When Love Calls
Ruth 1:11-18
Good morning. Happy Valentines weekend. Valentines Day is the day we tell the people in our life that we love them. Most people spread the love on Valentines Day though apparently several gathered yesterday at the midtown global market to "shred the love." This was an event for anyone who felt burned by love. People gathered to bring things given them by their exes- things they literally shredded. If you’ve been burned by love, you might have a restraining order on the chubby angel. I enjoy Valentines Day- but I also have a beef. Do we really need a day set aside for reminding us to tell the people around us that we love them? Or should be doing that on our own? Thankfully it’s Valentines day every day at All God’s Children- because this is the place where come to reflect on the God’s unconditional and extravagant love and where we share that love with each other and the wider community. Every day at AGC is about God’s love.
It’s about love and communion when we share the eucharist together. It’s about love when your pastors come to this pulpit to share God’s word, a word never meant to exclude or shame. It’s about love when you share the peace with each other at the beginning of the service. It’s about love when you go downstairs to fellowship and when you introduce yourselves to someone new. There are so many ways to love in this world. Our scripture today tells a very unusual love story. It’s not the story of two lovers; it’s the story of a mother and daughter in law. How subversive is that that we could begin a story saying, “Once upon a time boys and girls, there was a mother in law story without an evil punch line.” The story of Ruth and Naomi is a favorite at same gender weddings. They are beautiful words of love and covenant commitment between women. Ruth and Naomi can teach us about creating families for ourselves in unconventional and courageous ways. They stepped outside the cultural norms of their time to create security and life-giving relationships for themselves.
Theirs is more than a story of love, loyalty and faithfulness. It is a story about the greater movements of life, those times when love calls our spirit into movement. In nature we call it migration. Usually when we think of migration we think of birds or animals who move seasonally for the purpose of breeding or feeding. It’s not so different with humans. We move for lots of reasons.
The bible is full of migration stories, the story of Ruth and Naomi being one of them. In the book of Ruth, Naomi and her husband leave Bethlehem in Judah, moving east to Moab because of a famine. There they have sons; the sons grow up and marry Ruth and Orpah. And then sadly the three men in the story are killed. This leaves all three women widowed and alone in a culture and time when survival and status required men. As the matriarch of the family Naomi takes charge and decides to return to Judah where she has heard God looks kindly and where God will provide food. As would normally be the custom she tells her daughters in law that they should each move back to their mother’s houses.
But they love Naomi and they want to stay. Orpah finally agrees to go home to her mother but Ruth refuses. Ruth “clings” to Naomi while pronouncing the famous words, “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 will be my people and your God my God.”
So now these two unmarried, widowed women, unaccompanied by men, find themselves on a journey joined by loss and by love.
Twenty one years ago this weekend, also unaccompanied by men, Kaye Fredensborg and Sandi Nash met right here at All God’s Children. They’ve been on a journey of love ever since. I asked them what they’ve learned on their journey together. Here’s what they said. “We’ve learned to trust. We’ve learned to celebrate and cultivate our individuality in balance with our common interests. We are ‘not joined at the hip.’ We’ve learned to ask for help we’ve learned to offer help.” And then in a mischievous whisper, Kaye said they also believe in the value of primal screaming in the privacy of their cars!
We have another anniversary couple celebrating 27 years this weekend: Sandy Carolan and Nicky Giancola. Like Ruth and Naomi were joined by both love and loss, Sandy and Nicky met under odd circumstances. They say they have learned that there is nothing like grief to remind you who you can count on in life...
Here’s what they said about their journey “We are certain that our relationship is a gift from God. If there is a principle by which we live, this would be it. We cherish it, try to nurture it, and never, ever take it for granted. We put a high priority on each others' happiness. We've learned that you have to do more than just profess your love; you demonstrate it daily in big ways and small and the resulting payoff is what sustains you over the long haul. We put the relationship interest ahead of any individual interest and its amazing how truly contented and satisfied it makes you feel. Our love has never had conditions.
We operate as a team and know without doubt, that we have each other's backs always...”
Ruth and Naomi also had each other’s back. The end of their story is inspirational and funny. They arrive back in Judah where a distant relative named Boaz offers the women shelter and food. Naomi turns matchmaker engineering a scheme to setup Ruth and Boaz. This is where there is great humor in the Bible. Naomi tells Ruth to put on her best dress, and to wear perfume. She tells her to wait until Boaz is done eating and drinking, drunk enough to happily pass out on the threshing room floor. Naomi tells Ruth to “uncover his feet” (a biblical euphemism for sex). Boaz wakes up and “blesses her” (another euphemism) and then what he says is both humorous and sweet. He thanks Ruth for her “kindness” noting that she could have been “kind” to any of the younger men in the field. Poor Boaz. You can’t make this stuff up. This is better than reality TV because mother in law Naomi isn’t done. Next she brokers a sly real estate deal which includes Boaz purchasing an option on her dead husband’s estate, and --ta da—this means he’s just “acquired” Ruth herself. And so they were married and they gave birth to a son. And here’s the best part. They name their baby Obed. Baby Obed becomes the father of Jesse, Jessee becomes the father of David. So with the birth of Obed, Ruth became the great, great, great, great….. great, great grandmother of Jesus. All because she followed loves call.
Love comes in many forms and it draws us in lots of different ways. Have you ever felt inexplicably drawn to someone or some place, uncertain of the outcome yet following an instinct to move?
Every one of us has a story about the day we felt drawn to walk through the doors of AGC place of what we hoped would be unconditional love. Just in the years we’ve been collecting the data, 7,600 people have come through those doors looking for love--love of God, of community. Some have even found romantic love.
And like Ruth and Naomi, have you ever left your home, in search of a better life, a new opportunity or food for your soul?
This weekend we say goodbye to Tim Gisi and partner Ken Nelson. Tim lost his management job at Herbergers this month but fortunately was offered a transfer to a store in Illinois. They love it here however in these uncertain times, Illinois is calling them. So they are leaving us in hopes of a new future. Tim/Ken, we hope Illinois will be for you where God looks kindly and where God will provide food.
Tim and Ken, Sandy and Kay, Sandy and Nicky, Ruth and Naomi have learned that when love calls, we do well to answer. You cannot stop a caterpillar from emerging into a new creation. Life is about movement and becoming.
I am grateful that God called me to this place. I am grateful God called you to this place. I hope you feel the love of God and of community here. If Valentine’s weekend can teach us one thing, it is this.
When love calls, I say we should answer.
Amen.