God’s Shadow

Ruth 1:1-18

In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. When they had lived there for about ten years, both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman was left without her two sons or her husband.

Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had had consideration for his people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back to the land of Judah. But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, ‘Go back each of you to your mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband.’ Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. They said to her, ‘No, we will return with you to your people.’ But Naomi said, ‘Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.’ Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.

So she said, ‘See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.’ But Ruth said,
‘Do not press me to leave you
   or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
   where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
   and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die—
   there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
   and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!’
When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.

The book of Ruth is more akin to a folk tale or a short story than your typical book of the Bible. In fact, Boaz (whom we haven’t even met yet) is the only character in the story who is mentioned again in the entirety of the Bible. It’s a story that’s full of drama, tragedy, and love. It, spoiler alert for next week, has a happy ending. And maybe most interesting about this story, is that God is very much in the background. God pops in here and there to end a famine and to grant fertility, but God is mostly mentioned in passing. Naomi laments that she feels God has abandoned her in verse 20, “…the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me,” she says. But she doesn’t question God. There’s no back and forth like there is with Job. And Ruth, our main character, doesn’t even begin the story as a Jew. She’s a Moabite, a foreigner; God never gives her any direct instructions as God does with Moses; God never directly tests her as with Abraham. She’s a poor, grieving, widowed convert, who acts the way she does simply because it is right.

And today, we hear the beginning of the story. We hear almost nothing but tragedy. Three women are left widows after leaving home with their now-dead husbands because of famine. And we’ve talked before about the fact that widows were some of the most disenfranchised groups in Biblical days. There were really no protections in place; they couldn’t own land, they couldn’t make any kind of significant income. They really only had a couple options—beg or glean. (Gleaning, which they end up doing, is picking up the scraps of a field after it’s been harvested). So these were three women in absolutely dire straits.

Because Naomi feels she has been wronged by God in some sense, she begs Orpah and Ruth to go back to their homes of origin. “…the hand of the Lord has turned against me,” she says, trying to convince them that she’s no good to be around; why would they want to hang around someone who has nothing to offer them, who will only bring them down? Orpah relents and leaves. But Ruth stays. We don’t know why. Maybe she just had that much love for her deceased husband and therefore his family; maybe she was raised to be wholly loyal regardless of circumstances. Maybe her homelife was an unhappy one and she has nothing to go back to. Whatever the reason, she chooses to stay with her mother-in-law, to be a support to her in both their time of need.

Whenever I read texts like this in the Jewish Hebrew Bible, I’m often reminded of a song lyric. I’ve preached about this song lyric before; but it’s written by the songwriter David Berman, front man and creator of the bands Silver Jews and Purple Mountains. Berman sadly died by suicide not long after this Purple Mountains song was released, but you can hear the pain in his voice when he sings the question, “How long can the world go on under such a subtle God? / How long can the world go on with no new word from God?” Berman struggled with his Jewish faith alongside his struggles with mental illness as substance abuse. When he first got sober he dedicated himself to the Judaism of his youth; he very seriously studied Torah, he took his faith very seriously; but years later he became disillusioned again. In Berman’s obituary from the publication Jewish Currents, Berman is quoted as saying,

…there was no real place for me in Judaism. Maybe if there was I would’ve hung in there, but I was attracted to the social-justice aspects of Judaism, and I was attracted to the prophets . . . Part of it was also that Judaism is all about community . . . and where I live in Nashville, there’s just nothing there. The reform temples—the rabbis are like anchormen. There was just no community for me.[i]

So Berman didn’t really lose his faith in God; or what his religion stood for. He lost his faith in what his community could offer him and the greater world. He didn’t feel a connection to the clergy. He felt adrift. He felt lost. He felt isolated. He couldn’t find a spiritual home. He was, in that sense, the archetypal Jew—wandering, lost, searching for a God and a home in a fragmented and cruel world. Sadly, Berman never really found it. But if you listen to and read so many of his song lyrics, you can hear so clearly that he never stopped searching.

In another of his songs, in the chorus of “There is a Place” from 2005, he repeats, almost chants, “I saw God’s shadow on this world.”

God’s shadow is all over the book of Ruth. It is in the obvious places—in the return of food to the land of Judah—but it is in Ruth’s loyalty. It is in Naomi’s laments. It is in Orpah’s farewell kiss. God’s shadow, for better and for worse is always on this earth. We can always feel God’s shadow; we cannot always feel Godself, God’s presence.

I’m lucky if I can even feel God’s shadow, much less God’s true presence over these past few weeks. It’s a stressful time for many people. Tensions are high. People are angry. People are scared. How long can we go on under such a subtle God?

While David Berman was a deeply troubled individual, his loss of faith, his frustration with the houses of faith he had experience with were not unique. Community life, both religious and secular, has been waning and failing for decades now. We need to make sure this place, that all faith communities are just that— true communities… places where people can come to be their most authentic selves; places where people can be their most hopeful, their most cynical, their most joyful, their most depressed. Places where people will feel loved and embraced and seen no matter what state of mind they’re in.

Ruth was an outsider. There was very acrimonious tensions between the Israelites and the Moabites. Our story starts off today by telling us that this all happened “In the days when judges ruled…”. This was a time in which there was no king; no centralized government. Tribalism was the norm— neighbors fighting with neighbors over their various gods and traditions; over land and crops. It was not a friendly, happy time. It’s actually thought by many scholars that the book of Ruth was sort of an answer to some of the very anti-Moabite, xenophobic rhetoric from the Torah itself. In Deuteronomy 23:3—“No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted…”. So that was what Ruth was walking into. She knew when she refused to leave Naomi’s side that she would be looked down upon, that she would be looked upon as unworthy, as unclean. But she also knew that Naomi would need help. She knew that Naomi, an older woman, a widow with no immediate family left, with no community, would need at least one person by her side.

No matter what happens on Tuesday, and in the weeks and months and years that follow, one thing will remain true. We will need each other. We will need to have this same unconditional love and compassion that Ruth has for Naomi if we want to survive and thrive in this world. And we have to make sure that we are an answer, that we are an antidote to the xenophobic and angry rhetoric that we hear all too often these days. We have to make sure that everyone is welcomed and accepted into this assembly of God, just as they are.

Too many people, like David Berman, like Naomi, feel like there’s not a place for them anymore. And so in our modern day, they retreat into isolation and depression; or they retreat into echo chambers online where people fuel their alienation and their rage. We are pitted against one another because of this loss of community; because of this loss of togetherness and love. We don’t have faith in one another anymore. We are suspicious of each other because there are so few places where people from different walks of life can interact and be together; because even when there are there’s precious little time to do it. Tribalism reigns supreme. It’s an us vs. them mentality. Ruth is the cure to this.

“…the hand of the Lord has turned against me,” Naomi laments. But it hasn’t. Naomi has experienced so much tragedy and just doesn’t know where to look for God’s presence. God’s presence is a shadow. God’s presence is subtle. God’s presence is in Ruth. Ruth’s is a love that will not let go—a love that lives where Naomi lives, that will live and die with her. It’s a love that Naomi realizes she cannot shake, and so she relents and lets Ruth stay with her.

Church, in a world where God’s shadow hangs, where God’s presence is subtle, we have to see God in each other. We have to have faith in each other. We have to see God’s work in the hearts and the actions of our fellow humans. And we have to be God’s presence in this world. That’s what this place is for. In a broken world where God can feel hidden and subtle, we have to be loud and extravagant. We have to offer that extravagant, unconditional welcome to all people—those who feel alienated and left behind; those who feel othered because of their sexual orientation or gender; those who have been discriminated against because of their ethnicity or the color of their skin; those who have been stuck in the cycle of poverty. We have to extravagantly welcome all people, and make sure those who walk through those doors leave feeling accepted and loved and welcomed back.

Despite a centralized government, our country is too much like Ruth’s in the time of judges. It is a country where politics are broken. It is a country deeply divided instead of united. If the polls are to be believed, that will be clearer than ever when the results of the election start rolling in. I don’t know about you all, but I am tired. I am tired of the hate and the fear. I’m tired of being tired. It’s clearer than ever a single visit to the ballot box on Tuesday won’t save us. That isn’t to say don’t vote—it's simply saying that our work is just starting after Tuesday. The Georgia senator and pastor Rev. Raphael Warnock said a couple years ago, in a quote that went viral again just a few weeks ago, “A vote is a kind of prayer for the kind of world we desire for ourselves and for our children...” So we vote as we pray. And then we do the work. Faith without works is dead, as James says; a vote without the works to back it up is nothing.

So on Tuesday, vote, if you haven’t voted yet, for the kind of world you want for yourself, your kids, your grandkids; and then work for that world, no matter who gets elected. Faith without works is dead, but our faith informs the work we do. So whether or not your preferred candidate wins on Tuesday, our faith must not be shaken. Because that is what gets us through. That is what keeps us going—it’s the kind of faith that Ruth has in the God she has only recently adopted, the kind of faith that leads her into a land that will be unfriendly and cruel to her. Her faith informs her loyalty and her love to her bereaved mother-in-law Naomi, and she continues on in the face of hardship, strong and stubborn, and full of compassion.

God is subtle in the book of Ruth. God’s shadow is cast over it. And so the characters in Ruth are forced to see God in one another. They are forced to find God’s love in their neighbor. So as we bask in God’s shadow, as we wrestle with God’s subtlety, we will find God in each other. That is how we survive. That is how we thrive. Amen.

[i] https://jewishcurrents.org/kaddish-for-david-berman