Karen Hollis | June 25, 2023
Openness 1
Ruth 1:22 – 2:12: So Naomi returned together with Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, who came back with her from the country of Moab. They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
2 Now Naomi had a kinsman on her husband’s side, a prominent rich man, of the family of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz. 2 And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain, behind someone in whose sight I may find favour.” She said to her, “Go, my daughter.” 3 So she went. She came and gleaned in the field behind the reapers. As it happened, she came to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech.
4 Just then Boaz came from Bethlehem. He said to the reapers, “The LORD be with you.” They answered, “The LORD bless you.” 5 Then Boaz said to his servant who was in charge of the reapers, “To whom does this young woman belong?”
6 The servant who was in charge of the reapers answered, “She is the Moabite who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab.
7 She said, ‘Please, let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the reapers.’ So she came, and she has been on her feet from early this morning until now, without resting even for a moment.”
8 Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. 9 Keep your eyes on the field that is being reaped, and follow behind them. I have ordered the young men not to bother you. If you get thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn.”
10 Then she fell prostrate, with her face to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found favor in your sight, that you should take notice of me, when I am a foreigner?”
11 But Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before.
12 May the LORD reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!”
During our neighbourhood groups I asked people about openness. Some people asked, what do we mean by openness, for instance? Others would jump in with ideas . . . here are the responses of you all, as filtered through my ears, my pen, and my memory. Here’s what I heard you say:
You talked about openness as a current practice.
- we are open to everything, a wide range of otherness; open to people, we are welcoming and affirming
- openness to young people is very important
- open to new ways of doing things and new ideas, new music
- open to being more progressive (moving past liberal)
- open to other religions
Openness as a growing edge.
- It is difficult to break into a group for people who are more shy – invitation to us to get to know new people, welcome them in to sit with us at church.
- openness is growth
- openness for us is aspirational
- how do we share our openness and invitation with the wider community? We need to be visibly open.
- we are problem solvers, we open ourselves to ideas and inspiration.
In the past openness has manifested as:
- Visioning process, Queer Vespers over Zoom, PIE Day film open to public, partnering with Unitarian Church, Easter Sunrise Service, communication through the weekly Newsletter to keep the body informed, website, livestreaming,
As I said earlier, I think this is a bold value that will challenge us in ways we don’t expect and invite us again and again to ask, what does it mean to be open in this situation? How do we live out this value in these new circumstances? God be with us as we walk this courageous path.
Sermon: I picked up this little book on The Book of Ruth earlier this year and it slowly and thoroughly blew my mind. Borders and Belonging by Padraig O Tuama and Glenn Jordan. As I prepared this sermon I really wanted to just stand up here and read the book to you . . . alternatively, I think we could have a really engaging book study and for today, explore some of the pieces in the book that can help us think about openness. For today’s reflection I owe a huge debt of gratitude to these authors.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
I want to explore today what openness asks of us. Openness is easy when we are comfortable, when we are grounded, when we are in control, when our heart is open. Openness is much more difficult when our fears and insecurities are activated, when we are outside our comfort zones. An invitation to openness can touch places in us that hurt, it can touch rules we were taught when we were very young, it can touch cultural norms that formed us. Openness sometimes invites us to find safe places to unpack these things . . . the process of which can actually create little openings in us.
There is general agreement among scholars that the Book of Ruth was written and ultimately included in the biblical canon in part because it helped people do the internal work of openness . . . in particular, it invited self-examination through a story that upset stereotypes. Let’s dig in.
The text tells us straight away that Ruth is a Moabite from Moab. In fact in this morning’s reading, Moab appears 5 times in 13 verses. The author makes and remakes the point of who she is and where she is from. Why? There is always a reason.
When the original audience of the text hear that Ruth is a Moabite, they will immediately bristle with generations of animosity going all the way back to Exodus. In the story of the Israelites fleeing slavery, the Moabites were not hospitable to the formerly enslaved people when they needed help in the wilderness; the Moabites turned them away without food and water. As a result of this story, deep cuts were maintained between the two people groups. So in the beginning of Ruth, when Naomi’s family flees famine and travels to Moab, the reader expects them to receive same treatment. They are surprised to learn that the family makes a home there for many years. How do they do that in an inhospitable place? Then Naomi’s sons marry Moabite women. We know how this is going to end . . . in heartbreak. Hebrew stereotypes claim that Moabite women are famously unreliable.[1] Well, there is heartbreak, but a different kind . . . we can easily imagine the devastation of the 3 women when one by one their husbands die. Ruth remains with her mother-in-law well beyond what is expected of her. All this happens within the first 7 verses of the book. The author is setting the scene with a hospitable Moab, deep familial relationships, and loyal Moabite women.
One last piece of context for us: not only did the Hebrew tradition teach that Moabites should be hated, the law specifically names them as unwelcome: Deuteronomy 23: No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the people of God - even if after 10 generations they prove themselves worthy - because they did not meet you with food and water.[2]
We are told in today’s reading that Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth (the Moabite) return to Bethlehem . . . what’s going to happen now? And how are the original hearers of the story taking this all in? Are their cultural sensibilities activated? Is their commitment to God’s law on high alert? Are they confused and frustrated with the story? Even so, they read on . . .
. . . and in chapter 2 we learn a little more about Ruth. The first thing she does upon arriving in Bethlehem is ask Naomi if she can go and gather some food for them. It’s written into Jewish law that reapers are to leave the edges of fields for the poor to collect grain to eat. But Ruth is a Moabite, so she cannot expect to be included in this provision. When she comes to the plot owned by Boaz, she meets him there at the edge of the field. She is careful to check with him before collecting grain on the edges of his field. He not only seems to know who she is; he also treats her with the dignity that his culture does not afford her. Why?
Boaz is evidently aware of Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi, which is a powerful posture in this story. When Ruth’s husband died, she was fully released from her marriage contract. She owed nothing to the family, owed nothing to Naomi. We might wonder: what would Naomi have done if Ruth had remained in Moab? Returning to Bethlehem with no husband, no sons, no one would have been obligated by the law to care for her . . . her fate would have been critically uncertain. But Ruth went beyond the obligations of Jewish law to care for her mother-in-law.
There is a Hebrew word, which is often translated ‘lovingkindness’.[3] In Jewish tradition lovingkindness is a vital contribution to the repairing of the world. According to O Tuama and Jordan, Law by itself cannot repair the world, even though Law is the beloved ground on which this work of repair can happen. Law can compel acts of generosity but it cannot supply the magnanimity that draws generous actions from us in places where the Law doesn’t extend.[4] Law can require us to be generous, but it can’t make us want to be generous. Ruth embodies this place and Boaz notices . . . and he extends to her the law that protects the poor.
To come back to the view of the reader for a moment, “by offering [this] spacious story – with only the essential amount of detail - the text provides a container for the readers to challenge what they have been taught while also allowing for many small openings through which the imagination can travel.”[5] Perhaps at a time where Jewish people were coming back to their homeland after the diaspora – after being forced out by the Babylonians – perhaps many were coming back with Moabite family members . . . this would have been important work to do. After reading the story of Ruth, might the stereotypes that are so firmly installed in the hearer find themselves a bit cracked . . . making room for more movement down the road?
The Book of Ruth challenges the specific stereotypes of a people group, but stereotypes are everywhere in our world, and as the authors observe, “where stereotyping becomes dangerous is when we ignore differences between individuals in [a] people group. Stereotypes simplify our social world and reduce the amount of data we have to process about our social interactions.”[6]
In today’s world we are experiencing a challenging culture shift where it comes to gender stereotypes. We have been trained by our culture to look for gender cues to figure out how to relate to a person we don’t know. If this person is male, I will relate to them this way; if they’re female, I will relate to them this other way. Many of us find ourselves confused and awkward in our interactions when our assessment of gender cues fails to give us a clear answer. Many are celebrating pride this month, and as our culture engages the work of becoming more affirming, each of us is invited to learn how to relate to all people, regardless of how any of us present ourselves.
I’ve been thinking and praying a lot about this topic . . . and I really resonate with this idea that stereotypes reduce the amount of data we have to process in social interactions. We rely on that short hand with people . . . it works well in a binary world . . . which ours is not . . . the world has always been much greyer and more nuanced than most of us realized.
So if we can’t rely on the way a person presents to tell us how to interact with them, the only other place we have to look is within ourselves. Who do we want to be in the interaction? What do our values tell us about how to treat another human? What do we have to bring to the interaction? We have an invitation to reach a little deeper inside of us . . . and it takes some work to do that. Here at Comox United, we are open and are committed to openness – and the affirming committee is in conversation about an affirming refresher and creating some safe spaces to engage this work.
Is not the ultimate goal to move from being open to a wide range of otherness to simply seeing people as fellow humans, regardless of how any of us present ourselves? As an affirming church, this is a relevant and worthwhile goal.
The Benedictines – a Christian order of monks – have a practice for honouring the humanity in another. “The monastic bow by which a monk greets another person is an acknowledgement of the humanity of that person in whom the image of God dwells. It also [orients] the monk’s head to the earth, thereby grounding them and helping them to recognize that the person they now welcome shares the same place and the same feet of clay.”[7] In the Book of Ruth, in ancient Judaism, in 21st Century Vancouver Island, only such radical generosity can help us disassemble the stereotypes that are now a burden and a barrier to us . . . and create new possibilities for relationship, and new norms in our practices toward one other.
[1] Borders and Belonging, p. 29
[2] Borders and Belonging, p. 29
[3] Borders and Belonging, p. 10
[4] Borders and Belonging p. 10-11
[5] B&B p. 18
[6] B&B p. 32
[7] B&B p. 35