Baptism

All Saints – Ruth and Naomi: A Duet – November 3, 2024

Ruth and Naomi:  A Duet

Where you go, I will go;
Where you stay, I will stay;

your people shall be my people,
and your God shall be my God.

 

Emmanuel PeopleThis famous statement of chosen family and community from the Book of Ruth is perfect for a baptism Sunday.  These words have been remembered over the millennia as “Ruth’s Song” (that’s how Randy had encountered it in church music), but it’s just as much the story of Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, and a line of our mothers in the faith from the time of Abraham, as we read in Jesus’ genealogy in the first chapter of Matthew’s gospel:  Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba — all the way to Mary the mother of Jesus.  We’ll dig into all this in a minute.  It’s a gripping story, sweeping over generations and centuries.  And it’s fair to ask how it is we come to encounter it on All Saints’ Day — baptism Sunday — because it’s almost just too marvelous, too wonderfully applicable and appropriate to the holy work before us today, to even believe it’s a gift from our assigned readings.

All Saints’ Day is one of the seven principal feasts in the church year, and one of the four days recommended for baptisms, when we welcome new members among us, and say out loud our priorities as a community — what’s important to us about how we treat each other and make our way in the world around us.  In the Episcopal Church, we can choose to celebrate principal feasts on their actual date — that would have been Friday for All Saints’ Day — or on the Sunday after that date, as we’re doing today.  Many churches in the Anglican Communion choose to celebrate All Saints’ Day on November 1, whenever that occurs, using the lectionary readings for the Sunday closest to November 2, or Proper 26.

Why does this matter to us today?  I’m so glad you asked!  Because the Old Testament reading for Proper 26 is from the Book of Ruth, and I can’t think of a better text for baptism.  So we’ll walk on the Episcopal wild side today, and refer to Ruth’s faith journey and the Great Commandments from the readings assigned for today, while we celebrate All Saints’ Day with a baptism, and a flourish at the end of the New Jerusalem from the Book of Revelation for All Saints’ Day.  It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure kind of morning!

Ruth and Naomi

So here’s the tale:  Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, is not mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy by name, but she returned to Bethlehem from Moab with her Moabite daughter-in-law Ruth in tow, their chosen family bond stronger than the ties of blood, nation, ethnicity, geography, language, and culture.  We can see how this happens in any formed community.  Look around you today — we’ve all gathered today from many different places — some of them quite distant and different from each other.  Some of us are family by birth — parents, siblings, offspring.  Others of us are family by marriage — spouses, in-laws like Naomi and me, and step siblings.  Still others of us are family by choice — our very closest and dearest friends, bound together by shared experience and years and love and commitment.

Ruth and NaomiJust to connect all the dots and fast forward Naomi and Ruth’s story from the reading today, let’s go back to Naomi’s difficult journey with Ruth from Moab to Bethlehem.  Naomi has returned to her hometown, but she’s lived away for most of her adult life, raising young sons to adulthood and seeing them married, one to Orpah and one to Ruth.  When her sons die after about 10 years of marriage, widowed Naomi convinces Orpah to stay behind in Moab, but Ruth’s having none of it — nope, I’m sticking with you, she says.  After the arduous journey through the Jordan Valley — around the Dead Sea and back into Bethlehem — Naomi and Ruth are starving widows, not linked or allied with any family, community, or social group in Bethlehem, with no fully filled out household — children, husbands, siblings, cousins — to engage productively in farming or herding.

But Naomi has a cousin, Boaz, descended from a royal line.  (And it’s super interesting to note that Boaz’s mother is Rahab — honestly, we should spend whole Sundays on each one of these phenomenal, visionary women.)  Boaz has a prosperous farming and threshing operation.  Naomi is too old to do the active work of harvesting, but she arranges for Ruth to be allowed to glean the fields that is, to take what’s left over after harvest.  With Naomi’s coaching and advice, Ruth is able to parlay this casual arrangement for just enough to eat into a marriage that begets Obed, who begets King David, who with Uriah the Hittite’s wife Bathsheba begets King Solomon, continuing in this great line of begetting all the way to Mary, mother of Jesus, an unmarried teenager, not even from a priestly family, who with her choice and commitment, says yes to God and brings Jesus into the world.

Is our lineage of faith in Chapter one of Matthew’s gospel a history or science text?  No.  But it’s a story that carries the deep truth that chosen family is not less than family by blood, but instead is the origin of all family.  It’s the choices and covenants and promises — like Ruth’s commitment and promise to follow and care for her mother-in-law, Naomi, wherever she goes, — that all family by blood comes from.  The point of this lineage, and its titillating, fascinating, and even salacious twists and turns — is that we’re meant to love and care for one another, to build strong communities that we support and that support us, no matter where we come from and how different we are.

Baptism

BaptismNow this brings us to baptism.  When we baptize in the church, we welcome someone new into our community, promising to care for and about them among us.  It’s a classic covenant of chosen family, like Naomi the Ephrathite from Bethlehem in Judea, and her Moabite daughter-in-law, Ruth.  Even those of us whose faith traditions do not include baptism can find resonance in these promises, and comfort and belonging in this community.  Listen to what our community says together as we renew our own baptismal covenant in a few minutes and welcome Whitley into our community.

We say we’ll do our best to hold together as a community, remember what’s important, keep up our relationships, say sorry when we’re wrong and do better next time, always hoping the best for each other and the world.  We promise we’ll share our fellowship and community with others, bring out the best in each other, love our neighbors as ourselves, strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.  This is how Jesus answers the learned Jewish scribe who asks him which is the most important commandment.  Jesus responds with the Great Shema:

Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.The second is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

These were not new ideas, proposed by Jesus on the spot.  These were part of Jesus’ lineage, formed and knit by God into his bones and heritage from Abraham and Sarah, salted and seasoned by Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, Mary, mother of Jesus, and all the other chosen family along the way.  That is our community, and that is how we build the new Jerusalem.

New JerusalemI saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem,

coming down out of heaven from God. 

“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them.  Amen