Ruth’s Choice

Today’s first reading is taken from the Book of Ruth, a book I love and that we hear from too infrequently during Mass.

In today’s passage, we meet Naomi after the death of her husband Elimelech and her two sons, both of whom had married Moabite woman.  Naomi makes the decision to return to Bethlehem, her homeland.  Her daughter-in-law Orpah bids her a tearful good-bye.  Orpah’s choice to remain in her homeland is a sensible, as well as honorable and safe decision.

Ruth however, makes a much bolder choice. Despite Naomi’s encouragement that Ruth do as her sister-in-law has done, Ruth chooses to go with Naomi to a land where she will be an eternal outsider and where the national prejudice against Moabites, let alone single Moabite women goes deep.  (And remember, this is early Israel, where interracial marriages are frowned upon and where it is not easy to be a single woman in a culture where a woman’s social security depends on being linked to a man.)

Nonetheless, Ruth says to Naomi, in words familiar to us, “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” 

Joan Chittister, in her book The Story of Ruth: Twelve Moments in Every Woman’s Life, describes Ruth as making the choice filled with faith “that the God of yesterday is also the God of today, that the God who took one thing away has something else in store for her. Ruth determines to follow a God who worked through Miriam, Rachel, Sarah and Leah, as well as through Moses, Jacob and Abraham to save a world and lead a people.”

Ruth seizes the moment to become someone new, to start again in a place other than the place of her beginnings. She stretches herself to the limits to find the God who waits for her in what she has not yet become. Chittister writes:

Life is not a mystery for those who choose well-worn paths. But life is a reeling, spinning whirligig for those who do not, for those who seek God beyond the boundaries of the past. All the absolutes come into question. All the certainties fade. A ll the relationships on which they once had based their hopes shudder and strain under the weight of this new woman’s newness of thought and behavior.

Suddenly – it seems to have been, but probably only slowly, one idea at a time – Ruth finds herself at odds with her culture, her country, her religion and her role in life. One by one, she chooses against each of them. A Moabite, she makes the decision to go to the Jewish city of Bethlehem where race and religion will marginalize her forever. A follower of the tribal god Chemosh, she professes faith in the one God, Yahweh. A marriageable young woman, she opts for independence with another woman rather than set about finding a man to care for her. Ruth has discovered what it is to be the self that God made and nourishes and accompanies on the way.

Do we have the faith and courage of Ruth.

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Learning from Ruth and Naomi

Saturday morning, I gave a mini-retreat for women at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Edina. I was delighted that so many women were able to come out on a cold morning to spend three hours with me, each other, and God.

I drew from Joan Chittister’s book, The Story of Ruth: Twelve Moments in Every Women’s Life, as the basis for our time together.  Chittister sees the biblical women Ruth and Naomi as metaphors, as models of all of the women of the world, and she uses their story as a way to identify the defining moments “that mark every women’s passage through time in a way separate from the men around her and that shape her as she goes.”

In the first part of the morning, I retold the story of Ruth and Naomi, with a focus on its revelation of the defining moments in our lives as women. I then focused on the first of the defining moments Chittister identifies in her book: loss, talking both about our experiences of loss and the invitation to change that flows from loss. Each of those talks was followed by a period of quiet reflection as well as small group sharing and large group discussion. I ended by talking a little about the final moment revealed by the story of Ruth and Naomi: fulfillment and our invitation to explore how we bring ourselves to fulfillments, and in so doing, make the world a fuller place as well.

I am enormously grateful to the women who participated in our mini-retreat. The sharing was rich and God’s graces flowed.

I recorded the two main talks I gave, which you can access here and here. (Each podcast runs for about 22.5 minutes.) Alternatively, you can stream them both from here.

The Story of Ruth and Naomi:

Loss and the Change it Invites Us To:

Reading Between the Lines

Earlier this week, I posted about my friend Joe’s sermon on the Second Sunday of Advent on St. John the Baptist, which highlighted the value of reading beneath the lines in scripture, to push below a literal meaning to a deeper theological meaning.

My conversation with Rabbi Norman Cohen the other day raised a slightly different angle on that theme – the need to read between the lines to fully grasp the meaning of scripture. I’ve come back to reflect on what he said several times since we talked.

Our conversation turned at one point to the Book of Ruth, a book Rabbi Cohen has been engaged in studying. Whatever else we do or don’t remember of the Book of Ruth, most of us are familiar with Ruth’s beautiful response to Naomi when Naomi tells her to go back to her own people as Naomi leaves to return to the land of Judah. Ruth replies, “Do not ask me to abandon you or forsake you! for wherever you go I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

We typically read that passage as though it were a monologue, presented in a single breath in response to Naomi’s instruction that Ruth leave her to go back to her own people. Instead, Rabbi Cohen explained to me, this passage is regarded by the midrash (rabbinic interpretation) as a dialogue between Ruth and Naomi, with the Biblical text recording only Ruth’s side of the dialogue.

The dialogue is understood as a discussion of the laws of conversion. Ruth wants to convert. But it is not enough to simply announce one’s intent to convert; more than that is required for full conversion. Thus, as Rabbi Cohen explained, the midrash supplements the words contained in the Book of Ruth so that we understand Ruth’s statements as responses to Naomi’s description to her daughter-in-law of what Jewish law requires. (In itself, this is interesting, as normally one would go to a rabbi for this process; Ruth goes to Naomi.)

Thus, when Ruth says, “Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you,” Naomi responds, “My daughter, it is not the way of Israel to go to theaters or to circuses, but only to synagogues and study halls.” Ruth’s reply is: “Wherever you go, I will go.” Naomi further instructs, “it is not seemly for a woman to be alone with a man who is not her husband,” prompting Ruth to respond, “wherever you lodge I will lodge.” Naomi declares, “Incestuous relations are forbidden to us,” prompting Ruth’s response, “Your people shall be my people.” Naomi further explains, “Idolotry is forbidden to us,” to which Ruth replies, “And your God will be my God.” Ruth’s joining with Naomi on her journey is thus seen as the process of full conversion that Ruth underwent.

Although I’ve always loved these lines of the Book of Ruth, they seem to me so much richer and more powerful understood as Ruth’s responses to Naomi’s teaching.

In our further discussion, Rabbi Cohen gave as another example of midrash supplementing words of the Biblical text, God’s instruction to Abraham in Chapter 22 of Genesis. Often people ask why Abraham didn’t argue with God when God asked him to sacrifice his son. The suggestion, however, is that he did. The line that suggests that is “Take now your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah.” Framed as a single command, God seems a bit repetitive. However, Rabbi Cohen suggested the dialogue went something like (I can’t find this one to get the exact language as I could with Ruth and Naomi, so I’m recalling his language as best I can): God says, “take your son” and Abraham responds, “I have two sons.” God says “your only son,” and Abraham responds, “I have two only sons – one each from a different mother.” God says, “the son whom you love,” and Abraham says, “I love them both,” to which God finally says, “your favored one, Isaac.”

Both examples help us understand we need to pay attention to both the words that actually appear in the scripture and those that are left unsaid. It also reminds us how much we can benefit from deeper study of scripture.

Ruth and Naomi and the Role of Women

Again today, we hear from the Book of Ruth in our first reading, this time a passage from near the end of the book.

Yesterday’s reading ended with Ruth and Naomi returning to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. In today’s reading Naomi sends Ruth out into the fields to glean barley, where she is noticed by Boaz. Naomi then sends Ruth to the threshing floor at night, telling her to go to the place where Boaz lies down. Ruth does what Naomi tells her to do. The result of that plan, we hear, is that

Boaz took Ruth. When they came together as man and wife, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed is the Lord, who has not failed to provide you today with an heir! He will be your comfort and the support of your old age, for his mother is the daughter-in-law who loves you. She is worth more to you than seven sons!” Naomi took the child, placed him on her lap, and became his nurse. And the neighbor women gave him his name, at the news that a grandson had been born to Naomi. They called him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

One of the fascinating things about the Story of Ruth, is that it is one of too few stories in the Old or New Testaments in which women drive the course of redemption. Women plot the liaison between Ruth and Boaz. Women initiate the relationship. The women of Bethlehem credit Ruth with Naomi’s salvation. And finally, women name the baby – Obed, father of Jesse, father of David.

The implication, particularly when we consider Obed and his followers, is that what we do as women to bring ourselves to fullness is not just for us. Rather it is for the life of the world – what we do to bring ourselves to fullness makes the world around us a fuller place as well.

When women are strong and fulfilled, they become collaborators with men in what it means to be human…what it means to be created in God’s image.

The Courage and Faith of Ruth

Today’s first Mass reading is from the Book of Ruth, a story of two remarkable women, Ruth and Naomi. Today’s reading invites us to focus on Ruth, the younger of the two women.

Although we rarely hear this book proclaimed at Mass, the story is a familiar one to many people. Ruth, the Moabite, marries one of the sons of Naomi and Elimelech, who had years before fled from Bethlehem to Moab in order to escape famine at home. At some point Elimelech dies. Ten years later, Naomi’s two sons (both of which have married Moabite women) die, leaving Naomi and her two daughters-in-law alone and destitute. Naomi, with no real roots in Moab and no long-time friends to see her through this loss, decides to return to Bethlehem, her homeland. Ruth and Orpah are then faced with a major decision: to let Naomi return to Bethlehem alone or go with her to become foreigners in a new land.

Naomi advises the two young women to go back to the home of their mothers. There is a lot to be said for Naomi’s advice. Ruth and Orpah are both young enough to remarry, to settle down in their own land, to continue doing what their mothers and grandmothers before them have done, generation after generation. We learn in our reading that Orpah takes Naomi’s advice and tearfully says her good-byes. Her choice is an honorable and a safe one. She will surely marry again and live her life as usual.

Ruth makes a much bolder choice, a choice to go with Naomi to a land where she will be an outsider and where the prejudice against Moabites, let alone single Moabite women will be fierce. Worse, this was an environment where interracial marriages were frowned upon and where it was not easy to be a single woman.

Nonetheless, Ruth promises Naomi:

Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

Ruth makes the choice filled with faith, a choice that stretches her. Joan Chittister, in her book about Ruth and Naomi, writes:

Life is not a mystery for those who choose well-worn paths. But life is a reeling, spinning whirligig for those who do not, for those who seek God beyond the boundaries of the past. All the absolutes come into question. All the certainties fade. All the relationships on which they once had based their hopes shudder and strain under the weight of this new woman’s newness of thought and behavior.

Suddenly – it seems to have been, but probably only slowly, one idea at a time – Ruth finds herself at odds with her culture, her country, her religion and her role in life. One by one, she chooses against each of them. A Moabite, she makes the decision to go to the Jewish city of Bethlehem where race and religion will marginalize her forever. A follower of the tribal god Chemosh, she professes faith in the one God, Yahweh. A marriageable young woman, she opts for independence with another woman rather than set about finding a man to care for her. Ruth has discovered what it is to be the self that God made and nourishes and accompanies on the way.

We might reflect today on Ruth as a model of faith and courage.

How Ruth and Naomi Speak to Women of Today

I gave a women’s retreat day at my parish yesterday, a very powerful experience for me and the 60 women who participated in the retreat.  I used Joan Chittister’s book, The Story of Ruth: Twelve Moments in Every Women’s Life, as the basis for our time together.  Chittister sees the biblical women Ruth and Naomi as metaphors, as models of all of the women of the world, and she uses their story as a way to identify the defining moments “that mark every women’s passage through time in a way separate from the men around her and that shape her as she goes.”

For me, there is tremendous power in that statement.  If life is a series of defining moments that each of us as women passes through, then nothing I face is faced by me alone.  My own transforming moments – my moments of loss, of change, of insight, of invisibility, of transformation – may be different from those of other women, but these moments of loss, change, insight, etc., are moments that we all face.  And by “we all” I mean to include not just the 60 women I sat in a room with yesterday, or even all of the women living today, but rather every women through time. 

That realization creates a kind of strength.  Women of today stand in a long line of women who have all experienced the same kinds of transforming moments that each of us faces.  The blood of all the Ruths and Naomies that have come before us, the blood of all of our soul sisters who have come before us, flows through our veins.  When I say that, among the women I immediately think of are the ones I included in litany that was part of our opening prayer – Mary of Nazareth, Claire of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, Therese of Liseaux, Edith Stein, Dorothy Day, Ita Ford and Maura Clarke.  But add whoever you want to your own list.  And draw strength from their stories, from how they dealt with their defining moments, as you give attention to the moments that determine who and what you really are, who and what you are intended to be, who and what you can become.

I should also add that we don’t just draw strength from the women who have come before us.  One of the things that was so palpable yesterday was how women draw strength from each other.  We need to find more opportunities for women to tell each other their stories, for women to take time from the care they give to those around them to nurture their own souls, their own growth.