Risk & Restoration A sermon by Dan Stern at BCUCC 
P23B November 8, 2009

Mark 12:41-44 (The Message)
41-44Sitting across from the offering box, he was observing how the crowd tossed money in for the collection. Many of the rich were making large contributions. One poor widow came up and put in two small coins—a measly two cents. Jesus called his disciples over and said, "The truth is that this poor widow gave more to the collection than all the others put together. All the others gave what they'll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn't afford—she gave her all." 

Ruth 3:1-6, 4:13-17
3Naomi her mother-in-law said to Ruth, “My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you. 2Now here is our kinsman Boaz, with whose young women you have been working. See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor. 3Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing floor; but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. 4When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do.” 5She said to her, “All that you tell me I will do.” 
6So she went down to the threshing floor and did just as her mother-in-law had instructed her. 

13Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the Lord made her conceive, and she bore a son. 14Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; and may his name be renowned in Israel! 15He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him.” 16Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse. 17The women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David. 

My thanks this morning to Kate Huey for contributing the bulk of this sermon’s background contents, and also to Broadview’s wonderful little Thursday afternoon Study group - thanks for your wisdom and patience as you help me fine-tune and re-hash the same stories several times over!

As mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, Naomi and Ruth are an unlikely pair. Both are widows, and one of them, a despised foreigner. They live on the edge of survival in a patriarchal culture that only provides them the bare minimum of charity. They are, for instance, allowed to glean the harvest leftovers in the field, to take for themselves the tiny easy-to-miss bits of grain that get left behind when the harvesters go through the fields rapidly with their sickles, gathering up the sheaves, or when the winnowers separate the wheat from the chaff, and a few little cornels fall to the side. On a Washington State apple orchard, the equivalent would be for an orchardist to allow migrant farm workers or neighbors living in poverty without property of their own to pick the leftover apples on the highest limbs of the trees that the regular pickers didn’t want to even bother going for - or maybe to pick up the bruised culls that have already dropped. It isn’t any kind of sacrifice really on the part of the orchardist - no more of a sacrifice than it was for the rich and the privileged of Jesus’ day to loudly drop thick gold coins in the temple treasury - in both instances, the largesse of the well-to-do results in higher status, greater visibility as generous benefactors. But really, both the rich givers AND the poorest of the poor receivers are only giving and only getting leftovers. In fact, the Hebrew word for widow literally means to be a leftover! Putting it that bluntly sounds to our ears pretty heartless and crude, as if describing begging dogs underneath a sumptuous dinner table. Such vast economic inequalities are highly inappropriate. Yet given the very vulnerable position that widowhood put one into, calling widows “leftover ones” said it like it was. Widows were destitute. Widows couldn’t make it alone. It’s hard enough today. So rather complex Old Testament laws developed over time called Leverite marriages. These provided replacement husbands for widows from the families of deceased husbands. Such laws were a step in the right direction - the most vulnerable were thus to some extent protected, though that didn’t in the least bit put into question the patriarchal assumption that women were the property of men. The surviving male relatives still had the "right" to claim the “property” of the deceased male, including his ‘leftover’ wife. This in fact is what happened in the case of Ruth. In a portion we omitted from this morning’s reading, Boaz announces that he has "acquired" the property of Elimelech and his diseased sons, which included Ruth, the foreign widow of one of those sons (4:9-10).

But beyond these legal details, the story of Ruth is about major turnings around - turnings called shubs in Hebrew. The shub or turning around details of the story include some very creative initiative-taking on the part of the main players - especially Naomi, but also Ruth and Boaz - to make a just future possible, above and beyond hand-to-mouth dependency. Some real risks get taken for each other’s sake, for the sake of security and communal restoration. It is, by the way, a rather sexy story too. But more about solidarity than sex and seduction. Things really do get turned around, and the means by which it all happens is what the Hebrew people called hesed faithfulness, steadfast love. Naomi and Ruth’s love is profound and exemplary; Boaz observes and feels motivated by their love to himself turn, and do the loving thing too. Greatly respecting the two women’s devotion, Boaz in turn devotes himself to both of them. One thing leads to another, and a union of sorts gets organized, foreigner and resident alike, a little family of choice. The mixed-race baby that results becomes the grandfather of the greatest king in all of Israel, the ancestor of Jesus. A future becomes possible. Happy endings abound. We thrive on these storied models of turnings around, don’t we? We can get inspired by them to make society’s invisible ones visible, to no longer leave the previously leftover ones, so vulnerable - the foreigner and the homeless and the poor. We get inspired, so we do what it takes to be a perhaps small but nonetheless mighty community of faith; such communities being the very definition of faithfulness and of hope for the future.  

One might say by contrast to this communal definition of hope for the future that the definition of hopelessness is an isolated, non-communal lack of a future. Widows alone just can’t make it. But our focus story is all about making it: how one example of unswerving fidelity inspires yet another. Boaz sees Ruth’s dogged and determined love for Naomi. Boaz wants to live in like manner. One risky venture, one act of imaginative creativity begets another, and another, and another, all part of a grand multi-generational, not-to-be-deterred love. It is, to restate verse 15, absolutely and unequivocally true that GOD has become for us, in the gathered community we call this church, ‘the restorer of our lives and the nourisher of our old age”. So we make it to and through old age together. We do together what needs to be done. We take risks and initiative to lessen dependency, to increase interdependency. One member invites another and that new one invites someone else, and the circle continues to spiral into the future. And … we grieve together, we laugh together, we stick it out over the long haul in hesed faithful friendship fidelity, one to the other. We mean to be for one another here at Broadview a safe harbor (Copenhaver), just as Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz became a safe harbor for each other. When that happens, God works wonders and moves a loving future into the present with grace.    
 
The loving future, we hope, includes the unfinished widow story that Jesus himself told, when he saw the invisible, when he made a friend of that other and nameless widow, the one no one had noticed up until then. Jesus’ story of the widow’s mite is often told on Stewardship Sundays, since it naturally lends itself to the notion of proportional giving. “Others gave what they’d never miss. She gave extravagantly. She gave her all.” But as today’s bulletin back cover essay suggests, Christian stewardship is really ultimately about friendship, not about money. The kinds of friendship that make survival itself possible and bearable.    

No doubt about it, Naomi and Ruth's survival skills are impressive. But even more so, the quality of their friendship, their hesed love and faithfulness. Such friendship is something to build churches, communities, a better world upon. And though I kinda said it last Sunday, I’ll say it again (Martin Copenhaver:) "The family and the church are both places where we have the opportunity to learn to live with people we did not choose. Our fidelity to those we are stuck with can be a reflection of the fidelity of a God who (sticks with us)." “I no longer call you servants,” Jesus is credited with saying to his disciples, “I call you my friends.” Like Ruth and Naomi and Boaz, though we’re not necessarily related here at this church by blood, we stick together. And God will stick with us. Jesus noticed and named the poor widow who gave everything she had away, in devotion to God. We’re gonna notice the invisible ones, name the nameless. It’s the way we have to respond to who our noticing, naming sticking with us God is. 

You know whenever a baby is baptized here, I like to name that child’s name, and walk up close to you so you can notice that child well. I always ask you to welcome a new little sister or brother in Christ into the life of the faith community. One time right after splashing water on a baby’s forehead, I quoted what Martin Copenhaver always says: “In this family of faith, water is thicker than blood.” (repeat) Today, as new members join us, new members who have long histories with the church in other places and times, they bring their wisdom and their gifts and their infectious enthusiasm to this place and to this time. We are more than grateful for who they are and who they have been, for their seasoned and exemplary lives, and with them this day, we pledge not just part of who we are but all of who we are to this hesed faithfulness project of loving, modeled at and passed on from right here at Broadview Community United Church of Christ here where water is thicker than blood. May it ever be so, Amen.  

RESPONSIVE READING
O God, teach us to be generous:
to serve you as you deserve to be served;
to give without counting the cost;
to fight without fear of being wounded;
to work without seeking rest;
and to spend ourselves without expecting any reward, but the knowledge that we are doing your holy will.					 (adapted, Ignatius of Loyola)