Ruth 1:1-18; Luke 17:11-19

Pentecost 18 | October 9, 2022 | Ruth 1:1-18; Luke 17:11-19 | Paula Murray |

Ruth 1:1-18

1 In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. 2 The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. 3 But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, 5 and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.  Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. 7 So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. 8 But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “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 with me. 9 The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!” Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. 10 And they said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.” 11 But Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters; why will you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb ^jthat they may become your husbands? 12 Turn back, my daughters; go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, 13 would you therefore wait till they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.” 14 Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.

15 And she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” 16 But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” 18 And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.

Luke 17:1-19

¹¹ On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. ¹² And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance ¹³ and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” ¹⁴ When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. ¹⁵ Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; ¹⁶ and he fell on his face at Jesus‘ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. ¹⁷ Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? ¹⁸ Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” ¹⁹ And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”   English Standard Version (ESV), Crossway, 2001

Lord, give us strength.  How fervent a prayer do you suppose that was for an elderly woman living in the land of Moab a hundred miles away from her home who had survived not only her husband’s death but also the deaths of both sons?  Grief for her losses and fear for her future and that of her childless daughters-in-laws had to have made for an uncomfortable and sad tangle of emotions.  There were no men in their lives to cherish them and provide for them, so Naomi had two choices, starve in her adopted land or walk the hundred miles to her birthplace and put herself in the hands of her remaining family.  She chose not to die, and before setting her face towards Bethlehem and the land of her birth released her daughters-in-law to find their way back to their “gods and their people” in Moab.  One daughter-in-law, Orpah, kissed Naomi good-by and went to find her childhood home, but Ruth refused to leave her mother by marriage.

To her Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you.  For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge.  Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.  May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”  Essentially, what Ruth said that day is that your home is my home. This was an emotional speech, and a beautiful one, replayed over the millennia in many a book and a marriage vow, but it was not just speech. It was a repudiation of what she had been before, a lady whose home was in the land of Moab, who worshipped the gods of Moab, who was married to a migrant to Moab from Judah.  She may have done that because she was afraid her husband’s mother would die on her many weeks’ long journey back to her home in the land of the Israelites without her help.  She may have found that her home had been her husband the ten years of her marriage and without him she had no home at all.  Her situation even in Moab may have been as tenuous as that of widowed Naomi if she had no remaining family.  Whatever the reason, she left one land and the gods associated with it for another land, a land she knew not at all, and whose God she may have known through her husband if he was faithful.  That’s a real question, for Naomi was of the opinion that the deaths of her husband and sons meant that God no longer loved her.  She might think that, if her family once in Moab forgot the one true God Whose will gave creation life and sustenance, or worse, adopted the false gods of Moab.  Or she might believe that God had turned His face from her just because she suffered much from grief and fear for the future as a widow.  Again, whatever the impetuous behind Naomi’s choices, Ruth willingly walked away from both her homeland and her homeland’s gods, and the rest of the book of Ruth is a testament to her faith in the God of her mother by marriage.

As is the reaction of the one Samaritan leper of the today’s Gospel reading, who, after noticing that Jesus had healed his leprosy, returned to our Lord and knelt at His holy feet and thanked Him for this great work.  We do not really understand in this day and age how monstrous a disease, or set of skin diseases, leprosy was.  Not only did afflicted peoples’ fingers and toes and ears and noses fall off, eaten away by the disease, but they were banned from home and contact with their loved ones.  Once diagnosed, the leper would never again sleep in his or her own bed, nor hug a child or kiss a spouse.  They were permanently homeless unless it could be proven to a priest that their skin was clear of the disease again.  Of the ten homeless lepers that Jesus healed that day, only the one, the Samaritan, whose faith was held suspect by the Jews of Judah, praised God for his healing and worshipped the Son of God through Whom his healing came.  Once again, we see healing and reconciliation at the heart of Who Jesus is and what Jesus does, but those who should have known, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not.  Only the Samaritan, also, like Naomi the child of the land of Moab, an outsider, saw that Jesus healed and reconciled as does God, and so, it was only the Samaritan who offered his worship to the One Who is our Savior and Lord.

These days, sermons on this text veer at this point into social justice discussions on what is due those who are considered, by some at least, to be socially marginalized.  Who those groups of people are differs from year to year depending in part on what cause is trending among some part of the movers and shakers of our country.  It is a weird twist, because faithful Christian readers of stories like this applaud the Samaritan and Ruth of Moab for their clear perception of what God is doing for them, while those who should be in the know by virtue of their heritage and education are tragically blind to it.  Ruth and the Samaritan leper receive God’s blessing and know it for what it is, and so they worship the Lord.  Those who should be able to receive the blessing and know it for God’s gift do not.  They are self-absorbed, captured by assumptions about the world that have nothing to do with faith.

It is a life lived by faith that is at the heart of God’s Word this day, not politics, although the constant command that we are to support our neighbor is constant for a reason.  It follows directly from our knowledge of God’s constant care of us.  The righteous do live by faith, as the prophet Habakkuk taught us last week, and as the whole of God’s Word and Martin Luther, amongst many others, has taught us, too.  And that faith should direct our days and our deeds.  We are at odds with ourselves and our God  when faith does not guide both word and act.  Worse, we lose that sense of belonging, at being at home with God through the Holy Spirit, that is ours by way of faith and Baptism.

When we talk about Baptism, we are usually most interested in speaking to our relationship with God, with our Father Who delights in us, our brother Jesus Christ, who died for us, and with the Holy Spirit, that Light that brings home to us God’s unfathomable love and mercy.  In Baptism, we receive, as young Brody will shortly, the forgiveness of our sins and the promise of mercy without bounds and life without end.  But we receive something else, too, for we become through Baptism a part of the body of Christ, the Church, a new member of a family formed by God’s Word and water.  As members of that family formed by Word and water, we have a home, a home that cannot be lost to hurricane force winds and waters, to the sad economies of the day, or even to human griefs like death, divorce, disease or dimwittedness.  We have a home in the Church, and that home is inviolable, meaning, that it cannot be taken from us.

That does not mean, clearly, that individual congregations cannot fail or even just lose a building.  This happens, most often when a congregation forgets what it is and Who it serves and what its ministry is.  When we forget that each congregation is an outpost of God’s holy and everlasting Church, a sign of His goodness, His love, and His mercy made real in the worship, the faith life, and the fellowship of the Christians assembled there.  But when a congregation remembers what it is and Who it serves and what its ministry is, oh, beloved, what a force then we are for all that is good and holy in this world.  This morning God’s Holy Spirit brings Brody into the Church, making Him a part of the body of Christ.  His parents promise to bring him to church, put the Bible in his hands and teach him to pray.  But we make promises, too.  We promise, as an outpost of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, to worship with him, teach him in conjunction with his parents his faith, support him in every way when he is troubled, protect him from evil, forgive him as he forgives us when we sin against him, and to love him with all the heart that is in us.  We will, together, live by faith, making a home for one another in the Church, where God is truly our stronghold and our refuge, our help in every trouble, where we share in one another’s sufferings and our joys, giving thanks all together for the gift of Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord, and the family that is the Church.

Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us sing the Lord’s praise, offer up prayers for healing, and bring little Brody into the Church, into that home which is his forever.