“Your People Will Become My People”
Rev. David Takahashi Morris
September 16, 2007
“Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.”
When we talked about this year’s stories for the STARS program in religious education, knowing that we would be choosing many of our stories from Jewish and Christian scriptures, I wanted to include the story of Ruth first of all because of those words. Do they awaken any echoes in you? Have you heard them before? They’re often used as a wedding reading; they seem so clearly to be words spoken between lovers. I wanted our young people to know that these famous words from the Hebrew Bible are actually spoken between two women. This confession of love and loyalty is a declaration of kinship; it is a promise from a young woman to an older one: You are not alone. We are family.
The story of Ruth is beloved for its picture of Ruth’s loyalty and love, her free choice to bind her life to Naomi’s. I suspect that most of us don’t even remember the rest of the story; I know I was surprised by how much of the four short chapters of the Book of Ruth is taken up by the story of how she goes gleaning in the field and attracts Boaz’s attention, how Naomi coaches her to ask Boaz to purchase their bit of land and take Ruth as his wife, and how Boaz arranges matters so that it’s completely proper for him to do so. The part with the famous lines happens in the first page and a half.
Some of the deep values of ancient Biblical culture are visible between the lines of this story. The reason Ruth can go gleaning in the fields is that she is a foreigner; Biblical law specifically gives foreigners the right to glean after the reapers in anyone’s fields. The responsibility to be generous to the foreigner and to see to the welfare of widows and orphans is named by the prophets again and again as the most important obligation the people owe to their God. The need for family connections and the fundamental expectation that people should care for one another are themes as well that resonate as much for us today as they did in ancient times.
There’s a
lot in this story that makes us uncomfortable, too. Ancient
The matter-of-fact arrangement Ruth makes with Boaz is also a bit disturbing to modern ears. Naomi has inherited land from her husband Elimelech, but there’s never any thought that she and Ruth could simply struggle through the winter and begin farming the next year. They need a “redeemer,” a man who can do for them what they can’t do for themselves. As a male kinsman, Boaz has not just the right, but an obligation to redeem Naomi’s land and to continue Elimelech’s connection to the family line by way of Ruth. It’s clear the laws and customs of that time and place were intended to secure power and property in the hands of men.
So I’m not suggesting an uncritical reading of this story, and you can be sure that our children will be asking questions like “why didn’t Ruth and Naomi just stay and work on their own farm? Why did she need to marry anyone? Why did Naomi care so much about Ruth getting married?” They’ll find much to wrestle with in the story, just as we do, and that’s a good thing.
But for me it’s not the most important thing. All religious narratives and mythologies arise from within particular cultures, and they reflect the strengths and the weaknesses of those cultures. The point for me, the source of a scripture’s power for me is what I find in it that might transcend the particulars of a culture and speak across time and space and custom to us.
There’s a lot in this story that reminds me of us.
Ruth says to Naomi, “Your people will be my people, and your God, my God.” She is a convert. As a Moabite she had gods of her own, and in declaring her kinship to Naomi she is casting them aside and taking on a new faith. Then after her conversion she never mentions God again. That’s not the part that reminds me of us! It’s that Ruth’s conversion isn’t a matter of deciding that she believes something about God. In fact, one of the interesting little things about the Book of Ruth is that God is absent from it, in a way that’s really unusual in the Hebrew Bible. No one talks to God, no one has visions or hears voices sent from God; no one prays or asks God to guide or protect them—except when Naomi is complaining about how cruelly God has treated her. Ruth’s “conversion” to the religion of the Hebrew people is about something other than belief.
The American and Lakota writer Vine DeLoria Jr. says, "It is virtually impossible to ‘join’ a tribal religion by agreeing to its doctrines. People couldn't care less whether an outsider believes anything. No separate religious standard of behavior is imposed on followers of the religious tradition outside of the requirements for the ceremonies. . . . The customs of the tribe and the religious responsibilities to the group are practically identical." (From God is Red: A Native View of Religion. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1992.)
The customs
of the tribe and the religious responsibilities to the group are practically
identical. DeLoria is writing about
Native American religions, but ancient
When we teach our newcomers’ seminars, Leslie and I talk about what it means to become a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist. People who come to us from other backgrounds are often are puzzled that we don’t ask anyone to make a statement of faith. We don’t ask you to renounce your previous religion, or to declare that you are opposed to Evil and loyal to Good. We don’t ask you to say you believe in anything. It’s not that we don’t think it matters what you believe; we do. It’s that we think how you live and what we all agree to do together matters more than anything we say we believe. You don’t become Unitarian Universalist by believing something. You become Unitarian Universalist by making these people your people.
It’s not that easy for Ruth to become one of Naomi’s people. She isn’t really accepted with open arms. Naomi hardly seems to speak to her, except to give her advice. Throughout the story, people in Bethlehem refer to her not by her name but as “the Moabite woman with Naomi”; at the end of the story, when the neighbors are telling Naomi how lucky she is that “your daughter-in-law” has done so much for her, they call Ruth’s baby “Naomi’s son.”
But Ruth has thrown her lot in with her new people. She takes advantage of the laws of gleaning for foreigners to find provisions for herself and Naomi. She urges Boaz into recognizing that the customs of kinship and redemption call for him to take responsibility for Naomi and for her. In what feminist theologians call acting with power from the underside, she uses the rules that disempower her to accomplish her goal: Security and comfort for Naomi, a home and family for herself, and a place in the story of the people’s future.
Ruth’s final
acceptance into Naomi’s people happens outside the boundaries of her
story. She is written into the history
of
This is how you become part of a people: You enter into the customs and activities of their day-to-day life. You push them to fulfill the promise of their highest aspirations. And you weave yourself into their story, shaped by the history you have chosen to call your own, and shaping the future which will be different because you were there.
It’s how you become Unitarian Universalist, too. It doesn’t matter if you were born into a U.U. family—or born Unitarian or Universalist in the days before those streams flowed together—or if you discovered it early or late in life—or it was the first church you’d ever walked into—or if you came to a U.U. congregation after rejecting or being rejected by some other religious tradition, or a dozen of them. It’s easy to become a member here, but it’s hard to join. You become a member by signing a book. You join the people by becoming part of their life.
This is as true for the most seasoned veteran of church life as it is for the newcomer. It is true for ministers too. There are times when we need to limit our involvement at church to coming on Sunday and hearing words of inspiration, comfort, and self-compassion. Yet the greatest power of our faith has always been found in living, not in hearing, speaking, and believing. We must also constantly seek renewal and deepening of our engagement in the life and the seeking and the work of the spiritual community.
Look around you. These people will be your people.
Find a place to connect your soul’s deep longing and your heart’s delight with the abundant life that is flowing here, and you will find yourself renewed, refreshed, nourished—and challenged. Bring a passion that fires your mind and spirit to the circles engaged in our ministries of justice and service, and you will find yourself strengthened, encouraged, urged, and guided. Bring your insights and your most urgent questions to our worship, to our circles of spiritual searching and conversation and reflection, and you will find yourself awakened, affirmed, healed, energized.
Some part of the long history of this faith connects with some part of your story, your sense of what is true and right, your vision of how people should live. Find out what it is, and let it become yours, part of your understanding of who you are.
As a people, we are never all that we could be. We won’t always do well. We need every eye and every voice to see where we can do better and to call us to fulfill our best possibilities. We need every hand to pull us along. And as you strive to shape this people according to your vision, your story will become part of our story; our future together will be different because you are here.
Whatever barrier might be keeping you from throwing in your lot with these people, I invite you to take done one small part of it today, let just a little more connection in, and see where it might lead you. These people can be your people.
Let’s weave our stories together.