Comfort for Bad Evangelists

A Sermon On Ruth 1:15-22, delivered this morning, 2/22/11

And she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” 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. 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.” And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.
So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, “Is this Naomi?” She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”
So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest. (Ruth 1:15-22 ESV)

The book of Ruth is a story about two people with the odds completely stacked against them. In our reading for today, from the end of the first chapter of the book, Naomi does not appear as a very sympathetic figure. She is, by her own description, a bitter and hopeless person; moreover, In her own mind she was clear about who was to blame for her bitterness. The Lord has done this to her, and while she does not curse God, or even accuse God of injustice, it would be hard to say that she had any great hopes that God will come to her rescue.
On the other hand, it’s hard to blame her. In human terms her assessment of the situation was hardly inaccurate. She was an old woman, living in a patriarchal society, and all the men to whom she could have looked for help had died. She was an alien in Moab, the land of Israel’s enemies. She certainly had to return back to her own homeland, but even back in the land of Israel, she was living in the time of the Judges, and “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25 ESV). And Naomi had done nothing to deserve or cause the disasters she had endured.
In light of all this, Naomi’s advice to her two Moabite daughters in law was quite reasonable, and they would have done well to follow it. She told them to go home, and find new husbands. They could not expect any security or comfort if they went with Naomi, neither could they offer her any help. Orpah, Ruth’s sister in law, does a perfectly honest and sensible thing by going home.
But it never seems to have crossed Ruth’s mind to leave her mother in law. She was determined, despite Naomi’s repeated advice, to leave behind everything and go with her. And for Ruth, this did mean leaving behind everything: Her home land, her people, her family, and - Most importantly - her God. She tells Naomi “where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” (Ruth 1:16 ESV)
Which is an extraordinary thing. Ruth was a Moabitess, as the author of the Ruth reminds us repeatedly, who grew up worshiping the God Chemosh, and what can she have known of Israel’s God besides what she heard from Naomi and Naomi’s family? And as we’ve seen, Naomi was hardly the world’s most convincing evangelist. She was angry, and bitter, and as for her family – they had all died childless in a foreign land. But Ruth abandoned Chemosh and the religion of Moab, and she decided to cast in her lot with Yaweh and his people Israel, when there was really no good reason she should have.
So what made Ruth decide that she should follow a strange God? I don’t know, but it’s fairly easy to say what didn’t make her chose Yahweh over Chemosh. It was not because she had any promise that things would go better for her in Israel, and it was not because Naomi painted an appealing picture of life as a member of God’s covenant people.
Which in a way is good. I don’t exactly want to commend Naomi’s evangelistic strategy - because she does come dangerously close to accusing God of injustice. On the other hand, Naomi is honest with Ruth. I may just be preaching to myself here, so forgive me if you don’t have this problem, but I find that when I am telling people about Jesus, I always want to tell them all the ways that their lives will become better if they have a personal relationship with Christ.
The problem with that is that, like Naomi, I am not a very convincing evangelist. Not only do I have plenty of moral failures, but my life is really not all that much happier than the lives of many unbelievers. In terms of happiness and success, my unbelieving friends would probably be better off staying in their own land of Moab, with Chemosh or some other deity of their choice.
Fortunately, Jesus did not really try to sell people on his message by promising them success or happiness. He called them to take up their crosses daily; He promised them temptation and persecutions and as all the martyrs from St. Stephen down to the martyrs of our own day could testify, he spoke truly. Jesus does not promise a happy life - but he does promise life. And it is only through faith in God’s promises that true life is to be found.
People do not really come to God because they think they will be “happier” or more prosperous, but because somehow God shows them that he is real, and he is good and he is worthy of our trust, even in the moments when it looks most foolish to trust. In the end, nothing we can say to anyone can prove that or convince them of it, unless God brings them to faith. Which is encouraging if, like Naomi, you are not a terribly good evangelist - because ultimately it does not depend on you. God is good, and he will make that known, as he did for Ruth, when she realized that against all good counsel and sense, she must abandon her people to become part of God’s people.
And her faith, as it turns out was not misplaced. God would prove to be trustworthy and not only would Ruth prosper, she would be the ancestor of David and, of course, of Jesus himself. But she did not believe because God had promised that, she simply believed and trusted God. And that, as it turns out, is one of what G. K. Chesterton would have called the paradoxes of Christianity: when we come to God hoping for any easy or a happy life, we will be disappointed. When we come to God seeking only God, leaving behind everything that would make us happy, we will be surprised to find happiness and blessings as well.
Amen.