Episode 46: 6/08/09

Readings:

Psalm 4
Ruth 1:1-18
1 Timothy 1:1-17
Luke 13:1-9

Sermon:

Answer me when I call to you,
O my righteous God.*
Give me relief from my distress;
be merciful to me and hear my prayer.
Psalm 4:1

For Naomi, it must have seemed as if God had completely abandoned her: her husband dead, her sons dead with no children of their own, and their two young wives to provide for. Besides the personal grief of seeing her family devastated, she now faced an unenviable future as a penniless widow in a strange land, reduced to begging or starvation.

But as bad as this was, it was a fate that was common enough for women of her day, and which at her age she probably wouldn’t have to endure long before she joined her family in death. What particularly grieved her was the fate of her two daughters-in-law, young widows who had lost not only their beloved husbands but all chances for future happiness. Under the law of Moses, if they remarried, their first son would be considered the child of their dead husband, so that his name would not forgotten nor his line become extinct. Few men would be willing to marry them under these circumstances even if they were wealthy heiresses; as destitute beggers, their chances of finding a new husband were virtually zero.

And so we see Naomi sacrificing the last remaining comfort in her life, the company of her daughters-in-law, women who have become true daughters and dear friends to her, as she heads home to Bethlehem to face an uncertain reception by her old neighbors, on whose charity she will now have to depend.

After much protesting, one daughter-in-law, Orpah, is persuaded to return home to her family and to start over, released from her obligations to Naomi’s family. But Ruth will not be sent away so easily. During her brief married life and her recent widowhood, she undoubtedly learned to love and trust not only Naomi, but the God Naomi worshipped and trusted in, even throughout all her difficulties. Now she could no more abandon Him than she could her dear mother-in-law.

Ruth declares her undying loyalty and love in one of the most beloved verses of Scripture: “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." This passage is used today during wedding ceremonies to demonstrate the love between a husband and wife, a love that can only be broken by death.

And here we see the even greater love of God working in the lives of these two women. Though their future looks grim, He is at work preparing for them greater blessings than they can even imagine. But then, this shouldn’t surprise us. This is the same God who brought His people out of Egypt, through the Red Sea on dry land, through 40 years of wandering through the desert before bringing them at last to the Promised Land.

God can do these great things for His people, but He doesn’t limit Himself to grand deeds on a large scale. He promises to be with all those who call on His Name in any trouble, no matter how small it may seem. The lives of those two women, walking back to Bethlehem bound together in their love for each other and for God, were just as important to Him as the fate of kings and nations.

And indeed the fate of kings and nations does depend on these women. Although they cannot know what the future holds, the Lord will fill their hearts with a great joy, as He finds a husband for Ruth and blesses Naomi with a new family and a restored place in her community. The child that Ruth bears will restore not only her husband’s name in the line of Israel, but will be the grandfather of Israel’s greatest king, David. And Ruth, the foreign girl who left her family and gods behind to follow the true God, will be honored as the ancestor not only of a great king, but of the Messiah Himself, the King of Kings.

Trust in the Lord and call on Him for help, even in the darkest of times and most hopeless of situations. We may feel abandoned or forgotten, but with God, not even death can separate us from His love. He will bring us comfort in our times of trouble and bring us at last to a joy that is greater than anything we can even imagine.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.