Sermon
Heathmont Uniting Church
27 August 2017 - Migrant and Refugee Sunday
Ruth 2
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TaikaWaititi is the New Zealand film maker who created films like Boy and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and the soon to be released Thor: Ragnarock. He was given the honour of being New Zealander of the year for 2017. His focus theme for this year is “Combatting Racism” in our societies. Using his filmmaking skills, and his tongue in cheek humour, he created this short video, highlighting the way racism is kept alive, and ways in which we can reduce it. It is titled, “Give Nothing to Racism”.
Each time we open the pages of scripture, we are artfully reading it in a different context. The literary art of Hermeneutics demands that we take seriously the world in which we live, and the world of the scriptures, and the message of the story and stories at the same time. It is art, more than science.
This week we open the book of Ruth again. This week our news feeds have been full of stories of racism from the USA and Australia. We have also heard and seen the struggles of modern slaves, and Julie Bishop has promised to increase resources to combat Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery in Australia, and in our region of the Pacific and Asia.
Modern slavery is what happens this morning in Gippsland when migrant workers will be out in fields and vineyards for little or no pay, living in cramped conditions where vulnerable women are not protected from predatory men, no healthcare is offered, and their passports are held with threats against these people if they tell anyone else what is happening. Today.In Victoria.
Ruth and Naomi are vulnerable.
Naomi is the Israelite who went to Moab with her husband and sons because of a famine. Moab is a foreign country, with a different culture, religion, ethnicity and language. She returned to her own country, having buried her husband and sons, returning with one daughter in law. The country they return to is a foreign country to Ruth, with a different culture, religion, ethnicity and language.
Moab was not only foreign, it was also an enemy. In the book of Judges (before this story) the king of Moab tried to place a curse on the people of Israel. In the books of Kings and Chronicles (after this story), the Moabites made war on Israel. Ruth was born and bred in Moab.
Two widows in a time and country where women were unprotected without a family, and without land, without any visible means of support.They return with little money and even less hope. Naomi and her family left Bethlehem, (translated “the house of bread”), because there was no bread. They returned to a harvest for which only one could work.
“I will instruct my men not to molest you."
It was a feeling of overwhelming shock and sadness that gripped Rebecca and I as we sat in the dingy office of a minister of a church in downtown Johannesburg. The tale we were listening to was one of the horror of refugees who had fled Zimbabwe and Mozambique to find work, to find safety, to live longer than their relatives who had died under the hand of militia and oppressive governments. They packed up everything they had and walked across the border into a land that should have been safer.
“A woman is considered lucky if she is only raped twice in her journey here”, we were told by Paul.
The refugees were sheltered in the churches and sanctuaries if they could find them, and if they could find the space.
Somehow, this horror was better than what they had!
“I’ll instruct my young men not to molest you”.
Ruth - a young woman, a widow, poor, a foreigner.Vulnerable to abuse, assault, racism, rape and exploitation.
The story of Ruth has everything to do with the very modern struggles of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in our nation. Human Trafficking and modern slavery is alive and well even here. So is racism. So is the abuse of vulnerable women and children.
Before the people of Israel came into the promised land, God instructed them;
… The Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship …”
In 3 different places, in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, God says this:When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.
That’s where Ruth and the other women were able to gather around the fields and gather those scraps that had fallen out of the bales of barley and wheat.
I wonder how we should respond to the stories we read in our papers or see on our tvs or hear on our radios – and this story of Ruth.
- When we touch our food or our clothes, we might give thanks for the hands that have produced them … whether vulnerable, or strong, or calloused or pregnant or loved or rejected.
- I wonder if what we buy might be effected by where it comes from and what labour has produced it?
- I wonder whether we might join our voices to the chorus of protest by writing to our State and Federal MPs?
… and where is God in all this?
In the book of Ruth,
God is between the lines,
in the tender words between Naomi and Ruth,
in the careful attention of Boaz,
in the words “as it happened, Ruth went to the field of Boaz”.
For “a coincidence is a miracle where God prefers to remain anonymous.”
For that’s where God is for us.
Just on the edges of our vision
Between the lines
In the midst of our stories, our tears, our laughter.
Is it luck or karma or providence?
No.
God is in the patient, unspoken moments,
in the midst of life’s joys and tragedies.
Blink and you miss it - but it doesn’t mean that you miss out.
As we read and reread the book of Ruth,
in the story, gathering names and images
feeling the sense of hopelessness
and then growing hope …
God is present in those stories
as God is present in ours.
-amen-