“Surviving Mara Moments”

Ruth 1:1-22

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

November 2, 2003

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

            This month, we are going to look at the story of Ruth.  It is a story that is best looked at on more than one Sunday because it gives us new insights into the landscape of ancient Judaism, tribal customs, intermarriage, and primarily the power of a communion of women to bring hope and redemption to a sister in need.  On All Saints Day, when we remember the saints that have gone before us, I want us to look at Saint Ruth and Saint Naomi.  Maybe they can help us to celebrate the saints in our lives.  Today, I want to focus on Naomi, because the book of Ruth is really about Naomi’s redemption.  But before you can be redeemed, you have to explore hitting the bottom.  That’s what the first chapter is about.  

            The four-chapter book of Ruth opens with Naomi, her husband Elimelech and their two sons leaving their homeland to hang out for a while in Moab.  They were travelers who had to leave because of the famine.  Hebrew and Moabite people did not have a good history.  Over the years the nations fought each other and the book of Deuteronomy actually forbade the financial support of Moabites because they did not welcome the Hebrew people into their land when the Hebrews were fleeing slavery in Egypt.  But somehow this family was immune to all of that political infighting.  A famine was on and they went to Moab.   Things must have gone pretty well for them in Moab, because Naomi’s two sons Mahlon and Chilion married women from Moab by the names of Ruth and Orpah. 

Naomi means “Pleasant.”  We can imagine that when she was named, back in her own homeland, before everything was messed up by the war and the starvation, that that name suited her.  But life is seldom as uncomplicated as all of that.  In the movie Pleasantville, everything goes according to 50’s plan.  There are no surprises.  Everyone is happy, pleasant, all the time.  All of the main characters are like Naomis before the famine, pleasant in their oblivious black and white world.  When there are no variables, when everything goes according to cinematic plan, then there is no reason to be anything but pleasant, assuming that you have a certain freedom and security to begin with. 

            But Naomi’s pleasant persona was shaken when the men in her family all died.  Perhaps it was an ethnic cleansing and all of the foreign males were slaughtered.  We don’t know.  Elimilech, Mahlon and Chilion were dead.  Their lives reduced to some tiny bells on banners.  Naomi, Ruth and Orpah grieved.  They wept and tore their clothes.  They wailed about their loss.  And if that wasn’t enough, they slowly came to the realization that not only had they lost the loves of their lives, but their livelihoods were in serious jeopardy.  In those days, widows, at least in Moab, were not treated with the respect they had in Judea.  You were valued by how many sons you had.  A woman could not own land and a widow was left destitute.  At least in Judea, there was a welfare system for widows.  Naomi could be taken care of.  But her daughter-in-laws could not be taken care of because they were Moabites.  There was a ban on marrying people from Moab.  Maybe this is the root of the interracial marriage bans in more recent history.  Maybe it’s like the present-day ban on same gender-marriage, a cultural ban that lasted for a short amount of time and had no basis for judgements about today’s marriages.  The point is, that they were outsiders.  The fact that Naomi and her family had been in Moab for so long would make them persona non grata were they to return to Judea.

            Because of all of this, Naomi was no longer pleasant.  She was bitter.  She had lost her known way of life.  She had lost her offspring and her husband.  She was too old to have children again.  For a person whose life it had been to be a mother and a spouse, it was more than she could take.  To top it all off, women were defined by their husbands and their male offspring.  An infertile widow with no heirs was a non-person in the eyes of the patriarchal society of the time.  Naomi was bitter.  She even changed her name from Naomi (pleasant) to Mara (bitter).

            She left Pleasantville for the Bitter Valley.

            Nancy Hastings Sehested speaks about the fact that many of us have our Mara moments.  Times when we feel disempowered,

times when we feel cynical,

times when we are obsessed with fatalism,

times of bitter depression and a whirlpool of despair. 

We as a society have played our part in helping people get into those Mara moments through unjust public policy, through racism, sexism, homophobia, militarism, ageism and the like. 

            Many of our families have been through Mara moments at one time or another.  Be it because of divorce or infidelity, or debt or misunderstanding or abuse or you-name-it, many of us have been in Mara moments. 

            When we grieve the loss of a loved one, we are in Mara moments.  Those moments can last for weeks, months, even years.

            When you are in a Mara moment, or in a Mara event, it is hard to get out of it.  The walls of the Bitter Valley pit are steep and slippery.  Eventually, even the pit becomes familiar—even oddly comfortable.  When this happens, the pit becomes a tomb. It often takes medication, intervention and a real long-fought commitment to get out of the pit.  One thing is for sure, if you venture out of the pit, the world will look different.

            Naomi’s medication was her daughter-in-law, Ruth.  Ruth chose to risk her own life and livelihood, flee her homeland and go back with Naomi to the land of the Hebrew people so that she would not have to be alone.  Ruth risked her own bitterness, and reached down into the pit to grab a hold of Naomi.  But Naomi was not ready to grab very quickly.  These things take time. 

            The first thing Ruth did was to commit herself to Naomi.  “Wherever you go, I will go.  Where you lodge I will lodge.  Your people shall be my people.  Your God shall be my God.  Where you die, I shall die and there will I be buried.”  These are the words which serve as the stepping stones for most marriage vows.  The fact that they come from a covenant made from one woman to another is not often remembered.

            Naomi saw Ruth’s determination and gave up arguing with her.  But Naomi was so bitter, that even having a companion was no comfort.  Ruth must have been a remarkable person who had a deep well of love for Naomi.  It’s hard to love someone who doesn’t want to be loved.  It is hard to love when that love is not reciprocated.  But Ruth showed her remarkable love for Naomi, her mother-in-law by standing with her through thick and thin.   

            Some of the people on these banners have been Ruths for us.  Loving us when we were so bitter that we did not know how to go on.

            Some of the people on these banners have been Naomis.  They have been people who have been bitter and have wallowed in those Mara moments.  And some of them have been Elimilechs and Mahlon and Chilions. 

            When we come together around this table,

            When we pause to remember those who have gone before us.

            When we give ourselves the permission to grieve and to remember,

            Then we are Ruths to each other.

            For we hold on to each other and we pull and push each other out of the bitter valley.

            We show how we can make a difference because someone has lived.  Ruth could have gone along with Orpah.  No one would have thought ill of her.  She had her own grief to deal with.  But she needed Naomi, too.  She needed a sister who was going through the same kind of thing she was.

            Ruth needed to feel needed.

            Bitter Naomi who changed her name to Mara would eventually help to heal Ruth.  Ruth eventually helped to heal Naomi, too. 

            I encourage you to remember the people on these banners.

            Remember all the saints that have gone before.

            Remember and recommit yourselves to not staying in the bitter valley, but holding on to someone else for dear life and saying like Ruth said to Naomi, “I know you’re not the easiest person to be around.  But I will stay with you through it all.  I know you are going through hell.  But I will not forsake you.  Wherever you go, I will go there also.  Where you lodge, I will lodge.  Your people shall be my people and your God shall be my God.

            May we all have someone like that in our lives.  May we all be like that for someone else.  For when that happens, then those who have lived and died have not died in vain.  For they live on in us and how we make this world more loving, more kind, more just, more honest and more healthy and dare I say, more holy.

            Thank God for Ruth and thank God for Naomi.  Thank God for all of us as we traverse the path through the bitter valley back to wholeness.