This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, and probably the last Sunday of zoom gathering as we move to the traffic light system next week.
The parish council are working together to come up with guidelines for our in person gathering, for our building users and for our community conversations around all the aspects of hospitality, inclusion, care for the vulnerable and safe access to opportunities for worship.
To help us all adjust to the world with covid and find our way we will be exploring the story of Ruth this advent.
Ruth only appears once every three years in our lectionary cycle and then only two chunks of the story are lifted out for us to hear. You may know the outlines of the story quite well – it’s essentially about kindness, faithfulness and compassion. But if you slow down and consider the context and the human relationships in the text then you’ll find that it also speaks to us of the mysterious depths of relationships between women; of the trauma of surviving your children; of the pain of childlessness; of the challenges of marriage and the cultural system where women were chattels; of the marginalisation of the alien and foreigner; of the vulnerability of widows in the particularity of this story and the poor and disempowered in general; of the communal and personal responsibility to protect the vulnerable.
These are significant themes for our times and since Ruth “the Moabite from Moab” makes it into Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus this book also points us towards the hope that has carried the Jewish faith through generations.
We will read one chapter a week. I suggest reading it with your imagination, filling out the names with faces, the places with scenery and landscapes, the villages with people – families, friends and neighbours, the roads with travellers, the town with markets and the whole shebang. If you need a bit of help to jump start your imagination, you might try watching an episode or two of The Chosen, which you can find here:
https://watch.angelstudios.com/thechosen/watch?vid=S1:E1
Scripture Reading
In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there.
But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. When they had lived there for about ten years, both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman was left without her two sons or her husband.
Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had had consideration for his people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back to the land of Judah.
But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, ‘Go back each of you to your mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband.’ Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. They said to her, ‘No, we will return with you to your people.’ But Naomi said, ‘Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.’ Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
So she said, ‘See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.’ But Ruth said,
‘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.
Where you die, I will die—
there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!’
When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her. So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them; and the women said, ‘Is this Naomi?’ She said to them,
‘Call me no longer Naomi,
call me Mara,
for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.
I went away full,
but the Lord has brought me back empty;
why call me Naomi
when the Lord has dealt harshly with me,
and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?’
So Naomi returned together with Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, who came back with her from the country of Moab. They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
Saint Peters Presbyterian Church 