Welcome to the Family Story

Ruth 1:1-22; Matthew 5:3-8

Ruth said to her mother-in-law Naomi, “Wherever you go, that is where I will go. Wherever you stay, that is where I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. And wherever you will die, that is where I also will die and be buried with you.”

Have you had a chance to see the musical “Hamilton”? It’s the story of Alexander Hamilton, a young man born in the Caribbean who comes to New York to seek his fortune, becomes George Washington’s chief of staff in the Revolutionary War, a key Founding Father, the first secretary of the Treasury.

It’s a true story; all the events described in the musical actually happened in the 1780s and 1790s, up to Hamilton’s death in 1804. But it’s also obvious that the play was not written in 1804. The style of the music, the diversity of the cast, are all very clearly from the 21st century, not the 18th. And it’s also pretty obvious that the specific events that were chosen to be included in the musical, and the lens through which those stories are told, tell us just as much – if not more – about the questions we are asking about the meaning of our country in the 21st century than they tell us about the history of the 18th century.

A lot of the Bible is kind of like that too. Stories of God’s people are told and retold, and each time they not only give us information about the past but also shed light on the questions that the storytellers are asking in their present time. 

The Book of Ruth tells a story that happened very early in Israel’s history. At the end of this short book we will learn – spoiler alert! – that Ruth will become the great-grandmother of King David, which puts this story around 1100 B.C., maybe even a little earlier. And because it’s the origin story of the royal family, it’s a story that is like the story of Alexander Hamilton. It’s remembered and retold down through the generations. 

But this particular telling of the story of Ruth – the one that we have in our Bibles and that we began to read in our worship this morning – actually comes from a much later time, maybe around 450 or 400 years before Christ. The dynasty of King David has been ended by the Babylonians, who destroyed the Temple, carried off much of the people into exile. Many of those people have now returned, the Temple has been partially rebuilt, but things are not going well in Jerusalem.

The people have gone through a profound disruption, and nothing has really gotten back to normal. Perhaps we can relate. There is economic difficulty and disease. People felt disconnected, cut off from one another and their identity as God’s people. Chapters 9 and 10 of the book of Ezra tell us what happened next. The leaders came to the priest Ezra and told him what the problem was: “The people of Israel have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, the Canaanites, the Moabites, and their idols. They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves. So now let us make a covenant with God to send away all these foreign wives and their children, let it be done according to the law that forbids such marriages.” The book of Ezra even lists the names of families that were broken up as a result – dozens of them. Women cast aside, children disowned.

But, they thought, that was the price that had to be paid to get back God’s favor. To build a wall around God’s people, to separate them from all the impure people around them, that’s the way to make Israel great again. So the leaders of Israel thought. And it is in this context that someone remembered that the grandfather of King David was the child of a Hebrew father and a Moabite woman. So if we’re casting out all the Moabite wives and their children, there goes the family of King David, Israel’s greatest king. There goes the family of the Messiah, the expected coming Son of David, who is the one who will restore all things. And so they retold the ancient story of Ruth, the faithful Moabite woman, whose welcome and inclusion into the people of Israel was the source of great blessing and a window into the steadfast love and mercy of God. It was not just the retelling of a delightful ancient romance. It was a retelling to make a very specific point – that building walls and dividing families and excommunicating people is not God’s way and never was.

And so we have this story of a family from Bethlehem – the city of David, the city where the Messiah would one day be born. The story of Elimelech and Naomi, and their two sons, named Sickly and Frail. (By the way, what were their parents thinking, giving their kids the name Sickly and Frail? Those poor kids must have had a terrible time in middle school, don’t you think?) Anyway, as so often happens in the Middle East, there is a famine, and so this family heads off to the country of Moab, in what is today part of Jordan, looking for a place that has food.

And the good people of Moab are kind enough to take them in. Even after Elimelech dies, Sickly and Frail are strong enough to get married to local girls, to set down roots in this foreign land. But then Sickly and Frail both die as well, apparently without any children, and now – according to the customs of the time – Naomi is now responsible to support and provide for her two Moabite daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. But Naomi is herself a widow, and a foreigner in the country of Moab. She sees no way forward for her life or her family, but the famine is now over, so she decides to go back home to Bethlehem.

At first Orpah and Ruth join her on the way. But – and we will see more of this in the chapters to come – Naomi is a shrewd and strong woman. She is thinking things through. On the one hand, her obligation (as people in those days understood it) is to support and protect her two daughters-in-law, who are now part of her family. It’s her job to get them husbands who can give them children to take care of them in their old age. But Naomi recognizes she cannot do this. She cannot ask Orpah and Ruth to be widows and foreigners in a country that is not their own, when she, Naomi, does not have the means to support or protect them. So Naomi tells them – You will be better off going back to your own families of origin, staying with your own people. Orpah reluctantly agrees that what Naomi says makes sense, and with many tears, she turns back to Moab to try to salvage something of her life back home.

But Ruth insists on staying with her mother-in-law Naomi, no matter what. Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, that is where I will live. Your people will be my people, your God will be my God. Not even death can separate me from you. Ruth’s words are often read and sung even today at weddings – when people from different families, different stories, different places, sometimes different faith traditions, make promises to one another out of love.

And so I am invited to become part of my partner’s family, with all of their personalities and quirks and idiosyncrasies, with all their stories and inside jokes, all their foods and traditions, not because they are my stories or I belong in them, but because someone in this family loves me. And my partner is likewise welcomed into my family, with all of our dysfunction and weirdness and all of our joys and strengths, because I have told them that this is the person that I love and brings me happiness.

None of this is easy – if you have ever had a relationship serious enough that it’s time to meet the potential in-laws, you know how awkward it can get. And sometimes the awkwardness never goes away. But when it works, it is remarkable just how strong the bonds can be between people who are otherwise very much unlike each other, when they are brought into existence by people who love.

Ruth wants to be drawn into Naomi’s story. To be included in Naomi’s people, to know Naomi’s God. In fact, it seems to me that Ruth actually knows Naomi’s God better than Naomi does. At the end of today’s reading, Naomi arrives home in Bethlehem, the city she left more than a decade ago with her husband Elimelech and her two boys, hoping for a better life. Now she returns with this strange young woman in tow, and the people of the town recognize her – Naomi! Is that you? After all these years?

And Naomi says – Don’t call me Naomi. My name is not Pleasant, my name is Bitter. I have lost everything I cared about – I have lost my husband, I have lost my two children, I have lost my hope of grandchildren, I have lost my self-respect. I am bitter about how the Lord has treated me. (pause) So what’s new with you? What have you been up to these last ten years? Remember, these are the people who stayed through the famine. They too, no doubt, suffered loss and hardship in those years. Who knows, maybe they have even more to be bitter about than Naomi. But Naomi is too wrapped up in her own grief to see beyond it.

It is Ruth, who has insisted – against all reason and logic – on sticking with Naomi. It is Ruth who understands how blessed are the poor in spirit. It is Ruth who knows that the meek and those who mourn in fact are blessed. It is Ruth who hopes that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will have their fill. Somehow – maybe it was Naomi on better days, maybe it was poor old Sickly or Frail – but somewhere along the way Ruth came to see that the God of Israel is the God of promise and hope, and Ruth has enough faith to believe that she can be included in this family of God.

The writer who retold the story of Ruth to the people of one time and place, who retells the story of Ruth for us as well, wants us to know: Yes, you may be bitter like Naomi. You may be overwhelmed by grief and loss. You may be trying to get back a life and a time that you remember but that is gone forever. And you may feel that your only choice is to put up walls and find some “other” to blame for all your troubles. But the way of God is and always has been to tear down walls, to forge new communities and new connections, to welcome the widow and the stranger and in that welcome find renewal and blessing and promise. 

This story of Ruth, this ancient tale of the Hebrew people, is a story that we have been invited to share in, because a member of Ruth’s family – a direct descendent of Ruth, as it turns out – by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, has invited us to make this story our own. Because of the love that Jesus has for us, we – like Ruth – have been invited into his family. May we also have the faith of Ruth, may we be bold enough to risk everything to trust that in this family we will find a God of welcome and peace and blessing, that we will hear a story of walls coming down and strangers being welcomed, that our tears of bitterness will be turned into shouts of welcome and songs of celebration.