Godly Attitudes: Ruth: Faithfulness Ruth 1:6-22
Let me share with you two
stories.
The first is the story of
a young couple. They had both finished
high school and were pretty serious about each other as they began planning out
their future. The young woman had been battling
a chronic condition since early childhood, and they were both aware of this
ongoing health struggle. However, two
years into the relationship, things began to change. At 21 years old, the young woman’s condition
began to take a serious toll on her physical appearance and her interaction
with others. Her face began to droop and she started to lose her hearing as the
condition began affecting her nervous system.
The young man, only a year older, decided that he could not handle all
of these things happening to his girlfriend and the uncertain future that would
be in store, so he chose to end the relationship.
Then there is the story
of a small family. There was the
husband, Elimelech, and wife, Naomi.
They had two sons, Mahlon and Chilion.
They lived in a small rural community in Judah. A famine hit the land, leaving them unable to
grow crops and nearing starvation. They
learned that the conditions were better in nearby Moab, so they gathered up all
they had and moved to Moab, and settled there.
Not too long after moving, Elimelech died, leaving Naomi and her two
sons alone in this strange land. The two
boys, though, were not children. They
were adults and each married a local Moabite girl, one married Orpah and the other,
Ruth. Around their tenth anniversary both
Mahlon and Chilion died. Naomi was now
left in a foreign land, with no husband, no sons, and two foreign
daughter-in-laws. With no men in their
lives, at this point in history, that left Naomi with nothing, absolutely
nothing, even the land she was living on would be called into question. Naomi decided that she only had one option,
word had come that conditions had improved in Judah, the scarcity was
over…finding a merciful kinsman of her deceased husband might be the only thing
that would save her. She began the
journey, and her two daughter-in-laws began going with her. As they prepared leave Moab, Naomi stopped. She turned to Orpah and Ruth and said, “Go
back to your parents, find new husbands, have children, be blessed.” Both girls told Naomi that they would
continue with her. “No,” Naomi responded,
“There is nothing for you with me. I
cannot promise you anything but an empty life.”
They hugged one another, wept together, as they had probably done many
times since Mahlon and Chilion died, and Orpah gave Naomi a kiss, turned, and
began the journey back to her family.
Ruth, however, clung to Naomi.
Naomi again encouraged Ruth to return to her people. Ruth’s faithful commitment to Naomi would not
be deterred…though she would be a foreign widow in a strange land, Ruth
responded with words that have become synonymous with committed faithfulness: “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, as more as
well, if even death parts me from you!”
With that said, they began the last leg of the journey for Naomi to
return to, and the two to settle in, Bethlehem.
Last week we began
talking about Godly Attitudes, and the fact that there are many we know,
starting with the person pictured on our driving license, that need a divine attitude
adjustment. We learned, hopefully, last
week, to be thankful that God’s attitude adjustment process doesn’t involve the
outpouring of His wrath on us to set us straight, but instead involves the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the lives of those that need to have a new
way of looking at life. Today we turn
from Joseph’s positive thinking to Ruth’s faithfulness.
Sadly, too much of our
culture is reflected by the gentleman in the first story. When the going gets tough, or even looks
tough, the tough don’t get going, everyone decides to get gone. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be tough, it
might just be an inconvenience, and the person decides to bail. It doesn’t even have to be a boyfriend/girlfriend
or husband/wife situation…it can be friendships, it can be working
relationships, it can be mentor or discipling relationships. Sadly, it can even
be within the church. It can happen in any
relationship when a change of circumstances comes into play, especially if that
change involves difficulty or challenge.
Maybe the change is
physical. Our opening story was one of
these. I’ve also seen it happen between friends,
and for some reason this is especially true of men, that one of them develops a
terminal illness, and suddenly frequent get-together turn into no contact, as
the healthy of the two cannot bring themselves to visit the one who is sick. There are marriages who split up because an
accident, illness, or aging affects the physical intimacy between the husband
and wife, and the able spouse starts looking elsewhere to find fulfillment of
those physical urges.
The challenge could be
financial. Friendships might become
fractured if one friend begins making significantly more or less that the
other, causing a change in lifestyle and opportunity. Mounting bills or loss of employment can often
put pressure on a marriage that some couples don’t seem to endure.
Believe it or not,
popularity can be the change that leads to failure of a relationship. The stories often portrayed on children or
teenage oriented sit-combs, of two friends split as one gains popularity
(through athletics, academics, or some other avenue) wile the other doesn’t are
based on real life…and are nor limited to young folks.
Finally, but by no means
the only other pressure, is the emotional pain of tragedy. A couple’s life disrupted by a miscarriage or
the loss of a child. A family disrupted
by the unexpected, or in some cases expected, loss of a mother, grandfather, or
some other matriarchal or patriarchal figure in the family.
These are the times, my
brothers and sisters, where we need to take this story of Ruth to heart. This is when we need to observe her and see
what true faithfulness looks like. Ruth
offers us a glimpse of what it means to be faithful to love pledged in the face
of one crisis after another. Ruth had
wed Naomi’s son, become part of Naomi’s family, and from what we can tell in
the story, come to love her mother-in-law greatly. Naomi’s son, Ruth’s husband, dies…and yet
Ruth continues to cherish their relationship.
Naomi’s grief over the loss of her husband and sons emotionally distance
her from everyone…and yet Ruth continues to be faithful to their
friendship. Naomi decides to leave Moab
and return to Bethlehem, giving permission to, and even encouraging, Ruth and
Orpah to return to their families…but Ruth maintains her allegiance to Naomi. What does this mean to Ruth? As they journey from Moab to Bethlehem, Ruth
is leaving behind the familiarity of her homeland. She is moving from the security of her
homeland to the land of the Hebrew people, who on more than one occasion have
considered the Moabites their enemies.
She is moving to Bethlehem with as a widow with a widow, in a time when
women had no claim on land, and so there was no security before them, only the
hope of mercy…while she could have returned to her parent’s home and possibly
enjoyed the comforts of their home until she re-wed. There was no promised shelter, no promised
food, no promised anything but hardship.
Yet Ruth sets the standard for faithfulness as she claims Naomi’s God,
our God, as her own. Ruth reveals to us
what it means to be faithfully committed, unwaveringly.
How fitting it is that
this foreign Moabite woman marries Boaz, a Hebrew kinsman redeemer, and is the
great (twenty-eight times) grandmother of the ultimate figure of faithfulness,
Jesus.
Jesus, the one who shows
us what it means to be faithful to our friends, faithful to those we serve, and
above all faithful to God. Jesus, who
experienced the unfaithfulness of those around him—those he healed who didn’t
even return to offer thanks; a friend who betrayed him; friends that abandoned
him in his hour of need; a friend who denied knowing him to protect himself; a
follower among the religious leaders who refused to stand up and defend him; those
who had praised his arrival in Jerusalem suddenly shouting “crucify him.” Yet Jesus remained faithful to those friends
and all of those he came to serve. He
remained faithful to God despite the temptation and opportunity to walk away…He
endured the rejection of his hometown, including possibly childhood friends; He
endured endless crowds who interrupted every attempt to rest; He endured the
execution of his friend and cousin; He endured hunger; He endured thirst; He
endured homelessness; He endured ridicule; He endured his homelessness; He
endured false accusations; He endured torture; He endured the crown of thorns;
He endured being stripped; He endured being nailed to a cross and hung as a
common criminal…and through it all, though He could have walked away, Jesus
remained faithful to God, humanity, and all of creation…and through it all…as
Ruth’s faithfulness brought salvation to Naomi, Jesus’ faithfulness brought
salvation to all the world….and they both reveal to us what it means to be
faithful to friends, family, those around us, and most importantly God.
May their faithfulness
lead to ours…may we be as faithfully committed to our family and friends,
regardless of physical challenges, regardless of financial challenges,
regardless of risk of popularity, regardless of tragedy, regardless of risk of
life, as Ruth was to Naomi…and may our faithfulness to God be an imitation of
Christ’s and reflective of God’s faithfulness to us through Christ. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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