Sermon: Grace to Risk Something Big for Something Good

Sunday, October 23, 2011

You never know when some word that you speak without a second thought is going to be the spark that changes someone’s life. I can’t tell you the number of times when somebody calls me up during the week and says that the sermon on Sunday helped them to make a big decision or was exactly what they needed to hear at that moment. I wish I could tell you that I in fact do read all your minds and that I tailor every sermon to fit your every need. Actually, it is very kind of you not to call me on Monday morning to tell me that you didn’t get one darned thing from that interminable sermon. So, thank you for that.

But a couple of years ago, during visitors’ weekend at the seminary I had dinner with a woman who was on the cusp of making a hard decision, and she came to church here on Sunday, and after church she told me that God had spoken directly to her through our blessing. Well, good, but you know, sometimes I feel as if there might possibly be something at work here over which I have virtually no control. Imagine.

She really liked the Seminary of the Southwest but she had a safer choice and was probably going to go there even though her heart was here. I’m pretty sure she only heard one sentence spoken in church that day, “May God give you the grace to risk something big for something good.” Needless to say, she came here to seminary and is now serving a church in Rhode Island, where she seems to be very happy. I said words I say every week, but it is not an exaggeration to say that the course of her life turned on what she heard. Scary. Exciting.

Today we read the first chapter of the Book of Ruth. We have skipped over two whole books of the Bible, but, in my humble opinion, they are very good books to skip. The book of Joshua is a book comprised largely of massacres as the children of Israel undertake the project of ethnic cleansing in order to occupy the Promised Land. And the book of Judges is possibly the darkest chapter in Jewish history, story after story of idolatry, punishment, repentance and restoration only to open the door for further idolatry, punishment, repentance…you get it. The book of Judges ends with these ominous words: In those days there was no king in Israel and all the people did what was right in their own eyes. They had forgotten the commandments that were God’s gift and hope for them and they lived as if they had no God. Every man for himself is a recipe for mayhem.

So the book of Ruth actually takes place several hundred years later and is the bridge between Judges and the story of David. The book of Ruth is a foil to Judges. In Judges everything that is selfish, evil, and faithless begets more of what is selfish, evil, and faithless, until it reaches its crescendo in a father’s senseless sacrifice of his daughter and the rape and dismemberment of a concubine. See why we skip it?

But the story of Ruth is a breath of fresh air. It is a story that begins with a famine but ends with a feast, begins with death and ends with birth and all because of human faithfulness that incarnates the faithfulness of God.

Ruth is the wife of one of Naomi’s sons. She is not a Jew but from the country of Moab. When Naomi’s husband and then both of her sons die, she releases her daughters-in-law to return to their families as she will return to her own homeland, Israel. If we know one line from the book of Ruth it is probably the one we hear at many weddings: Ruth says to Naomi, “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

Risk something big for something good. I wonder how Ruth could even have imagined something good from where she stood, widowed young, abandoning all security to venture into a land where she knew exactly one person. Risk something big? What is bigger than your life?

What is bigger than your homeland, the people to whom you belong? We all have a yearning to belong. Watch little children beset by separation anxiety. Watch grade school age kids as they form best-friendships and teams. Watch teenagers as they struggle to find their tribes. And look at our own lives as we seek the groups where we belong. How often we define ourselves by the groups we belong to. I’m an Episcopalian, a Texan, a Republican or Democrat, Rotarian, a vegan, a blogger, a skydiver. Imagine abandoning every group you belong to in order to follow a widow back to her land, a land that is foreign to you. Ruth was not asking, “What’s in it for me?” She gave herself completely without counting the cost.

Risk something big for something good. Risk, by its very definition, is not a sure bet. We take an action whose outcome we don’t know. But when did we ever achieve something really wonderful by making the safest choice? By doing the least we could get away with? Jesus tells the parable of the talents, and the master in the story rewards the stewards who took risks and punishes the one who buried the talent in the ground. Do you think Jesus might be telling us something about what God wants us to do with the gifts we have been given?

We are in week two of our parish pledge drive. You will hear the words of another parishioner today, someone who I guarantee you is taking a risk by standing in front of you and telling you from her heart why giving to the ministries of St. Alban’s is worthy of her family’s risk. None of us can predict accurately what life is going to throw at us. We’ve all probably had years that started out great and ended up in the weeds. Or times when windfalls came out of nowhere. And in all this uncertainty we are asked to make a pledge. We are asked to take a risk. To risk something big for something good.

The book of Ruth is a tiny little book. You can read it in one sitting, easy. It has a good plot.
Naomi takes Ruth back home to her people, to the farm of a relative of her deceased husband.
Ruth asks permission to glean the grain that is left in the fields after the reapers have passed through, but when Boaz comes home, he takes the young woman under his wing and offers her more in terms of both food and protection. The next part is pretty tricky. The next part is really risky. Naomi tells Ruth to go lie down with Boaz after he has gone to sleep. This part is R-rated at the very least. I’m guessing your imaginations can fill the gap. Boaz wakes up in love with her.

Goodness is begetting goodness. Faithfulness is begetting faithfulness. Beauty is begetting beauty. Generosity is begetting generosity. Ruth and Boaz get married and have numerous sons, the youngest of whom is the grandfather of David and ultimately the direct ancestor of Jesus. Oh, what a difference from the meanness and selfishness of Judges.

Jesus tells the disciples about what happens when a micron of yeast gets into a measure of flour. It is all contaminated. Well, that’s what happens when a micron of goodness, generosity, faith, trust gets turned loose in the world, too. It can be a catalyst. It can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. That one little step outside our safety zone may very well be the step that sets us on the road to our dreams come true.

I don’t know what God has in store for you or for me in this next year. I can’t tell you what the markets are going to do or when it will ever rain again or whether the Rangers will win the World Series or the Steelers will go to the Super Bowl. But I can tell you that it is a good thing for us to invest what we have in our very best dreams. And up here our dreams are, I hope, God’s dreams. Dreams of justice, kindness, grace, equality, love, fellowship, service. And they can’t come true without my investing from what God has blessed me with or without you investing from what God has blessed you with. We are here because generations before us risked some-thing big for something good. Are we willing to take that same step? To set something really wonderful in motion? To go a step or two beyond our safety zone? To set all that crazy love loose in the world? Amen.