"Created for Community" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
August 13, 2023
Scripture:  Ruth 1:8-22 (The first part of the chapter was summarized in the story for all ages.)

 

 

Ruth and Naomi. There are so many different lenses that you can read their story through.  They are mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, so you can read it through the lens of obligation to care for your family – an obligation that was very strong in that time and place.  Naomi’s decision to send her daughters-in-law back to their families after all three husbands died would have been a very counter-cultural choice as their society said that Ruth and Orpah had an obligation to care for Naomi.

 

You can also read their story as a love story.  Last December we read this story, and in the sermon, I re-told it as a queer love story between Ruth and Naomi.

 

You can also read their story, especially if you read the whole book of Ruth, as a story of going above and beyond what God requires.  The story explores God’s law of levirate marriage – a brother’s requirement to marry his brother’s widow to provide a home for her. The story explores God’s commandment not to harvest your field right to the edge, but to leave some of the harvest so that people without enough food can take what they need from what you left behind.  The story explores what truly loving your neighbour as you love yourself might look like in practice.

 

But this week, I want to look at the story of Ruth and Naomi through the lens of community.

 

Right from the very beginning of the bible, God is a God of Community.  When God created the first human, shaping them out of the dust, then breathing the breath of life into them, God said that it isn’t good for the human to be alone, and God divided that first human into two humans.  Right from the very beginning, we weren’t created for isolation.

 

We see this again and again throughout the biblical story.  So many of the laws in the Old Testament, as well as the writings of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament are all about how to live well together – about how to live well in community.  There are laws in Deuteronomy about how shopkeepers shouldn’t falsify their scales, and how kindness is to be shown to people who are vulnerable – widows and orphans and foreigners living in the land.  And then we have Paul writing his famous verses to the Corinthians about how to live well together – how to live with love that is patient, love that is kind, love that isn’t envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.

 

Even when we consider that we are all made in the image of God, the God in whose image we are made is Trinity, is community. We are literally made in the image of community.

 

So getting back to Ruth and Naomi.  Whether their relationship was romantic or familial, they were together.  We have two women who are grieving – Ruth has lost her husband, and Naomi has lost her husband and both of her children.  In her grief, Naomi tried to isolate herself – tried to send Ruth back to her parents’ home, tried to travel the dangerous road back to Bethlehem alone, tried to go to a place where, if she made it back alive, no one would know the depth of her grief and pain.

 

But Ruth doesn’t let Naomi be alone.  She refuses to be sent back to her parents’ home.  She refuses to let Naomi be alone in her grief.  She insists on accompanying Naomi to what would be, for her, a strange land where she would be treated as a foreigner.  Ruth says to her:  “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 will die, and that’s where I will be buried.” And then Ruth calls on God’s name to seal the deal, to witness the covenant promises that she is making to Naomi.

 

These two women are now bound together.  Even though Naomi changes her name from Naomi which means “pleasant” to Mara which means “bitter,” the bitterness of her life will be lessened because she isn’t alone – because she has someone to share her grief with.

 

Yesterday, some of us from Two Rivers joined with some people from the other two Affirming churches in this area to walk in the Saint John Pride Parade.  There are so many things that Pride is all about – it celebrates legal gains that have been made over the past decades in terms of rights and protections for LGBTQ+ people; it continues to contain an element of protest, pushing back to make sure that the gains won’t be lost in the current political climate; it is a joyful celebration of authenticity and being your true and authentic self.  And it is also a celebration of community.  It is a celebration of a community coming together to support each other and to celebrate each other.  As humans, we are created for community.  It is not good for the human to be alone.

 

I also think that community is one of the gifts that the church can offer to the world.  In a time when people are becoming more and more isolated, here in the church we recognize the importance of community.  We recognize the importance of celebrating with each other, whether that be at baptisms or marriages or concerts or just gathering on Sunday morning to worship together.  We recognize the importance of supporting each other through difficult times, whether that be funerals or health challenges, or simply praying for each other through the tough times in life.  We recognize that a joy shared is a joy doubled, and that a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved.  The gift of community is one of the gifts that the church offers to the world, for it is not good for humans to be alone.

 

Community takes so many different forms.  Like with Ruth and Naomi, it can come in the form of family, either biological family or chosen family.  It can come in the form of an intentional community – people coming together to both support and celebrate each other, like we do in the church, or like we saw yesterday at Pride.

 

And as Jesus reminds us, wherever two or three… or more… are gathered, he is there with us.  Jesus is present in community, the body of Christ that gathers.  And so God becomes the thread that weaves community together; God, whose very essence is love, becomes the love that glues a community together.

 

And we are never alone, for God is with us and we are with each other.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

 

 

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge at the Saint John Pride Parade

August 12, 2023