What To Do When You Don't Know What to do - Celebrating God’s Grace Part 5 by Pastor Gabrielle Martone at Pearl River United Methodist Church on Sunday 17 May 2020
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Ruth 4:3-17 NRSV
He then said to the next-of-kin, “Naomi, who has come back from the country of Moab, is selling the parcel of land that belonged to our kinsman Elimelech. So I thought I would tell you of it, and say: Buy it in the presence of those sitting here, and in the presence of the elders of my people. If you will redeem it, redeem it; but if you will not, tell me, so that I may know; for there is no one prior to you to redeem it, and I come after you.” So he said, “I will redeem it.” Then Boaz said, “The day you acquire the field from the hand of Naomi, you are also acquiring Ruth the Moabite, the widow of the dead man, to maintain the dead man’s name on his inheritance.” At this, the next-of-kin said, “I cannot redeem it for myself without damaging my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption yourself, for I cannot redeem it.” Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging: to confirm a transaction, the one took off a sandal and gave it to the other; this was the manner of attesting in Israel. So when the next-of-kin said to Boaz, “Acquire it for yourself,” he took off his sandal.
Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, “Today you are witnesses that I have acquired from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and Mahlon. I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite, the wife of Mahlon, to be my wife, to maintain the dead man’s name on his inheritance, in order that the name of the dead may not be cut off from his kindred and from the gate of his native place; today you are witnesses.” Then all the people who were at the gate, along with the elders, said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you produce children in Ephrathah and bestow a name in Bethlehem; and, through the children that the Lord will give you by this young woman, may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.”
So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the Lord made her conceive, and she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him.” Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse. The women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.
So the continuation of the Ruth and Naomi story, Naomi goes to sell her land, to give up her inheritance, and the person who was to inherit it next would have to give up way too much in order to receive it. So he gives it to Boaz, which is a little bit what they had planned, and Naomi is restored again. Because as Boaz takes on Ruth as his wife, he takes on Naomi as his mother-in-law and together, this family rebuilds their line. If you listen to the last verse of this, you hear that Obed is the father of Jesse, who is the father of David, who is the father of Joseph. The lineage of Jesus Christ comes out of this seemingly broken pair of women where everything else they had had was completely gone. They were not okay.
Any prospect of prospering or of having a successful life or having a life that was worth something seemed completely out of their grasp. By the end of the Book of Ruth, their entire lives have been restored and they are part of the direct lineage of Jesus the Christ. This I think is wildly important for us to note because Jesus's line is not filled with people who get it right. Jesus's line is not filled with folks who are perfect and who have all of the right answers. Instead, Jesus's lineage is from broken, beaten down, not okay people.
Jesus comes out of the brokenness of life. Jesus comes to us not with a lineage like they do with show dogs, right? Where you can, if you have a dog that you're going to show up and put in dog shows, yeah, you want to be able to track their lineage. I know that was ridiculous. It's okay. You want to be able to track their lineage and know who's in their family and you want the best of the best of the best. One might think that that's the line that God would want to come from if God were going to pour God's self into the world. Instead, instead, Jesus's lineage is one full of brokenness, one full of hurt, one full of scrappy young women. Go read the story of Tamar, of people who didn't get it right all the time.
Jesus comes from a place in which real people live real lives, the fullness of the ups and the downs. Additionally, from this narrative what we remember is that God's timing is absolutely not our timing, right? All of the things that we had hoped for and desired and wanted don't always work out the way that they're supposed to, but somehow it works out even better. So if you listen to the first part of this sermon series or the first part of this sermon duet this week, last week, you would have heard me talk about my junior year of college and the boy who broke up with me who I really thought we were going to get married. I look back to that time in my life and I am reminded that if I had had it my way and I had married that guy, I never would've met Matt.
I never would've gotten married in the middle of a pandemic. I never would have had the life that is fully complete in finding my partner in life. I would have spent my whole life making myself smaller and less than to fit into a particular image that somebody else had for me, instead of the opportunity of being fully known and fully loved. God's timing was never my timing, right? The broken roads that led Matt and I to be together in both of our lives were what neither one of us would have ever asked for. But by the time God did what God was going to do, it produced something beautiful, something sacred, something far better than either one of us had ever imagined. I think that's exactly how God works in our not okayness. We experience these moments in which we feel like we have lost absolutely everything, all of our plans and our hopes and our dreams just seem to fall through our fingers as though it were sand.
And yet at the end of the day, what God does in the midst of that is even more beautiful and more amazing than you and I could ever imagine. Ruth and Naomi struggled for years to figure out what they were going to do with their lives. They both believed that they were down for the count and there was nothing more for them except bare minimum. They believed that there was no hope left for them and that there was no way that they were possibly going to get out of this situation of being widows in Israel, in Moab. There was no way that these two women would ever find fullness of life again. And yet God's timing produced something even more incredible. A son is born to Ruth and the lineage begins again.
The lineage of what was hopeless is filled with hope. God made a way where there seemed like there was no way. God's timing never works the way you and I think it's going to. God's timing is never part of what we expect it to be a part of. It never happens the way we'd like to happen, and the more that we spend trying to control God's timing, the unhappier and more frustrated we become. It's hard to wait and to trust that something is happening. In our Bible study this past Wednesday night, we're reading Max Lucado, or past Monday night, we're reading Max Lucado's Unshakeable Hope. The most important thing that I pulled out of last week's chapter was that we know the ending of the story. So Max Lucado talks about, he's a big Dallas Cowboys fan. I'm not really sure why, but he is.
He would work all morning and into the early afternoon because he's a pastor so he'd miss all of the football games, so he used to record them and then watch them. One day, one of his congregants spoiled the game for him and told him that the Dallas Cowboys won that game, which I can understand. That's a big deal. So he watched the game anyway, and he writes in his book about how much more powerful being able to be in the moment of watching the game was when he knew how it ended. So when the Cowboys were down or they fumbled the ball with six minutes left to go, there was this assuredness in the viewing that he knew exactly what was going to happen at the end of the day. He knew what the ending of the story was. I think that that's a beautiful metaphor for everything we do in life. We know the ending of the story, right? We know that God has conquered everything. We know that eternal life is gifted to us through Jesus Christ. We know who holds the future.
We know the ending of the story even when we like to forget that we know the ending of the story. So if we know the ending of the story, how does that change the way that we watch the game? If our lives are a game that we are participating in, but we know at the end who's going to win even when we're down in the second half or we fumble the ball with six minutes left to go or somebody really messes up in the last three minutes, we know what happens. So even in the midst of the moments of our lives when we are not okay, we know that God is still in control and we trust the promise that God works all things for good for those who love him. So if we know how the story ends, right, we all know that God wins, that love wins, that at the end of the day, God has us all in his hands and we're going to be fine.
So if we know that, if we know the ending of the story, how does it change how we live in the in between times? It doesn't mean that they don't stress us out and make us not okay. It doesn't mean that we don't panic in the moment, but it means that when we see it, we know. Many of you know I am a huge Kentucky Wildcat fan. Yes, go Cats. One of my favorite things to do is to be able to watch the Cats play. I prefer to do it in stadium, but they're only ever in New York once a year. I would love, love to know at the end of the game who's going to win because it stresses me out while I'm playing. I find that I can't actually focus on what's happening in the game because I'm so overwhelmed about who's going to win.
I'm so worried that my team won't win, that I am that person. Here's the confession. I am that person who stands in the stands or in my living room and screams at the players. I mean screams. I scream at referees. One time I almost got kicked out of a high school basketball game that I was watching somebody playing because I got a little testy with the referees. Oops. I am a person who is so focused on wanting to win that I am that person. But what happens is I forget to watch the game. And in forgetting to watch the game, I miss all of the incredible plays that my guys make. I watch all of the incredible work that this team has strived for and worked together to have not matter. I no longer care about the growth of individual players or the growth of the team as a whole and all that matters in my brain is who wins and who loses.
If I knew the ending of the story, if I knew who would win, I'd probably respond a lot differently, because instead of screaming and yelling about needing to get more points on the board than the other team, and maybe one or two derogatory comments about the other team, sorry, I would actually be able to appreciate the game for all that it is. I would be able to live in the fullness of the moment instead of needing to rush to the end. What does that look like for us in our lives, to not be screaming and yelling on the sidelines, wanting so hard to force a hand so that things go our way and forgetting to be in the moment?
If we already know the ending of the story, if we already know where God is and how God redeems the whole wide world, can't we live in the ups and the downs a little more fully? Knowing that what we're going through right now may be the shadow of the valley of death, but we fear no evil for we know God is with us, whether we are in the valley of the shadow of death or the mountain top with the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ feeling the full presence of God, shouldn't we know that we know the ending of this game?
So when we're in the darkest pits of our lives we can be not okay and still know that this is not the end. And we are at the highest of highs, know that this is a glimpse of what happens at the end, but this too probably isn't the end? Would we be able to appreciate more of the moments that we have? I think one of the things that quarantine has taught me is how much I miss people and how much I have taken for granted. I'm a hugger. I like to hug people. I think I have taken the opportunity to be able to hug people for granted, being able to see my friends or to be in a physical space with somebody not six feet apart, not hiding, not hiding, but not covered by a mask.
I think I've taken a lot of simple things in life for granted. My hope is that when I come out of this, when we all come out of this, that we're in the moment a little bit more, that we appreciate every aspect of life, that we stop rushing to know the end because we already know it. God's timing is not our timing, so we know that God holds the future, but we have no idea what that looks like. Ruth and Naomi thought they were down and out and nothing was going to bring their family back until Boaz walked into the picture and inherited everything.
Naomi thought she was barren and would have no more children and her daughter-in-law has the beautiful grandson Obed. All of the things that she thought she lost all of the places in her life in which she was down and out and over, God said, "Stand back up one more time. Don't stop fighting. Your timing is not my timing. I will fulfill the promises that I have made to you. I'll do it in my time for I know all things, but I will fulfill the promises I have made to you." It changes things, at least it does for me. I know how this story ends. I know where I go when I take my last breath on this earth. I know who holds the future.
I need to do a better job of remaining in the moment, of being able to say that sometimes the things I lose in this life or in this phase of my life are important for what comes next, that what's happening now may give me the strength to be able to do something later. I'm not saying that God is a big-bearded dude sitting in the sky, working on a computer, dictating everything that happens to everybody else, but I truly believe that God works in and through all things. So while God is not causing COVID, let's just be very clear about that one, God did not create COVID to teach us all a lesson, but God is working in the midst of COVID-19 to help us take something from this. God reaches down into our not okayness, takes all of the feelings that we have and breathes new life into them so that one day, in God's timing, we will be able to understand and appreciate everything that we have differently.
I go back to the person I thought I was going to be when I was in high school and the person I thought I was going to be my junior year of college. To be totally honest I'm really thankful I'm not that person. I'm really thankful that life didn't happen the way I told God I wanted it to. I'm really grateful that I'm not the one who's in control because the gift of my life now is far beyond what I ever imagined for myself. Even in my not okayness now, I can say I know God will work all things for good and I can't wait to see what God is up to. There will be struggles and trial and tribulation, and there will be moments in which our world is darker than it's ever been before, but do not be afraid, for God is with you today and every day. Amen.
