NRSV RUTH 1:1-18

1 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, but Ruth clung to her.

15 So she said, “See, 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

or 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–

there will I be buried.

May the LORD do thus and so to me,

and more as well,

if even death parts me from you!”

18 When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.

The book of Ruth is one of those books in the Bible that strains at comprehension with the reading of just a few verses.  Like Esther and Jonah, it almost demands to be read in its total. But I already did that earlier this year with the book of Esther, so I will take my chances with the first 18 verses of Ruth.

In those 18 verses is packed no small amount of pathos and emotion.  It’s great for an introverted feeler like me, at least that’s what the folks who run the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory say.  But what about the rest of you?  I am sure there are extroverted thinkers out there for whom this is just one more appeal to touchy feely stuff which is as foreign to your make up as the Cyrillic alphabet.  Some of us are big into emotions, and some are not.  We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and different, too.

But for all of us, introverted feelers and extroverted thinkers alike, this is a story that touches us where we live.  And also where we die.  For that is where it takes us; to the full experience of what it means to be alive, even the end of life.  It touches us when someone special to us is no longer around.  We may not all like to talk about it, some of us may talk about it too much.  But sooner or later we are all touched by the emptiness that comes when someone close dies.

This is a special time of year to call that to mind. Our friends in Mexico have a Dia de Los Muertos, Day of the Dead, a time to celebrate life and death and to embrace the memory of those who have passed through this life.  In our community there was a group who recently had a discussion time, like our Theology on Tap (which is this Thursday, by the way), to talk about death; to talk frankly and openly about a subject that many of us avoid whenever possible, but which none of us can avoid forever.  And yet there are times when it is necessary. We need to get out into the open our feelings of fear, of wonder, of grief, of mourning.  One of the saints of my life, the late Rev. Fred Rogers, said, “Whatever is mentionable is manageable.”  That applies for everything, including death.

It’s especially significant for us in the church.  Last Thursday was All Saints’ Day. Since we don’t gather for worship during the week (usually), we set aside this day as All Saints’ Sunday, with the naming of those from our church and other families who have died over the past year during the Prayer of Thanksgiving.  It’s important to do this, to remember those who have passed on, those who are still very much a part of this church, still a part of our church family.  We remember them, and we re-member them; we bring them back in thoughts and love expressed on this side of the grave, remembering Paul’s words, “Whether we live or whether we die, we belong to the Lord.”

While we are doing all of that there is something ironic in that this Tuesday is Election Day.  Not just any election; but one of the most bitterly contested elections we have ever had. Usually the midterm elections are toned down compared to Presidential ones.  Not this year; the rhetoric has been just as hostile and nasty on both sides, and this week may come as a bit of relief for many of us that at least we won’t have to put up with anymore campaign ads on TV, the radio or the internet.  But we also know that whoever prevails, if the Democrats win the House or the Republicans hold on, there will still be a bitter divide afflicting us.  Some people will feel a bit of death on Wednesday that their side, their issue did not win.  Others will feel exhilaration but then comes the tough part of governing such a fractious people in such a fractious time. While All Saints’ Day reminds us of our infinite connections, elections have a way of demonstrating our temporary disconnections.

Which, in a curious way, is where the book of Ruth comes in. While not all scholars agree, the general consensus has been that this book was written in the years just following the return of the people of Israel from their 60 years of exile.  There are two schools of thought about what their military defeat and exile had taught them about dealing with other nations when they returned to Jerusalem.  One, espoused by the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, was that the people had been punished for being too cozy with the neighboring nations. They were to be a people set apart, so these books called on them to distance themselves from other nations.  Some much so that those people of Israel who were married to foreigners were compelled to divorce their spouses and send them back where they came from.

All of this purity and disdain for other people was not the only response.  There was another one, shown by the book of Jonah, and by Ruth.  This was that God had made all the nations of the world, and rather than distancing themselves from others the people of Israel needed to reclaim their covenantal responsibility of being a blessing to the nations.

In Jonah, that meant being respectful even to the Ninevites, those people who were the epitome of Gentile nastiness. The book of Ruth has a different take; here it is on the Moabites, the people who lived on the other side of the Dead Sea from Israel, but Gentiles nonetheless.

But this not just a story about Gentiles and how God can bless them, too. This is also a story about death, and how it can completely immobilize us.  And yet in the midst of that immobilization, the remembrance of our connections with each other – even with our dearly departed – can give us the resources we need to move on.

The story begins in the time of the Judges, before Saul and David and all those kings came along.  In that time a man and his wife and their two sons were living and suffering through a famine in Bethlehem – ironically called the “House of Bread,” as well as being the ancestral home of David. They decide to move on, as people of that time did when famines came up. They settled in Moab, across the Jordan. As time went by the father died, and the two sons married Moabite women.  Tsk, tsk, Ezra and Nehemiah would have said, but that’s what they did and from all accounts they were very happy marriages, with everyone in the family getting along quite well.

But as time went on both of the sons died, leaving the mother, Naomi, and the two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, in a very serious bind.  In that patriarchal culture, a woman without a man to connect with was without a protector, without a family, without a name, without a community.  They had no support and no connection.

Word comes that the food situation in Bethlehem has improved considerably, so knowing that she has little or no options Naomi packs up to head for home.  She lets go – or so she thinks – of her two daughters-in-law, knowing that if they tag along with her their prospects of finding someone else and starting over will be diminished.  They both protest, but Naomi insists.  She feels that “…the hand of God has turned against me.” And who hasn’t felt that way in the throes of grief and hopelessness?  Haven’t we all had our times of death and felt that God had turned away from us, abandoned us, left us to the hopelessness that comes not only with a world without a loved one but a world without God.

But one of them, Ruth, is insistent. She almost demands that Naomi take her, in words that we may have heard more during weddings than funerals.  But this is even more than that; this is a song, a poem of chesed, that wonderful Hebrew term for steadfast love.  It is used mostly in connection with God’s relationship with people.  But here it is used to describe the connection Ruth feels with Naomi. She will not leave her, Naomi’s people will be Ruth’s people; Naomi’s God will be Ruth’s God.

What connects Ruth with Naomi initially is not the Holy Lord, who delivered Israel out of slavery and later out of exile.  It is the connection she feels with Naomi, forged by their love of those who have gone before them.  It is those three dead men who hold this story together, because these women will not let them go.  They will not let them go as they cling to each other and as they cling to hope, even if they may feel God has left them.

We know by faith, of course, that God does not leave us.  It is especially in those times of grief where we may feel God’s love and presence more profoundly than at any other time.  But we feel that love and presence because someone taught it to us.  Because someone showed it to us.  Because someone took on flesh and love and dwelt among us and gave that demonstration of what God’s chesed, God’s steadfast love, looks like.  And so, by the grace of God, may we be for someone else.

We may know the rest of the story – of how with Naomi’s instructions and maybe a little bit of badgering a husband was found for Ruth, and the child they produced turned out to be the grandfather of King David.  But in this story the main theme is not birth and the start of a royal line.  It is the death that links us all.  And yet it is the love we have for those who have passed on that keeps us going, that keeps us hopeful, that keeps us focused on their God and our God.

I have a Ruth in my history; my Aunt Ruth, Mom’s younger sister. She was a very independent type, and I didn’t get to see her very much.  But when I did she was all graciousness and warmth, though in her last years she developed Parkinson’s, a condition that rendered her without much emotion.  I never thought about how much I missed this relative I rarely saw until I was driving into the Woodlands last week for a visit and saw a lady who looked remarkably like Aunt Ruth. All at once the feelings of love that comes with family connections came back, with a powerful force.

Such is the way it is with God’s chesed.  It is what keeps us going, but we all have the same starting point: This table.  Every time we eat this bread and drink this cup, Paul told us, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes again.  We proclaim the Lord’s death, not his resurrection.  I always thought that strange.  But then I realized that death is what links us all – death and the hope beyond death.  After all, you can’t get to resurrection if you don’t go through death first. At the table our Lord comes and sits with us, bringing all of those special people to us with him. All the saints of our lives, all those who showed us what Jesus’ love looks like.  We are all together, linked in God’s chesed. As we eat this meal may we remember Christ and his love for us; but let’s also remember our loved ones, and the love they shared with us. For in the memory of that love, we may find our hope to keep going and to stay connected.  Amen.