231206 Sermon on Ruth 1-2 (Advent 1 Midweek) December 6, 2023

 Audio recording

Sermon manuscript:

The book of Ruth is about poor people. Being poor can lead
to desperate actions. The book begins with a desperate action. A poor family leaves
their homeland when they can no longer make ends meet. A famine struck the
land. Naomi and her husband Elimelech have to leave their land behind in search
of better conditions. They went to the land of Moab where the people worshipped
other gods besides the Lord God. Naomi and Elimelech had two sons who married Moabite
women.

But one bad thing happened after another for this family.
Elimelech, Naomi’s husband died. Then both of Naomi’s sons died. The family
that was left was made up only of widows—three widows, three in-laws. Naomi was
the mother-in-law. She had two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth.

Being a widow is bad enough regardless of whether we are
talking about modern times or ancient times. Being a widow carries with it
sorrow and loneliness. But in ancient times being a widow also brought about
impoverishment and vulnerability. Men were important for providing sustenance
for the family. There was no social security during those times. Men were also
important for protecting the family. Widows could be overpowered and taken
advantage of. So with Naomi, Orpah, and Ruth all being widows we are talking
about very weak, poor, and vulnerable people.

Normally histories do not get written about weak, poor, and
vulnerable people. Wretched people live in wretchedness, die in wretchedness,
and are soon forgotten. But the attentive reader is going to notice that Naomi
and her daughters-in-law are not completely wretched. They have a couple of
outstanding attributes that no amount of money can buy.

Naomi, first of all, was obviously loveable. Naomi was loved
by her daughters-in-law. The way that a person becomes loveable is by being
loving. People who love do not look out for themselves, first and foremost.
They look for how they can love, serve, and sacrifice for others. Naomi must
have lived this way, as can be seen in what we heard tonight.

When Naomi’s sons died she lost everything. She had no means
for any income that could amount to much. The only hope she had was in her
daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. But Naomi thinks about their welfare instead
of her own. She tells them that they should leave her and find new husbands.
Naomi was too old to marry and have children, but Orpah and Ruth were young.
They could still get married to a man who could support them and whatever
children God might give them.

And a clear sign that Naomi was loveable is shown by both of
her daughters-in-law’s reactions. Orpah and Ruth weep at the thought of leaving
their mother-in-law. They love their mother-in-law. However, Naomi was right.
If they were to have any hope for a better future they needed to marry again.
With the famine and everything else that was going on, it sounds like they were
living in desperate times. One daughter-in-law, Orpah, takes her
mother-in-law’s advice. She leaves to find a husband and we do not hear about
her again.

Ruth, however, refuses to leave. She says, “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, and
there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but
death parts me from you.” Here we see someone else besides Naomi who
loves in an extraordinary way. Ruth, also, is so very loveable because she
loves, she serves, she sacrifices. She doesn’t look out just for herself. She
looks out for the good of her mother-in-law.

And how is it that both Naomi and Ruth are able to be so
loveable, so selfless, so sacrificial? Both of them have faith in God. God
would bless them and keep them. Because God would bless them and keep them,
they didn’t need to be their own gods. They didn’t need to see to things
themselves, engineer their own happiness, taking whatever they could get. God
would see them through. They believed that even though God had dealt with them
in a rather bitter way up to that point. They were impoverished, after all, and
God had taken their husbands from them. Nevertheless, they could afford to love,
because God would bless them and see them through.

Now if we take a step back and look at these two women we
can see how rich they are, even though they are so very poor in almost every
other respect. You can see how noble they are, even though they would have been
outwardly clothed with the rags of poverty. They were living life with a
capital L, even though they had nowhere to lay their head and to call their
home. They were like the birds of the air. They were getting their daily bread,
day by day, without barns full of provisions.

We see several of Jesus’s sayings fulfilled in Naomi’s and
Ruth’s lives. Jesus said, “Is not life more than food,
and the body more than clothing?” Naomi and Ruth were loving and being
loved. What more can we ask for out of life than loving and being loved? But
this love does not just come out of nowhere. Love comes from God, who, as St.
John says, “is love.” And so Naomi and Ruth were
fulfilling another of Jesus’s sayings when he says, “Seek
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be
added unto you.” It is by faith in God’s kingdom, in his reigning and
ruling, that we receive the Holy Spirit’s gift of love.

Again Jesus says in another place: “I
came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly. The thief comes
only to steal, to kill, and to destroy.” The way to have life and to
have life more abundantly is to love and to be loved. To love one another means
that you are looking out for the other. You love, you serve, you sacrifice.
This is abundant life as it reflects the nature of God.

The alternative is to steal, to kill, and to destroy. This is
the character of every ungodly life. It’s where a person looks out only for
himself or herself. Others get used for one’s own benefit instead of being
served. Instead of trusting in God to bless you, you see to things yourself,
unable to be generous, because you never know what the wheel of fortune might
give you.

Looking at Naomi and Ruth from a distance we see that everything
that subsequently happens with them is a working out of their faith in God, and
their fervent love for one another. These are their riches. Outwardly they are
extremely poor. Ruth is practically a beggar and a slave. I’m sure that both
Naomi and Ruth would have like it very much if their outward circumstances were
different. Nevertheless, they are content. They continue to believe. They
continue to love.

Faith and love can seem like small matters. History books
are not written about faith and love. Nevertheless, faith and love are the
truly great things. Faith and love are what prepare us for the eternal things. Heaven
is the place where God is, and “God is love.”
Those who do not want to love, therefore, do not belong there. Hell, on the
other hand, is where everyone is an expert at not loving—that is, manipulating
and torturing. They steal, kill, and destroy eternally. They are unable to do
anything else. Faith and love are by no means small things. They are the truly
great things.

But we don’t need to wait until we get to heaven to see the
effects of faith and love. We can see the effects already in this life. What a
difference Naomi made for Ruth already in this life. Ruth loved her so much!
And what a difference Ruth made for Naomi. Ruth practically kept Naomi alive. And,
as we’ll hear about more in the next two chapters next week, Ruth was the
great-grandmother of King David, that truly great man of God. The heritage of
faith and love can be passed down from generation to generation. Something of
David’s wonderful, courageous faith, and his burning, passionate love, was from
his great-grandmother Ruth.

We can easily apply these thoughts also to our own life. We
all can probably point to someone in our life or in our lineage who believed
and loved, and thereby brought that faith and love also to us. We also are
presented with a challenge and an opportunity for our own lives as well. The
challenge is to separate ourselves from the great horde of humanity who seeks
only to steal, to kill, and to destroy—looking out only for themselves.

Or, alternatively, we can believe that God exists and that
God blesses. We can trust in him. Then we can afford to love no matter what our
circumstances. When we believe and love, there’s no telling what might happen.
There’s no telling what can happen in the coming generations.

Think of Naomi and Ruth. Do you suppose that either of them
thought that they would be the ancestors of a king while they were going from
place to place, barely surviving? So also we do not know how our actions will
affect our families and friends and even those yet to be born—either for good
or for ill.

What we can be sure of, no matter what, is that if we fear,
love, and trust in God, and if we love one another, goodness is bound to come.
Naomi and Ruth are examples for how we should live and wait for God’s
blessings.