Jon Hauerwas – “Longing” – May 14, 2017

Genesis 16:1-5, 15 and Ruth 1:1-5

In the course of my ministry, I have had conversations with many people who are grieving. Often, a child calls to say that a parent has just died. I am asked to share the news with the congregation and to help plan a public memorial. Then, in the midst of that sharing, memories emerge. Narrative forms. Voices crack. Tears flow. Eventually, laughter returns once again. This is what it means to love.

The Old Testament book of Ruth tells a deeply personal story. It begins in Bethlehem of Judah, the city of David, where Jesus is said to have been born. And it features a group of people known as the Ephrathites. In ancient times, names were highly symbolic. So it is no coincidence that the root word for Ephrath means “fruitful,” “fertile,” or “productive.”[1]The descendants of this clan have names, too. Elimelech and Naomi are married. Mahlon and Chilion are their sons.

And yet, fruitfulness quickly meets its match. We read no further than verse one to learn that “there was a famine in the land.” And soon, the descendants of a fruitful, fertile, and productive people find themselves in want. Their future seems uncertain. Desperation sets in.

And so, they move. They pick up their belongings and they walk away. I am reminded here of other biblical journeys. Journeys to Egypt in times of famine or to flee a threatened king.This family does not go to Egypt, but they do leaveBethlehem behind, and Judah, and the Promised Land. And together, they enter the land of Moab where they live among a people who are often at odds with the Hebrews. Soon the plot grows dark. Elimelech, the family’s patriarch, dies. Then, his sons do too. Years earlier, they had marriedlocal women. But neither union has resulted in offspring.

As Edward Campbell notes, what is established here “is a dire set of socio-legal circumstances… Three women have all become widows and there is now no male heir left in the family; the figure at center stage, Naomi, is in a land foreign to her and she has been away from home for at least a decade.”[2]

Another scholar, Kathleen Farmer, describes it this way: “the ones who look for more abundant life in Moab find death there instead. Naomi’s life turns from ‘full’ in the midst of famine to ‘empty’ in the midst of plenty, and Naomi herself turns from ‘sweet’ to ‘bitter.’”[3] “These travelers… find only barrenness and death in Moab.” [4]

Well today, of course, is Mother’s Day, which begs this question: why did the pastor choose such a heavy scripture for this occasion? Isn’t Mother’s Day supposed to be about cards, and candy, and flowers? Who am I, or anyone else, to dampen the mood?

Today, I assure you that I do wish to honor those women who have lived, through much sacrifice, that traditional model of motherhood. In so many ways, these courageous women have formed us. But, I also wish to honor a variety of other women – those who never married or had children, either as a matter of choice or of circumstance. I want to honor mothers who have died far too soon, and mothers like my own who have endured the death of a child. I was actually the third in line. The second, a little girl, died at one week old from congestive heart failure.

What do we say to these women on Mother’s Day? That parenting is only about joy, and light, and life? What about those who will spend this Mother’s Day mourning the incarceration of a son or the abuse of a daughter, the addiction of a grandchild or years of personal estrangement and cutoff? And what do the scriptures have to teach us?

The book of Ruth is“only eighty-five verses long, but the words ‘redeem,’ ‘redeemer,’ and ‘redemption,’ are used twenty-three times.” Naomi, the one who has lost so much – food security, shelter, homeland, husband, children, and status – this outsider becomes theultimate recipient of redemption. And Ruth, her Moabite daughter-in-law, becomes the instrument that God uses to accomplish Naomi’s redemption.[5]

Naomi’s life does not end in tragedy, but with a radical reversal of her bitterness, emptiness, and hopelessness. [6] Naomi is not the model of exemplary behavior, but of the graciousness of God. Indeed,“God chooses to redeem those who seem to have done little to deserve redemption. And God chooses those who seem unqualified according to human standards of judgment to accomplish God’s purposes in the world.”[7]

How is it, I wonder, that you define fruitfulness in your own life.Are you left longing for deeper relationships and years gone past, or do you feel that you are now enjoying the fruits of your labors, whatever they may be? Are you at peace, satisfied, and content? Or are you longing for life’s great reversal? Some redemption at long last.

These are the questions not only to be found in the book of Ruth, but are at the very heart of the cross and in the great reversal of the resurrection. If God is capable of this great love, then surely, God can make all things new in our lives. May it be so and all thanks be to God both now and forever. Amen.

[1] Kathleen A. Robertson Farmer, Ruth, The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary Volume II, ed. Leander Keck (Abingdon Press, 1998), 900.

[2] Edward F. Campbell, Jr., Ruth, The Anchor BibleVolume 7, ed. David Noel Freedman (Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1975), 58.

[3]Ibid., 899.

[4]Ibid.,900.

[5]Ibid., 892.

[6]Ibid., 892.

[7]Ibid., 893.