Sermons

Sun, Nov 18, 2012

A happy ending?

Series:Sermons
We all love a happy ending, don’t we?
It’s what drives so much of our popular fiction.
It’s what drives Hollywood and the film industry.
Take your average romance––
boy meets girl…
their relationship gets off to a shaky start…
they encounter problems along the way…
but, in the end, they live happily ever after:
Cinderella gets her Prince Charming…
Bridget Jones ends up with the brooding Mark Darcy…
and Shrek marries Princess Fiona.
Or, take the action genre––
a James Bond dodging numerous bullets…
careering through elaborate car chases…
escaping from certain death by means of wonderful gadgets…
but he eventually saves the world, yet again.
So, too, with a Captain Kirk…
a Luke Skywalker…
or a Harry Potter.
Almost inevitably, for a book or a film to be popular it needs a happy ending––
the virtuous and upright winning through…
love conquering all…
good triumphing over evil––
except, perhaps, if there’s a sequel planned.
We want the world to be a nice place…
a fair place…
a just place.
We want those who do good to be rewarded for their efforts.
We want the underdog to win.
We want love to conquer all.
We want good to triumph.
In fact, on one level, we need it.
Otherwise it’s easy to get swamped by the reality of our experience––
where, so often, that doesn’t seem to happen.
And, if we didn’t believe in, or yearn for, the triumph of good…
it would be easy to lose heart…
to give up…
to stop trying to achieve anything…
and the world would, quite literally, stop;
society would cease to function, or exist.
We need to believe that love will conquer and that good will triumph…
we need our fairy-tales…
we need our happy endings.
 
And here––
at the end of the book of Ruth––
we seem to get one.
After last week, and the start of the story…
when Naomi and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, were both widowed and left destitute…
they set out for Israel, hoping to find safety and security…
without knowing what the future might hold…
and struggling to perceive where God was.
But here, at the end of the book…
Ruth marries her Prince Charming––
the wealthy landowner, Boaz––
they settle down…
and, in a rare mention of God’s intrusion into the story…
the narrator tells us, “The Lord made her conceive”.
Ruth produces a son.
And all of her and Naomi’s struggles and heartaches are over.
It could just as well have ended with: “and they all lived happily every after”.
 
And yet…
scratch below the surface a little, and this story isn’t the fairy-tale that it might seem to be.
It may be more an episode of Days of our Lives or Desperate Housewives.
After all, Naomi is still alone.
Despite having a husband and baby, Ruth is still separated from her family.
But, more than that…
what’s really unsettling is how the happy end comes about.
Naomi devises a devious plan.
She instructs Ruth to bathe…
to anoint herself…
and to put on her best clothes.
Now, bathing was not an everyday event back then…
and anointing the body with perfume was even less so.
But Naomi wants Ruth to be as attractive as she can be.
And, after Boaz has finished work for the day…
after he’s had dinner and quite a bit of wine…
and after he’s gone to lie down for the night…
she tells Ruth to go and lie down with him.
Now that, in itself, was a provocative act.
But Naomi’s instructions don’t just stop there.
She also tells Ruth, before she lies down, to “uncover his feet”.
Let’s be clear––
that’s a euphemism…
referring to something a bit higher up.
In other words, Naomi explicitly instructs Ruth to seduce Boaz…
in the hope that he will then do the honourable thing.
In a culture where a woman’s livelihood depended on a man…
Naomi plots to secure their future…
but she goes about it in a devious…
manipulative…
below the belt sort of way.
And, not only does her devious scheming come off…
but God seemingly rewards it!
 
So what does that say to us?
 
Is it saying that the end justifies the means?
But that contravenes a fundamental ethical principle.
And would we be comfortable with a God who goes along with that?
 
So, maybe it’s trying to say that––
despite our misguided machinations and manipulations…
despite our faults and failings––
God is still able to achieve God’s purposes.
But is that really all that much better?
 
How are we to make sense of this story?
 
Well, perhaps it isn’t a fairy-tale in any shape or form.
After all, Ruth and Naomi aren’t two ordinary characters––
certainly not characters with whom the average reader was meant to identify.
They’re two very marginal women:
poor…
destitute…
homeless…
powerless;
two widows in a patriarchal society…
without any men to protect or provide for them…
relying upon handouts.
And, more than that, Ruth is a foreigner––
a member of a much-loathed ethnic group.
Naomi couldn’t have gone to Boaz directly, and asked him to marry Ruth.
She would’ve been laughed at.
As a wealthy and distant relative, he was under no immediate sense of kinship obligation.
And marrying a poor…
destitute…
homeless…
foreign…
widowed refugee…
would have been foolhardy in the extreme.
So, in effect, Naomi and Ruth did the only thing that they could.
They were desperate.
So they resorted to desperate measures.
And, maybe, that is the point.
Maybe the book of Ruth was meant to challenge Israel about how they treated foreigners.
Written in a climate of distrust and superiority…
the author was saying, “NO!
As the people of God, you’re not to be narrow…
or exclusive…
or bigoted.
As the people of God, you’re to welcome and embrace those who are poor…
destitute…
foreign…
and seeking refuge––
even if they don’t follow the rules…
even if they take matters into their own hands…
even if they have to resort to desperate measures”.
Maybe this story is suggesting that God cares for––
that God vindicates––
those who are forced into desperate measures;
and maybe this story is meant to be a challenge…
to those of us who are––
in any way––
complicit in maintaining structures that force people into desperate measures.
 
And perhaps that’s a message that we still need to hear today…
as our society becomes meaner and meaner…
as our government does a good job of labelling people as “other”…
breeding fear of those who are different…
chastising those who are poor and powerless…
when they’re forced to resort to whatever means available…
and denying natural justice to those on the margins––
be they…
asylum seekers…
aboriginal peoples…
Muslims…
the mentally ill…
or, perhaps, that group of people with whom most of us affluent middle-class folk struggle––
those on welfare.
As the people of God, it’s time to say:
“No!
We will not marginalise.
We will not demonise or dehumanise.
We don’t want to be complicit in forcing people into desperate measures.
We want to welcome and care for…
all of the Naomis and Ruths of this world.
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