Sermon: The Spiritual Practice of Belonging

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The Spiritual Practice of Belonging

By Caroline Dean

May 8, 2011 – Mothers Day

[ Audio (mp3, 6.0Mb) ]

we are honest about Mothers Day, it's not always a Hallmark occasion. Some of us have complicated relationships with our moms. Some of us have lost our mother, or “mother figures” in our lives. Some of us don't know our mother. Some of us cannot be mothers. Some feel like they struggle as a mom, and the list goes on and on. And yet we do want to celebrate our moms and mother figures today, we want to say Thank You, and we want to honor the fact that we “belong” together. And so this Mother's Day, in honor of our mothers and our grandmothers and the women in our lives who are meaningful to us, we meditate on “the spiritual practice of belonging to one another and belonging to God.”

Who do you belong to? Who belongs to you? Who does Ruth belong to? Ruth is a Moabite; she is connected to a people. And in ancient times this relationship of ethnic “belonging” usually defined you. And yet Ruth also belongs with her husband, an Israelite and with her husband's family, her in-laws. (And while we are at it, we can be honest and say that some of us also have complicated relationships with our in-laws). But Ruth belongs to her mother-in-law Naomi, and, surprisingly, this is the relationship that Ruth prioritizes. This is the person that will guide Ruth's life from now on. Ruth and Naomi will “stick together,” lodging together with the same people and the same God. The word in the Hebrew for this kind of “sticking together” and this radical “belonging” is “hesed” or everlasting love and faithfulness. This is a word that describes God's relationship with the people of Israel. God will “stick with” them, God will be “with” them no matter what happens.

So, how do we practice “hesed” in our lives? It seems so abstract. Certainly we practice faithfulness in our marriages, in our friendships and in our families. But what does it really mean to “belong” to God or to belong to a people like Ruth did? One author beautifully imagines that Ruth's story “teaches us, in the way only a great narrative can, by taking a quality, a virtue (like hesed) of which we speak in the abstract, and then showing us what that virtue looks like in concrete real life. This virtue assumes flesh.” Ruth's story “embodies” what it means to “practice” belonging to one another and belonging to God. (Davis “Scrolls of Love” page 6).

And the context of Ruth's story is important in order to understand this radical nature of Ruth's relationship with Naomi. The book of Ruth and the book of Judges (which proceeds Ruth) are both set in a time of chaos and disorder. In the book of Judges, there is no king and so the people of Israel “do what is right in their own eyes,” which results in escalating violence and disorder. And so in response to this chaos, charismatic leaders called “judges” attempt to guide the people of Israel back to God. Some of the judges, like Samson, have super-human strength; he wrestles lions and knocks down buildings in a display of victory for his people. The judges engage in violence and war, which represents a necessary historical reality for the people, as they literally fought for their security and survival. In short, the book of Judges would make an awesome video game or action movie.

And on the other hand, Ruth would make a horrible video game. She definitely does not make the cut for an action movie. The story of Ruth is set in the same time “the rule of the judges” and this same chaos threatens her own survival as she encounters famine, the loss of her husband, loss of security, childlessness, and poverty. And yet Ruth inhabits this disorderly space quite differently than the judges. Ruth does not have a super human power. In fact, her story is utterly human. She doesn't wrestle lions or provide charismatic leadership to the masses. The story of Ruth actually challenges the idea that redemption and hope come from the battlefield, from the war room, or even from the holy mountain (Ellen Davis, “Scrolls of Love page 3).

Ruth's story is ordinary and yet it is pervasive, it has been passed down to us throughout the generations. Why is it so enduring and how does it challenge our idea that peace comes from the battlefield or from “homeland security?” Without the action-packed drama of other books, and grand characters like Samson and King David, what does ordinary Ruth have to show us to help us survive our own times of chaos?

If we are honest, aren't we worn out by “great events” on our national and international stage? In this country, in Pakistan, in Japan, in Haiti, in the Middle East and North Africa, those who are devastated by tornadoes, flooding, and earthquakes, even in the fragility of our own ecosphere, “we are witnessing cataclysmic events that seem to offer only the most uncertain hope of a safer future” (Davis page 4). And since Ruth's story does not give us super human powers to fix these problems, or strategies of political intervention in peacekeeping or war effort, what does she teach us about ordinary living in our world of chaos?

Sue Monk Kidd writes, “I think about how we travel this universe upon this tiny planet, knee-deep in the sorrows of its inhabitants. Together we sink. Together we float. Together we swim. Together. That is the small, and tender mercy of this ride.” (Weavings, “Availability” page 13). The story of Ruth would not make a good action movie, but her story does teach us about the “spiritual practice of belonging to one another” even in the midst of widespread disorder and personal loss. Ruth teaches us how to float, sink, and swim together.

Ruth says to Naomi, her mother-in-law, with whom she has no legal or cultural obligation, “I'm going where you go; I'm lodging where you lodge; your people will be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—and there I will be buried.”

This is a portrait of vulnerability and radical commitment, rooted in love. This is not a fuzzy, kind of romantic love; this hesed love is the kind of love that we dig up from the bottom of our soul, the kind of love that “sticks people together.” The kind of love that is an act of the will.

Ruth and Naomi march into a land of unknown territory. They are impoverished and they have no child to give them hope for the future. And yet they take this journey together.

But, again, if we are honest, sometimes belonging to other people can be a “pain in the butt.” Sometimes it is just easier to go alone. You don't have to deal with their neuroses. You don't have to be confronted with your own neuroses (at least as often). You don't have to carry their pain and their burdens. When Ruth commits to Naomi, she commits to be by her side at her death and at her burial. She will “stick” with Naomi in her darkest times. And that is why “belonging” to one another is a vulnerable thing. We risk getting our hearts broken; we risk having loved ones taken away from us before we are ready. Vulnerability also takes a lot of time and energy in our busy lives. How much of our time do we set aside in the practice of belonging deeply, the practice of being vulnerable to one another despite the risks? And secondly, how much of this kind of energy to we invest here at Christ Church? How much do we trust each other? How much do we “stick together” in the dark times? How much do we really actively “belong” here and call others to “belong” here with us?

The story of Ruth also challenges us to ask the question, “how big is our family? How wide is the reach of our belonging? Can we stretch it out to the furthest circle of God's household? Does our care embrace the most vulnerable ones? Do we even belong to our enemies? Ruth was a Moabite woman. And this is controversial. On this Mother's Day, we remember that Ruth is actually mentioned as a great, great, great grandmother of King David and as an ancestor of Jesus. But in Ruth's context, the Moabites and the Israelites were forbidden to intermarry. In many scriptures we find tensions between these groups. The authors want to identify who “belongs” to Israel and who cannot “belong,” they identify people groups who are a threat to their communal identity. And in Ruth we find beautiful resistance to this idea. A Moabite woman clings to an Israelite woman and marries an Israelite man. A Moabite woman is an ancestor of the greatest King in Israel and the Messiah, Jesus.

Who do you not want to “belong” to? Who do you want to “kick out?” If you had the power, which groups of people would not make the cut for your “kick ball team?” The ordinary story of Ruth teaches us that we all belong to one another, even our greatest enemies, even the ones who hurt us and betray us.

And so how as a church do we practice “belonging” to the ones who we prefer not to belong to? How do we practice reconciling and coming to peace with those who betray us? How do we embody radical inclusivity? In times of chaos and vulnerability it is easy to “kick people out of the circle,” to create a straw man or straw woman to fear and blame, but how can we “draw our circle wider” even in vulnerable times?

And so in our times of chaos we can focus on Ruth's spiritual practice of building deep vulnerable relationships despite the risks, and we can practice belonging to our enemies.

In the first scripture reading this morning, we find that Jesus belonged to a group of friends, the disciples. In this story Jesus washes the disciples feet, he practices vulnerability, taking on the form of a slave who washes dirt, and grim, and worse, off of the filthiest parts of the disciples bodies. Taking on the role of the lowest servant, Jesus also shows us how to “belong to our enemies.” One of the most striking parts of this scene is that Jesus washes the feet of the ones who will shortly betray him. Not just Judas. Peter will betray Jesus three times. And all of the disciples abandon him in his darkest hour. The disciples practice the opposite of “hesed” faithfulness and yet, right before they flee Jesus, he tenderly washes their feet. He declares that he “belongs” to his betrayer friends despite their cowardice and unfaithfulness.

And for me, the most beautiful part of this passage is the first verse. The author writes, “Jesus knowing that God had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table to wash the disciples' feet.” Jesus belonged to God, and he let that relationship grant him the courage to belong to others in radical vulnerability.

The last message that I leave you with today is that you belong to God. You are beloved. You are cherished. You have come from God and you are going to God. And so like Jesus, let this confidence draw you into vulnerable relationships with those around you. Let this divine belonging give you the courage to love to your enemies. Let this belonging give you ‘hesed' so that like Ruth, you can cling to one another in the times of chaos. Let God's love secure you and send you out to serve. Amen.