We are all born with expectations and are raised
into them. In our families, the stories of our parents-- their lives, their
goals, their dreams-- shape the kind of people we expect to be. In our communities
and churches, we learn what adulthood looks like, so we expect those things in
our future. Consciously or unconsciously, something pervades our cultural
experience and shapes our expectations: Surely our bodies will be healthy and
strong; how could it be otherwise? Some day, I’ll buy my own house with a yard,
or a charming flat in the city. I’ll be admitted to a certain college or law
school, get an internship that will lead to the kind of job I’ve wanted. I’ll
travel the world and have grand adventures. My future holds a husband, or a
PhD, or both. My parents will grow old together, and die peacefully in their
sleep. Or perhaps fruitfulness: healthy children with fat cheeks and good
grades; ministry work that reaches into the local community, or activist work
that fights injustice and brings hope to the poor. There will be rich friendships that provide
laughter and comfort and likemindedness. After all, God is good, and I’ve been
faithful, and I’ve put in time and effort and patience-- but mostly, God is
good! Isn’t he?
What happens when reality doesn’t meet the
expectations we had? How do we respond to the chasm between the expectations we
had and the reality we find ourselves living? How we make sense of it? One
response is often self-loathing, which masquerades as humility, and can be
justified by a seemingly righteous focus on our creatureliness and depravity.
We conclude that our expectations and hopes and dreams were the problem, that
to desire such things is a sinful act of pride or selfishness. After all,
aren’t I a mere sinner, a worm before God, of the dust, and isn’t my heart
deceitful above all else and desperately wicked?
Or, we just try harder, striving: what is the
next thing I can do to accomplish this desired good? To bring about this end?
to resolve this brokenness? And we fight and we work and we strive. . . and
we’re just weary and depleted and still so utterly unsatisfied. And maybe feel
guilty about that weariness and depletion.
And at the end-- when the striving fails, and
the chasm between expectations and reality is still there. . . What do we take
refuge in? Where do we go with our pain and our sorrow? Perhaps we choose self
pity: We comfort ourselves with a sense of our own victimhood, and pour
compassion inward upon ourselves. If God loves me, why does he give to others,
to her, and not to me? Or, bitterness: God is to blame; he has created this
injustice because he is against me, he just doesn’t care like he says he does.
Maybe you keep an account of each disappointment, each loss, each short-coming
in your life as a mark against God’s goodness. Didn’t he promise good for me?
Doesn’t he say that children are a blessing from him? Didn’t he say he would
care for me? Other refuges may be cynicism and mockery: towards others or the
desires themselves in order to feel just a bit better. Or perhaps we just
choose withdrawal: you just hold back your heart. . . I’ll obey God, because
he’s God and I know I’m supposed to, but I’ll never trust him with my heart
again. I’ll keep it locked up here, and I’ll just choose not to desire any
more.
But the truth is that God is good, and he does
good, even in our unmet desires. These desires didn’t originate in our families
or cultures, but in our souls at his loving act of creation. Made in the image
of a relational, Trinitarian God, we are designed for relationships and for
community. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in eternal, generative,
life-giving love, and we are like them, longing also to create, to produce, to
work and to delight in fruitfulness.
So, why is it all so broken and awful? We broke
from this relationship and sought knowledge independently of a relationship
with him. The image of God in us was marred, and so now, those desires are
still there, reflecting that image, but they are distorted, and we seek them as
idolatrous substitutes for God himself, or they are subject to futility, and we
hunger and thirst without being filled.
So here we are: with powerful but misdirected or
unfulfilled desires and expectations, and a fallen reality that doesn’t match
up. How do we respond to our own pain, to the grief of others? What refuge is
there for our pain? How does the love of God meet us in our anger or despair,
and how do we become vessels of that love to one another? Is there actually any
hope?
One of the signs of hope, that God is good and
loves us is that he gives us stories. Today, we’re going to consider the story
of Naomi and Ruth as well as our own stories in search of answers to these
questions. I’m going to tell a bit of Ruth and Naomi’s story, and then you’ll
hear from some of the women in our church how these stories have played out
similarly in their lives. We’re looking at the book of Ruth, but we’re going to
back up a bit. What are the expectations that shaped Naomi’s view of the world?
Once upon a time, when the judges ruled in the
land of Israel, a little girl was born in Bethlehem, in the “house of bread.”
Of all the nations on the face of the earth, the Israelites were God’s chosen
people, and one day, a child was born in the land of plenty that God had
promised. Her parents named her Naomi, which means “pleasant,” and she grew up
as part of the fulfillment of the covenant blessing.
God had said to her forefather, Abraham, “I will
surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of
heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. . . in your offspring shall all
the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”[1]
Israelite parents were called by God to tell these stories to their children, shaping
their identity as chosen people, loved by God, brought to a land of blessing,
and preferred by him above all others. What a sense of divine security and
personal identity this must have cultivated in young Naomi!
And, as she grew
into young womanhood, the promises seemed fulfilled and burgeoning. She married
Elimelech, a fellow Israelite, and the Lord gave them two sons. In her culture,
these were the marks of achievement of a woman, signs of the Lord’s favor. The
birth of not one, but two sons, surely secured a name for their family and care
for her in her old age, like a 401K and the promise of heaven all rolled into
one. Truly, her life was pleasant.
But, slowly and
perhaps imperceptibly at first, a bitter reality crept in, marring Naomi’s pleasant
expectations. Droughts or plague struck, and there was famine in the land.
Bethlehem, the “house of bread” had forsaken them. The land the Lord had given,
flowing with milk and honey, was dried up and bitter, leaving them empty,
hungry, desolate. The land had abandoned them, and so, it seemed that God had,
too.
In turn, Naomi and Elimelech leave the land that
God had placed them in and set out for Moab, perhaps with a courageous hope to
be able to feed their precious boys. They are, however, Israelites, and God had
said they should dwell in the land he was giving them. Their whole identity is
national, bound to the community, bound to the land, bound in practices and
laws that no other nation in the world practiced. Hunger drove them toward
cultural and spiritual isolation, refugees fleeing the home and people they had
known. But at least they would find a way to provide for their two boys,
promises of a better future and blessing to come. And they had each other.
You can imagine the blow, then, when Elimelech
died. Naomi faces the difficulty of being a widow and a single mother in a land
without help from her family, or his family. How could she support herself? How
could she feed the boys? How could she raise them in the faith of their fathers
when their father was dead?
But life goes on, and the boys, Mahlon and
Chilion, grew up and married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Sure, these women
were from outside of Israel and likely not the most promising of in-laws, but
grandchildren would make up for that, and oh, what the future might hold!
But the years went by, and the months. And month
after month, Ruth and Orpah realized yet again that there was no pregnancy,
that four more weeks of stressful waiting, of deflecting painful questions, of
wondering what was wrong, loomed ahead of them. Perhaps Naomi taught them the
story of Sarai, of the promised child Isaac who came in her old age. Perhaps
they clung to this hope, perhaps hope slipped away a bit more each day, each
month, each year. For ten years.
And, at the end of this ten years, both Mahlon
and Chilion died, childless. The author of Ruth tells us that “the woman was
left without her two sons and her husband.” Her providers, her calling, her
security, her identity, her home. . . “the woman was left without.” The husband
with whom she had found a life, the sons in whom she had hoped a future, and
the land in which they had hoped to find a refuge, all become places of death
and desolation. How can she, a child of Israel, a daughter of the Covenant, respond
in this? “the woman was left without.”
Naomi does respond, and her response is a
complicated muddle of truth and untruth; She is human in her ambiguity. Naomi’s
response includes steadfast love and honest lament, and it also resounds with
bitterness and despair. It is against this backdrop of bitter loss that we
first see Naomi act and hear her speak. Word had spread even as far as Moab
that the Lord had visited Israel and given them food. She rises in the midst of
death and walks forward, somehow clinging to hope in the midst of such loss.
What’s more, she doesn’t go alone, but her two daughters-in-law go with her.
And so, we get another glimpse into her character. Something about this woman
is so compelling that Ruth and Orpah set out with her, leaving their own land,
their own parents, and the only lives they’ve ever known to attach themselves
to Naomi, who, as a wandering widow, can provide no protection or care for
them. Perhaps it is her hope that draws them, her orientation towards a home
and a God who cares.
But Naomi will not let them sacrifice themselves
for her, however much their company might be a comfort to her. Her first words
in the story reveal her great love and thoughtfulness for others, even in her
own despair. She turns to Ruth and Orpah, and beseeches them, “Go, return each
of you to her mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have
dealt with the dead and me.” In a life that feels like a curse, she turns and
blesses these women. The phrase “deal kindly” is actually a Hebrew word, hesed. Unpacking this word reveals the
full weight of Naomi’s blessing. Hesed
is often translated “steadfast love,”[2]
and it carries a range of meanings including kindness, love, loyalty, devotion,
favor, and mercy. It implies not just an emotion, but practical action for the
good of the other, and, most importantly, it is a love that endures across time
and circumstances. Naomi’s blessing calls for God’s hesed love, but it also a tiny reflection of that steadfast love,
for she seeks their good at cost of her own.
She calls down God’s blessing on them, but she
also recounts the loss and suffering in her life in order to persuade Ruth and
Orpah to leave her. She has nothing to offer them, no sons for them to remarry
and no hope of ever providing such a redemption for them. Naomi may plod
forward, toward Israel, but she will not bring these young women with her into
a life that seems like death. She may offer blessing and hesed love for them, but for herself, she offers up only lament,
telling them that the hand of the Lord has gone out against her. She knows this
hand can hold out offer steadfast love and kindness, but God has only offered
her desolation, death, and bitterness. She sends them back, pained that her
circumstances might cause them bitterness. It seems too much to bear, and too
terrible to speak, but Naomi’s honest lament speaks forth her pain honestly,
and it is no sin. In response, Orpah and Ruth don’t scold Naomi. They don’t
tell her to keep her chin up, to hang in there. They don’t “give her space” to
justify their own discomfort with having to see and bear her pain. They don’t
promise her that all shall be well, or try to convince her that God is good.
They simply lift up their voices and weep with her. Naomi sends hesed love toward them, and they enter
into lament with her.
After grieving with Naomi, Orpah turns to go,
obedient to Naomi. But Ruth clings to Naomi, and will not go. Perhaps out of
desperation, Naomi’s loving dismissal becomes instead a curse, and she urges
Ruth to go with Orpah, back to her family and to her gods. She lashes out in
her pain, angrily rejecting Ruth at cost of Ruth’s own salvation and
relationship with God, pushing Ruth toward paganism if only away from herself.
Though Naomi’s lament is in many ways a
truthful, God-oriented response to suffering, it is also mingled with
distortion and false vision. She sees her own pain and loss as more isolating
and defining than it is, turning toward self-loathing and rejection of her own
identity. As she enters Bethlehem, returning home after ten years, but in
emptiness, disappointment, and perhaps shame, she demands a different name from
those who addressed her: “Do not call me Naomi,” she says, “ call me Mara, for
the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.” She demands to be defined and
named by her bitterness and sorrow, and her demand echoes with anger against
God. Naomi casts him as an enemy, and she cries out in the public gate “Why
call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has
brought calamity upon me?” To support her case against God, she revises her own
story. She who had left Israel seeking food now cries out, “I went away full,
and the Lord has brought me back empty.”
Death and loss have sent her home a widow with
no security and no future. Her human response reveals both truth and
distortion; she offers up steadfast love for Ruth and Orpah and honest lament
toward God, but she also sinks into bitterness and despair. The chasm between
her expectations of a pleasant life and the bitterness of her reality yawned
wide. The particulars of our own expectations may be different from Naomi’s,
and the bitterness of our experience may vary as well, but we all know the pain
of that chasm.
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