Proper 27 B
Transcribed from a sermon given on
November 11, 2012
By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart
At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
Mark 12:38-44
In the lectionary today we read about three poor widows. The widow in the Gospel of course, but also of Naomi and Ruth. For those of you who haven’t read the book of Ruth for a while I want to give you the context here. Naomi and her husband were from Judea, from Bethlehem. There was a famine so she and her husband and their two sons moved to Moab, which was a nearby nation. It was an enemy of Israel, but due to the famine they went and stayed there. While they were there their two sons married Moabite women. So they would have been considered foreigners to the Judeans. Then her husband died and Naomi became a widow. And then both of her sons died, and there she was a widow with two widowed daughter-in-laws. No grandchildren had been born. So the question came up, now what were they to do?
Back in those days the life of a widow was pretty difficult. They had no social safety net, no social security. Basically your support was from your children and your grandchildren, especially the males, because at that time a woman couldn’t own property or inherit property, and there weren’t any good jobs for women. So these three women were pretty destitute - very poor widows.
Naomi decided to return to Judea. She had heard that the famine was over there. As she left she told her two daughters-in-law, “you stay here. Go back to your mother’s houses and see if you can find new husbands because I am not going to provide you any more husbands.” Well one of them decided to stay in Moab, but Ruth, in a very famous statement said, “No, I will go with you. Your home will be my home. Your God will be my God.”
So Ruth and Naomi return to Judea, probably hoping that there might be some friends or distant relatives who would help them out. At that time the way that the poor were taken care of was through what was called gleaning. If you had a crop and you were harvesting it you were not supposed to harvest every single grain. You were supposed to leave a little bit behind. It is hard to get the edges, it is hard to get everything, and rather than going back and getting all of that for yourself you were to leave it there so that the poor could come by and harvest the part that was difficult to harvest and have it for themselves. So Ruth goes out to glean in order to try and get some food for her and Naomi. And it just happened. (There are lots of things that “just happen” in scripture, but we know it is God’s hand when things “just happen.”) It just happened that the place where she went to glean was owned by a relative of Naomi’s husband. So Ruth was gleaning, and she worked very hard, and she took back whatever she gleaned to Naomi. They had enough, and she did that for several days. The owner of the field, Boaz, noticed what a hard worker she was so he surreptitiously told the people who were gathering his crops to leave a little more for her so she had plenty to glean. And he told them to give her some water because she gets thirsty in the middle of the day. He was treating her very well. There was respect for her, even though she was a foreigner, because she was caring for her mother-in-law and she was working very hard.
This brings us to the part we just read, of Naomi going to Boaz, the owner of this field. Boaz was a kinsman and in Israel at that time inheritance of property was a very complex thing. It was to be inherited down the lineage, son to son to son. It was the property that had been divided up when they entered into the Promised Land, and the property was to stay within the family. So it was difficult if a man died without an heir. The law was that if a man died who didn’t yet have an heir and he had brothers one of the brothers was to take the man’s wife into his home and provide that woman with a child so that that child could be the heir for the man who died - so that brother’s name could continue on. There was a responsibility to take care of your brother’s lineage and heritage. Remember Naomi’s husband had died leaving no heirs since the sons have died.
So Boaz is a kinsman, but not the closest kinsman, it turns out. But he is a kinsman so if the property is going to go to someone, it should go to someone who is related. And that is why Ruth goes and offers herself to Boaz, getting all dressed up and beautiful for the, well you all can imagine. Add to that the symbolism of uncovering the feet. The feet are often used in scripture as representing the genital area. So you can kind of see what Naomi was telling Ruth to do. They left out a part in which Boaz says that he is interested in marrying her, but he can’t do it right away because there is one kinsman that is closer, one relative that is closer and should have right to the property. So he has to first give that kinsman the opportunity to take Ruth as his own. The other kinsman says no so Boaz marries Ruth. And that is why when Ruth has this boy child with Boaz, it is taken to Naomi because that boy child represents the lineage of Naomi’s husband. It is a little confusing to us, but it is a very important story. The reason it is so important in scripture is because the son of Obed was Jesse who was the father of David. So when you read the genealogy of Jesus in scripture, it includes Obed of Ruth. Ruth is one of the women mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy. It is interesting too that this woman is a foreigner. She is a Moabite. But what is important to me today is the faith that these women had. Their great trust, especially Ruth’s trust in Naomi’s God. She was willing to leave everything she knew to go back and worship the God of Israel.
We have another poor widow with great faith in the Gospel today. She comes and puts two small copper coins or pennies into the collection box. Jesus is impressed because he says she gave everything she had to live on.
And there is one other widow I want to tell you about, a fourth widow. This was a woman who went to my previous parish. She lived in the poorer area of town. She had an apartment in subsidized housing. She didn’t have much. There came a time when the person who had been giving her a ride to church wasn’t able to do it any more and since I went right by her house when I came in to church I started giving her a ride to and from church. And it came to be the fall and it was stewardship Sunday, which is what we have here today. When I got into the car with her on the way back to her house she had tears in her eyes. I asked what was the matter, and she said she couldn’t come to church anymore. So I asked. “Why not.” She said, “Because I can’t give anything. I don’t have any money to give.” At that moment I felt like God inspired me. I had been hoping to find someone to make bread, so I said, “Could you make bread?” She said, “Sometimes I won’t have the money to buy the flour and the yeast and all.” And I said, “If I got you the flour and the yeast could you make bread?” She said, “Sure.” After that, every single Sunday until she went into the hospital before she died, when the gifts were brought up, her loaf of bread was right there. Her gift was offered to God.
You see it is not the size of the gift, it is the heart behind it that matters. The two copper coins were more valuable to God then lots of money from a rich person, because you see God doesn’t need money. God doesn’t need money any more than God needed the blood of animals that were sacrificed at the temple. God has all the animals God needs in creation. God has it all - it is all God. God can take a church and blow it down. God can make something grow up instead. God doesn’t need money.
But we need to give. That poor widow needed an opportunity to give to God. Each one of the four widows we have spoken of had a relationship with God. A relationship that involved trust, that involved love, that involved a sense of oneness. They had a relationship that included a sense of thankfulness even though they were poor, even though they didn’t have much, they needed to give to God. Ruth did so by taking care of Naomi. The widow by giving her two pennies. My friend by making bread. They needed a way to express that relationship, to live out that relationship. The giving was a sign of giving themselves to God. A sign of their trust that God would take care of things.
And that is what it is for us. Today is the day we collect our estimate of giving cards, sometimes called pledge Sunday or stewardship Sunday. God doesn’t need your gift, but we need to give, because what we give represents our relationship with God. If we truly feel that we have received love from God, if we’ve experienced the incredible gift of God’s love, we need to give back. It’s just a natural thing.
We can give back in many ways. We can help out around the church, we can help our neighbors, and we can help our families. We can love God in many ways. One of the opportunities is by giving to the church. When we offer our offering to God it is a symbol. It is a symbol representing our offering of ourselves. As one of the Eucharistic Prayers puts it, “We offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies.” It is a giving of ourselves that is offered up at the altar. The amount of the money isn’t important. The ministry that goes on here can go on without a building, without a paid organist, without a paid priest and a secretary. We could still express the love of God to people. The early church worshiped in houses and there were no paid clergy. God’s work could still go on. God doesn’t need our money, but we need to give. We need to love, we need to give and we need to share.
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