Intense Faith
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I have two stories for you today. The first story is about a senior pastor I worked with in a previous call. One of the things that he loved doing during his time in Washington was to plan a motorcycle trip to a different part of the country. When I say plan I use the term in the loosest sense possible. He would have a general sense of where he was going but it could always change depending on what the weather was like. I remember one year he was planning on going through Washington and Montana and a day or so before he was going to leave the forecast changed and it was going to rain. So instead he decided to head due south and spent a lot of his motorcycle trip in Utah where it was nice and warm. I don’t know about you but I could not handle a trip like that. Just waking up day by day and looking out the window of your hotel room and deciding that it looks sunnier to the south today so I’m going to head south. I loved hearing his stories but there is no way that I would have ever done something like that.
The other story is about a man who came to the church and wanted to talk to a pastor. I happened to be in my office that time. It probably was while the senior pastor was on his motorcycle trip now that I think of it. This man wanted to know if I could help him with some different things. I like to always ask people who walk into my office like that about themselves so that I can know what kind of things they need and to learn a little bit about them and what brought them in that day. He told me that he had recently moved into town from the midwest and he was looking for a job and a place to stay. He was able to stay at one of the state parks and sleep in his vehicle in the meantime. I asked him why he moved here without a job and a place to live and he told me that he heard that there were jobs around here.
Honestly, I have frequently heard stories from people that come into my office that are passing through our town or moved here from somewhere else in the hopes that there would be a job waiting for them in this part of the country and in this town or that town. I have never understood why someone would up and move without so much as any clue as to where they are going to live and how they are going to make ends meet.
To an extent this is how I feel about the opening to the story of Ruth. First there is a famine in Israel so Elimelech and his family move to Moab. Moab isn’t another state like the United States , it’s another country and who knows what’s there when they get there. Not only is it another country but it’s one that doesn’t have a good history with the Israelites. It’s not a forbidden country and people, but they do worship Baal instead of Yahweh. But things work out and they live there for about 10 years despite Elimelech passing away. Then her two sons pass away and Naomi up and decides to move back to Bethlehem because the famine that happened 10 years earlier has gone. Bethlehem is where she is from, but she is once again going somewhere else. This time with no husband and no sons to care for her. Naomi is the true definition of a widow according to Israelite law.
The story continues to baffle me from here. Naomi, as she heads back to her country possibly snaps out of her grief for a moment and realizes that her two daughters-in-law are following her back to Bethlehem. She convinces Orpah to go back to her family and Ruth insists on following her. Both Orpah and Ruth choose the right option. Orpah followed the tradition to return home to marry another man, and Ruth is right in staying with the family that she became a part of. But despite being right Ruth now baffles me as much as Naomi has. Ruth has now chosen the path of going into the unknown and uncertain nature of living in a new country, being a widow, following a different God, and sticking by her mother-in-law until death parts them.
While it baffles me that Ruth would choose such a path for her life it also says and teaches so much about her and about faith and life all in one very small part of the Bible and in one small part of a story in the Bible. So I want to just spend the rest of our time together to lay out what I personally get out of all that Ruth has just said and done.
Just as Naomi had left her people and land now Ruth does the same. Ruth becomes an alien in the land of Judah. She has the rights of an alien and of a widow, but she still has a lot going against her. As I mentioned earlier Moabites and Israelites did not get along very well so she would be facing a lot of criticism as an alien and immigrant from the land she was coming from. As we see from our history books and from our current events being an immigrant is not easy no matter where you live or try to live. There is no doubt that this will be a hard task for her to overcome, but she faces it head on.
Ruth also declares Naomi to be her family. I don’t know if that means that she turns away from her old family, but she calls her her family and wants to be by her side no matter what happens in this life. She will be with her wherever she goes no matter how good or bad life may get.
She then declares that Yahweh will be her God and that she will no longer worship Baal, the god that she grew up worshipping and knowing. Somehow, in some way Ruth sees something either in Naomi’s whole family or in Naomi herself that she decides that she will now put her faith in Yahweh. She’s not just moving to another country to be an alien, but she is fully accepting that Yahweh is God and that there are no other gods in this world. She professes her faith before God and Naomi. Professing faith is never an easy thing and Ruth does it as she prepares to leave everything else in her life as she heads to Bethlehem.
Ruth completely baffles me. She baffles me in the best and most meaningful way possible. She turns away from everything she knows in her life. Everything that she grew up with and everything that made her comfortable in life to follow Naomi and Yahweh. She chooses God no matter what may come and I have no other way but to say that God blesses her for it.
As the end of the book of Ruth we are told that Ruth and new husband Boaz have a son Obed. Obed is the father of Jesse who is the father of David. David is the father of Solomon. Not only is Ruth the great-grandmother and great-great grandmother of the two greatest kings of all of Israel, but we also know that Jesus was born of the line of David and Ruth is even mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in .
Through this mind boggling and baffling story of Naomi and Ruth God brings about the savior of the world, Jesus. God uses an alien. God uses a widow. God uses someone who started her life believing in a different god. What that leads me to believe with my whole heart is that no matter where we have come from and no matter what we faced in our lives God can and does use each and every one of us. Embrace the unknown. Embrace the ways in which God is using you, listen to the ways that God is calling you. I guarantee Ruth had no idea she would bring about the birth of the greatest kings of Israel and that she would be one of the ancestors of God’s own son, Jesus. All because she had intense faith that there was more for her life if God was in it. Embrace God, and embrace all that God can and will do through you. Amen.
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