Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, rcl yr b,
Remembrance Sunday, November 10, 2024
RUTH 3:1-5, 4:13-17; PSLAM 127; HEBREWS 9:24-28; MARK 12:38-4
Beware of the scribes…who devour widows’ houses.
(Mark 12:38a, 40a)
Not too long ago, one of my friends complimented another of her friends by saying “She is so in her skin!” It wasn’t the first time I had heard that phrase used, but it was the first time I had heard it applied to someone I knew. I agreed with the comment, and then, for my own benefit, quietly expanded its meaning. By saying our friend was “in her skin” I realized that it was a way of saying, “She is authentic, integrated, comfortable with being who she is, whole, someone who knows who she is and is strong because of it, a person with her feet on the ground.”
I see the women in our readings today as having that quality of strength and wholeness: Naomi, Ruth, and the widow who appears at the temple in Jerusalem and gives her last two coins to the treasury. What allows us to see how centered these women are is their grace under fire, their ability to live among the oppressive barriers that threatened their well-being.
The story of Ruth and Naomi is significant for readers of both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. For the Jews, Ruth’s conversion to Judaism is huge: the expectation of the storyteller is that she will stay in Moab, her homeland, and live among her own people, speak her own language and follow her own religion after Naomi’s two sons die, one of whom was her husband. Ruth is left a widow without children as is her mother-in-law, Naomi. Life has dealt both women a bitter blow, and Ruth makes the incredibly hard decision to stick with her mother-in-law, Naomi: she has great love and respect for Naomi, and together, she realizes, they will be stronger and better equipped to face whatever the future holds. Not only that, she has come to faith in the God of Israel through the deep kinship she has found in Naomi and, presumably, the great grief they share: Naomi for her sons; Ruth for her husband. And even returning to Naomi’s homeland of Judah, the two women are incredibly vulnerable in its patriarchal society with no husbands, no sons, no status, no income: they become gleaners gathering small amounts of grain left behind in the wheat and barley fields at harvest time.
Through this story, Ruth is recognized by Jewish readers for her faith and compassion. A non-Israelite converting to Judaism is also significant in the unfolding history of the Hebrew people: Ruth becomes a type for the future envisioned by Isaiah of Israel’s becoming a light to the nations – nations being a synonym for Gentiles.
Through their mutual and deep suffering and through Ruth’s covenant with Naomi recorded in the first chapter of the Book of Ruth, the two women become each other’s best friend. Naomi’s concern for Ruth is that eventually Naomi will die and Ruth will be more abandoned and have even less status in society than she has at present. Naomi understands the system, realizes Ruth does not have to be stuck in poverty since she is still young and attractive. Her plan for Ruth to approach the well-regarded and presumably rich Boaz is essentially Naomi’s permission for Ruth to get on with her life. We know of Boaz’s kindness from earlier accounts in the story. He is also a relative of Naomi’s through marriage. Both women are taking a chance with their matchmaking plan for Ruth, but truly they have nothing to lose. The narrative is quite anecdotal regarding Boaz, but the reader gets the impression that Boaz is a thoroughly good man, fears God, and is gracious. And it is these qualities that open him to a relationship with Ruth.
From a Jewish perspective, this unlikely turn of events has the hand of God written all over it. Ruth, a non-Israelite, becomes a great-grandmother of Israel’s greatest king, David – one of several instances in the Hebrew bible of God working in mysterious ways using unlikely people.
From a Christian perspective, Ruth becomes a great-grandmother of Jesus (through Jesus’ adoptive faither Joseph), as Jesus is “of the house and lineage of David.”
Ruth and Naomi appear as beautiful women in this story – beautiful because they search for and then find the freedom they need to live; beautiful, because they are “in their skin” and able to call upon their resources and intuit faith in a God who seeks blessing for people, even in the time of trial.
The other widow, the widow in today’s Gospel is not unlike Ruth and Naomi in this respect. And her environment is even more oppressive than the environment Ruth and Naomi lived in if we consider the negative relationship between scribes and widows that existed in Jesus’ day.
Bible commentator Hilary Hayden explains, “Scribes [in Jesus’ day] were given almost unequalled social privileges. Because they were scribes, and therefore prohibited from earning a living from their work of interpretating the law of Moses, they frequently stole from widows when entrusted scribes with the management of their inheritances.”
Jesus bristles at these pious lawyers who, as he says, like to walk around in long robes, be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, have places of honour in synagogues and banquets, but, when no one is looking steal money and even houses from vulnerable widows. Jesus has zero tolerance for the religious establishment when it abuses its privilege.
By contrast, he draws the attention of his disciples to a widow with no status but whose faith in God was such that she gave everything she had to live on to the temple: the scribes’ stealing versus the woman’s sacrificial giving; an authentic response to the call of faith versus sleaze.
And so, if we now take a step back and look at the two readings, the reading from Ruth, and today’s Gospel, we see three examples of people of faith, women of faith, struggling with challenges that are seemingly beyond their capacity to overcome, finding strength to go on living hopefully through their confidence in a faithful, loving, and merciful God; a God of grace, a God of hope, a God of justice, a God of liberation.
Can we place ourselves in their sandals? Can we allow our confidence in God’s faithfulness, mercy, and justice to still our troubled souls and stiffen our resolve when so many in our world seek to oppress the vulnerable? This is a difficult question because oppression is all around us, comes from within and outside of systems and governments, and even comes from among us if we’re honest with ourselves about privileges we enjoy, often at the expense of others.
In spite of feeling compromised, in spite of the complexity of sources of oppression, I feel that the answer has to be “Yes”. If faith is something we not only hold to but also practise, we must place ourselves in the sandals of Naomi, Ruth, and the widow at the temple. If we wish to keep faith with all those we remember today who fought against oppressive regimes we must answer “Yes, we will be present-day advocates for those in our midst, in our community, in our own country, and in our world who need our voice, our power, our support, and our accompaniment.” Perhaps we can identify with Boaz. Boaz knew who Ruth was – a foreigner, a widow, but he saw beyond those labels of oppression and welcomed her into his heart. He doesn’t get first billing in the story, but there would be no story without his mercy and love.
Jesus, by pointing out to his disciples the faith and trust of the widow at the temple and the hypocrisy of the so-called religious class removed the filter of social convention from his disciples’ eyes, and allowed them to see the difference between simulated faith and authentic faith, between archived faith and practised faith.
These two stories and now four people, since we’ve included Boaz, show us possibilities for practising the faith we profess, rejecting oppression, especially oppression of those who are most vulnerable, and yes, possibilities for living in our skin, the skin God has given us in the gospel of Jesus Christ.