Wherever You Go, I Go
Wherever You Go, I Go
Ruth 1:1-17
I’ve been making the case for a while now that what we are called to do is live our faith. Being a part of a faith community can help us live our faith because others may help us to see what a lived faith looks like or they may challenge us when we wander from a faithful path or they may be supports for us when we are going through hard times. Of course, just as importantly, in community, we also get the chance to be there for others in all those same ways. The presence of a loving, caring faith community can be a huge help. However, in the end, what matters is the faith that we live, whether we are at church or not.
As I’ve said to you many times before, Jesus spent almost no time inside of “designated holy place”—a church or synagogue or temple. He taught a lot of things but what he taught was how to lie our faith by loving God and loving our neighbor, not by being a regular church goer. Jesus is the ultimate example for us of lived faith. The example he sets for us, though, is of a faith lived 24/7, no matter where you go, no matter who you are with: “Who needs help? Who is in need? Who is being excluded that I could include?”
This idea of faith being lived by ordinary people in the ordinary events of their lives did not start with Jesus. While the Hebrew Scriptures are full of larger than life people—Abraham and Moses and King David and the life, there are also powerful stories about ordinary folks—people like you and me—who bring faith to life. One of those people is Ruth, for whom the Book of Ruth is named.
If you pause and think about it, it is really astounding that Ruth is even mentioned in the Scriptures, much less that a whole book is devoted to telling her story. This woman had three huge strikes against her. First, she’s a woman. Very few women are named in the Bible. Those whose stories are told are often temptresses or sources of some other evil. A handful of women are lifted up to us as faithful women. Second, Ruth is not only a woman, she is a foreigner. She is from Moab. If being female didn’t disqualify her from being taken seriously, being a foreigner certainly would. Finally, she is a young widow. Widows had almost no standing in society. And yet…against all the odds, Ruth’s story has survived for thousands of years. Let me introduce her to you…
The story begins early in the life of the people of Israel. We are introduced to a husband and wife—Elimelech and Naomi—and their two sons—Mahlon and Kilion. They had a good life in Bethlehem until a famine came. Desperate for food, they left their home and fled to Moab in the hope of finding food.
At this point, we should pause and consider how many stories in Scripture involve refugees. Famine drives Joseph and his brothers into Egypt. Moses liberates the people from slavery but they are homeless nomads in the wilderness for years. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph and Mary and the baby, Jesus, flee to Egypt to be safe and out of Herod’s reach. Maybe it’s a matter of faith that we, as a people with refugee ancestors, might look at the refugees today with an extra measure of grace. It’s a tough place to be in life—strangers in a strange land.
As is often the case when ordinary people are at the mercy of fate, life only gets harder for this family in their new land. After undoubtedly being relieved to be away from the famine and thinking things would be okay, the father, Elimelech, dies, leaving Naomi a vulnerable widow. The good news was that she had two grown sons with her, sons who were old enough to marry Moabite women and maybe find some security. The first son, Mahlon, marries Orpah. (My understanding is that Oprah Winfrey was named after Orpah but her family jumbled the letters!). The second son, Kilion, marries Ruth.
This time, for ten years, everything seem okay. They’ve all but forgotten the famine. They’ve mourned Elimelech. The sons and their Moabite daughters have built a life for themselves, a life which included caring for their mother. All signs are that everyone has put together a life. Then, tragedy strikes, not once but two times. Both of Naomi’s sons die. Namoi has now lost her home country, her husband and both of her sons which is more loss than almost anyone could take.
Again, we need to pause. Real people have real problems. When famines come, you do what you have to do to survive. When losses happen, you do whatever it takes to survive. Right about the time it feels like life’s okay, more losses come your way. Resilient people work to keep hope alive, work to answer the question, “What should I do next?” Naomi, having received more than her fair share of tragedy, finds hope when word comes that the famine is over in Israel. She thinks to herself, “Maybe it’s time to go home…”
When she gets ready to go home, her two daughters-in-law initially come with her. It’s clear that over the course of ten years, these women had genuinely come to love one another. All three husbands are gone but these women still care for each other. Pretty quickly, though, Naomi stops dead in her tracks. She looks the two young women in the eyes and realizes that she needs to release them. They were fantastic wives to her sons. They were beloved “daughters” for all those years, too. These women deserved to have a life. They deserved to have new husbands and a chance to love again. Naomi tells Orpah and Ruth to go live with their mothers and start their lives over again.
In the words of our translation, Orpah “does what’s best for herself.” She takes Naomi’s advice seriously and leaves Naomi’s side. In a world that was very harsh for widows, retreating to her family’s care made complete sense. It was the best shot Orpah would have at surviving. Naomi would have totally supported this decision, as would any audience who heard this story in the ancient world. Sometimes, you had to take care of you. That’s what Orpah was doing. That’s what we’ve all done, too.
Then, there is Ruth. Initially, both Orpah and Ruth rejected Naomi’s advice. Eventually, Orpah leaves. Ruth, though, embraces Naomi and refuses to let go. Even with Ruth’s arms wrapped around her, Naomi points out to Ruth that Orpah has left: “It’s okay for you to go, too.” Still, Ruth holds on for dear life. Then, Ruth says the most amazing thing, ““Don’t force me to leave you; don’t make me go home. Where you go, I go; and where you live, I’ll live. Your people are my people, your God is my god; where you die, I’ll die, and that’s where I’ll be buried, so help me God—not even death itself is going to come between us!”
“Where you go, I go.” In a few words, Ruth embodies loyalty and commitment and love. Of course it makes sense to leave like Orpah left. Of course, its possible to imagine rolling the dice on something better. Of course, it’s tempting to run when things get hard. That’s not who Ruth is and that’s not what Ruth does. She stands her ground and declares that what matters more than where she lives or how comfortable her life might be is the person whom she loves—Naomi. In a world where husbands can die and famines can unfold and who knows what tragedy might come next, what matters is that Naomi and Ruth are together.
Loyalty and commitment—not to a nation or a tradition or to obligations but to each other— that’s what matters to Ruth. She’s a foreigner and a woman and a widow but that sense of loyalty and commitment is so rare and so needed in the world that her story makes the book and is told for thousands of years following. In a world that is always susceptible to “What’s in it for me?” Ruth is the shining, clear cut example of what lived faith looks like—a lived faith that looks and says, “Whatever comes our way, it will happen to us and we will deal with it together.”
Our ancestors needed to hear that loyalty mattered, that relationship mattered, that such things mattered way more than where you were from or whether you were a man or a woman or whether you’d had a fortunate life. We live in a world where we need that reminder, too. It’s so easy to choose to do the expected thing, to do what anyone else would do, to be committed as long as we can make the case that our commitment makes sense, that it is in our interest, that it won’t really cost us that much. It’s not hard to be Orpah and be good and loving and kind and then…move on.
It’s hard to be Ruth. You have to do the right thing not because it is expedient or leads to some clear positive outcome. You have to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing, the loving thing, the faithful thing to do. You have to throw caution to the wind and trust that even if things get hard—and they will—even if there is a cost for doing the right thing—and there almost always is—still, I will be able to live with myself. In order to have the kind of integrity that Ruth embodies, you have to be ready to go all in on doing the right thing.
There are such people in the world. Here’s where I find them, though. They are not the larger than life characters. Rather, they are the people who fly below the radar and are quietly about the business of caring. It is the woman who relentlessly cares for her husband who has dementia. She loves him, plain and simple, always has, always will, no matter how hard this gets. It is the people in this church who go on a work trip and give up precious vacation time or pay a price because their going to miss a sports practice or willingly choose to take on a project which is going to be really hard and, by the way, it’s going to be really hot, too. It is the folks in every generation, who have sized this quirky church up, seen all it’s foibles, and, nevertheless, declared, “This is my church, I’m all in!”
We live in a world in which caring about the needs of others is a nice afterthought or something you do when you have extra time or extra money or extra energy. We live in a world in which smart people prioritize their career trajectory or their resume’ or simply whatever feels good. Making real sacrifices and taking big risks and declaring deep commitments in order to help someone else hardly makes any sense at all. Here’s the thing, though: self-sacrifice and taking big risks and making deep commitments may not make sense but they do make for a faithful life.
Ruth’s goes all in with Naomi. She makes a commitment that no smart person would ever consider. When she makes that commitment, she takes a leap of faith. Next week, we’ll see where that leap carries her…