2021.10.31 | Family of Choice
“Family of Choice”
Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost
October 31, 2021
All Saints Day (always on Nov 1) and All Saints Sunday (which we’ll celebrate on Nov 7 this year) are occasions when we pause with Christians around the world to remember and give thanks for those who have gone to God.
As we celebrate these occasions, we also have an opportunity to reflect on our individual and collective experiences of grief and loss, how we cope, and who and how we show up for others in times like these.
My sense as a pastor is that our individual experiences of loss are as unique as our fingerprints; and yet, there are also similar patterns in how we experience and respond to death.
For example, the death of a loved one may teach us something about ourselves. We may discover strengths that we didn’t know we had, or develop strengths that weren’t evident earlier in our lives.
Likewise, we may learn new things about our families and friends as we move through the process. Some families pull together and function in very healthy ways through grief, while others unravel.
Our “best friends” may not know how to support us and we may have trouble articulating our needs. Meanwhile, friends, and even acquaintances, may draw closer, and become very dear to us.
Consider for a moment your own experience of a loved one’s death. What have you learned about yourself through that process? What have you learned about others? Were there surprises? If you are like most people, the answer is probably “yes.”
These types of ruminations are echoed in the story of Ruth and Naomi, which is the primary text for today’s message.
II
In the opening verses of Ruth, we learn that a man named Elimelech has moved his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion (NIV says “Kilion”), and his wife, Naomi, from Bethlehem, in Judah, to Moab during a time of famine in Israel. On the way to Moab, Elimelech and Naomi’s two sons married Moabite women, whose names are Orpah and Ruth.
Over the period of a decade all three men died, and the survival of their widows, who were economically and socially dependent upon them, was in jeopardy.
Each of the three women was forced to develop a survival plan. Naomi, Elimelech’s widow, decided to return to her homeland and to her husband’s family, because they were obliged under levirate marriage laws to support and protect her.
The welfare of Naomi’s daughters-in-laws was more tenuous, because both of Naomi’s sons were dead, and Naomi was too old to conceive and bear more sons who might care for Orpah and Ruth. So she urged her daughters-in-law to return to and seek refuge with their families in Moab.
Orpah followed Naomi’s direction, but Ruth did not. Instead of going back to Moab, Ruth pledged her allegiance to Naomi, and returned with her to Bethlehem during the barley harvest.
Ruth asked and was granted permission from Naomi’s relative, Boaz, to glean in his fields. After the harvest was over, Naomi sent Ruth to Boaz asking him to take them into his household, which he did.
As a result of their actions and Boaz’s hospitality, both women survived the death of their husbands, and their relocation to Judah. A further outcome resulting from Naomi and Ruth’s return to Bethlehem is that the lineage of Elimelech was extended to include the house of King David, and ultimately to Jesus of Nazareth. This was because Ruth married Boaz, and their posterity begat David and Jesus.
In the conclusion of the book of Ruth, we find a genealogy that links King David with his great-grandmother, Ruth of Moab—a genealogy that is continued in the introduction of Matthew, where Matthew reiterates the lineage of Ruth to David and where he describes the lineage of David to Jesus.
III
The book of Ruth serves an important purpose in the history of Israel, in that it preserves a record of King David’s ancestry, but that is not all. Ruth also depicts the essence and meaning of hesed.
Hesed is a Hebrew term having to do with compassion and companionship. Hesed may be expressed between God and individual people or groups of people, or among members of a family or community. In the book of Ruth, the main characters, Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz, all demonstrate divine-like qualities of hesed.
Naomi expressed concern for her widowed daughters-in-law, even though she is not bound by law or custom to care for them. Naomi’s brother-in-law, Boaz, was inspired by Ruth’s care for Naomi, and extended his compassion to both women by providing grain for them when they returned destitute to Judah. Ruth also expresses hesed by sticking with Naomi through their mutual grief processes, and by traveling with her mother-in-law to Bethlehem. Her actions exceeded everyone’s expectations, particularly given her continued show of loyalty after Ruth married Boaz.
Ruth’s hesed is poignantly expressed in her memorable and often quoted words in verses chapter 1, verses 16 and 17:
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!
In addition to the emphasis on hesed that we find in the book of Ruth, it is important to note that Ruth is a Moabite—a foreigner who worshiped other gods—AND she is portrayed in this story as the one who is most like Yahweh (Israel’s God), because Ruth is loyal and faithful to her Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi.
Biblical scholars have helped us understand that the book of Ruth emerged in the history of Ancient Israel during the pre-monarchical period. This was the period after the Israelites had entered Palestine, but before they established the monarchy. Nation building, which is to say, ethnic purity and advancement, were highly valued.
So, here, in this context, we have a story about two women who defy convention, who are not related by blood or obligated to each other by Jewish law, who become for the Israelite people the model of faithfulness, and the human embodiment of God’s constant companionship with Israel and the whole human community.
IV
Mindful of Ruth and Naomi’s experiences of death and loss, think again about your own experiences of death and loss, and other hardships. Think about what you experienced, and what you’ve learned about yourself, your family, and your friends.
Times like these often put us (and the relationships that we are in) to the test. Who we call family and friends and how we understand these relationships can change, especially in times of profound stress.
I remember, for example, a woman named Penny Petros, who told me a real-life Ruth and Naomi story, where her relationships with family (including her in-laws) were put to the test.
Penny Petros was the matriarch of St. Athanasios’ Greek Orthodox Church, in Elmira, New York. She was the matriarch of a patriarchal church. She had no formal authority in her congregation, but lots of power. One of her long-time friends once confided to me, “The priest only thinks he runs our church. Penny’s the heart and soul (and brains) of the organization.”
I met Penny Petros for the first time at an ecumenical Bible Study that I was asked to lead by a couple of the matriarchs from my own congregation. Our Bible Study that year focused on the story of Ruth and Naomi.
In an effort to make a good impression, I prepared a thorough analysis of all the dead German theologians’ commentaries on this Old Testament novella, and imagined the several ways that I would bring the most exciting new feminist interpretations to bear on the text.
The participants were politely intrigued by my research, which was gratifying, but the true reward of having led that Bible Study was hearing the personal reflections on the biblical text that were shared by the matriarchs of our community.
I was humbled by the depth of their faith, and their profound abilities to exegete the text based on personal experience and practical theological reflection. They brought more to the table than all the dead Germans and up-and-coming Western feminists put together. This was Bible Study at its best!
Penny’s insights into the text were particularly memorable. She spoke from the heart about how she saw herself and her mother in-law in the text. She said, “Twice I was widowed. The first time was euphemistic, when my husband went off to war, and the second was when he died a premature death.”
Penny went on to explain how she had met and married her husband in New York City, but when he was shipped out to Europe, he sent her to his hometown in Elmira to live with his recently widowed mother. At the time of her move, Penny said that she knew no one in Elmira, and desperately missed “the Big Apple,” her family, and her husband.
Penny’s mother-in-law was empathetic and set out to help her by teaching her old family recipes—a gift that would keep on giving when her husband came home from the war. She later came to appreciate how her mother-in-law also provided her with an excellent role model for how to cope financially and emotionally in the wake of her husband’s death, and she went on to explain that over the years, she became closer to her mother-in-law, in a lot of ways, than to her own mother.
Penny’s relationship with her mother-in-law was similar to Ruth’s relationship with Naomi, and both reflected the biblical ideal of hesed, and a human experience of how God relates to her people.
V
I imagine that most of us can think of other examples of Ruth and Naomi-like relationships in our own lives. If we are fortunate to have grown particularly close to someone or a small circle of friends, we may even refer to them as our “family of choice.”
Fair-weather friends are easy to come by, but traveling companions who embody God’s hesed are few and far between. So it’s important that we cultivate these types of relationships and recognize what a gift from God that they are when we are able to participate in them.
My prayer for each of us today is that we may name and claim these sacred relationships—these families of choice, these relationships that are forged from love and loyalty rather than law—and give God thanks for the ways that we have experienced God’s hesed. Amen.