Unexpected Heroes

Ruth 1:1-18

You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin–-to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours–-closer than you yourself keep it. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. Anyway: there it is.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Like many of the books in the Writings section of Hebrew Scripture, you need to read the whole book of Ruth to get the real picture.   At least it’s shorter than e.g. Job, so it is something you could easily do settled into a comfortable chair with a cuppa.

The book is very likely a critique of male-centred law and culture, a challenge to the power of patriarchy and the powerlessness of women (and children) when they have no men to attach to.  It is clearly also a critique of xenophobia which patriarchy feeds into.  Now that’s very much a topic for contemporary consideration.

The important characters in this story turn out to be the least powerful people.  The people at the margins.

Do you know what it is like to be disregarded?  To feel dispensable.  Not sure of being any use.  To feel on the margins of a group.

The heroes in the book of Ruth – it might look like it’s Boaz the man in the story who rescued them from poverty, but actually it’s Naomi and Ruth – are margins people.

Bitter Naomi – that’s what her name means.  Her first thought in her dire situation is the welfare of others, of Orpah and Ruth.  That’s her response to being a nobody in the world’s view.

This is a clear pointer to her faith – her God is expansive, inclusive.  Even when she is suffering, even when she feels abandoned, she doesn’t lose this sense of all-encompassing life-giving Spirit and so can give of herself.

Ruth’s response to the dire situation is a promise to an “other”, to someone who in standard terms she does not belong with and has no connection or responsibility to.

This is a clear pointer to her faith – her God doesn’t take belonging as a cultural given, determined by birth and place in the world, but chooses belonging. Her God doesn’t see boundaries of social or political or cultural or economic making but, like Naomi’s, is expansive, inclusive.

Like Naomi, her response to being a nobody, counting for nothing in the world’s view, is to think of the welfare of this other person.

Here we have an unexpected God shown to us by unexpected people.  An understanding of Spirit and life that means it’s possible to risk the new and different.  We don’t have to stay within the confines of the known which so often require us not to care beyond our own zone.  For the sake of our own security and survival we shouldn’t risk too much compassion.

And we see God at work in unspectacular ways. God’s presence in the book of Ruth is through the characters, not grand action, but the little things of relationships.  Little things that really are the big things.  God is seen in what’s called in Hebrew hesed. Faithfulness, kindness, compassion, loyalty, never faltering love.  Aroha.

That’s the heart of who we are.

Shalom Rangimarie Peace, Robyn

An Act of Human Courage

Moemoeātia te moemoeā engari whakatīnanahia
Dream the dream but achieve it also
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You’re not trying hard enough. Sorry. Please save your praise, we don’t want it. Don’t invite us here to tell us how inspiring we are without doing anything about it. It doesn’t lead to anything.
Greta Thunberg to the US Senate
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People need hope and inspiration desperately. But hope and inspiration are only sustained by work.
Tarana Burke
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We are hearing a loud and very clear challenge from young people right now. It reminds me of the verses in Joel (quoted in Acts 2) about sons and daughters prophesying and young people seeing visions.

Their vision of their future as adults concerns them greatly. Will life on this planet be liveable?
What will it be like in 2100 when babies born now reach old age.

There is quite a debate going on whether our youth should be leaving school classes to protest about climate change. As one politician (aged 70 plus) said, “they should be at school, getting a good education, and then being able to contribute to our country’s productivity.” But they can see longer term than the next two or even three decades.

Specifically, their protest is about the inaction of leaders on whom they have to rely at this stage of their lives. They are not yet the leaders. They do not yet vote. But it is their future that is most at stake.

Joel also said that the old people are to dream dreams. There is a clear role for the elders to draw on experience and keep dreams alive. With a lifetime of living in expectation and hope that we can make a difference for the future, there’s no point giving that up now, no matter how hard it is and no matter how bad it seems to get.

The prophets in the Old Testament were big on hope. Unfortunately, we’ve more often heard just their opening words, the ones making clear bad stuff was happening; the leaders were not being leaders for all the people, some getting the benefits, but most being left out; that the earth itself is being damaged. Yes, they talked about that too – environmental destruction by raiding armies and by urban exploitation of the rural poor.

The prophets started with “a state of the nation” strip down. They continued with a message of change and of hope. Turn back to ways of living that build community and livelihood for all. Turn back to God: keep the faith and work for the future.
Jeremiah did something like this when he bought back a piece of family land right in the middle of the exile (Jeremiah 32), when that land was still under the control of the occupying Babylonians. He put his money where his mouth was, to show people he believed God did have a good future for them. They just needed to join it, to believe it would happen and do whatever they could to work towards it.

That’s what I see as our call to action, all of us as adults, older and younger, and as young people.

Like Jeremiah, believe in what seems almost impossible with the trend of current events – a future that is liveable for the next generations and not condemned to conflict and contest over resources.

Yes, be inspired by our young people, inspired to help turn our dreams of what good life looks like and feels like into their reality in the decades to come.
It’s not the whole solution we’re asked to come up with. Just to have hope. To have hope and to prove it by living now in a way that helps towards good life on this planet. Every little bit makes a difference.

The last word is from an Old Testament scholar whose teaching has been formative for me, Walter Brueggemann. Hope is for him a key theme, perhaps the key theme of the Bible:

Hope is not a passive reliance upon God. Hope is a human act of commitment to and investment in the future. Hope is an act of human courage that refuses to cherish the present too much or be reduced to despair by present circumstance. Hope is the capacity to relinquish the present for the sake of what is imagined to be a reachable future. In the end, hope is a practice that bets on a vision of the future that is judged to be well beyond present circumstance, even if one does not know how to get from here to there.

Rangimarie Peace Shalom
Robyn