A sermon preached at Old South Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Hallowell, Maine, November 5, 2006.
Text: Ruth
The Rev. Susan M. Reisert, minister
This past summer, in the span of just four short days, I attended two funerals. Although they were presided over by the same priest, they really couldn't have been more different.
The first funeral was for our friend and our neighbor who committed suicide, leaving a wife, two young children the same ages as our children, an adult son, many friends and a struggling business. Mark wasn't a church-goer, but the priest had met Mark and had spoken to him just a month or two before-when Mark's father had died. That funeral involved a wide span of emotions-a lot of grief and sadness, regret for somehow missing the signs that Mark might be thinking of hurting himself, and anger for the fact that Mark had not turned to his friends and, instead, left his family in such a profoundly awful and difficult and painful way.
The second funeral was for the man who once held Joe's teaching position at Colby. Al died surrounded by his family-his wife, his grown children and his grandchildren. He had lived a good, long life. Although there was certainly much sadness and grief, there really was no regret for something being left undone. At his funeral, two of his adult children spoke about the great gifts that their father had given them in shaping their character and values through the daily routines of their family life. Al was a faithful member of the Church, which meant that the priest not only knew him well, but that Al possessed great hope for his new life after death. The back of the program for his service featured an end of life statement that he had written that included his hopes for and belief in eternal life.
Death is one of a very few common denominators that link us together as human beings. Yet, we don't like talking about it or dealing with it-not unless we really have to and even then, it can be an awesome struggle. Death remains one of life's greatest mysteries. Most of us don't know when we, or our family or friends, will die or how. We struggle with its meaning. For instance: what does it mean when a young person dies? What does it mean when the meanest guy we've ever met lives a long life and dies at an old, old age? What does death tell us about life? But, still we prefer to avoid the subject-although many spend a great deal of time privately worrying about it.
This morning, we focus on death in two ways: one through the lens of the story of Ruth and the other as we honor those precious departed from our lives, those we consider to be "saints" (small "s"), people who have been especially meaningful in our lives and have died in the last year.
In the story from the book of Ruth, we are reminded of the reality of death and the consequences that can come from death: "In the days when the judges ruled, there was famine in the land; and Elimelech, a man of Bethlehem in Judah, with his wife and two sons when to reside in the country of Moab. . . . Elimelech, Naomi's husband died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women . . . and then the two sons also died."
And Naomi and Ruth and the other daughter-in-law, Orpah, are left widowed and grieving and destitute. Without husbands, they had no means of support, no way of taking care of themselves.
"Like everyone ever born who goes through sudden, defining loss of any kind, these women find themselves faced with the question: Who am I when I am no longer who and what I was? Like the rest of us for whom the very foundations of our lives are given to shifting from day to day, there are no miracles in sight to save them, no angels on the road to point the way. Nothing. Everything they had, everything they ever thought they wanted, is gone. Now they have only themselves on which to depend, only the spirit of God to lead them on through a world that has little place for them at all once motherhood ends, or there is no man to support them, or there is no institution to define them, or there is no one and nothing whose need legitimates their existence." [Joan Chittister, "The Story of Ruth: Moments of Loss and Faith," available at www.csec.org.]
In her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion writes eloquently about the year after the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, a year in which she was also dealing with the grave illness of her only child, her adult and recently married daughter, who died shortly after the book was published. In the book, Didion writes about that moment when her husband had a sudden and massive heart attack: "Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." Didion goes on to describe grief this way: "Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life."
I wonder if Ruth, Naomi and Orpah experienced a same kind of thing that Joan Didion experienced, though centuries separate them.
Naomi, Ruth and Orpah find themselves at a most precarious crossroads. No husbands, no sons meant that they were destitute and vulnerable. Naomi heard that there was longer famine back in Judah, in Bethlehem. So, Naomi makes plans to return. Concerned for her daughters-in-law, Naomi advises them to return to their own people that they might find husbands. She is too old to provide sons for them. This comment relates to the Law in Deuteronomy that states that widows have to be cared for by any brothers of the dead husband in order to continue to the bloodline of the family. In this case, there are no younger brothers. The emphasis on Naomi's concern seems to reflect her own understandable bitterness against God.
Initially, the dialogue has both Orpah and Ruth claiming they will return with Naomi, but Orpah is prevailed upon and we are left with Naomi and Ruth traveling together. The repetition of "return my daughters" underlies Naomi's cry for them to find happiness and security within their own people. In further dialogue, Naomi pleads with Ruth and points to the return of Orpah to convince her to do likewise. There follows the well-known reading, which is used out context and rarely given its context. It is profound not only for Ruth's affirmation of loyalty to Naomi, but also for her own affirmation of faith in Yahweh. The words she uses are similar to words used by God and are set out like a covenant. After this affirmation, Naomi is finally convinced and they travel together into Bethlehem where the townsfolk greet her.
But, yet, even in this painful episode, full of grief and longing, the path to something new and wonderful is making itself known-though in a small, barely discernable way. Even in the midst of death, there is life. Through the line that extends from Ruth, King David will be born and, later, that line will be extended as the line through which the Savior is born. Consumed by grief, and longing and bitterness, the women were likely unable to see that God was indeed traveling with them and setting for them the path that would lead to the birth of the Savior. A foreign woman, who pledged her devotion not only to her mother-in-law but, more importantly, to her mother-in-law's God, would provide the line for David-a thought that Ruth could hardly ponder or imagine. Yet, there it is-in all of its profound truth.
Loss, ironically enough, is the catalyst of newness, a doorway to other parts of the soul, where what lies dormant in us comes alive because without a capacity for the unexplored, life dies. Life is not one path; life is many paths, most of them unexplored in favor of closer, clearer ones. But when loss comes, our creating God comes again to us in new and demanding ways so that we can finish the creation that has been begun in us. [Joan Chittister, "The Story of Ruth: Moments of Loss and Faith," available at www.csec.org.]
There is grief and there is reassessment of where we are on the path of life. There is loss and there is new life. The art of remembering involves knowing that the two work together.
We remember with sadness and grief those whom we think of as saints, but at the same time today, we recognize that what made those people saints is that they, in some way, opened something new for us, they brought meaning to our lives, they showed us a little something about how God works in our midst, they, even through death, showed us the path of life. As we pray to God at a funeral service: "Through the veil of our tears and the silence of our emptiness, assure us again that ear has not heard, nor eye seen, nor human imagination envisioned, what you have prepared for those who love you."
Frederick Buechner, the great Christian writer, sums up saints this way: "In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a pocket handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.
"Many people think of saints as plaster saints or moral exemplars, men and women of such paralyzing virtue that they never thought a nasty thought or did an evil deed their whole lives long. As far as I know, real saints never even come close to characterizing themselves that way. On the contrary, no less a saint than Saint Paul wrote: 'I am foremost among sinners' (I Timothy 1:15), and Jesus himself prayed to God to forgive him his trespasses . . .
"In other words, the feet of saints are as much of clay as everyone else's, and their sainthood consists less of what they have done than of what God has for some reason chosen to do through them. When you consider that Mary Magdalen was possessed by seven devils, that Saint Augustine prayed, "Give me chastity and continence, but not now,' that Saint Francis started out as a high-living young dude in downtown Assissi, . . . you figure that maybe there's nobody God can't use as a means of grace including even ourselves.
"The Holy Spirit has been called 'the Lord, the giver of life,' and drawing their power from that source, saints are essentially life-givers. To be with them is to become more alive." [Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC]
We remember today. And, in our remembering, we weave together our grief and our faith in the new life that is made real even in the midst of death and loss. That new life may be barely discernable, perhaps indecipherable, but we know it is there. Our faith tells us so. This doesn't make the path any easier, but it does grant to us that which the world cannot: hope, trust, peace and love. As Jesus tried to prepare his disciples for his death on a cross, something which the disciples continued to misunderstand and even ignore, Jesus spoke to them of peace: 27Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. (John 14:27)
May it continue to be so for us. Praise be to God. Amen.