Sermons

Sun, Nov 11, 2012

Seeing the face of God

Series:Sermons
Where is God when things go wrong––
when life gets messy and your world seems to fall apart?
Where is God––
especially if we happen to believe that God is all-knowing…
all-powerful…
all-loving?
Where is God when someone you love loses their memories…
becomes like a child again…
or fails to recognises you anymore?
Where is God when you lose your livelihood…
when your factory closes just before Christmas…
or you’re made redundant because you’ve passed some arbitrary use-by-date?
Where is God when your life revolves around visits to doctors…
with more and more tests…
or more radical treatments that sometimes seem worse than the illness…
but there’s still no relief from the pain?
Where is God when you know that it’s time to go…
and yet you still linger?
Where is God when someone you love dies––
a beloved parent…
a close friend…
and especially your spouse?
 
Where is God when things go wrong and your life falls apart?
I can imagine that that’s what Naomi would have been asking…
because, in our story from the book of Ruth, her husband had died.
It’s reported rather briefly in the story––
almost matter of fact––
masking the reality of what that would have meant for someone like her:
the experience that a widow would face…
of pain…
of empty, aching grief…
and of loneliness, especially at night;
trying to pick up the pieces of a shattered life…
and, perhaps, having to do things that she had never had to do before…
not knowing how she might cope.
But imagine Naomi’s plight.
There she was:
a stranger in a strange land…
with no extended family for support…
so that she would have felt utterly alone and isolated…
and probably treated with suspicion or contempt by the locals…
having come as an economic refugee because of a famine in her own land.
And yet, as a refugee family, they would have lived a precarious existence.
So, without her husband’s labour and support, they really would have struggled.
But it was even worse than that.
Because, in the ancient world, there was no widow’s pension––
there was no social security system at all––
and wives didn’t inherit anything from their husband’s estate.
At best, they simply received their dowry back.
Otherwise, they were totally dependant upon their children to look after them.
So, to lose her sons as well, would have been utterly devastating.
It would have been almost like a death sentence.
She had, in reality, lost every means of support.
She had no future there.
Her only choices would have been begging…
selling herself as a slave…
or becoming a prostitute––
although, given her likely age, she probably would not have earned terribly much at that.
So she decided to return to her homeland.
But it would not have been an easy journey––
something in excess of a hundred kilometres…
on foot…
around the Dead Sea…
through a hot, dry, inhospitable land.
But, if she made it…
at least there might be some distant relative who would have pity on her…
who would help her out.
 
And so she set off, with her daughters-in-law in tow.
But, as they walked, Naomi would have had plenty of time to mull things over.
And it would have occurred to her…
that it was foolish for her daughters-in-law to come with her.
If they went back home to their families, they might find new husbands…
and a new future––
certainly, a better future than they would have by coming with her…
since there was no guarantee that they would find husbands among the Israelites.
After all, they were Moabites––
people whom the average Israelite detested.
So her daughters-in-law would not have had much of a future in Israel…
and Naomi didn’t want that on her conscience.
So she stopped.
She encouraged them to return home.
But, in actually vocalising her thoughts, her emotions began to spill out.
She wept.
Then, the telling comment…
My daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me”.
“The hand of the Lord has turned against me”.
Where is God for Naomi?
Her experience of God is one of sheer abandonment.
God has turned against her.
God has not been kind…
or faithful…
or loyal…
or compassionate.
God has not treated her in the way that she had expected…
in the way that God was supposed to.
God had allowed all these things to happen.
So she’s bitter.
She’s frustrated and angry with God.
And she complains.
But, in the pain and despair of her complaint, we also see her faith.
For, she still invokes God’s blessing on her daughters-in-law:
May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband”.
Now, the word translated here as “deal kindly” has a range of meaning in the Hebrew.
It doesn’t just mean to treat kindly.
It also meant to show faithfulness, loyalty and compassion––
above and beyond what’s expected or what’s deserved.
Naomi is calling upon God to show kindness, loyalty and compassion to her daughters-in-law…
because they have shown it to her.
In fact, she calls upon God to emulate their behaviour…
to follow their example…
to show the sorts of qualities that God was expected to show…
but hadn’t shown to her.
 
And yet, Naomi, in the story, doesn’t make the connection.
She doesn’t realise that God had not turned against her or abandoned her.
Rather, God was, indeed, there––
with her.
God was showing kindness, faithfulness, loyalty and compassion…
through her daughters-in-law.
God was there, as Ruth risked all for Naomi’s sake…
abandoning her homeland and family…
abandoning any prospect of security…
risking her reputation…
risking her future…
risking her very life…
for the sake of someone she loved.
Ruth was, in a sense, incarnating the love of God…
prefiguring the love of God which was revealed in––
was seen and experienced in––
Jesus Christ:
costly, self-giving love…
life-giving love.
Naomi didn’t recognise it…
but God was with her in the midst of her suffering…
because Ruth was there…
because Ruth loved her.
 
How often in our pain, despair and grief do we feel like Naomi?
How often do we feel like God has turned against us?
Or that God has abandoned us?
How often do we wonder, “Where is God?”
 
This story serves to remind us that God is with us;
that God is with us when things go wrong…
when life gets messy…
when our world seems to fall apart.
God is with us in the kindness of a stranger…
God is with us in the faithfulness of a foreigner…
God is with us in the compassion of a caring professional…
God is with us in the loyalty of a loved-one.
God is with us whenever someone reaches out to us in love.
Victor Hugo once wrote, “To love another person is to see the face of God”.
But the flipside, in a sense, is also true:
to be loved by another person is to see the face of God.
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