Twenty-third Sunday After Pentecost Year B 2009

23 Pentecost B 09
November 8, 2009

Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
1 Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, "My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you. 2 Now here is our kinsman Boaz, with whose young women you have been working. See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor. 3 Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing floor; but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. 4 When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do." 5 She said to her, "All that you tell me I will do."
13 So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the LORD made her conceive, and she bore a son. 14 Then the women said to Naomi, "Blessed be the LORD, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; and may his name be renowned in Israel! 15 He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him." 16 Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse. 17 The women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, "A son has been born to Naomi." They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.

Psalm 127
1 Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. 2 It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved. 3 Sons are indeed a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. 4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one's youth. 5 Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

Hebrews 9:24-28
24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own; 26 for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Mark 12:38-44
38 As he taught, he said, "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39 and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! 40 They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation."
41 He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 43 Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44 For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."

Three Widows

Our scriptures today tell us about three widows, Ruth, Naomi and a nameless widow who lived over a thousand years after them.

Our remembrance today is nearly miraculous. We are remembering two people that lived over three thousand years ago and another two thousand years ago. This is the marvel of scripture.

All of you who like to remember the good old days will enjoy this one, because the story of Ruth is a story from the good old days. Not long after the time of Moses and Joshua, when the people of God had settled in the land, there was a period that is covered by the book of Judges. These indeed were the good old days. There was no king but God in Israel back then, no need of palaces or temples or cities. Israel was an tribal and agrarian nation who practiced among themselves a religion marvelous to behold.

From our point of view today, of course, there is probably a lot that is wrong with Jewish society in that period. But for the people of the day, their society could only be compared to the societies around them, which were all much, much more brutal and violent. It was also not a time of uniform faithfulness; there was a good bit of backsliding here and there, but these periods were relatively short-lived.

Among the unusual practices of the Jewish people in the time of the Judges was their hospitality to strangers. Another was their tender care for the weakest and poorest among them. So it was that when Naomi and Ruth and Orpah all lost their husbands while living in Moab, Naomi, a faithful Jew who knew her people would take care of her, decided to return to them. She urged Orpah and Ruth, her daughters-in-law, to return to their mothers, as was apparently the custom in Moab. Orpah did so, but Ruth chose a different path.

“Where you go, I will go. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

A widow in the ancient world, particularly one without sons, was a deeply vulnerable person. One very consistent dimension of God’s personality as it is described in the Old Testament was his concern for widows, orphans and strangers. This concern is repeated again and again. God commands his people to care for the widow, the orphan and the alien sojourner at least twenty times in the Old Testament law. He promises blessings to those who do, and wrath to those who neglect them.

For example, we find in Exodus 22:

21 You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. 22 You shall not abuse any widow or orphan. 23 If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry; 24 my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children orphans.

And so it was that Boaz, a faithful Jew blessed with wealth, welcomed and cared for both Naomi and Ruth. Later in the books of the Kings, we hear the story of the widow of Zarephath, who, in the midst of the evil and unjust rule of Ahab and Jezebel, gives herself into the hands of the Lord by welcoming his prophet, and is sustained by a never-ending supply of grain and oil.

Interestingly enough, as it turns out, despite his wealth, Boaz himself was a man in need. In our story today, Naomi coaches Ruth in the art of seduction and sends her off to join herself in marriage to Boaz.

The faithfulness of these two widows, along with the faithfulness of Boaz, becomes the spring out of which pours Israel’s greatest king, David, and centuries later, David’s descendent, one Jesus of Nazareth.

Fast forward twelve hundred years, and we find Ruth’s descendent in critical opposition to the temple religion of Israel in his day. The good old days are long over. Israel has been deeply troubled and compromised for hundreds of years. I read a wonderful sermon that described this scene as if it were a movie made by a brilliant filmmaker.

It begins with a close-up of Jesus, teaching about the religion of the scribes, who were the bible teachers of Israel’s day, held in deep honor by all the people. They wore long and fancy robes and were always seated at the best places at the table. Among their duties, they often counseled people who were having financial difficulties, for a fee of course, and were even sometimes investors on behalf of their clients. In Jesus’ day, it appears that they were not above getting everything they could out of those who were most vulnerable. Jesus says, “They devour widows’ houses, and say long prayers for the sake of appearances.”

One black preacher titled her sermon on this story “Have You Got Good Religion?” Jesus is contrasting not the difference between faith and unbelief, but the difference between true religion and false. The people of Israel deeply respected their scribes and believed in their teachings. But Jesus is warning his followers that careful discernment must be exercised, as the teaching of the scribes was warped by their own unknowing hypocrisy.

It’s highly unlikely that the scribe got up every morning and thought, “Today I will be a religious hypocrite,” anymore than an addict gets up in the morning and says, “Today I will deliberately ruin my life.” The ministry of Jesus during his earthly life, as Hebrews tells us today, was directed at the problem of sin, and the reality of sin is that it is, as the twelve-step fellowships tell us, “insidious, baffling and powerful.” Most of us are blind to our own sin. We are blessed with the gospel accounts so that we might come to be able to remove the log from our own eyes, before we remove the speck from our neighbor’s. The sin of the scribe was not readily apparent; he appeared pious, successful, confident and authoritative. His prayers were long and beautifully constructed. He said all the things people expected religious leaders to say. How could he be wrong?

The shot then widens to show us that Jesus is sitting opposite the temple, observing it, while his disciples stand around him. The scene is busy and crowded. Near the temple wall are metal receptacles shaped like trumpets into which people toss coins as offerings to the temple treasury. We see elegantly garbed people—might some of them be the very scribes Jesus just finished describing?—tossing handfuls of heavy gold coins into the trumpets, and we hear the loud clanging of their descent.

But then, as if on cue, the camera zooms in on an old widow in tattered clothes, the very victim Jesus had just mentioned, making her way through the bustling crowd. At the trumpets she digs into her bag and withdraws two small copper pennies. She looks at them with a thoughtful expression, perhaps thinking of the meal they could buy her that day, a meal she will have to go without in order to make an offering to the Lord. At last, with a sigh, she drops her two coins into the trumpet and disappears into the crowd.

The shot shifts to Jesus watching her in amazement. He urgently calls his disciples to pay attention.

"Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44 For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."

“Everything she had.” In the face of the terrible injustice she had suffered, she nevertheless continued to be faithful to God. In her offering, she becomes as Christ himself, believing and trusting in the face of every reason not to. And today, we remember her, and she lives again among us. Today she is our teacher.

I heard a story from Jim Perry, the chairperson of the Region’s Mission and Stewardship Committee, about a missionary to China that returned home to report to congregations. At one congregation, after he’d finished his presentation, someone asked, “What can we do to help?” The missionary responded, “It’s not they who need help from you. It’s you who need help from them.” He went on to explain how the congregations in China had been built in the midst of horrific persecution. They’d had to meet in utmost secrecy. They’d had to memorize the scriptures because it was too dangerous for people to own bibles. Yes, perhaps there are some things we have to share with them. But the missionary was also pointing out that there was an even more precious things they could share with a wealthy and complacent American congregation, passionate faithfulness.

Three widows have more to offer us than we have to offer them. And so it may also be for the whole church on earth. By seeking out and knowing those in the deepest need, we just might find the passionate faith we lack.

Amen.