (like many places in our world) treated women like property, and crimes against women were the just order of the day - THE ONLY safety net is family, (sometimes even that is not a safety net), but when your safety net was torn and you're a woman, you're in free fall. These women are free-falling in Moab. They are surrounded, hounded, by privatation, emptiness, by loss, by homesickness, by heartsickness. They are at the mercy of every circumstance.

We have many people who come to the Vineyard and that is your story. Your life has been rocked by loss, of spouses, of children.
For many of you home feels like a long way off, your family lives in another state.
Many of our single moms who gather each month are living on the edge, this church is a ray of hope. Some of you today are in free-fall.

Its at this point in the story we get the first contrary note to that theme.
v. 6 When Naomi heard in Moab that the LORD had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. 7 With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.

Good news often arrives just like that, just as faintly as that. Whether it had arrived by merchant traders from her homeland, she didn't know how reliable it was, she was in Moab (as we are sometimes). Good news comes from some distant place, from some unreliable messenger perhaps, like a rumor, sounds too good to be true, but its the only alternative you have to your bad news life. So what do you do, you do what Naomi does, you get on the road toward the land of Promise, you make your way toward anything that smells like hope.

v8-15 read (even if I thought there was still hope for me)
8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go back, each of you, to your mother's home. May the LORD show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead and to me. 9 May the LORD grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband."
Then she kissed them good-by and they wept aloud and said to her, "We will go back with you to your people."
11 But Naomi said, "Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? 12 Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me-even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons- 13 would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the LORD's hand has turned against me!"
14 At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-by, but Ruth clung to her.

Naomi is not returning home full of hope, hoping for a better life in Judah. If she was she'd be glad to have her daughters. Why come with me I've got no future there. Why is she going back? She's run out of options (sometimes that's what it feels like to hope, you know I've run out of options, what can I lose?)

One of the wonderful themes we see in Ruth is just the love these daughters-in-law have for their mother-in-law. Daughters-in-law for a mother-in-law. Naomi is a widowed woman; she has nothing to offer; no social standing. This is not a given, all this weeping at the thought of leaving, the kissing, the reluctance to leave Naomi.

All of this is beginning to tell us something about Naomi that she can't tell us about herself. Because she doesn't see it in herself. Naomi has ingested, absorbed Moab, she's been taken in by the mentality of Moab. She sees herself under the afflicting hand of God. "Its more bitter for me than for you b/c the Lord's hand has done this to me." What a horrible thing to believe about yourself - I'm someone that the Lord's hand has gone out against. Its the final insult to all the injury; its her perception and belief that this trouble is the back hand of God smacking her while she's down. She says I've brought this on myself, I MUST deserve this.

That's one of the cross-cultural, universals of the human mind - the mentality of Moab. Buried deep in the human mind is this need to find a cause for life's troubles. I've heard people say it at every funeral I've been to: "there must be a reason...someday we'll know." We find it so easy to say to ourselves.

The brain has this function that's called the Causal Operator: meaning with every event our brain is working to find a cause for every event. Because of the causal operator we'd rather blame ourselves than say there is no cause or meaning. I've brought this on myself. That's what's enshrined in the law of Karma, but the law of Karma is part of the law which Jesus overturned like the temple tables. You remember that? When Jesus just turned the religious establishment upside down because they had it all wrong about God.

Remember when the disciples brought the blind man to Jesus: "who caused this man's blindness his parents sin or his own sin? They knew someone caused this and there are only two candidates, the parents (who are affected by his blindness) or the son who was affected. Who caused this?! Jesus just shook his head and said, well neither this man nor his parents sinned. But this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. You see suffering isn't always an event with a cause that can be identified. Sometimes its just an occasion, its just an occasion for God - to help.

16-18 Help comes like this: with Ruth's impassioned reply,
"Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. It goes on, we'll get there in a minute.18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

When Naomi saw that Ruth is insistent she stops refusing her.
You see, Ruth is seeing something in Naomi that Naomi isn't seeing in herself. Naomi's very name in Hebrew means pleasant (she doesn't see herself that way), in Hebrew its deeper than "nice", Naomi means pleasing to God. Because in the Hebrew mind everything is oriented to God, especially names.

What is the story doing? we're only 18 verses in, but what's happening here is amazing. We don't know much about these women, but by the wonderworking power of this story, without looking for it or asking for it our eyes are being opened to something right here, right now. These are not just pitiable, unfortunate women, but these are women who are in the most god-forsaken place, but they are women who are shining with something of the glory of God. (The Hebrews had a very unique understanding of the glory of God; that's the Godness of God, glory of God.) The Hebrew understanding was Glory of God is especially revealed in what was known as hesed: steadfast love and faithfulness of God. When the Hebrews were praising the glory of God, they always turn to praising his hesed, his steadfast love and faithfulness. You could say they were taken, captured by the hesed of God.

Here in the bleak, bleak landscape of the land of Moab comes this almost painful beauty by contrast, this shaft of glory rising up out of the ashes: "don't urge me to leave you or turn my back on you, where you go I will go, where you stay I will stay."

If you've heard this before you've probably heard it at a wedding? Its a very appropriate song at weddings because a marriage is about hesed. Steadfast love and faithfulness.

If you've only heard this at a wedding it might be misleading: these words don't originally come from a wedding celebration they came at a time of conflict, a crisis, a very different place. These words were said from an angry, frustrated, stubborn place, with shooting tears. They come from Ruth, who has just lost her husband, her home, life as she knows it and she's free-falling. The one person that knows her and loves her is Naomi and Naomi is is saying "no, no, don't come with me, there's nothing for you".

And Ruth knows, she's learned the traditions of the ancient world respect for elders. She knows she's supposed to respect her elder, but Naomi has gone too far.

v. 16-18 (emphatically) And so with hot angry tears..."Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. (And then she takes a vow in the name of God, a solemn vow by a Moabite woman) May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me." When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

That's pretty forward, risky thing for a Moabite woman to say. They're big words for a young woman, these words are much bigger than Ruth who spoke them, much bigger than Naomi, these words bear the glory of God; these are the words of hesed.

If you want to walk the path of Jesus, understand that what he offers is hesed. Steadfast love and faithfulness, loyal love is what you get from Jesus.
And hesed is the ONE THING he wants from you, loyalty this is the one thing he wants from you. Jesus came to saints and sinners, the pious and impious, he asked one thing only of both groups, hesed. Jesus offers hesed, Jesus asks for hesed.

He came fulfilling the words of Micah the prophet (that we studied this winter), he has shown you O God what is good. And what does God require of you: but to do justice, and to love hesed (to love steadfast love and faithfulness) to walk humbly with your God.

These are the words of a disciple to a Savior, from one who is following Jesus to Christ himself. Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me."

But these are also the words of the savior to the sinner. Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you, sinner. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me."

Here we have the glory of God appearing in the middle of Moab through the revelation of hesed...spoken by a Moabite woman
spoken by a woman (women had no standing in ancient world, no voice)
spoken by a Moabite, the nation surrounding Israel that just evoked the most hateful feelings from Israel, on the outside of Israel's prejudices (today a Palestinian woman perhaps)
notice she is not on the outside of hesed, steadfast love and faithfulness of God

On hearing these things Naomi does the wise thing, stops fighting it, the steadfast love. Maybe she doesn't accept it, but at least she stops fighting.

If you cannot accept the hesed of God, at least (learn a lesson from Naomi), at least you can stop fighting. (an important step to take with God).

The end of this story, there are two voices: one is the knowing narrator (telling it like it is)

In the narrator's voice, v.19, The two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, "Can this be Naomi?" "can this be Naomi." Narrator picks up excitement, narrator sees better things ahead, her kinsmen haven't forgotten her, even after all these years, can this be Naomi, coming home at last?!

But then it switches back to Naomi's voice, "Don't call me Naomi," she told them. "Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me." she told them. Call me Mara.

This is where a lot of us can identify with Naomi. We've all been there haven't we. We've all had a long stretch in Moab, we've all been in that place where our mind has gotten stuck in the mindset of Moab, fully adjusted to the fact that life sucks.

We just figure that's how its going to be. We're in the mindset of Moab, nothing new under the sun, we know where how the script of our life is reading, we've got it coming, (as a friend of mine put it) we've been watching movie of our life and we've been eating our karma corn.

When things are so bad for so long. Actually, when things are so bad for so long, there's only one thing you have to watch out that could make it worse: that one thing is is latching onto some good news that is fake (it leaves you worse for the hoping).

But here...Naomi doesn't get the last word. The Narrator gets the last word in chapter 1:
So Naomi returned from Moab (ignores her little speech) accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, arriving in Bethlehem just as the barley harvest was beginning.

The Barley Harvest was the first harvest with spring (it went with Passover), the barley harvest is beginning (the flowers are blooming, there's a smell of fresh life in the air) the emptiness of winter is over, fullness of spring.

When you live in Michigan you wonder if its ever gonna get here.

The whole book of Ruth is about changing the script of our lives, we've gotten so used to the absence of blessing, we buy the plotline, I'm bound to get what's coming to me.

But we are not the only narrator of our plotline, unless we choose to be, God is telling a story and his story involves us and his story has a different script.

But if we're willing to give over the authorship of our lives, listen to a different voice narrating a story that includes us, if we're willing to leave not just Moab, but the mindset of Moab behind, then perhaps what we hope will happen for Naomi will happen for us, we'll be able to lift up our heads just high enough to see in the distance see the fields of barley, to smell for the first time the smell of roasting barley, reminding of just how ravenously hungry we really are, we'll expect that we can get in on the fullness of God.

The earth's is the Lord's and the fullness thereof: that's the vision of the people of this book. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness of the earth comes from God.

The whole thing about Jesus is the fullness of God coming down into the bleakness of our lives. There is a point of intersection between the story of God and our story and that point of intersection makes a cross. That's a point where God left his fullness and came into our emptiness so we could trade our emptiness and poverty for his wealth. Let's bring our emptiness to the foot of this cross and exchange it for the fullness of God.

You can do that this morning. This is a spot this morning where heaven comes close, the glory of God is close, he is waiting for many of you to come home, he's waiting for many of your friends to come home.