God’s Story of Faith and Hope
Ruth, Chapters 1 & 2

“God’s story is a tragedy!”

"Don't call me Naomi; call me Bitter.  The Strong One has dealt me a bitter blow.  I left here full of life, and God has brought me back with nothing but the clothes on my back.  Why would you call me Naomi?  God certainly doesn't.  The Strong One has ruined me."  Ruth 1:20-21 (The Message)

Naomi can only refer to her God as the “Almighty,” the “Strong One.”  She can no longer call herself Naomi, a name that means “my delight,” or “pleasantness,” but rather she changes her name to “Mara,” a name meaning “bitter.”  What else could she do?  The Strong One had dealt her a bitter blow.  

She left her homeland of Israel ten years previous with her husband due to a famine in Bethlehem.  Life started off so well in her new home in Moab, a country about 40 miles north of Bethlehem.  They had a nice home and two strong and handsome sons, and their future looked bright and hopeful.  

But then, tragedy struck, her husband died unexpectedly and at all too young an age.  Naomi, also at all too young an age, is suddenly a widow.  In that culture, to be a widow bore a terrible stigma, and the possibility of the loss of all income and property, and so her faith and hope began to fade.

Time passed and healed some of the sorrow, but not much.  Her two sons took two lovely wives, and Naomi’s hope began to grow, slowly but cautiously, “perhaps God’s face will shine on us once again,” she wonders, “perhaps our future will now be bright and hopeful.”  

A little time goes on, and tragedy strikes again, and both of her sons die unexpectedly at all two young an age.  In the dark of the night, three widows cling to one another in tears.  Three women suffer the sting of prejudice of being a widow with the possibility of never bearing children.  In that culture, being childless was seen as a curse from God, and for them eternal life was through the bearing of children so this hope was being cut off as well.

So Naomi under all this unbearable grief calls out, “Don’t you dare call me Naomi, call me “bitter!”

Naomi hears that God had shown favor to others back in Israel, and driven by self-pity and self-preservation she decides to go back to Bethlehem and leave her two daughter-in-laws behind.  In bitter tears, she tells them, “Go back, you still have hope.  As for me, the chance that someone will marry me at my age is about zero, and even if I did get married and have children, by the time they grew, you would be too old to marry them.  No, it’s clear that the story God is writing with my life is a tragedy,”

“Don’t you dare call me Naomi, the pleasant one, the one in whom God delights!  Call me by the new name your God has given me, “bitter!”


Are you standing with Naomi, seeing your life as a tragedy?

As I sit at my desk typing this sermon, a news flash comes across Fox news website saying they had just found the body of 18 year-old Kelsey Smith.  I throw myself back in my chair with tears streaming down my face and anger welling up in my heart, I scream out to God, “What kind of world are you running here?  What kind of God allows young Christian girls full of joy and life and hope to be kidnapped and killed?”   

And this sorrow, like all deeply felt sorrow, unlocks all the other sorrow buried deep in my soul, and suppressed question after question violently forces its way out of my heart and onto my lips.  And in a moment, I am standing there with Naomi remembering the seasons of sorrow that Kelly and I went through of loss after loss of loved ones, and shattered dreams from two miscarriages, and a firstborn diagnosed with a life-long disease, and I know Naomi’s pain.  I know Naomi’s bitterness.  I recall what it is like to see the story that God is writing as only a tragedy.

And then I’m pulled back into the present with an email from someone in dire need, and I recall the sorrow and trials that many of you face right now.  And again, I call out to God, “why do you allow innocent young teens to be born into homes with such neglect or children to suffer severe abuse?  Why do you allow families to be torn apart over finances?  Why the cancer, why the taking of husbands and children and mothers at all too young an age?  

And I wonder if any of you are still standing there with Naomi crying out, “Don’t you dare call me pleasant, God has dealt me a hard blow, too hard, call me “bitter!”  And if not you, I suspect that everyone of us knows one or more who are stuck in that place of bitterness borne of deep, unprocessed sorrow.  

It’s a place where the heart looks at one’s own sorrow, or just all the sorrow and injustice of this dark world, and says, “It’s clear that if there is a God, the story God is writing with my life or with this world is only a tragedy.”


Trusting God’s heart when you don’t see His plan

One of Naomi’s daughter-in-laws, Ruth, refused to return to Moab and insisted that she was going to accompany Naomi back to Bethlehem.  Ruth declares in 1:16-17, “Don't force me to leave you; don't make me go home.  Where you go, I will go; and where you live, I'll live.  Your people will be my people, your God will be my God; where you die, I'll die, and that's where I'll be buried, so help me God—not even death itself is going to come between us!"

This is Ruth’s conversion experience.  In making this declaration, Ruth, a gentile idol worshiper, rejects her idolatry, and declares her allegiance to the God of Israel.  In pledging her commitment to Naomi, Ruth lived up to the meaning of her name, which is “friendship,” and gives to us a picture of what true friendship looks like.  Her pledge to “cleave” to Naomi is the same word used to describe how a man and woman should cleave to one another in marriage.

The cost to Ruth of leaving Moab with Naomi is high.  She must leave her own people, her friends and extended family.  She will be a gentile living among Jews with little hope of her finding a new husband and having children.  

How can we account for the different responses?  Under the same depth of loss, one woman turns to cynicism and bitterness, and one turns to faith and hope.  What empowers Ruth to place her trust in this barley known God of Israel, and delay or possibly surrender any hope of earthy happiness?   

The way this tale of Ruth and Naomi is written makes it clear that the God-given gift of faith that fosters hope is what empowers Ruth.  The author of Ruth writes this story in a way that makes it clear that God is not distant, uncaring, uninvolved.  Rather, we as the reader have a birds-eye view of what is happening to Ruth and Naomi, and it is clear that God is the one writing the story of their lives.  

Under Jewish law, a relative had the right to buy the property left by a deceased relative if he was also willing to care for the window.  In chapter two, we read, “It just so happened” that Naomi had a relative by marriage who was rich and a man of compassion and integrity.  

In those days there was another Jewish Law called “gleaning” that insisted that farmers leave behind the harvest that fell on the ground so that widows, the poor, and visiting strangers could collect this food and so not go hungry.  And of all the hundreds of fields that Ruth could have gleaned in, our story tells us that “it just so happened” that Ruth was gleaning in the fields of this rich relative named Boaz.  

God moves Boaz’s heart to look upon Ruth with attraction and favor, and he tells Ruth to glean only in his field, and that he would appoint men to protect her from any foul play or harassment from the workers.

We read beginning in 2:10 Ruth’s response to Boaz’s kindness:  “She dropped to her knees, then bowed her face to the ground.  "How does this happen that you should pick me out and treat me so kindly—me, a foreigner?"
 
11-12  Boaz answered her, "I've heard all about you—heard about the way you treated your mother-in-law after the death of her husband, and how you left your father and mother and the land of your birth and have come to live among a bunch of total strangers.  God reward you well for what you've done, the God to whom you have come seeking protection under his wings." 13  She said, "Oh sir, such grace, such kindness—I don't deserve it.  You've touched my heart, treated me like one of your own.  And I don't even belong here!"

Boaz is the Christ-figure in this story, and God through Boaz extends His grace to Ruth, claims her as his own.  And so it becomes clear that it is only through God’s grace, God’s gift of faith and hope, that Ruth is empowered to trust that God is still good, that God is still on their side, and that God is still writing a good story with a happy ending with their lives!  Ruth believes this even in the face of overwhelming data that screams out this cannot possibly be true.  
This is what faith means: to trust God’s heart when you cannot see His plans, to believe that God is writing a good story with ultimately a happy ending with your life and with all human history no matter how tragic the current chapter may look.

And Hope always springs from faith, and it is Ruth’s faith that gives her the kind of authentic hope that empowers her to delay or even give up earthy happiness.  This is what hope means: to live with the ache of delayed happiness trusting that God will reward such faith and hope with eternal joy and riches beyond our wildest imagination.

Naomi, in her unprocessed sorrow and unrepented of bitterness, can no longer see the bigger story that God is writing, she sees only the immediate chapter of tragedy.  Cynicism is also the outcome of a refusal to live in hope.  Bitterness is always the outcome of a refusal to live in faith.

But God’s grace reaches out to restore Naomi’s faith and hope as well!  God’s love is never dependent on our love of Him.  Naomi was the one insisting that God had changed her name to bitter.  But God still called her Naomi, “the one in whom He delights!”

When Ruth comes home from gleaning, Naomi asks her whose field she was in, and Ruth tells her the whole story of Boaz’s extravagant grace and lavish kindness.  Naomi responds in 2:20: "Why, God bless that man!  God hasn't quite walked out on us after all!  He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!"  Naomi went on, "That man, Ruth, is one of our circle of covenant redeemers, a close relative of ours!"

And we begin to see our gracious God blow upon Naomi’s smoldering-wick faith and barley-glowing-ember-hope fanning it back to flame.


Moving from seeing only the tragedy chapter to God’s whole good story

As I sit typing the last section to this sermon, another news flash is posted that they had found the kidnaper/killer of Kelsey Smith.  But this capture is not justice.  It’s not enough to take away the dark questions stirring in my soul about God’s seeming absence from this tragedy.  

There will be no, “O now I understand the full meaning of this tragedy” wrap up.  There will be no tidy, satisfying closure to my deep sorrow and dark questions on this event.  Just as after many years there are still no such satisfying answers to all my troubling questions over mine and Kelly’s losses, such as, why God allowed Kelly’s father, our children’s grandfather, to die at too young an age, leaving Kelly’s mother as a widow at all too young an age.  

We all seek to discover the meaning of tragedy and loss, and sometimes we’re granted a glimpse of its purpose.  But more often than not, God does not choose to give us such satisfying answers.  Instead, God calls us to faith and hope.  Sometimes our insistence on attaching some understood meaning to a trial or loss in itself can be our sinful refusal to live in the infuriating mystery of faith and the inconsolable ache of hope.

God had never abandoned Naomi even in her darkest season of doubt and bitterness.  The Master Story writer just kept authoring a good story with the events in Naomi’s life even as she could only see the current chapter of tragedy.  God’s relentless grace and irresistible love eventually broke through Naomi’s hardened and hurting heart and rebirthed faith and hope.  

This same rebirthing again and again of faith and hope in the hurting heart is the gospel, this is what Jesus Christ offers to all, no matter how hard the heart or deep the hurt.  The Father has granted Kelly and me such rebirth many, many times over.  But we must remember, that faith and hope is not the absence of struggle and doubt, but the sustaining presence of Christ that empowers us to trust in God’s heart when we cannot see His plan.  

So when an event like a kidnapped murder of Kelsey releases all manner of rage and questions, as I call out to God and demand that He give an account for His seeming incompetence in protecting His people, God does not strike me with lighting for my arrogant disrespect, nor does He sit me down and explain to me all the reasons why He allowed this tragedy.  

Instead, Christ does what He always does when I wrestle with Him in prayer over such matters, the Holy Spirit brings me once again to a place where the presence, person, and promises of God become a sustaining, not a fully satisfying, but a sustaining answer to all my still unanswered questions and still lingering sorrow.

If you are now, or ever find yourself, stuck in sorrow or bitterness, the path of discovering faith and hope almost always goes through this place of engaging God in such wrestling prayer.

So what about you?  Are you, or someone you know, still standing there with Naomi prior to her encounter with grace, seeing the story of your life as only or mostly a tragedy?  Crying out, “Don’t’ you dare call me pleasant or tell me that God delights in me.  Call me bitter, because this almighty God has dealt be a bitter blow, too hard to handle.”

If so, in your life, or as you take these promises of God to a friend stuck in bitterness, as you pour out your darkest emotions and most troubling questions to Christ in wrestling prayer, may the Holy Spirit once again blow upon your dying-ember hope and smoldering-wick faith, until you are brought to a place where you can declare like Naomi, "God hasn't quite walked out on me after all!  He still loves me, in bad times as well as good!"