November 8, 2009 Sermon

Expect the Unexpected..(Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17 and Mark 12: 38-44)

Rev. Kerri Mesner

Perhaps I’ve been watching a bit too much tv in my downtime. As I was imagining how to set the context for our story today, I started envisioning it like one of those tv drama recaps. You know, “Previously on Lost”… except this time, it’s “Previously in the Book of Ruth…”

And then we would have a series of fabulous out-takes with the most poignant moments in our story so far… Naomi losing her husband and then her sons, the dramatic moment where she tries to send her daughters in law away and Ruth refuses to leave… the moment of Ruth’s declaration of commitment, which we explored last week.

And then of course, there would need to be a voiceover at this point, explaining that between last week’s story and this one, Ruth and Naomi had found their way to the home of Boaz, who was related to Naomi’s deceased husband, and had worked very creatively with Boaz to ensure that they would get food and safe refuge.

At any rate, given that I don’t have the cinematic special effects, I hope that we can imagine at least, the drama, the emotion, the highs and lows that have brought these two women to this point in our story. And in today’s reading, Naomi and Ruth are talking about how to ensure their future…. Which in those times, for a widow especially, certainly meant children- and especially sons.

Now for all those people who think the Bible is boring, I’d say to them, have a look at the book of Ruth! This is not tame stuff! Naomi tells Ruth to wash and anoint herself, wait til he has eaten and drunk, and then “uncover his feet” and he will tell her what to do.

Now if this were indeed a modern tv drama, we would be very clear that “uncovering the feet” – in Biblical speak- really meant uncovering… well- his lower body. And it’s pretty clear then where Naomi- and Ruth- expect things to go from there.

So Ruth does so… and in a few very short verses, we learn that she has had a son with Boaz and gave him to Naomi to nurse. And again, while this might not seem like such an extraordinary thing to us in modern day Canada, in their time, having a son meant that Naomi was no longer a powerless, completely vulnerable, widow at the mercies of the systems of her time. She, and Ruth as well, now had family, a future generation, protection and provision. Pretty amazing stuff!

Now last week, we talked about looking for different ways of understanding this story… and of listening carefully for the voices that may not have been heard… and I want to suggest that we need to continue to listen in that careful, attentive way.

Some commentators like to boil this story down to a story of redemption… one writer I came across suggested that God was simply using Ruth’s faithfulness to accomplish Naomi’s redemption. Some folks debate the morality of these two women… was Naomi manipulating Ruth by sending her out to Boaz in this way? Was Ruth in fact a manipulator? (it’s curious to me that Boaz isn’t interrogated in this same way… he certainly benefits from what’s going on!)

But in the spirit of looking for the unheard stories… of seeking out the unexpected, I wonder if Ruth, Naomi, and yes even Boaz, aren’t victims or manipulators… but rather, are acting as agents for change. Certainly, we can see all three of them working creatively to find ways to ensure Ruth and Naomi’s survival in a time and a place where that was not guaranteed. And as Mona West reminds us, we can see Ruth and Naomi working here to find strategies for survival within a hostile environment. But what if they are doing more than just surviving here… what if they are actively working as agents for change… as builders of a more just world- even if it is simply for their small community at that point in time?

Mona West suggests that Ruth Naomi and Boaz offer us a lovely example of an alternative family. (Now granted, there were in fact many alternative families in the Bible- some more disturbing than others… but that’s another sermon!) But what if these three were in fact, building something new… something different… something that allowed them to build family and community and thrive together in this new place and this new life?

Sometimes I wonder if we underestimate just how important that notion of different kinds of biblical families actually is. It’s a bit like what we talked about last week- for those of us who have traditionally not seen our lives reflected in scripture, it is particularly important to find those different voices… those different stories- and to lift them up- maybe even to celebrate them. In the wake of the Maine vote this week that reversed lesbian and gay marriage in that State, perhaps these kinds of reminders are even more important than ever for us to hold on to.

And perhaps one of the most delightfully unexpected things of all, is that out of this very unusual, very alternative family, comes a line of ancestors that scripture tells us leads eventually to Jesus himself! I just love that… Jesus came from an alternative family…!?

And in our second reading today, we find Jesus challenging the systems of his time. He takes to task the scribes for their showy prayers and for taking from the widows. And he watches and honors the widow who comes and gives her only two coins into the temple offering.

There is, as commentators have noted, a danger here of falling into stereotypes… you know, “those awful scribes”, that kind of thing. In my NT class last year, the instructor talked about this tendency in the book of Matthew and noted how often that gospel writer critiqued the scribes… it was a kind of literary strategy… a dramatic technique, if you will.

But I wonder if this kind of stereotyping can be problematic- not only because of the very nature of making blanket judgments about a group of people, but also because- I would suggest- it kind of lets us off the hook. You know, sometimes I think this is kind of our usual response to this particular story… “those awful awful scribes… and that wonderful widow who gave her all. What a lovely lesson in this story. Sigh….”

But once again, what if we look for the voices not being heard… the stories not being told… what if we look for the unexpected?

What if Jesus wasn’t just criticizing the scribes, but was in fact criticizing the system of which they were a part… a system they may well have been somewhat trapped in… and a system that asked this widow to give her all?

Jesus had this wonderful, aggravating, inspiring ability to turn things upside down- to get his listener to consider looking at things in radically different ways.

What if he is calling us to look at this story in a radically different way… as a challenge to the systems that bind us to injustice… as a challenge to the systems that create such incredible gaps between those who have and those who do not… as a challenge to the systems where wars are not the exception… they are the expectation?

On this Peace Sunday, what if Jesus is not only challenging us to reexamine those systems… but to be audacious enough to imagine something different?

I find myself deeply troubled by the shooting at Fort Hood this week… I struggle to make sense of the meaning of what happened there… especially today. And yet, I wonder if it is times such as this that are especially important for us to really wrestle with this different vision that Jesus offers us. To imagine a different system… a different way of being… a different way of being with each other, of being family, of being community, of being a global community… To imagine something quite… unexpected? What if Jesus is calling us – in fact- to expect the unexpected?

How might these wonderful teachers of ours… Ruth, Naomi, Boaz, and most of all Jesus… call us… challenge us… inspire us… to something completely new, completely unexpected? Can we even imagine?

Will you pray with me…

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