The Shape of Love's Presence

A sermon preached by Lee Cheek, Lay Preacher, 

@ Crissey Farm, Great Barrington 11-11-12

 

I don’t know about you, but John and I are thoroughly enjoying the new series on PBS Sunday evenings: “Call the Midwife.”  The series is based on the memoirs of Jennifer Lee Worth, a nurse trained for service in post-war London as a mid-wife deployed by the newly implemented National Health Service.  She and several other young women served the slums of the East End of London, where they were headquartered in an Anglican Convent whose sisters also served as midwives. 

Among the series’ delights is the voice-over in each episode spoken by Vanessa Redgrave who portrays Worth’s older, wiser self as she looks back on her life.  In the tone of her voice, you can hear her heart scouring her memories for the Presence of Love in the messiness of her life and in the lives the families she served.

I haven’t read Worth’s memoirs yet, but in the televised series, Worth is unflinchingly and graciously honest about how flawed we human beings are.  She is also honest about the  surprise of Love in  unpromising situations as well as the sad, tragic consequences  when Love is temporarily shut out.

The same could be said about the writings we Christians call our “Bible” comprised of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament writings. They are memoirs, too.   They, too, are unflinching memoirs of flawed human beings and their 2000 years of being surprised by The Presence of Love in their messy and unpromising circumstances and the tragedy of what happened when they tried to shut Love out.  

The Book of Ruth is one such story of the Mysterious Presence of Love in an unpromising situation.  This morning we heard excerpts from the second half of the story.  Since we missed the first half last week when we used the readings for All Saints, I’ll catch you up a bit. 

Naomi, her husband Elimelech, and their two sons flee famine in their native Judah to work and live in the fields of Moab, an alien land on the other side of the Dead Sea. 

After some years there, her husband dies. Then a few years later both her sons die, leaving their two Moabite wives, Orpah and Ruth, to live with Naomi.  When Naomi hears there is food again in Judah, the three childless widows hit the road for Bethlehem, Naomi’s hometown. 

There are many clues that this story may be an allegory of the exiled Israelites returning to Jerusalem from Babylon, but we are immediately drawn into a story of disaster for these vulnerable women, who have no men to protect them and provide for them.  The three childless widows are the sole remnants of a family.  

Widows are very much on the mind of the Markan memoirist in our Gospel reading this morning.  Upon hearing this comparison of indigent widows and well-positioned elitists who are able to legally rob them of their money, no contemporary of Mark’s community could have failed to recall the numerous condemnations in Jeremiah and Deuteronomy of those who take advantage of resident aliens, orphans, and widows. 

And if we read further in Mark, we cannot fail to see that this comparison immediately precedes what is known as the Markan Apocalypse, Jesus’ description of the end times which includes the destruction of the Second Temple.  I leave you to reflect on this as our nation’s leaders are re-working federal taxation policies and determining budget priorities.

But back to Ruth. Let me say how grateful I am to my circle of Jewish friends for all the many recommendations of commentary on this amazing Book of Ruth.*  I was greatly enriched by this study and eventually had the peculiar experience of the book “reading me” –telling me something about myself. 

Though God never “acts” in the book of Ruth, we sense that God—The Presence of Love—is very present.  For me Ruth is a master class in how to listen for the Presence of Love in my life and in the lives of others.

Naomi manages to dissuade Orpah from leaving her own people in Moab, but Ruth clings to her. Sticks by her side.  We can feel how The Presence of the God of Love, clings to Naomi and will not let this suffering, embittered woman go anywhere alone.  

Dear One!  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.  Where you die, I will die.  

Imagine that this is the voice of Love speaking to you.  You, personally, in all your vulnerability, your weakness, your lack of funds, your lack of shelter, your lack of dignity, your lack of success.  I say to you that I can hardly bear that Love would speak to me thus. But I know it to be true.  Love has stuck by me even in my arrogance, my hubris, my vengefulness, my greediness, my bitterness and my resentment.  

As in Exodus, when God speaks to Moses, Love sees  a possibility in an unpromising situation, with a precarious future, and says, 

        I will be with you.

Ted [Cobden], in his beautiful “epistle” to us this morning alludes to this Presence of Love that would move two dying embers closer together so they may re-ignite.  The Presence of Love sees the possibility and a future when we can’t, and has no plans for leaving the hearth untended.

Naomi and Ruth arrive in Bethlehem. While Naomi professes her bitterness of what she believes is God’s harsh treatment of her, Ruth, the Love bearer,  unhurriedly and uncomplainingly goes to work gathering up the left-over grain as permitted for those in need.  In an act of generous benevolence, hesed, Boaz, the owner of the field, grants special protections to the alien Ruth who is unknown to him.

Thus Naomi is abundantly fed by  Love’s steady harvest of the field’s left-overs.  That’s just the way Love is.  It simply makes do with anything that is left lying around!

Nourished by the food of Love, Naomi revives and sees an opportunity for Ruth’s future.  She sends her to lie down beside Boaz who is asleep on the threshing floor, guarding the threshed wheat.  It is no surprise here that the threshing floor is a both a place of illicit sexual relations and a place of theophanies, appearances of God.  

As instructed by Naomi, Ruth-Love, lies at his “feet”(a euphemism for genitals) until he wakes and asks, trembling, “Who are you?”   She answers in Love’s singular way, confidently yet modestly:  “I AM Ruth your servant.  May you spread your cloak over your servant, for you are a redeemer.”  

 

You know, the Presence of Love waits for us like this:  Gently, quietly, confidently at rest next to the most vulnerable parts of us, which are paradoxically the most fertile places in us for new life.   Love waits for us to wake up so She can say:

I Am Thine.  Marry ME!   We will make Something from Nothing together.

This is how Love speaks to us, enticing us to give ourselves away.  Love desires, as did Ruth, to gently decant the generosity, the benevolence, the hesed, we didn’t know we had in us. 
 

We also see in this story that the Presence of Love does not take “no” for an answer.  Neither does Love recognize things being closed off or shut down.  And the Presence of Love is not boastful or arrogant, nor unkind to us.  Love waits patiently by our side, never leaving us, for however long it takes for us to recover from our losses. Think of the flooded Taft Farm fields last year and the trucks full of vegetables that have been sent from it  to New York City this year! 

So Ruth and Boaz marry and conceive.  Love delights in this!  Imagine—a family from a pair of childless widows!  Grace Church from two homeless congregations!  A renewed fire from dying embers! 

May we awaken each day on the threshing floor of our lives to the devoted Presence of Love who, mysteriously confident in us, whispers to our trembling surprise,

            I am Thine.  Marry ME.  We will make Something from Nothing together.

AMEN.

 _______
* A group of Jewish and Christian scripture students in South Berkshire County, MA, met for several months this year to begin reading together the Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford). They recommended to me the following books which I found very helpful preparing this sermon on Ruth:  Reading the Women of the Bible (Frymer-Kensky. Schocken, 2002); Reading Ruth (ed. Kates and Reimer. Ballentine, 1994); Certain People of the Book (Samuel. Knopf, 1955).  I am also indebted to James Alison and his monumental new education series soon to be released, The Forgiving Victim: An Induction into Christian Vulnerability. http://forgivingvictim.com/