August 5, 2007 Sermon

Love Across Borders
Ruth 1:1-18

We spent the week before last with my wife, Linda’s, family in Wisconsin. On our way back across the U.P. we stopped to visit some good friends from Indiana who have a place along the Menominee River. We got there just before lunch, evidence of master planning on our part. These people plant one of the truly great gardens. John, the husband and father of the clan, is a forester by trade. He knows plants. And he loves working in his garden every day.

John’s garden provides his family with much of its diet year-round. Beans, squash, lettuce, strawberries, corn, zucchini, cucumbers, apples, peaches, peppers: whatever they do not consume they can, and eat year-round. They brought a lot of produce with them up north to their river house. They served us home-grown carrot and cucumber salads, and lettuce for the hamburgers. But the star of the show, for me, was the home-grown, Indiana tomatoes. You just can’t grow hall of fame tomatoes up north. It’s not hot enough, early enough, long enough to make it happen here. It’s not fair to our local gardeners, but it is the truth. (Of course, Michigan blueberries, apples, and cherries outshine Indiana’s.)

Every place has its strengths and weaknesses. We have lived here ten years. I love it. I pray that God will let us stay here for the rest of our lives. But here has yet to become “home” for me. On the mission trip the bus made a late stop at a rest area in central Illinois. As we entered the mugginess I felt I had gone “home”. A hot, humid evening. Cicadas chirring. The sweet smell of a nearby corn field. Sycamore trees. It all created an overwhelming sense of belonging. My daughter Laura and I looked at each other. We both felt it. This is where I spent my childhood; this is where Laura spent hers. I said to her, “I love it that you get it.” She gave me a sad smile and nodded.

Home has a grip on us. Even if our experience of home has been bitter we still have—and need—a base, a center, a place from which we come. While we can leave home, home never completely leaves us. This universal human truth makes the story of Ruth all the more powerful.

Just a few generations later than Joshua, the man who led the children of Israel back into the Promised Land to complete the Exodus from Egypt, famine struck the land. The Bible tells us that “a certain man” named Elimelech fled the famine. But did you notice where Elimelech called home? Bethlehem. Remember this important factoid. Elimelech took his wife, Naomi, and their two sons with him to Moab, the country east across the Jordan River. There they found food and settled. He died, their sons married local girls, and life went on for ten years.

But both of the sons died, as well. This placed Naomi in an impossible situation. Hebrew women in that era depended utterly on their male relations. They had no legal or property rights of their own. Plus, Naomi was a foreigner, a Hebrew in Moabite territory. Though she had Moabite daughters-in-law, as women they also lacked standing. This is why Naomi decided to return home, to the Promised Land across the river. At least there, among her fellow Hebrews, she would have the protection of those parts of God’s law that provided for widows such as herself.

It speaks extremely well of Naomi that her Moabite daughters-in-law started to go with her. Their situation was the opposite of hers. Their only hope for a living would normally be to stay among their own people. They would never remarry. They would never have children. They would never have the life they could have expected had their husbands survived, but at least they would be home, among their own people. Still, they chose to leave with their mother-in-law. But she told them, “Go, return each of you to your mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead” (her sons) “and with me.”

The girls wept and refused to leave Naomi. But she begged them again. One of them relented, kissed her, and took her leave. The other, Ruth, stayed. And when Naomi tried yet again to make her go home, Ruth answered, “Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” This demonstration of loyalty and love finally broke Naomi’s determination. She and Ruth journeyed together to Bethlehem.

What would cause a young woman to leave home? Everything she had known—food, customs, religion—would differ. She knew this much, though she probably suspected the differences would be even greater than she could imagine. Yet she chose to go. Why? The story forces us to accept only one explanation: Ruth loved Naomi. Ruth loved Naomi so much she chose to leave her own mother behind. Naomi had given birth to Ruth’s late husband; perhaps she had loved him so much that she could not bear losing this living tie to him. But no matter how many angles there are to this love story the bottom line remains the same. Ruth chose with her heart to leave home.

Have you ever loved so much you chose to leave home? This is a loaded question. It requires interpretation. First we must define love. The story of Ruth embodies a unique kind of love. The Hebrew language in which this story was told uses a particular word for this type of love: hessed. Hessed means steadfast, permanent, unconditional love. Normally the Old Testament uses hessed to refer only to the love God has for creation, and especially for us. But Ruth loved in this godly way. Her actions prove such a big claim. She made life-changing decisions that could come only from a foundation of steadfast love. Her love changed not only her life, but Naomi’s and, as we shall see, literally the whole world.

Have you ever loved so much that you chose to leave home? Now that we know this question refers to godly love, we need also to define one more term: home. At the start of this sermon I made a big deal about tomatoes and sycamores. I had a point. These things evoke for me a powerful feeling of home. There is a place, a geographical place but also an emotional place that will (apparently) always be home for me. My mother and father still live there. It carries memories, some happy, some hurtful, but together they make up my past. They help make me who I am. It was hard for me to leave home. Linda and I got married when I was 21. We immediately climbed into a car and drove a thousand miles away. I entered a highly competitive graduate school. I did not struggle or suffer nearly so terribly as Ruth did, but I was unhappy. I wanted to go home.

When we understand “home” as being the place from which you come, physically, emotionally and spiritually, we finally understand the question, have you ever loved so much that you chose to leave home?

Our ultimate allegiance in this life is not to home. It is not to our families, to the land, nor even to the church. Our ultimate allegiance is to the Lord God and His steadfast love. Young people, as you go through the tough process of trying to find a husband or wife remember that unless that significant other shares your commitment to steadfast, godly love, you have not (yet) found a literal soul mate. Parents, as your children spread their wings and go through that tough process of leaving home, unless you uphold them in steadfast love you do not fulfill God’s call upon your lives. Church, as we go through the tough process of growing our building and our ministry, unless we bathe all we do in godly love, we labor in vain.

As our lives go by we must leave home in many times and ways. Take Ruth’s example to heart: choose love, and let love guide your choices. Pray constantly that you might love constantly. Seek support from your brothers and sisters in the church that you might love constantly. Let the Spirit of God, which is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Son of God born in Bethlehem to one of Ruth’s descendents, fill you, that you might love constantly with His love. Love: don’t leave home without it.