Sermon from Sunday, July 24, 2016

Reading:  Ruth 3 and 4 

Theme:  Who's story is this, anyway?

In a sermon series on “Celebrating (and Listening to) the Little People in the Stories” you might wonder why this sermon is about Boaz.  In Bethlehem where he lived, Boaz was not a background character.  He was not one of the city’s little people.

He was a landowner who seemed to recover well from the famine that decimated and destroyed many others.  He was head of a prosperous household that employed a number of servants.  He was blessed, successful, and influential.

He was a good law-abiding man.  He followed the customs and expectations of the city elders, did everything right and above board, and even made sure he and his servants followed God’s law – the law of compassion for the poor and needy, instructing his servants not to be greedy in what they gathered of God’s blessings, making sure the poor had access as well to all they needed of Earth’s bounty in his fields.

He was a good, kind rich man, and it was he who stepped in when Ruth and Naomi needed a saviour.  His kindness and generosity towards them kept them alive, and kept the future open for the coming of David, the first real king of Israel who a few generations later came into the world as grandson of the man who by the grace of Boaz was born to Ruth.

It makes you wonder why the book of this story is not named The Book of Boaz.  He is an example worth holding up for all rich and well-intentioned people to follow – for all of us to follow, as we live out our privileged position today in relation to many others in Canada and most other people of the world.  So The Book of Boaz would be a really good story of how the rich and blessed can live in this world in such a way that they can be part of the story of God and of God’s kingdom on Earth.

But it’s called something else – The Book of Ruth.  It’s named after the woman Boaz helped save – a poor immigrant to Israel, an economic refugee from a foreign country and people and religious tradition, an alien woman bereft and alone in the world, known only for her sacrificial commitment to her equally poor and bereft mother-in-law.

And maybe the fact that it’s named after her – that Ruth and her desperate life are lifted up as the real story, that Boaz the successful and blessed man is made secondary to her, and that Boaz in all his privilege seems okay with being just a passing servant to her and her mother-in-law’s need – maybe all of this is part of what this story tells us about how those who are rich and powerful find their way in to the good news of God and of God’s kingdom on Earth.

There are four things I see in Boaz that speak to me and challenge me.

One is that Boaz is a good man.  He is blessed and he knows it.  So instead of thinking that the fruitfulness of his fields is his doing – that he’s earned all he has and now it’s his to enjoy as he sees fit, he sees his good fortune as God’s bounty that’s really meant for all – which is why he takes from the fields only what he needs, and leaves the rest, leaves enough for the poor to be able to come into his fields and gather what they need as well.  Beyond simple law and order, he lives and teaches others God’s law of compassion and care for the poor.

I wonder if I do as well in how I see and use what I have in life.

Second, Boaz looks beyond the simple and narrow definition of who he is to care for and care about.  With Israel still not a kingdom, still just a loose collection of twelve tribes governed by a network of judges, the question of who’s us and who’s not is important.  It would be easily for the tribes to lose their identity, for the family names to be lost, for the bloodlines and heritage to be watered down, for the sons and daughters of Israel to become so mixed with other people that they would cease to exist as God’s special people.

And that’s part of what leads Boaz’s kinsman to say no to the opportunity of helping Naomi and Ruth, because it might put him and the continuity of the community he is part of, at risk.  But Boaz doesn’t let himself worry about that.  He sees someone in need, and knows that whatever the risk to himself and his community, he has to help them.  He reaches out in love, and treats them as sisters to him.  He knows together they are citizens of the world, family of the one God of all heaven and earth.

Again, I wonder if I do as well in who I see as part of my world.

Third, when Boaz does offer help, he doesn’t try to control the situation or the people he helps.  He gives and shares with no strings attached.  Once he sees Ruth and Naomi’s plight, he marries Ruth to guarantee their safety and well-being and the continuance of Naomi’s dead husband’s line and inheritance within the community.  And he does it for their sake, not his – so they can carry on in the community as they need to and want to, not so he can bring them into his own household and make it bigger and more dominant. 

Even when a baby is born to Ruth – a son! – the one destined to be grand-father to the greatest king of Israel, Boaz lets the child and all he is destined to be, be Ruth’s and Naomi’s to claim.  He doesn’t even claim naming rights.  The women around Naomi decide the boy’s name, and Boaz is okay with that.  He lets go of control.  He doesn't need to have his name all over the kingdom of God; it can have a foreign name, as long as it's the kingdom of God.  He gives and shares with others what God has blessed him with, and then leaves it for God and the others to work out as they see fit.

Again, do I do as well?

And finally, how does Boaz get started on this saving journey of love and blessing?  How does he find his way in to the story of God and the unfolding of God’s kingdom on Earth?

He does it by falling in love.  By being seduced.  By letting his heart be captured by someone in need.  Beyond just his general goodness, kindness and faithfulness he starts to feel a passion for some very particular need that is laid at his feet, that he wakes up to and sees right before him, and that he does not hesitate to embrace.

I think of how, when we chose the Syrian family we are helping to sponsor as this year’s Summer Day Camp mission project, instead of just talking to the children and their parents about the refugee crisis in general and about the one family in some nameless way, we showed them their pictures and we told them their names – Loay, the young father; Israa, the young mom; Sham, the 3-year-old daughter; Zain, the one-and-a-half year-old-son.  We really hoped they would come to care about them and take them to heart as individual persons.

I think of the effect on Barb McMullen six or seven years ago when she took an actual tour of the City Kidz facility and saw the whole set-up and the people first-hand; of the VanDuzers going as a family to the Dominican to help build homes; of Suzanne Boyce going to Haiti a few years ago and Robyn Hunt going to the Galapagos soon on medical missions where because that’s where their passion takes them; of Canadians who take the time to actually listen to or read the First-Nations stories that have surfaced through the process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and be moved and changed by them.

Boaz is a basically good rich man who goes the one step further of letting his heart be captured by some particular need right at his feet, that he wakes up to one day and sees right in front of him.

I wonder -- even at this stage of my life, what will catch me?  If some need and story that I see someday right in front of me might capture my heart, seduce me into action, and draw me in a focused, passionate, saving way into the story of God and God’s kingdom on Earth today?

Towards Sunday, July 24, 2016

Reading:  Ruth 3 and 4

Theme:  (How) do the rich and powerful enter the kingdom of heaven?

Some people still call it The Henderson.  As much as they are grateful for the hospital’s massive renovation, to them it still doesn’t seem quite right to call it The Juravinski.

Nora Frances Henderson was an immigrant from England who settled with her family in Winona in 1913 before moving to Hamilton in 1917.  In the city she followed her dream of being a journalist and also came to be an activist in support of children’s and women’s rights to health care.  She was instrumental in the first appointments of women to the Hamilton Hospital Board, and in 1931 she herself as the first woman elected to Hamilton City Council, after which she also became the first woman appointed (eventually for 16 consecutive terms) to the City Board of Control.  She died in 1949 and when a new hospital was built on the mountain, it was named the Nora Frances Henderson Hospital.

Charles Juravinski, after whom the hospital was renamed when it was massively renovated in 2010, is a former owner of Flamboro Downs who in addition to other charitable initiatives around the City of Hamilton, gave $43,000,000 to help renovate the Hamilton hospitals.

We recognize that in our society, naming rights (i.e. the power to be remembered and honoured) often come with success in business and the power of money.

But why do some resent it?  Is it just sour grapes?  Sentimental attachment to a heroine? 

Or something more?

This Sunday we are reading from the Book of Ruth.  In our day, this book might just as easily have been named (or re-named) the Book of Boaz, because he is the rich, respected, charitable landowner who steps in to save the day and keeps the door open for the eventual birth – a few generations later, of the boy who becomes King David.  In other words, without Boaz’s charity, there might never have been a David and a kingdom.

For some reason, though, the name that has stuck to this story is that of the bereft immigrant woman he was charitable to – an outsider to the covenant community, who came to Israel in grief as an economic refugee and was known only for her personally sacrificial commitment to her mother-in-law’s well-being.

Why?  

And does this Word say anything to us?

Reading:  Genesis 37:12-36 (Joseph, the favourite youngest son of Jacob -- also known as Israel, is sold by his eleven jealous and angry older brothers to some passing traders, who take him to Egypt where they in turn sell him as a slave to someone in the pharoah's court.)

What a terrible story! 

Out in a field where there are no witnesses, eleven brothers gang up on the twelfth, youngest brother.  They rough him up, strip him and throw him into a deep pit.  Ten of the eleven want to kill him right there.  One says no, not to go that far.  They solve their problem by selling their brother to passing traders, who take him to Egypt and sell him there as a slave to one of the pharoah's officials.

I'm glad I'm not having to teach this story to children in Sunday school.

Family jealousy and violence.  Slavery and international human trafficking.  A young man lost, his eleven brothers guilty, and their father broken in grief.
  
It sounds like a terrible story from the nightly news.  Or an episode of The Hunt with John Walsh, or Nightline.  Or The Fifth Estate.  And it goes on for 12 long chapters of pain and confusion before there is a "good" conclusion and God's good will is accomplished. 

My guess is that when I was taught this story as a child in Sunday school, the story was somewhat sanitized with the violence and pain toned down, the traders turned into serendipitous good guys, the evil and brutality of slavery glossed over, and the happy ending as well as a take-home lesson about learning to be a good rather than a bad brother all tacked on by the end of class.


But is there something in the non-sanitized version that offers a word of deep hope in the world as we know it?

Can we, like the ancient people of Israel, come to see the stories of our day -- as bad as they are, somehow gathered up in, and made part of the story of the kingdom of God being unveiled in our time?

What did those ancients in all their dark stories know about the good news of God and the kingdom of God on Earth, that would be good for us to know today?

Sermon from Sunday, July 10, 2016

Reading:  Genesis 6-9

Theme:  Poor Mrs Noah (or, Her Life Matters)

Poor Mrs Noah!

First her husband goes off for months on end to build a big boat because his God tells him to without – as far as we know, ever once talking it over with her. 

Then when the Great Flood he talked about actually comes she has to leave behind her home and her kitchen and garden and all her dear friends, to be den mother to the messiest, loudest, most disorderly floating zoo you can ever imagine.

And finally when they come down to ground again, she finds she is now de facto mother of all post-Flood humanity – again, without anyone ever consulting her and caring to hear her thoughts on the matter.

I wonder how she felt?  What her life was like?  What she thought of Noah?  Or of God?

Was she grateful to be married to someone so good and committed to what needed to be done?  Pleased to have made such a good match?  Was she happily obedient to whatever Noah and his God had for her to do?

Or was she maybe just a little bit angry?  Suspicious about this big boat and about Noah’s equilibrium and his faith?  And maybe his God?  Did she resent at least some of what was asked of her, maybe all of what was taken away from her, and what was left?

It would be nice to speculate, and spin some wonderful imaginative story about her, as many storytellers have in delightful ways.  I’d love to bring her to life here this morning in some fanciful incarnation, but the thing is it would be just that – just imagination.  Because the story as it’s been passed down to us just doesn’t say anything about her – and I wonder if that’s an important thing for us to listen to and think about.

She has no name, no face, and almost no place because with only once exception in the whole 4-chapter, 96-verse story, she is just background to the people who really count.  Twenty-two times in the story it’s just Noah who is mentioned.  Nine times it’s Noah and his sons – a few of those times, Noah’s wife and the son’s wives are added on at the end.  Only once is it Noah and his wife together.  Never is it her by herself.

She’s just not important in the official story of the Flood.  The storyteller doesn’t think we need to know anything about her.  She just doesn’t count.

It reminds me of funerals and memorial services I did for different University staff while I served as campus chaplain.  When the services were for professors – active or retired, they were held in the grandeur of University Hall with hundreds in attendance, important people offered tribute, and a wonderful reception followed.  I also did services for lower staff, maintenance workers, secretaries.  One in particular was for a server in one of the student cafeterias who committed suicide and left behind a young family; it was sparsely attended with no real involvement by the upper levels of the University itself.  I talked that over with the Chaplaincy Council (most of whom were professors) and I get the point they made about the different kinds of impact and influence different people have on the world, but I still wonder.

Is the world meant to be divided between Noahs who for whatever reason are up top and whose version of things becomes the official story, and Mrs Noahs who spend their lives silently and invisibly in steerage, absolutely necessary to things turning out the way they do, but whose experience of the story doesn’t get told on quite the same stage?

Whatever happened to that song we sing, that “all God’s critters got a place in the choir” where one of the verses says, “all God’s critters’ got a place on the planet, and if one doesn’t show, then the whole choir’s had it”?  Can we really measure importance and unimportance, and whose experience is worth listening to, or not?

I heard once of a professor of medicine who sometimes on a final exam would ask his students – for 10% of the mark, to name the cleaning woman they passed every morning on their way in to the school.

So I think it’s interesting that the only place in the story where Noah and his wife are seen and treated equally and like partners is when God is leading Noah out of the ark – after the Flood has come and gone, after Earth has been washed of corruption and all life is about to start over again according to God’s good will, and God says to Noah,

Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your son’s wives with you.  Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh … so they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.  (Gen. 8:15-17)

Every other time it’s been either just Noah, Noah and his sons, or Noah and his sons with Noah’s wife and the sons’ wives added on at the end.  But when God is starting it all over again, God clearly elevates Mrs Noah to full partnership with Noah, and their sons’ wives to full partnership with them.  It seems hierarchy -- particularly patriarchy, was part of the corruption Earth needed to be cleansed of, that what makes Earth good and what God wills is mutuality between men and women, equality among all people, and right relation of humanity with all of creation.

And I wonder what Mrs Noah felt at that moment – to hear God affirming her place as full partner with her husband?

Poor Mrs Noah, though, because no sooner does God issue this command, Noah ignores, or forgets, or just doesn’t get it.  Because as Noah leaves the ark (one verse later – in Gen. 8:18), instead of leaving as God commands, “Noah went out with his sons, and his wife and his son’s wives (somewhere behind them),” and by the very next chapter – the last chapter of the story, Mrs Noah and the wives of their sons have disappeared entirely from the story, old Noah is out drinking with his sons, and in his drunkenness he disgraces himself in front of them. 

It makes you wonder if anything was learned.  If Earth really was cleansed and re-made?

If Mrs Noah had been given more of a place, had been allowed to tell her side of what happened, had been invited to help shape the new world, I wonder what she would have said.  How things might have gone.  And how different – maybe better, the world might be.

There are many still in the world today – in our lives, in our country, in the world who like Mrs Noah are essential to the world, but who are voiceless, nameless, treated as unimportant, whose experience of how the world works never gets included in the official version.

Out of respect for Mrs Noah and all she gave up in the Flood for the sake of a new and better world, I wonder if the ones on top can learn to listen to their voices, and see them as partners in shaping the world in the way God wants, in the way it really works best?