RUTH 1:1-19a

PSALM 113

2 TIMOTHY 2:3-15

LUKE 17:11-19

Sermon – 10/14/01

“Foreigners”, Grace and Faith

This morning we hear stories of suffering and affliction and how God acts – in unexpected ways and through unexpected people. Both the afflictions and the unexpected people may be extremely pertinent to us, here, today.

Let’s start with Ruth. This is one of the shortest books of the Old Testament, is set around 1100 B.C. and peppered with archaic, Middle Eastern customs and rituals and yet is vivid, topical, real and well worth reading in its entirety.

We have the saga of a man and his wife and two sons having to leave their homeland due to famine and seek refuge in another country. They are Israelites and their country of refuge is Moab, a nation just across the Dead Sea from Israel in what is now southern Jordan. Moab, it’s important to know, was by then already a traditional enemy of Israel – as it would remain – and was famous for its resistance to the Israelites militarily and its efforts to seduce the Israelites (literally and theologically) into following the Moabite way of life – which included a grim paganism that sometimes involved even infant sacrifice.

We can suspect that this Israelite family was not happy to have to go to Moab for refuge.

And while there, disaster strikes. The husband and father died. Then, the two sons of his widow, Naomi, married Moabite women, which could not have thrilled their mother. Finally, both the sons die. Naomi is devastated; the four of them had come to Moab to save their lives, but three out of the four of them die anyway. All Naomi is left with is these two pagan daughters-in-law, whose very existence perhaps reminds her of their country which has been so lethal to her family.

Nevertheless, Naomi manages to be civil to her daughters-in-law, and when she resolves to go back to her homeland she formally releases her daughters-in-law from all customary obligations to care for her in her old age. Her daughter-in-law Orpah weeps, kisses Naomi, and then stays in Moab, as would be expected. Naomi is deeply depressed, and blames God for her misfortune. God does not punish her for blaming him.

Naomi turns to trudge back to Judah, but finds that she can’t get rid of her daughter-in-law, Ruth. Naomi tries to, but Ruth says, “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” Ruth decides to convert – one of the least opportunistic conversions in history. Ruth, as Naomi points out, is “hitching herself to a bandwagon which has no band”: Naomi should be out looking for a husband (who in that chauvinistic age would protect and care for her, hopefully) and by whom she could have children (who would be her only “social security” in her old age). The prospects for a childless widow in 1100 B.C. were bleak indeed, as Naomi well knew; she must have thought Ruth was crazy to want to hang out with her and presumably remain, like her, a childless widow – and in a foreign country.

That’s where this morning’s excerpt ends, with them trudging across the Jordan River back to Judah. Now for the rest of the story. Ruth manages to be allowed to be a “gleaner” – someone who goes through a field after the harvesters and pick up stray bits of grain they’ve missed, a traditional “workfare” opportunity for the destitute. While there, she is providentially guided to a field owned by a relative of her late husband, a man named Boaz, who ultimately marries her. They have a son, and at nearly the end of the story we see (Naomi), astonished and joyful cuddling Ruth’s baby boy, while the villagers sing the praises of the pagan foreigner who, in the villagers’ words “is more to you Naomi than seven sons” (the ultimate accolade).

But that’s not all. The Book of Ruth ends with a genealogy, something many readers of the Bible skip. Don’t skip this one. It seems that Boaz and Ruth had a son named Obed, and Obed had a son named Jesse, and Jesse had a son named David. And, Oh yes, the village Naomi and Ruth trudged back to was named Bethlehem. This ring a bell? Yes, that David, greatest King of Israel, was Ruth, the foreigner’s, great-grandson. No Ruth, no David. And David’s genealogy is later continued in the first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel down through another thousand years until it reaches the name of a certain carpenter named Joseph who had to take his pregnant wife back to his ancestral hometown, Bethlehem, for the census “because he was of the house and lineage of David.”

And suddenly, we realize that this poignant, archaic story of the foreign, pagan daughter-in-law who Naomi couldn’t get rid of is an essential precursor to the story of… Christmas. The birth of the Savior of the World.

And thanks to the faith, hope and love of a woman, Ruth, who normally would have been viewed with suspicion and loathing by believers in the Lord, great blessings were showered upon believers in the Lord – and ultimately, on the whole world. God’s plan involved… a foreigner. Maybe she even wore a head covering.

The Samaritans get such a “good press” in the New Testament that it’s hard to realize how unpopular they were among Jews in the first Century. The Samaritans were descendents of the people who settled in the northern part of the Holy Land after the Assyrian Empire conquered and dispersed the Northern Tribes (who became “The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel”). They were thus “mixed” ethnically, and neither “pure” Jewish ethnically nor were they fully Jewish theologically, as their entire Bible has only the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures: Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

As a small minority in the first Century who were considered ethnically impure and religiously eccentric at best, the Samaritans were easy targets for prejudice by Jews proud of their power or ancestry or “correct theology” or all three – so Jesus telling the story of “The Good Samaritan” shocked people.

In the incident in today’s Gospel, Jesus heals ten lepers – and only one, a Samaritan, comes back to say thank-you to Jesus. Jesus says, “’Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’”

Once again, a foreigner – this time a man – is singled out as an example of faith. Ruth was a means for God to bless Naomi and posterity; this nameless ex-leper was healed and blessed by Jesus. Both were examples of faith, blessing and thankfulness that narrowly religious or narrowly patriotic people would not have been able to accept.

Let us remember, too, that in biblical terms “foreigner” means anyone who is not a Palestinian Jew. Those are the “foreigners” to whom Paul preached, at great risk to himself. Those are the “foreigners” that the Christian church realized could become heirs of God’s Promises, by adoption and grace.

In biblical terms, any one of us who is not, by birth, descended from Palestinian Jews, is a “foreigner” who has been included in the family of God “by grace through faith” – just like Ruth and the Samaritan leper.

We are the “foreigners”.

So we Christians are the last people on earth who should be suspicious of all “foreigners” and doubtful that God’s love could come to them or purposes carried out by them. “They” are “us”.

I am sure that in the midst of “this present darkness” God is with us – so we need to be alert enough to recognize him. If he comes again as a 30 year old, bearded, Middle Eastern man… well, he might get “profiled” and hauled in for questioning.

It’s happened before.

Let us be vigilant, as we must, on the look-out for evil-doers – some of whom may be about as Middle Eastern as, say, Timothy McVey, Ted Kacyzski, Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson. Let us judge people “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”, as Martin Luther King, Jr., said.

And just as we have been shocked and devastated at the appalling power and presence of Evil in the world, let us expect to be surprised at how God can bring blessings, and through what unexpected people. Like Ruth.

Let us remember, as we celebrate the life and ministry of our brothers and sisters in Christ in El Salvador over lunch today, that God does indeed “have the whole world in his hands”, and we are called to embrace the goodness of the whole world not merely with tolerance, but with understanding, with respect and with joy.

When we can all stand and stretch out our arms to embrace the world and say, ”Lord, today I found out how big my family is,” then it will be clear that the terrorists have lost.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church