Nov. 10, 2024

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

Mark 12:38-44

 

Thomas Troeger was a preaching professor for a number of years at Yale Divinity School.  He’s written a reflection on this week’s lectionary passages, some of which I thought I would share with you.

“Articles about the cosmos always catch my interest.  I cannot claim to understand every astrophysical explanation, but I am always filled with astonishment when I read about light that began to travel toward earth before the planet even existed.  That same sense of wonder returns to me when I am skiing down the Continental Divide from an elevation of 13,000 feet.  I marvel at the massiveness and age of the alpine peaks that surround me.  Then suddenly it hits me: I am impressed with these awesome peaks, and yet they are nothing more than wrinkles on a little stone that revolves around a minor star in a galaxy that is only one among fifty billion galaxies.

The discrepancy in size between my little world and the cosmos is the same scale of realities we find in our lections as we approach the end of Ordinary Time in the lectionary year.  We read [in Revelation] that time itself is encompassed by “the Alpha and the Omega.”  But we also observe the smallest act of giving: ‘One poor widow came forward and put in two small copper coins worth a penny.’  Between the beginning and end of time, a widow gives a penny to the temple treasury, and Jesus is so moved by her action that you might conclude it is one of the major events in the history of the cosmos.”

Troeger concludes, “By putting everything she has into the temple treasury the widow embodies the greatest commandments.  Her action is an event in the stream of time that is in harmony with the source and goal of time, “The Alpha and the Omega.”  Who knows what act of love you and I have received as a result of that widow’s generosity centuries ago?  Love travels across time as surely as the light that set out for earth before earth existed.”[i]

So, in the vast mystery of God’s great big creation, no act of love is wasted.  No act simply ends with itself.  Instead, it moves along through souls and time, adding to that providential light that will one day fill all in all.

The story of Ruth, which we read just this once in the lectionary is the perfect illustration.

It begins with a woman from Bethlehem named Naomi, her husband, and two sons.  There’s a famine throughout all of Judah and so in desperation the four of them make their way to the country of Moab.  In Moab her husband dies and leaves her widowed.  Her two sons who had married Moabite women also die, leaving Naomi stranded in a foreign land with two foreign daughters-in-law.  Naomi, feeling hopeless and cursed, decides to return to Bethlehem.  The two daughters decide to stay with her.  But she resists.  I can do nothing for you.  I have nothing to give you.  I am nothing myself, so go back to your mother’s homes and see if they’ll take you in.  

One of the daughters reluctantly agrees and says goodbye.  But the other, Ruth, refuses.  In the book’s most well-known passage Ruth responds, “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.”

We don’t know if it is love, or compassion, or duty, or all of the above that motivates Ruth to stick with Naomi, but we recognize the beauty and the passion in her vow.  And, we admire it.

Still, ultimately, the story is about more than that.  It’s about more than Ruth’s loyalty, and the hero isn’t simply Ruth.  It really is helpful to read the whole book through because when we do that we can put her beautiful pledge in its greater context.

In her loyalty to Naomi, Ruth unknowingly expresses the loyalty of God.  As the drama of Ruth and Naomi’s plight unfolds, we see a certain picture of God emerge too.  Ruth’s acts of faith and hope point to a God of certain providence, a God capable of surprises.

We see in this story a God capable of working beyond the common boundaries of nation and faith, a God capable of bringing life from despair, a God who is never removed from the minute details, but is able, using those details, to paint a bigger picture than the one at hand.

It’s helpful to note that Moab is the land of Israel’s bitter enemy.  To have gone there for food in the first place was an act of total desperation on Naomi’s part. And to return from it – a widow and a mother of two deceased sons – was for Naomi a total act of shame.  Beyond that, what could Ruth do?  Ruth was a nothing, a person of no resources or standing anywhere.  The notion that a Moabite widow could save a disgraced Israelite widow would have been, for many, theologically absurd.  Ruth’s vow, in their minds, would have been a death sentence.  She should have stayed with her kind and left Naomi to her fate.

But, what the story shows us is that they would have been wrong.  The story shows us that God can do great things through something so small as a foreigner’s loyalty – and a woman’s at that!

At the end of the story Ruth and her new husband Boaz, as you know from today’s passage, conceive a child.  They name him Obed.  Obed, as we are told, becomes the father of Jesse.  Jesse, of course, is the father of David.  David becomes King of Israel, uniting the 12 tribes and the northern and southern kingdoms.  He is the one to whom God promises an eternal heir to sit on the throne for God’s people.

Here, you might argue, the point has been made.  God works mightily through what is small.   God is strong through weakness.  God has more in store than we might imagine.

But, there is more!

David, you see, is the Father of Solomon, Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, who is the father of Jehoshaphat, who is the father of somebody else and so on all the way down to Jacob, who is the father of Joseph, who is the husband of Mary, who is the mother of Christ.

We go, today, all the way from the love and loyalty of a Moabite widow to God Incarnate – the ultimate expression of God’s love for all God’s people for all God’s time.

Look what Ruth’s apparently futile act of loyalty did!

Look what God did through it.

So, my friends, let your love shine, for with God there’s no telling where it will end up.

 

 

[i] Thomas Troeger, “Sermon Sparks,” page. 181