Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, August 5, 2018
Ruth 2:1-23
When you look at this glass, is it half-empty, or half-full? Do you have a glass half-empty or glass half-full perspective on life, generally? I tend to be a glass-half-full kind of person, generally optimistic. Sure, I have my days like everyone else where I feel less than hopeful, a bit despairing, but most days, it’s hope in a future that will be better that keeps me going. I believe that my faith in God gives me that hope. I trust that God will make all things right, that what I have been given from God is a glass half-full, which means that there is potential here for the glass to become even more full – there is room to grow! Hope, from a faith perspective, is God promising us a better future. It’s a deep trust that in the end, God’s got it, and we’ll be OK. Having this kind of hope, obviously, even for the most optimistic of us, is challenging at times.
The book of Ruth helps us look at hope in a deeper way, just like we looked at loyalty last week. Last week in the first chapter of Ruth, we saw how Naomi was stuck in a season of depression, losing hope in God and in her future. It’s hard to blame her – she’s lost both sons and her husband. But Ruth, being hopeful and loyal, vows to travel with Naomi to Bethlehem, to her in-laws’ family home, to see if she and Naomi can make a new life for themselves after living in Moab during a famine in Israel. In this chapter, we learn that Ruth has the valuable quality of loyalty, she also has the gift of hope: She strives to make the best of her current circumstances. She trusts that God will care for her and be with her wherever she goes. Her eyes are open to the ways that God is working in her life, seeing events not just as coincidences, but as ways that God is working to care for herself and for Naomi.
It is not just a coincidence that she meets Boaz, for example, and that Boaz just happens to be a relative of Naomi’s husband, Elimelech. God gives Naomi and Ruth hope that their future will be better. In fact, Naomi says, “God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!” God restores Naomi’s hope in the Lord to lead them and guide them.
It’s interesting to note that the actual word “hope” is only actually used once in the book of Ruth, and it’s in chapter one when Naomi is telling Ruth there is no hope for her to have future sons to take care of her and her family. The concept of hope, however, is a powerful theme in Ruth, and of course, throughout scripture. In our Christian understanding, hope is not naïve optimism without grounds in any kind of reality. Our hope is grounded in the very real Jesus the Christ, who overcame death and the grave for our sakes. The root definition of hope for us is to see Jesus, dead on a cross, and to trust and believe along with those first disciples that death was not the end for Jesus – hope is the empty tomb. Hope is the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side. Hope is seeing the face of Christ still today in our neighbors when we love and are shown love. Our God sightings that we share with each other each week, for example, are signs of hope that God is still at work, and that God doesn’t leave us for dead but sticks by us through thick and thin, no matter what.
Think of this: we can be signs of Christian hope to others in need. We give hope to others through generous acts of love and kindness just as Boaz gives hope to Naomi and Ruth. It’s Boaz today along with Ruth who challenges us to think about how we could share our faith and hope in God’s faithfulness to others, through giving to others who are in need, or simply giving of our time or our listening ear. It’s faithful people like Ruth and Naomi and Boaz who inspire us as Christians to have greater hope, too.
Just this summer I had a conversation with one of our Sudanese pastors about having hope in difficult times. So often my hopes are really trivial: I hope my flight is on time…I hope I don’t catch a cold…I hope I win in our monthly argument of which restaurant we get to go to for our date day! This pastor told me about trying to survive in Sudan when war and famine were really bad (and things have been bad there for twenty or more years now). He said, “When we ran out of cattle, we harvested the grain. When there was no grain because of draught, we said, ‘God will provide mothers’ milk at least for the babies.’ When the mothers’ milk dried up, we said, ‘At least God will give us fish from the rivers.’” Can you imagine? There was such a basic trust that God would provide, even just a little bit for survival. I was kind of embarrassed about my own personal wants after that, for awhile. This is more the mode that Ruth and Naomi have found themselves in – not knowing what they’ll have to eat, or when they’ll be able to eat, but trusting that whatever God provides, it will be enough. And of course, it is more than enough.
Ruth would not have the hope that she has without God, and others, especially her mother-in-law, shared their faith in God with her in the first place! Levitical law required Israelites to leave standing grain at the edge of every field and grains that were missed during harvest for the resident alien and the poor. Their faith in God allowed Naomi and Ruth and many others to survive by following this law. Having hope in God’s generosity, they provided generously for others. What is the “grain on the side of the field” that you are leaving for others who need signs of hope? How is your generosity giving others hope and inspiring faith and trust in God?
Next week, we’ll hear how it gets even better. God provides abundantly more than Naomi, Ruth, or Boaz, for that matter, could possibly imagine. Like the resurrected Jesus outside the tomb, we’ll get a glimpse of the other side of hope, hope fulfilled, for Ruth, Naomi, Boaz, for us. Amen.
