“Ruth” Ruth 1: 1-17 and 4: 13-17

  One question that I am known for asking people is what their favorite scripture is. Time and again, I have found one of the most common answers to be the Book of Job. In Job, people find comfort in the midst of suffering. They find someone who they can identify with and someone who was able to lay his heart before God. 

Another person in scripture we find in that same vein is Naomi in the book of Ruth. Naomi. Namoi’s life, like so many of ours is ones of ups and down. As we begin the book of Ruth, we find her married to Elimelech and having two sons. We could probably go as far as to say that this scripture starts with a happy family.

Only then circumstances become difficult. A famine starts to sweep through the land. And Bethlehem, the family home, is no longer the bread basket, but is not producing. So the family makes the hard decision to leave behind their home, family, and friends, and set out to a place where they can provide for one another. 

They went out of their own land and became foreigners in the land of Moab. A place where folks weren’t like them, but a place where they were willing to take the risk of settling down for the sake of their family. 

We don’t know how long the family was settled in Moab before things started to turn, but we do know that after a period of time Elimelech dies, leaving Naomi with her two sons. Those men grew up and took Moabite wives. But then both Mahlon and Chilion die as well. 

Now the entire shape of the family has changed. No longer are they one happy family - Naomi and Elimelech and their two sons. Now all that remains is three childless widows. This is Naomi’s Job-like experience. She is in a land that is not her own. Without her family and friends. And now her family unit looks completely different because of death. 

So Naomi does the only thing that she can think to do - head back home. Hope against hope that someone will step up and help provide for her as a widow because she doesn’t have anything that would have been her own in this day and time. 

But Naomi somewhere along the road gets this realization that this is not what she wants for her two daughter-in-laws. They don’t have any children. Their is a slim possibility that they could go back to Moab and start again. Find someone who will marry them and settle down and start a family with them. And she didn’t want to be the reason that such a future would be pulled away from them. So she tries to send them back. Back to hope and possibility, so maybe, just maybe they wouldn’t end up in a future that looks as bleak as Naomi’s.

Eventually one of the daughter-in-laws, Orpah, was willing to turn back. To listen to Naomi’s advice. To go back in hope. But not Ruth. Ruth boldly declares that she was going to stick by Naomi through thick and thin, going as far as to make this vow that is often read at weddings. 

When we read this text, we often rightly focus on Ruth, whose name is that of the book of the Bible which contains this account. But today, I want to change our focus. I want to sit with the story of Naomi. Naomi who found her world entirely changed. Namoi who was caught in the midst of grief. 

I wonder, friends, if you know someone like Naomi in your life? Or maybe there have been seasons when you have felt like Naomi yourself - caught in the midst of suffering and pain. Those Job-like moments that rock our entire world. 

Naomi in this chapter is in deep grief and as such, she blames God. Notice that the narrator, the one telling us this story, is not blaming God. But Naomi is. How do you react when someone is hurting and blames God for what they have experienced?

I think many of us rush in and try to defend God. Try to explain to the Naomi’s in our lives why they are wrong. 

But I got to tell you friends, grief is not the time to try to explain deep theological truths to people. Because in grief all you can do is feel. And survive. 

Maybe the time will come when we can speak of our faith in the God of love and the God who doesn’t cause the pain we are going through, but instead redeems it. But when someone is deeply hurting that isn’t the place I would recommend starting. 

Instead we see in Ruth a completely different way. 

Ruth doesn’t try to argue with Naomi or talk her out of what she is feeling. She doesn’t try to assert her own beliefs. Instead in Ruth we find someone who is willing to be with another in the midst of their deep suffering. 

First, Ruth and Orpah were both willing to cry with Naomi. As Namoi is walking along the road to Bethlehem, stewing in her mind about how she doesn’t want her daughters-in-law to be locked into her faith, tears fell upon the road. When Naomi told Orpah and Ruth to go back, the women wept together, even as Naomi shared her concerns and gentle words. They wept when Orpah listened and Ruth did not. There were so many tears in this story. 

Friends, are we willing to be the people who cry with one another? All too often, I find that in our eagerness to make people feel better, we want to rush past this crucial step. We offer platitudes and words that we mean to be kind, telling people not to cry. But what would it look like, Church, if we were the people who were willing to cry with one another. To hold each other’s burdens in loving-kindness. 

Second, Ruth promised to be with Naomi. To be with her in the midst of it all. This a different type of presence then telling people to reach out to us if they need anything. This is sticking with some one through it all. This is the best version of Job’s friends, who got down in the dirt with them, before they started to blame him for his circumstances. This is fidelity, faithfulness, loving-kindness, with flesh on it. 

Church, this is not being with someone for a week or two. This is being with them for a life-time. 

Naomi believed that her God was big enough to hold her anger and grief and Ruth was willing to make space for Naomi to grieve, and not be alone in the grief, no matter what it may take. 

How about us, Church? How do we create spaces for one another to grieve? How can we cry with one another? Make space to hold each other’s weightiness when life comes at us, hard? Where are we today and where is God calling us to be?

May we be the space where Naomis can come and be held. Amen.