Umbrella-wielding crowds at Whitehall in London, England, attend the official Remembrance Day ceremony at the cenotaph
Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost November 11, 2012 -Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
It’s Remembrance Day. A lot of preachers are uncomfortable today. They don’t know what to say. This year the lectionary offers us something old that can ring new on this day.
The story of Ruth, Naomi and Boaz takes us into a world of trouble. The book begins with Naomi, her husband and two sons fleeing their homeland. The problem is not fightin’ war, but famine. They’re displaced by circumstances far beyond their control. They were probably poor to begin with. They have nothing to start with in Moab, but they build a life.
Then Elimelech dies. Naomi is left with two growing boys, Mahlon and Chilion. They marry local girls. With no expectation of return to Judah, what does it matter whom they marry? Then it matters. Ten years pass. Mahlon and Chilion die. Naomi has neither husband nor sons to support and protect her. Two women, not of her blood, call her mother.
Where can Naomi turn now? She doesn’t belong where she is. She no longer knows the place where she’s going. She knows she must go alone and trust there will be someone who remembers the old laws to take her in.
She begs Ruth and Orpah to stay behind, among their own people. It breaks her heart, but she has worked out the odds. There’s some hope for them in Moab. Three lone, lost women in Judah? Two of them Moabites? No chance.
But Ruth won’t let Naomi go alone.
What does this have to do with Remembrance Day? In famine and in war the poor suffer most. Famine and war send desperate people in search of refuge. How can we forget, on this day, how women grieve the premature death of husbands and fathers? Their grief surrounds us on this day. I see the grieving women on the monument at Vimy and imagine Naomi and Ruth, turning from Moab, toward Judah.
Our reading today jumps ahead in the story and propels us toward its happy ending. Let’s not rush. Let’s think about what the lone, lost, grieving women have to do to survive. Naomi is crafty, and willing to do whatever it takes to find Ruth a husband who will support and protect them both. She knows enough about the old laws to identify Boaz as a hot prospect. He’s rich, and kind, and observant. He knows to leave the leftovers of harvest in the field for the poor. Maybe he’ll take up his legal obligation as kinsman to Elimelech and marry Ruth.
Naomi hedges her bet. Boaz has already seen Ruth, but he hasn’t seen her all made up and dressed for… For what? To place Boaz in a compromising position! “Uncover his feet,” says Naomi. Crawl up under the duvet and… “Uncover his feet” is a quaint Old Testament euphemism for what often happens when one healthy, attractive person crawls into bed with another.
The storyteller tells us Naomi’s calculation and manipulation, and Ruth’s seduction of Boaz, are all right because things turned out well in the end. Ruth became David’s grandmother. And the great king’s sexual ethics weren’t exactly the most highly tuned, either.
On this Remembrance Day let’s give some thought to the casualties of war who survive and have to fight their own battles to live on in wastelands. Who flee to find safe homes, often only to run again. For trouble knows no borders.
Let’s not forget the men and women who did their duty, often had to compromise their values, were victims of circumstances beyond their control. But who did the right thing, even if it cost their lives. Let’s not forget the grieving women, the widows who live on, who still struggle and can never forget.
