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The Story of Ruth part 1
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
I'm not sure if this is your first week back in church in 2016, but it is mine. And so I wanted to say thank you to Joel and Devin who spoke over the last couple weeks, Kevin and the rest of the team that we're able to make some space for Rachel and I to sneak out of town, head back to Toronto for a few days to see family. It was great to have a chance to recharge. So I appreciate that. And so I hope you also found some space and time to reflect and enter into the new year with renewed passion for yourself as well.
Speaker 1:Now that said, even though this is the 2016, it is my first opportunity to speak in 2016. And so I want it even just for a moment before we jump into our new series to reflect for a moment on the year that's just gone through. Because 2015 was by any measure an absolutely incredible year for our community. We were able to accomplish some amazing things together in the past year. Now, we added a third service every Sunday.
Speaker 1:We had 10,704 views on our YouTube channel this year. Translated into ninety four thousand five hundred and sixty minutes spent watching YouTube. So over sixty five days straight, people watching our YouTube videos, that is way too much YouTubing. There were 20,000 downloads of our podcast in 2015. But even more than that, we sponsored a community in Zambia.
Speaker 1:We changed the lives of one refugee family. We rose to the challenge of caring for those in need here in the city remarkable ways over the Christmas break. In 2015, we put 91,000 into missional projects together. And that is increasing in the budget in 2016 to $115,000 we intend to give away in this year, which incidentally, $115,000 was the entire initial budget for our first year as a church plant. And so now we're already giving that much away.
Speaker 1:So absolutely incredible. Thank you everyone for your generosity this year. But one of the amazing things is that God has been able to do this in just such an incredibly constant and if I can say it this way, peaceful way this year. I don't know about you, but at least for me, 2015 just didn't feel frantic or hyped or out of control. It just felt good.
Speaker 1:And I don't say that lightly or flippantly because I realized that this past year has not been easy for some of us. As a community, we have also been present to some deeply painful, some heart wrenching moments over these past three hundred and sixty five days. Jobs lost and relationships torn and lives passed away here. And yet personally, I have been maybe more aware this year than perhaps any year that God has somehow been deeply present in this mixture of joy and celebration, but also this pain and mourning that we call life. And so as we enter into 2016 together, I have found myself reflecting of course on Ruth and we will get to that in a moment.
Speaker 1:I promise. But also on the words of Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. He writes in the closing words of his third chapter, this crescendo to an argument that he's been building. He says, I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have the power together with all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. So, make a note here.
Speaker 1:It's this is the power that we need. Not economic power, not political power. What we need most keenly is the power to grasp just how deeply God loves us. But then he says, I pray that you know this love that surpasses knowledge and that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God and now he reaches for the climax and this is what he says. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine.
Speaker 1:So listen here, it's not just what we can ask for and how lame would it be if God could only do more than we could ask? No. God is interested in more than we can even imagine. He's interested in expanding our horizons and helping us to imagine new things. And so to him, be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever.
Speaker 1:Amen. And so, as we begin 2,016 together, let me ask. If God is with you in this coming year, what is it that you imagine? Would it be a transformed status quo in your family? A more intentional investment every single day from you as a parent or as a spouse or as both.
Speaker 1:Now, can you imagine waking up every single morning ready to love your family with purpose and passion? Because God imagines this. Would it be a changing career this year? You know you need to make it. Somehow it's burning inside of you.
Speaker 1:There's this passion that you can't even begin to bottle and yet in the midst of an economically uncertain time like this, you're unsure. Can you imagine imagine that risk and opportunity can be the same thing in 2016? Because God can. If God was with you, I mean honestly beside you in this coming year, Could you imagine letting go of hurts that you have carried around with you for far too long? And maybe if you're honest, you're not even sure who you are without them anymore because those scars become part of your identity, how you would define yourself to yourself.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine what it would be like to send those away this year? And to begin to invite forgiveness maybe just in some small steps, steps, but to begin to invite that somehow deep into the core of your being. Because I think this is what God imagines for us this year. And so my prayer for the second Sunday of of twenty sixteen is that your imagination would be enlarged this new year. First, so that you would see how deeply you are loved and cared for in God.
Speaker 1:But then, that you may dream big dreams alongside the God who wants to do immeasurably more than you imagine. Alright. Enough pep talk for the year. Let's pray and then we'll jump into Ruth. God, may you grant us the power to grasp just how significant your love is for us.
Speaker 1:And in that, would we find the strength to let go of anything that hinders or splinters or fractures our love in return for you. Help us to dream big dreams this year. But not just the dreams of things that we want. Instead, the kind of dreams that come from being immersed in your imagination. The kind of dreams that pull us into the future you imagine for us.
Speaker 1:The kind of dreams that invite us to become the person you imagine us to be. And so where we have priorities this year that need to be flexed or fixed or completely reinvented, would you help us see a new way forward? And where we have ideas, goals, aspirations for tomorrow, would you grant us the wisdom that inspires us to see what is truly possible? Even if that means healing and grace for ourselves. And as we begin our new year together with this story of Ruth and the themes of sex and money that so often seem to pull us off course.
Speaker 1:We ask you to help us engage with these conversations with openness and honesty and then to imagine where it is your spirit might speak to us. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay. We're about to start our annual sex and money series.
Speaker 1:And if you have picked up one of the 2,015, 16 journal projects, then you have known that this series was coming. Let me mention this, that if you have not picked up one of our journal projects, we have a few left on the table. Unfortunately, our first print run is out and so we're ordering a second run this week. We'll have them in the next couple weeks, so keep that in mind. But if you have picked it up and you have read it, you may have also noticed that we are going to approach it in a somewhat different manner than we have in the past.
Speaker 1:Now, we've always felt and we've always had good feedback from the community that sex and money are important conversations for us to have. We can and we do address these ideas as they come up throughout the year in the text, but they because they are so central to our lives, we also feel that these are topics that we need to set aside time to focus on as well. This year, however, however, rather than jumping around between different texts that address these ideas directly, we decided to spend our time with the story of Ruth. And that's because as we take the time to watch this story unfold over the next few weeks, this really is a story about sex and money. Now, more than that, of course, it is a story about people and the character of Ruth at the center of that story.
Speaker 1:But really, if sex and money weren't ultimately about people, we wouldn't find them compelling either. And so there are four chapters in the book of Ruth. Luckily, are four weeks in this series. You'd almost think we planned it that way. But it is a very short book.
Speaker 1:And if you haven't read it or maybe even if you have, I would encourage you to take some time, maybe even this week, and to sit down and to read this book straight through. It will take you five or ten minutes max, I promise. But it's an odd little book because it is essentially a love story. Now, maybe not in the typical way that we might imagine love stories today. But for the ancient Hebrew reader, this was in some ways their pretty woman.
Speaker 1:Or insert whatever rom com it is that you personally happen to enjoy right here. Just imagine Julia Roberts as Ruth and maybe, oh, I don't know, let's say George Clooney as Boaz. Sorry, Brad. I'm changing it up this year a little bit. But, this story serves as a sort of bridge, a novella if you will, that helps to bridge the gap between the times of the judges and the times of the kings.
Speaker 1:In fact, book opens by saying that the story takes place in the days of the judges, but it ends by identifying Ruth's son as the father of Jesse who is the father of King David. And so it has been written as a way to pull these stories together. And so as we work our way through, this story will give us all kinds of opportunity though. Now, opportunity to talk about the economically disadvantaged in our world. That's today.
Speaker 1:The difference between the legality and the spirit of caring for the poor next week. The enormous gulf between sex as a tool, sex as a weapon, and sex as a commitment in year three or week three. And then finally, the risk and the cost of entering into relationships as we close out the story in week four. So that's our agenda for the rest of the month as we walk our way through Ruth. But it all comes from this obscure little book called Ruth that sits right after Judges in your bible.
Speaker 1:And so with that in mind, let's jump into Ruth chapter one starting in verse one. In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. And so a man from Bethlehem in Judah together with his wife and two sons went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man's name was Elimelech. Now literally, this man's name means my God is king.
Speaker 1:His wife's name was Naomi which meant pleasant or pleasantness. So things start really well here. My God is king, is married to pleasantness, but then we read that the names of whose two sons were Maelon and Kilion. Now these are names that mean probably something like sickly and annihilation. And so unless Eli Malek and Naomi are just really bad at picking names for their kids, this is probably some kind of foreshadowing that's going on here.
Speaker 1:And so next we read that Elimelech, Naomi's husband died and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women. One named Orpah, very similar to Oprah except not quite as fabulous. Now if you're wondering what her name means, it's either hard necked and obstinate or pleasantly scented. We're not really sure you can make that call for yourself.
Speaker 1:The other's name was Ruth and Ruth is a very nice name. It means companion or friend. A name she will certainly live up to as the story unfolds. However, after they had lived there about ten years, both Maelon and Killion also died. And so Naomi was left without her two sons and without without her husband.
Speaker 1:Now, very quickly, the stage has been set for us. But we have to understand here just how desperate a situation this is for Naomi in the story. She is an Israelite living in Moab without a husband and now without any sons. See in this time, a woman could inherit land but she couldn't take possession of it unless she was properly married. Essentially, they couldn't hold property on her own.
Speaker 1:Then add to that, it would have been very difficult for a woman to fend for herself physically in a violent world. Now, just read the book of judges to see how chaotic this season was. And you start to realize that widows are some of the most vulnerable people in society at the time. This is why widows and orphans are such a theme in the bible. It's not just because they're down on their luck or because they're grieving.
Speaker 1:It's because they were incredibly vulnerable. Now add to that that foreigners, the Hebrew term is gar, were largely unable to access any kind of even rudimentary rudimentary legal system regardless of marital status. And where we read over and over again in the Hebrew scriptures this call for the Israelites to care for the foreigner and the alien among you. Do not abuse them the way the Egyptians abused you. It's because foreigners are vulnerable.
Speaker 1:And so she's in incredibly perilous position here. And in fact, the text makes all of this clear in a way that the English translation unfortunately obscures for us. See, there are a lot of proper names in this paragraph. We read that Elimelech, Naomi's husband died. That her sons married Moabite women, one named Orpah, the other Ruth.
Speaker 1:That both Maelon and Kilion also died. And then we read that Naomi was left without her sons and her husband. Now, the English, this is the NIV on the screen here, has phrased it this way just so that we don't get confused about who we're talking about. They're trying to help us. But the writer of the story has actually done something very specific and very purposeful here.
Speaker 1:After this long paragraph packed with proper names, what the writer actually says is that the woman was left without her sons or her husband. You see, pleasantness was married to my God the king, but sickness and death have come into her family and now she has lost everything including her name. Have you ever found yourself grieving something so deeply that you felt like you had lost yourself. And somehow your sense of identity had slipped away from you. And despite all the people who came to you and they tried to comfort you, you had somehow become invisible in some way.
Speaker 1:This is what the writer is trying to show us here that Naomi, the mother and the wife has become lost. And so maybe for you, it was being a mother. Maybe for you it was being a spouse, a husband. Maybe it was a job that was more than a job. And for you it wasn't just a job, was a calling, was a passion passion and somehow that was taken away.
Speaker 1:Maybe this, maybe it was a sport, it was your health. It was an outlet where you felt most you. It's a profound thing when age and health inevitably begin to show themselves in our lives. Maybe something even less tangible, the way that people used to look at you or the way your children used to turn to you for help and now they don't so much and it hurts. And so you begin to wonder if you're not that, who are you?
Speaker 1:A part of your identity is lost when things change. And this is normal and it's natural and it's human, but it's not real. I have a friend who wrote a blog post on the last day of 2015. And I found it particularly profound when I read it that day, but it struck me again as I reflected on this unnaming that happens in Ruth this week. He writes, every morning I need an hour or so to remind myself that the significance and the notoriety I seek won't make me feel what I think they will.
Speaker 1:It won't give me what I feel I need. I am already as significant as I can be. Those other columns in the spreadsheet, notoriety, influence, but they have no real weight to me. I am already as significant, as important, as meaningful as I can be. Every morning that feels lame.
Speaker 1:Every morning I have to breathe through it, sink into it. Every morning I remind myself, I ask myself to live in the way of my already thereness. Creating from rest instead of thrusting out word at more always more. I am ripped apart by this every morning. This call for significance, this impulse to matter more, to be more than the average person.
Speaker 1:And every day I remind myself, I am enough. And every day I forget. I am every day pulled apart and reformed from the scraps. Chase Reeves. There's this moment in the gospels where Jesus is being introduced to the public for the first time.
Speaker 1:And he comes to the Jordan River and he meets with John the Baptist and he asked to be baptized. And this is before he has done anything. So, there is no water to wine. There are no followers. There have been no profound sermons as yet.
Speaker 1:So, he goes down under the water in this ceremony of cleansing commitment. But when he comes up out of the water, there's this voice from heaven that speaks in the gospels and says, this is my son whom I love with him I am well pleased. Now, sometimes we need to be reminded that even for the Christ, the love and the care and the pleasure of the divine is predicated on our being not our doing. And so, you have ever felt unnamed as Ruth does, would you hear the voice of God reminding you every single time you need it that before you have done anything, you are significant and meaningful and well loved in God even when you forget. But, there is of course more here as well.
Speaker 1:Because it is not just the internal state of Ruth that is being communicated to us in this moment of unnaming. There is also just as powerfully the naming of something very dark. And that is the way that systems and societies and structures minimize the value of certain human beings. And how precisely we tend to do that specifically based on economic economic power. Now in the world of this story, that is a very specific and desperate situation.
Speaker 1:Naomi has very literally become a non person as a widow. But this is not as a foreign as we might imagine it today. One of the major projects that we support as a community is the citizenship office that International Justice Mission runs in Thailand. Thailand. In that country, as in many others, there are what are known as hill tribes.
Speaker 1:These are rural indigenous communities where children are born in traditional ways where professional hospitals and government issued birth certificates are simply not part of the pattern. Pattern. These are communities that have existed long before modern nation states drew their boundaries around them however. But the thing is without a birth certificate, without a document that says you're a person, it's almost like you're not in our world. Laws don't protect you and assistance doesn't reach Opportunities just don't apply to you.
Speaker 1:And yes, in Thailand there are laws that exist to recognize these peoples but the application process is long and expensive and technical. And if you can't afford to if you can't work until you get your papers and you can't afford your papers until you work, you end up simply unnamed all over again. One estimate says that 80% of the girls sold into the sex trade are non citizens. No country anywhere officially recognizes them. Because predators know almost instinctively who are the most vulnerable.
Speaker 1:And often that is anyone who we have collectively unnamed. I don't know if you saw president Obama's gun control address this week. Where he stood with the families of children who were killed in some of these horrific mass shootings that have plagued our neighbors to the south. And regardless of views on gun control or exactly what is driving this incredible problem of violence in The States right now, to watch as he talked and wiped back tears as he stood with these families, it drives home the very distinct difference between talking about statistics and talking to a human being. It's one thing to talk about the fact that there are ninety two people a day, every day killed by guns in The United States or that thirty three five eighty people are killed by guns every year in The US, that's still very different than trying to stand beside the family who now has a hole in their family photo because their child is gone.
Speaker 1:It's a very different thing to talk about the 10,000,000 orphans in Sub Saharan Africa than it is to go to Kalende and meet with Phoebe and hear her story and see the children that she's caring for. It's a very different thing to demand the end of slavery with a post on Facebook than it is to learn the names of the girls, these children who are sold into the sex trade every day. Because when we un name people, when orphans become numbers or girls become statistics, when Naomi's become the woman to us, we make it easier for us to ignore them. Trust me here. There's a very big difference between talking about the 25,000 refugees coming to Canada and then meeting the Al Qaeda family that we've brought here.
Speaker 1:And I promise you, the moment you see them and you hug them and you welcome them, you will know it somewhere deep in your bones. Because the system of un naming each other, of predicating the value as human beings on our ability to acquire a mass and contribute economically, what it does is it diminishes each of us. You see, when we turn each other into statistics, happens is that we subtly teach ourselves, we reinforce to ourselves that we are statistics. That we are what we do, what we make, what we earn. And the truth is for those of us here in Calgary who do earn and do make, we learn to get along with this.
Speaker 1:It becomes the proverbial water that we swim in but still somehow slowly it begins to erode our humanity. And we end up trapped in that cycle my friend wrote about. This driving impulse to matter more. This gnawing need to be more than the person beside us. And the only real antidote that I know out from that angst is when we choose to absolutely refuse to value others that way.
Speaker 1:And you can even see it here in the story. Naomi, the unnamed woman decides to head back to her hometown. Maybe she can find a pity there. And so she tells her daughters in law to go to their hometowns to try their luck. Perhaps they can get remarried and find their value in what they can offer to another man.
Speaker 1:But in verse 16, Ruth replied, don't urge me to leave you or to turn back to from you. For where you go, I will go and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me be it ever so severely if even death separates you and me.
Speaker 1:Now, am I suggesting with this? So the next time you pass a homeless person on the street, you promise to never leave their side to be buried beside them on pain of divine punishment. No. Not exactly. But what I am suggesting and what I think the text is pointing us toward is this idea that when we are able to take even one person who has become unnamed in our society and we were able to make their story part of our story.
Speaker 1:When we're able to put ourselves into their shoes, not metaphorically, but actually physically present face to face and name to name. Not only is it healing for them, it is somehow transformational for us. There's the question for each of us as we begin this new 2016 together is what does it look like in our lives? Well, maybe that transgender person in your life goes from being that transgender person in your life to being Jason. Because you sit with them and you listen to them and you allow their story to impact you.
Speaker 1:Now maybe the next time you walk past a person on the street and you reach reflexively into your pocket to toss them your change, instead you stop and you sit and you ask them about their day, and their story frees you from whatever it was you thought you were rushing to get to. Maybe you continue to give to some of the projects that we're doing, but you also go to Africa. Or maybe you just sit with someone who's been and you hear their story. Maybe you volunteer in person at the drop in center and you let an unnamed story into your life somehow. Maybe maybe it's as simple as this.
Speaker 1:You bring dinner over to your neighbors, better yet a bottle of wine and you invite yourself in and you ask them questions and you listen to their story. And you take one person and you move them from a category or a label and you name them in your life. Because this is part of how the kingdom of God liberates us from the economics of empire. By teaching us and reminding us and demonstrating to us over and over again that we are loved and valued. We are valuable before we have done anything, before we have contributed anything.
Speaker 1:Before we have purchased anything, before we have acquired anything, before we have contributed anything to the economy, we are named and we are embraced in the kingdom. And so my prayer for you this this And my for benefit and you would show them just how deeply valuable they truly are. And as you do, may you hear the voice of the spirit of God. Say to the most desperate and anxious who parts of your soul that strive for more, for notoriety, for significance. Might you hear God say, this is my child whom I love.
Speaker 1:In you I am well pleased. Let's pray. God, help us to take these stories separated from us by hundreds, thousands of years and recognize in them the very transcendent human stories. This need for belonging, for significance, for influence. The way that we predicate these ideas in our society on them economics, contribution, earnings, and value.
Speaker 1:May we instead know in the deepest parts of our being that we are loved and we are valued for who we are not for what we produce. That you love and you invest invest into us because you have created us. And then God, may we take on the responsibility and the opportunity to carry that understanding, that invitation and that embrace out into every relationship that we encounter. So that those who have become unnamed around us would be renamed and re embraced in your kingdom. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.