Sermon: What Holds Us Together

I preached this sermon on June 6, 2010 at St. Lydia's as part of our five week exploration of the Book of Ruth.  The text is Ruth 1:1-14.  Read it here.

My first year at Divinity School, I had the privilege of watching two very good friends fall in love.  John and Kelly were close friends that first year we were all in school together, and at some point, the relationship just turned, and suddenly they were together.  I actually remember the night – it involved all of us exiting Kelly’s apartment very quickly after they had both consumed a certain number of cheap mixed drinks.

 

The rest is history, as they say.

 

I gave the toast at their wedding, and just this Thursday Kelly gave birth to a little boy.

 

They are a family.  They are held together, this new family of three.  Held together by history, memory, love, blood.  All these things hold them together.

 

During the time at Divinity School when John and Kelly were getting ready to get engaged, I was with a man named JC.  And all of us, John and Kelly and JC and me, pretty much lived together in that apartment on Canner Street.

 

And we did things that families do.

Sometimes we would have taco night.

Or movie night.

And on Saturdays there was always a big breakfast with all four of us.

 

We were a family.  We were held together by time, situation, a certain moment in life,  caring for one another, shared experience, love.  And then things changed, shifted, and we found family in different places.

 

People make family in a lot of different ways.  Among the folks gathered at this table tonight, I know of so many different ways people have found to make family.  We find our tribes, our people, and something holds us together.  Sometimes blood, sometimes experience, sometimes pure, unfettered love.  Sometimes choice.  Or obligation.  History: painful or joyful.  Some of us are more alone in the world than others.

 

JC used to say there’s the family you have and the family you choose.  He had found it necessary in his life to nurture that family he chose.  I learned how to do that from him. 

 

This story of Ruth and Naomi, they’re choosing to be a family.  What makes sense is for all of them to return home.  For Naomi to go to Israel and try and find someone, some distant relative who will take her in, because as a woman who can no longer bear children, and has no children, she faces destitution.  What makes sense is for Ruth to return to the family of her now-dead husband, to see if they’ll take her in.  Maybe another member of the family will marry her, and she’ll produce more children who will take care of her in her old age.  But she doesn’t choose what makes sense.

 

While lineage or religion or finance presents the clearest way for a family to be held together, Ruth and Naomi choose another way.  They’re held together through loyalty, love.  They’re unlikely and they’re foolish.  But they’re held together.  They decide to make a family.

 

The last image presented in our text tonight:

But Ruth clung to her.

 

The word used, “to cling” is the Hebrew "dabaq."  It’s the same word used in Genesis 2:24: Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and cling to his wife.

 

Families don’t always look how we think they might.  Forget picket fences and 2.5 children, try and a mother in law and a daughter in law who have decided they’re going through life together.  They’re taking care of one another, in exactly the same way a partnered couple is asked to.

 

The bible presents us with plenty of models for different ways of being family.  It’s not about blood or lineage or money.  It’s about love, and loyalty, and yes, choice.  We choose each other again and again, over and over.  Every day we choose once more to be family, to be in relationship, to sustain love, sustain loyalty.

One of the funny things about preaching from the Book of Ruth, is that, in some ways, God plays kind of a supporting role in this story.  It’s a story about

relationship,

harvest,

fertility,

and, oh yes, God is mentioned as well, almost in passing.

 

But then you take another look and see that it’s a story about

relationship,

harvest,

fertility,

death and loss,

pain and separation,

commitment and family,

love and sex,

and you see God

not mentioned in passing,

but woven in and through all things.

 

Often Christians will talk about God’s "presence" in all things.

I think it’s more than that. 

God is all things.

To bring in the harvest,

to birth children and loose them,

to choose love when it’s entirely foolish,

to find a way forward when everything seems bitter

and you believe God’s hand has turned against you,

this is God.

God experienced in and through the world, and most of all, in and through one another.

Ruth clings to Naomi.  We cling to one another in ways that are surprising and foolish and don’t quite make sense.  That defy boundaries and traditions.  And our love makes us like God.

 

Tonight I want to ask you to stop trying to figure out what you believe,

and if you believe,

what it means.

Instead, just throw yourself into loving,

into pain and joy.

Start there.

To know love, to know joy, to know pain,

to know birth and death and intimacy.

This is to know God.

We finish the sermon together at St. Lydia’s.  Please share a story from your experience that’s been brought up by the text or my words.

Comments

[Penelopepiscopal]

Thanks for this, Emily - I love the emphasis on knowing God through living the life that God has given for us (and lived/lives with us). A much different message than the "Jesus and me and my salvation" emphasis one often hears - approaching God as an external being etc. And I think it goes well with your post at the Episcopal Cafe today about tradition being the ocean we swim in. We "be" in God and in the traditions of people seeking to know God rather than to set aside time to address God "out there." Thanks for posting this.

[Emily Scott]

Hi Penny,

Thanks for reading.

Maybe God is like an ocean too...! I love it. Thanks for the insight.

Also, I love your screen name. Took me a second to work it out with all those vowels!