RML: Ruth, Week 4 · (Recorded 03/22/2026)

In this concluding lecture on Ruth, Mark Lloret expands the story’s themes into a broader reflection on our responsibility toward the vulnerable—widows, the poor, immigrants, and all who find themselves in need. Through a spectrum ranging from exploitation to sacrificial love, he challenges us to examine how we respond, ultimately pointing to Christ as the model of perfect love, truth, and justice. (Week 3 was not recorded.) The story of Ruth thus becomes not only a narrative of redemption, but a call to faithful, costly care for others in a complex and broken world.

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Mark Lloret: 00:00

There's broader definition of everything here, and so we can look at widows, orphans, the poor, the sojourners, the immigrants, and what I'm kind of would rather look at from a broader perspective, and I'm not just kind of coming out of this from my own observations, but it's really there's more of a thematic there's a theme that emerges throughout both the Old Testament and the New Testament that encompasses all of this and that is, I'm just using the word vulnerable, anyone amongst us who is vulnerable for whatever reason. And that really broadens it because quite frankly all of us are vulnerable to some extent in some way. But I think maybe the theme that we're covering today is those within our society or within our neighborhood who are particularly vulnerable due to surrounding circumstances, be they social, economic, historic, what have you. So, I'm gonna try to look at this in maybe a different way and look at it as a spectrum. So, it's what is our relationship to the vulnerable and to what extent are we kind of part of the dark side, Satan, where love, truth and justice are entirely absent.

Mark Lloret: 01:41

I mean, in effect, we're defining hell, which is the absence of anything good, the absence of any truth. And we talk about Satan being the father of all lies and just that underlying meanness and we can all think of people throughout history who have exhibited some of these characteristics. And it's really basically an exploitation. And I want to look at it from, and then on the far right we have the example of Jesus, which is a manifestation of perfect love, perfect truth, and perfect justice. And I choose those three words very carefully because all three of them are characteristics of God and the absence of any one of them really blows things up.

Mark Lloret: 02:35

So, for example, in Corinthians, he says, If I have all the great prophecies or I have all the truth and I know everything, but if I have no love, I'm a clanging symbol. So if you take truth and justice without any love, it can quickly become very cruel. And if you take love and truth without any justice, it just kind of gets flim flammy. It's like, well, what's, you know, everybody's beautiful. No, everybody's not beautiful.

Mark Lloret: 03:08

I mean, that's kind of living in a la la land of reality. And if you take justice and love and you don't have the truth, then you get twisted justice and twisted love. So all three of them are very much required in order for us to effectively discuss what our relationship is as Christians to the vulnerable that are around us. So we're gonna go on a little trail here. So there's different types and different categories and these are mine.

Mark Lloret: 03:51

These are not coming out of scripture or anything, so feel free to shoot these down and part of our discussion will be where can this go wrong? And it can. But in effect, and I don't remember the priest who was preaching. The idea of a spectrum is not original with me. I think it was John Jordan, but I'm not positive.

Mark Lloret: 04:16

On the far left, we've got where I'm doing exploitation and it's willful and it's for my own benefit, so I'm going to do it on purpose because it's good for me and I really don't care. We have Complicit Exploitation for somebody else's benefit. Yeah, I'm going go along with this, I'm not really getting anything out of it, it's wrong and I'm gonna exploit them, but this is just, you know, this is where I am and I'm just gonna go ahead and go with it. We have Willful Ignorance, where we've got plenty of opportunity to understand what's going on around us and we just kind of decide, I don't want to, we stick our head in the sand. I just don't want to mess with it.

Mark Lloret: 05:04

It's too complicated. We find all kinds of excuses and reasons why we can just ignore it. But the reality is when it comes down to it, we do it out of our own will. We choose to just ignore it. Then there's awareness inaction.

Mark Lloret: 05:25

So I'm aware of some sort of an injustice or some sort of an exploitation or some sort of an extremely difficult situation that someone that I know is in and I'm aware of it, but it's not my problem. I'm just not gonna do anything about it. And again, it's willful. You'll notice we're getting into some gray areas. Of course, I've illustrated them as red, yellow, and blue or green.

Mark Lloret: 05:59

I don't know what I don't even know what that color is. Is that green? Teal? There's somebody who has a full time job naming painting colors of 175,000 different ones, and that's one of them. Anyway, there's symbolic protection at no cost.

Mark Lloret: 06:19

I'm gonna come back to that one because that's a personal pet peeve of mine, is grand statements that don't do anything. So now I've got, if we go up, now we're getting over a little better onto the better side of things, we've got well meaning but harmful protection. So, this is somewhat linked to some level of ignorance, but I see a problem and I just think, I can fix that. And we go in there and we do something and we think we're doing great, but in reality we may just be making the problem worse because we don't have enough information and we really haven't done the homework in terms of what needs to happen. Then we issue protection because it benefits me.

Mark Lloret: 07:15

So I hate to come up with too many illustrations because then it gets kind of goofy, the idea is that, yeah, I'm going come to this person's help because it's in my interest to do so, but I'll feel good about it anyway. I'm going to go and help. Then there's well meaning and yet ineffective protection. So, my intentions are great, it's not really harmful, but it just doesn't fix anything. And we're gonna get into a little more detail about how these things can be in little while.

Mark Lloret: 07:59

And then lastly, there's effective protection that actually costs me something. And if we roll back up there into the example of Jesus, He protected us, it's effective, and it cost him his life. And then there are lots of examples throughout history. The saints are one of them. I recall reading a book that was really hammering on foreign missionaries.

Mark Lloret: 08:35

They're like, How dare you go to another country and mess up their sociological systems and you're just doing this for your own benefit. Well, I grew up with missionaries and that's got some truth to it, but I do know way too many missionaries who gave up everything. They were not in it for the money. They were not in it for the glory. They dedicated their lives in their field of work and they were fabulous.

Mark Lloret: 09:08

And they were effective and it cost them a lot. So, let's get the elephant out of the room here when it comes to this issue. A couple of things that I want to point out. If you were to see what I'm seeing here in terms of how this slide is put together, it's mathematically dead center with everything else. So I'm not pushing it one side or the other.

Mark Lloret: 09:38

I have, however, taken the liberty to put more of all of them over on the red side than the green side because none of us are as great as we think we are, right? So we can take any one of our ideologies and there's good, there's bad, there's effective, there's ineffective, and we've just become overly obsessed with overly simplistic ideologies that, quite frankly, they don't they don't get us anywhere. And and I think most of us know that, that it's you just can't whittle it down to a simple, well, if only they were in charge, life would be good again. Well, now that we're in charge, everything's perfect. No.

Mark Lloret: 10:21

It's, you know So I'm gonna leave that alone, and here's the one that I'm gonna go with, James two sixteen. And this is my one freebie that I'm throwing out there for my behalf, and that is the verse in James where he same way, faith by itself is not accompanied as an action. I'm throwing social media posting in here because it really is such a I'm open to argument, but just my opinion, it accomplishes nothing. It usually just makes a person feel better about themselves and their position. They're coming out hard against the bad guy and then another bad guy comes out.

Mark Lloret: 11:16

It just goes back and forth. A It's waste of time. So, let's take another one. Let's go through some scriptural examples. Let's take Pharaoh.

Mark Lloret: 11:25

Remember Moses and Pharaoh? When Moses was beginning to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, Pharaoh's a pretty good example of a 100% willful for my benefit. And there's no question that it's willful when you look at all the things that went through, the plagues and all of the different judgments that came through against Pharaoh, and he's still stuck with it. And finally, when you think, It's now, I'm gonna let him go because it's in my benefit, and he lets the Israelites leave, and then what follows? He changes his mind and decides, I'm gonna go after him anyway.

Mark Lloret: 12:15

So same Pharaoh and his daughter is the one who rescues Moses out of the river in the basket. So you can debate, it was effective protection. He grew up, he survived. Remember, Pharaoh was killing all of the sons of the Israelites, so she protected him and it was effective. Now, can argue, probably benefited her.

Mark Lloret: 12:53

She liked the kid. He was cute. And it's probably not, you know, 100%, but let's give her credit where credit is due. So now when we get into these, I'm creating what I'm calling it's the Judge O Meter because this can easily get into very quick judgmentalism because kind of passing judgment about various characters and we do that within our own lives all the time. Well, let me clarify that.

Mark Lloret: 13:26

I do it all the time. I see people doing this, I see people doing that, I see people posting on social media and I judge the heck out of them. So, I'm just warning us ahead of time that there's some ambiguity here, but let's take a look at the book at David. Which David are you talking about? There's time in David's life when he was definitely protecting those around him and he was doing it out of obedience to God, but boy, oh boy, there's a time with Bathsheba, he saw her, he wanted her, he took her, and then he had her husband killed.

Mark Lloret: 14:07

So that one's pretty what's that? Yeah. You remind me of George Costanza. Remember that Costanza's line? Was that bad?

Mark Lloret: 14:20

So, you know, in that regard, he's over there with Pharaoh. I mean, my gosh. But this, again, what I'm starting to bring out is there's some complexity involved in both evaluating what's going on around us and quite frankly evaluating what's going on within ourselves. We've got Moses, same thing. Moses, by and large, we have a few things that he did that were probably not great, but generally on the right side we have King Saul, who is another interesting one.

Mark Lloret: 14:55

But he started out I don't know, he started out kind of as an awareness and inaction. He was kind of I don't want to say a dingbat, but a little there's a little bit of King Saul that's just a pretty boy but ended up just being horrible. And by the way, David over there in the green, you remember in the cave, Dave had the full option of killing off King Saul on the spot and he didn't do it. He didn't exploit that vulnerability that King Saul had and he left it to God. So, I mean, again, there's conflicting pieces going on throughout here.

Mark Lloret: 15:34

How about Luke 10, the rich man and Lazarus? This is one of my favorite and, well, I find most fascinating parables that Jesus gives us. And it's the rich man who lives his entire life in opulence, plenty of food, and then there's Lazarus outside the gate who is absolutely destitute and hungry. We don't know what was going on between the rich man and Lazarus. The parable doesn't tell us of any interaction between them until after they're dead.

Mark Lloret: 16:07

But the words of the rich man after he's dead where he's bossing, he's saying, Lord, I'm really I need some water. Can you send Lazarus over to get me another cup of water? I mean, the attitude and the audacity leads us to believe that within that parable there was very little redeeming quality that rich man. How about Ruth? Okay, now we're getting into the book we've been studying.

Mark Lloret: 16:39

Know, Ruth, a good person. When she chose to follow Naomi, That was sacrificial. It was protective. Naomi was I mean, to send her by herself was practically a death sentence. And we have Ruth giving up everything that she knew, everything she was used to, some level of protection within her own tribe.

Mark Lloret: 17:05

So, I gave her a pretty good rating. Boaz and Naomi, slightly less because they both had something to gain. I think Boaz especially. I mean, it says he saw her and he's like, You know, you could go with any of these other women, but the presumption is that she was quite attractive. He so his wasn't entirely yeah, I mean, I don't wanna be negative on both.

Mark Lloret: 17:41

You notice I've got him all in green. Because by and large it was a good thing that he did and he protected not only her, but we also know from remembering the stories that he was leaving extra grain for people to come by and glean, so we know that he was a man who cared about the people around him that did not have as much. So I left him there. Is that all of them? What's that?

Mark Lloret: 18:19

Oh yeah, the scribes. Interesting group. Yeah, I'm not a big fan. And they exploited the poor, they exploited everyone around them for their own benefit, and most importantly, were willfully ignorant, and then when presented with the facts, and we can see that, love the other story I love about the blind man, and they're like, Well, who made you blind? Well, what's going on?

Mark Lloret: 18:50

The blind guy's like, I don't know what you guys are thinking. All I know is that I was here, I was blind, this guy came along, I can see. What's so complicated here? So, I keep them over on the other side. And then the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Mark Lloret: 19:06

Again, I think about it, it was protective, it was effective, it cost him a lot. We don't even know how much it cost him. We know that he said, This will cover his expenses. Any other expenses that come along, let me know and I'm gonna cover them when I come back through. So, it's a beautiful representation of that idea of providing protection to those around us who need it.

Mark Lloret: 19:35

So, the Church's relationship to the vulnerable, and I mentioned this earlier, it's really this idea of protecting the vulnerable is a through line that begins in the book of Genesis and goes all the way through to the book of Revelation. You just and what I hope if nothing else out of this, you all might experience what I've experienced is having become aware of this, you can't unsee it as you read the Scriptures. It's everywhere. It's almost like every day when I go through the Daily Office Lectionary, and a part of it's because I'm teaching this class so it's really heavy on my mind, but almost all of the Psalms there's an element of this, of God, why are the bad people winning and the vulnerable are losing? There's awareness that there's this discrepancy between what's happening and what's supposed to be.

Mark Lloret: 20:33

What does it look like in 2026 in this Dallas seventy five thousand two hundred and two-four? And that's what we want to look at and I'm going to introduce a term that over where we work at Incarnation Place, which is across the street in Roseland, we use the idea of Incarnational Ministry. So, here we are, Church of the Incarnation. It's a fabulous term when you think about the protection of the vulnerable. And what I want to do is spend a little time talking about how does the Incarnation, reflection of how we are supposed to be interacting with those around us who are vulnerable?

Mark Lloret: 21:15

Now, for every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear and simple and wrong or doesn't work. Now, this is H. L. Mencken. I don't know if any of y'all have ever heard this phrase, but I love this phrase.

Mark Lloret: 21:32

And remember we were talking about, you know, the different ideological parties and we got it, oh, this is simple, this is simple. They're horrible, they're horrible, and none of them work. We're all wrong. It's just very complex. But let's break down a few things.

Mark Lloret: 21:50

We talk about incarnational ministry, requires proximity. You cannot or it's very difficult to effectively help the vulnerable if you have no proximity to them. It really requires somehow making that connection and working inside of a world that we're probably not comfortable with, we're certainly not used to being inside of it, but you have to be there to do anything. Another one's a little little otter and it's a Sabbath mindset. And again, I'm not going to claim this for my own.

Mark Lloret: 22:35

This is Father Victor Austin gave a sermon on this once. And the Sabbath is the day of rest, but what does that imply? If I can take the Sabbath off and rest, the implication is I have enough. There's a sufficiency that goes along with a Sabbath mindset. I not only have enough, I've got enough left over that I can actually be of service to those that are around me.

Mark Lloret: 23:09

So if I'm just scrambling seven days a week, it's time to reevaluate what am I doing that is leaving me in a place where I just don't have the time, energy or resources to do anything for anybody around me. Unless you think that that is a first world middle upper class problem, Marva's here, she's visiting and I'm glad you're here. She's over at Central Dallas Church. They have the same issue. It is not a wealthy church by any stretch, but the same principle applies.

Mark Lloret: 23:46

It's not like we're hate to put it this way we're wealthy, therefore we have to manage our lives in such a way that we've got enough left over. No. Economically, they're not as wealthy, but they're still having to figure out, well, how do I live my life in such a way that I have enough energy left over for those that are around me? So it's this idea of the Sabbath, it's just there's enough. I have enough that I can provide to someone else.

Mark Lloret: 24:13

It's countercultural. This is not the way the world works. This is not a debate about capitalism, socialism, communism, whatever. That's not what this is about. The whole idea of me sacrificing something for somebody else is completely counter cultural, and it always has been.

Mark Lloret: 24:41

It's not unique to The United States. It's it's world that's human nature. I'm gonna grab all that I can get for myself and my family, maybe, and I'm gonna take as much as I can and I'm gonna hoard it for myself, and that's the natural state of the human mind. It's counter cultural to do differently. It's messy.

Mark Lloret: 25:05

So when someone is in a vulnerable spot, it's rarely a simple issue. And I'm gonna go back to the experiences that we've had working across the highway and in the Roseland community. It's rarely just an economic thing. It goes so much deeper than that. There are so many issues that are going on that the economic repercussions are really only skimming the surface.

Mark Lloret: 25:42

And if it were that simple, the estimates since the War on Poverty was declared that we've spent somewhere between 22 and $27,000,000,000,000, that does not include Social Security and everything else. If it was just an economic problem, it would be simple, but it's not. So it's messy and it involves getting to know someone well enough that they trust you enough to then tell you what the real problem is. And again, the real problem is rarely financial. And I'll just use a quick example.

Mark Lloret: 26:26

In our after school program, you know, the kids, they're quite misbehaved, they're rambunctious. Hey, they've just sat through school all day and they're coming over and we try to run them for about an hour and work all the willies out. It's not enough. And so they're coming everywhere, but we always reemphasize when you see bad behavior, it's telling you something. Listen.

Mark Lloret: 26:52

And so when you get to know them well enough and they start talking to you, then you realize, I see what's going on here. And then you start working with the core problems. And then lo and behold when those root issues start getting dealt with, the reading problems begin to alleviate because they've got enough mental energy to actually learn how to read and do other things, but it's messy. It's very, very messy. And just think about our own lives.

Mark Lloret: 27:26

Yeah, we'll leave it at that. It's best done in a community. None of these things well none is a heavy word. Few of the problems with the vulnerable are one offs where you can just deal with one person and it's done. It involves working with an individual and then partially addressing those underlying needs and then getting them involved in a community that can provide the support that is enough, that's sufficient to get them through whatever it is that they're going through and eventually come out on the other side.

Mark Lloret: 28:11

I want to remind you today what time is it? It is oh, perfect. We're right on schedule. After this, speaking of all of this stuff, you may have noticed there is a luncheon immediately after the service is over. And we're gonna be talking particularly about an Incarnation Place, which is an organization that came out of Church of the Incarnation.

Mark Lloret: 28:36

It's a separate organization, but we work over there in the Roseland Homes area, which is across the street behind the Target over there on Haskell. There's a government housing system there, about 2,500 people when it's full, and we work in that community. So the luncheon will be a little more information about who we are, what the organization, the volunteer opportunities that are available that incorporate all of these things that we've been talking about: proximity, it gets messy, you got to build trust, and we'll be going into all of those different aspects in terms of what we're doing. I want to close and we may be a little bit early. This is Darien.

Mark Lloret: 29:26

Darien was a part of what we call the Men's Fraternity. It's a Monday night program that we do over there at Roseland with young men and a group of adults and Darian started actually Darian started in sixth grade when our church was doing mentoring over at Spence and he has kind of come up probably unbeknownst to him what his connection has been to people within our church from that day all the way on through. Well, he joined the men's fraternity in his freshman or sophomore year and he's been working with us throughout that whole time to the point where he is now a full time employee of Incarnation Place. He helps out with the kids in the after school program, helping manage if you can picture 30 kids fresh out of school just going crazy. And it's, for me, it's a blast because I just get to go in there and I'm kinda like being a grandparent.

Mark Lloret: 30:35

You're not responsible for them, you just get to have fun watching whatever they're doing and they're they're just they're ridiculous and it's hilarious. Know, one little kid, he's he for five minutes, he just walked around with a with a a chair on his head. And it doesn't make any sense to us. He's got a perfectly good reason for doing it. I'm sure it's logical in his mind, but anyway, it's really just a lot of fun.

Mark Lloret: 31:00

But it takes adults to manage that and to try to pull it together. But I want you to watch something. We have a set of cameras in We have a camera system that for security purposes tracks everything, so there's probably eight cameras and they're pointing here and there and if you've ever watched ID Discovery and what's the name of the one? See No Evil. It's an interesting one.

Mark Lloret: 31:47

It's where they solve crimes and it's because of the cameras. And that's a little bit what this looks like, but I want to play this for you. There it is. That's not it. Guys, I'm really sorry.

Mark Lloret: 32:04

Oh wait, no here it is. What's that? There we go. Now, I'm gonna narrate this from time to time. So here is a classroom.

Mark Lloret: 32:16

It's one of the classes we do. It's where we work on homework. Dadgummit. Yeah. I I think you're right.

Mark Lloret: 32:35

Let me just close it. This, I didn't expect this. What's that? Where's my there's my display settings. Display, duplicate these.

Mark Lloret: 33:13

There we go, sorry about that. We'll keep those changes and now we're gonna play this thing. There we go. So we're starting here in one our side groups. Kids come in, we break them into small groups and this is where they're working on homework, things that are going on at school and so forth.

Mark Lloret: 33:38

And you're gonna see some activity going on here between this kid in the red and this kid here in the white. And it leads up to some level of confrontation. Reagan, who by the way is fantastic, and separates them, but she's having difficulty and this is a challenge. I mean, a professional educator would look at this and like, Man, you gotta get your classroom under control, and they're right, but it's not easy. Now, this is another interesting part.

Mark Lloret: 34:09

It's growing, you can see the stress that's going on back and forth. And keep your eye on this kid in the white, and he's getting more and more frustrated. And then in another moment, which I find fascinating, again like the kid walking around with the chair on his head, watch the kid in the red. Okay, get on the ground and what would make more sense than to wait for it. Yeah, let's crawl under the table and go over to the other side and come up over here and again just causing trouble.

Mark Lloret: 34:43

Then here you're gonna see, and by the way, his name is Tyler, the kid in the white. He is kind of reaching his limit for the day and he decides, Ugh, I'm sick and tired of this. I've had enough. I'm out of here. So he leaves.

Mark Lloret: 35:03

Now, I'm gonna pause this. If you'll notice up here, there's kids dancing, they're joking around, this is kind of the free area where they get to goof off, do whatever they want. But you're gonna see what happens when Tyler comes out. So they're up there just dancing away, they're having a great old time. There's Chloe, she's wandering over doing who knows what.

Mark Lloret: 35:30

And then here in a little while we're gonna see Tyler come out and look at that look. Now you see that? I recognize that move because I remember when I was in boarding school, it was not a great experience, but I remember the question was, Is anybody watching me? Does anybody care? And I'm gonna stomp out of here, I'm gonna make my big statement of defiance, but the question is really, Is anybody gonna notice?

Mark Lloret: 36:05

Is anyone gonna see what's going on here? And you see that, he's looking back and forth, I want to storm out. And by the way, I'm speculating, but it's a pretty decent speculum. And who shows up but Darien? He decides, No, no, no, no, you are not going to get away that easily.

Mark Lloret: 36:28

And look what happens, he's not running away, he's ambling away, just waiting. Will somebody come out and sure enough, there's Darien. And they sit there, I mean I've edited this out, and he's basically told me that they sat and he just listened and that kid talked and he's frustrated and this is going on and so and so did this and it's really making me mad and Darion's like, I just listened to him for a while and sometimes that's all it takes. And here shortly you're gonna see the final. So there he is.

Mark Lloret: 37:08

Come on, look at me buddy. What do you think? Should we go back in? Let's just go on back inside. Don't run away.

Mark Lloret: 37:17

This is a very safe place for you to be. Let's go back inside and be protected. And then you see what's going on. They're still over here. They have no clue what's going on.

Mark Lloret: 37:32

They're just dancing around, but back come back in oh, by the way, did you see that move? Every man here knows at that age if anything is within the slightest reach, you've got to jump up and hit it. It's just what we do. So back he comes, he brings him back in and as the final portion of this, He's back in holding his head. What's the point here?

Mark Lloret: 38:10

Be like Darien. Keep your eyes open. There are people all around us that are vulnerable for one reason or another and the role of the church and the role of us as Christians is to be aware of them, look for them, get to know them, listen to them, build that trust, and be a part of the solution and be a part of the protection of those who are vulnerable around us. I really want to thank all of you. I've had an absolute blast teaching this class on the Book of Ruth.

Mark Lloret: 38:52

I hope it's meant as much to you as it meant to me, and I think it's eleven zero five, so let's go to church.