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Adventurous Lectionary – Pentecost 24 – November 3, 2024

Adventurous Lectionary – Pentecost 24 – November 3, 2024

Last updated on: October 27, 2024 at 8:54 am by Bruce Epperly

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Adventurous Lectionary – Pentecost 24 – November 3, 2024 2024-10-27T08:54:11-04:00 Bruce Epperly

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The Adventurous Lectionary – Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost – November 3, 2024

Ruth 1:1-18 (3:1-5; 4:13-17)
Psalm 146
Hebrews 9:11-14
Mark 12:28-34

Preaching is always contextual. You preach to a certain congregation, with a certain demographic and community, and at a certain time. Time is of the essence this Sunday: in two days, we will begin to receive the results of the Presidential election, leadership in the House and Senate, and state and local contests. This is a momentous time, and on November 3, many of your congregants will be anxious about the fate of the USA democracy. Will we choose expansion or contraction, tomorrow or yesterday, hospitality or ostracism? Will we enact sensible border policies, respectful of asylum seekers, or will we cry out for mass deportation?

The bible is profoundly political as is the spiritual journey. Even opting out of politics, scorning its penultimate and flawed nature, is political. God is at work in history. The moral and spiritual arcs flow through our decision-making process personally and as communities. This week, you can’t read Ruth without engaging in the politics of immigration and hospitality.

To repeat, we must study and preach in light of our community, political, social and economic context. In that regard, reading Ruth requires us to ponder the immigrant caravans, traveling from Central America, the inflammatory and false rhetoric of politicians, and the reality of over seventy million refugees and displaced persons. The reading from Ruth begs a readers’ theatre or play to make the story come alive.

The Book of Ruth is more than a quaint love story, it is about politics and particularly the survival of immigrants. Naomi and Ruth are widows, without any means of support, in a patriarchal society. Their survival depends on the kindness of strangers, first, their friends and relatives in Bethlehem and then the securing of a husband for Ruth, who will provide for both widows. The situation is complicated by the fact that Ruth is a foreigner, a Moabite, and is, by definition, outside the Naomi’s tribe. When the two widows returned to Bethlehem, no doubt many of the locals fostered negative feelings toward Ruth and implicitly toward Naomi who, years before, fled the country in a time of draught. Moabites were considered inferior and of dubious morality: some might even use language like vermin to describe them.

The story of Ruth is in reality about two immigration treks. A stranger in a strange land when she first arrived in Moab, Naomi and her husband made a life for themselves, and no doubt planned to stay in Moab at least until the end of the famine. Like millions of immigrants, Noami’s family is seeking a better life, in fact, survival, and depend on minimally a tepid welcome in Moab. Then the deaths of all three males changed everything. They must return to Naomi and Elimelech’s hometown. Naomi’s hope is that Ruth will find a home in the new land. Now, Ruth is a stranger in a strange land.

When Ruth and Naomi return to Naomi’s homeland, their survival depends on finding a husband for Ruth, and there is a spark between Ruth and Boaz that Naomi wants to capitalize on. For all intents and purposes, Ruth seduces Boaz. A bond between them emerges after their night together, they marry, Ruth becomes pregnant, and they have a child, whose son will be the father of the great king David. Romance and obstetrics are present in this story, but also issues of economics, gender, and ancestry. Imagine, the greatest of Israel’s kings is the product of a mixed-race marriage, the great grandchild of a maligned Moabitess. Imagine, a foreigner giving birth to the Israel’s greatest military and political hero. Nationalists beware. Outsiders can change the world for the best and may be vehicles of divine revelation. Imagine Jesus, the descendent of Moabites.

Like Job, the book of Ruth is countercultural. It challenges the received orthodoxy of xenophobia, grounded in writings in Deuteronomy, Ezra, and Nehemiah. In the wake of returning from the Babylonian exile, Ezra and Nehemiah prohibit Jewish men from marrying foreign women and charge currently married Jewish men to divorce from their foreign wives. Ruth is a foreigner, and God uses a foreign woman to establish God’s realm in Israel.

Immigrants, documented or undocumented, invite us to become hospitable, whether they come from Central America, Afghanistan, Haiti, or the Sudan. Our hospitality affirms the divine image within the immigrant and God’s own vision for each person. We are all pilgrims; the boundaries of our nations are important but relative. The earth belongs to God. (For more on Ruth, see Bruce Epperly, “Ruth and Esther: Women of Agency and Adventure.”

Psalm 146 reminds us that God alone is sovereign and that rulers are finite and relative. “Don’t trust mortals and princes,” and don’t trust presidents and political leaders for your salvation. God alone is our salvation and God’s path aims at justice for the vulnerable, forgotten, and oppressed. On the eve of the midterm elections, Psalm 146 counsels that a nation is judged by its care for the least of these and that, despite our pluralistic society, we must judge candidates by their commitment to the poor and to fairness to the forgotten. A nation is judged by the character of its leaders. Often it is unclear who to vote for, but often it is clear who NOT to vote for.

The passage from Hebrews proclaims the all-sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice for humankind. In Christ, we are purified and enabled to begin again. We can trust God despite our imperfections, knowing that God’s grace covers our sin and brokenness. Healing is God’s goal for us and all creation. What might trusting God’s grace mean in our election season and for the future of the USA.

Jesus’ response to the scribe counsels us to love God holistically and politically. We can love God with our emotions, our actions, and our intellect. God’s love permeates every aspect of our lives and challenges us to love others with head, heart, and hands. Today, we need to love God with our minds – to be wise and intelligent Christians, placing the quest for truth above all else whether in theology or in politics. We must place love at the heart of our political decision-making, knowing that we must often love in penultimate ways, minimizing the harm we do, even when we must use coercion or bar certain persons from entry into our nation.

The time has come for Christians to challenge, on the eve of the Presidential election and moving to the future, the proliferation of lies and falsehoods in the political realm, whether from the President or any other candidate. We must challenge hate speech and the denigration of immigrants. Honesty is not only the best policy in life and politics; it is the only policy for those who follow Jesus in the political realm. Intentionally embracing and perpetuating lies in the political realm is an anathema to the way of Jesus.

In loving God with heart and hands, personally and politically, we are counseled to follow Therese of Lisieux in doing ordinary things with love. Every action can transform the world, one person or at a time.

The adventurous preacher recognizes our ultimate dependence on God’s grace. God brings people into our lives, inspires our imaginations, and lures us toward unexpected but life-changing encounters. Grace liberates us from the politics of fear and falsehood and opens us to courageous and wise hospitality. Our dependence on God inspires us generosity, knowing that when we open to divine energy and creativity, God will supply all our needs. We cannot avoid politics, and must let our political decisions be guided by copassion and hospitality as well as pragmatism. The world is watching, and the reception of our gospel message depends on us walking the talk of loving action in our relationships and citizenship.

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Bruce Epperly is Theologian in Residence at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ in Bethesda, MD. A pastor, professor, university chaplain, and seminary administrator for forty years, in retirement he remains on the faculty at Wesley Theological Seminary. He is the author of over eighty books including “Saving Progressive Christianity to Save the Planet,” “Homegrown Mystics: Restoring the Soul of Our Nation through the Wisdom of America’s Visionaries,” and “The God of Tomorrow: Whitehead and Plato on Metaphysics, Mysticism, and Mission.”

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