Reason for Hope: Ruth 1:1-15 - Harvest Home Sunday

Earlier this week, I attended a retreat for pastors and lay leaders of small churches. 

At one of our workshops, the presenter asked everyone to share a story of their experience of God.

A woman seated next to me shared that she had been in a terrible car accident, suffering multiple bone fractures and an injury to her brain stem. She had no memory of the accident or of the weeks she was hospitalized. Her memory returned when she found herself seated in a wheelchair in a room full of other wheelchair-bound patients receiving physical therapy. She was in an exercise class, and a female therapist was calling her by name and encouraging her to raise her arms. 

She tried to raise her arms, but they hurt terribly. But then, a small, gentle voice began speaking within her: “People are praying for you. Raise your arms. People love you. Raise your arms.”

Despite the immense pain, she began to raise her arms, and kept raising them. Her experience of God’s grace in that moment of confusion pain gave her a reason to endure to persevere through the months of treatments, until finally, she made a full recovery, and returned in triumph to the open arms of her congregation. She and all the people who had been praying for her had seen the glory of God in her healing. And it all began when she raised her arms.

The story of this once-broken woman gave me a lot to think about when preparing to preach about two other broken women: the widows Naomi and Ruth.

They had just suffered the worst nightmare for a woman in the ancient world: their husbands had died. Unlike today, life insurance and social programs did not exist. Their only hope of survival was to return to their families in hopes that they would take them in. That is, if they were still alive.

This is what Naomi told her daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, to do. At this point, there was nothing she could do for them, and there was nothing they could do for her. So, Orpah kissed Naomi goodbye and went on her way. But Ruth refused to go. Perhaps she had no family left to return to (and Orpah did), or maybe she was closer to Naomi than she had ever been to any living relative. We don’t know. All we know is that they had nothing to offer each other except each other. And that was enough. Neither woman will have to grieve alone, nor will they have to face a harsh and threatening world alone. 

In these two destitute widows, we see that the difference between hopefulness and despair is someone who cares. It doesn’t matter if the person you’re leaning on is as destitute as you are. Hope is born in the ties which bind one to another in love. And hope is contagious. Hope inspires hope. Service inspires service. People make God’s power real. 

You must hold fast to these truths as the world around us descends deeper into chaos. As we witness the bloodshed in Israel, Palestine, and Ukraine; as we contemplate the future of our congregation amid a tidal wave of change; as we fear for what kind of world our children will inherit from us, there is one thing you can do: and that is to take care of each other. We must break the yoke of fear with a steadfast commitment to love and service.

The reason why we are seeing so much hatred and violence is because people have given up on hope and love. We’re losing the will to build up and heal, choosing instead to tear down and destroy. The only future some people can imagine is one in which all their enemies are destroyed, and their tribe wields absolute power. Far too many Christians have given up on the teachings of Jesus, instead invoking God’s name in a war God never wanted them to fight.

What’s going to turn it around? An ordinary person, just like you, baptized into Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit, who makes a bold, brave, moral choice: “I will serve God’s people today without judging if they’re worthy.” “I’m going to help that elderly stranger carry her groceries.” “I’m going to check in on that neighbor I haven’t seen in a while.” “I’m going to raise my broken arm despite all my pain, for the sake of all the people praying for me.” “I’m going to go to church today because I need Jesus’s blessings, and someone there needs mine.” “I’m going to treat my life as a gift I can give to someone else. “When my neighbor is blessed, I am blessed.” 

Jesus’s power to heal runs through your hands. It rings through your voice. It lives inside your mind. It breathes through your body. 

There’s no power in the world that’s greater than love. We know that from the cross. We see that in Ruth and Naomi. And it’s our truth to live out, both within the walls of this sacred space and out in God’s mission field, called daily life. Hope is the reason to love. Hope is the reason to care. Trust Jesus. Be a servant. 

The way to change the future is to invent it, one act of love at a time. 

friendship by Alice Popkorn on Flickr. CC BY-ND 2.0 DEED

In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. ² The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. ³ But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. ⁴ These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. When they had lived there about ten years, ⁵ both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

⁶ Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had considered his people and given them food. ⁷ So she set out from the place where she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back to the land of Judah. ⁸ But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back each of you to your mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. ⁹ The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband.” Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. ¹⁰ They said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.” ¹¹ But Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters. Why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? ¹² Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, ¹³ would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.” ¹⁴ Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.

¹⁵ So she said, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” ¹⁶ But Ruth said,

“Do not press me to leave you,
    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.
¹⁷ Where you die, I will die,
    and there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus to me,
    and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!” (NRSVue)