Sermon Illustrations for Proper 26 | Ordinary Time 31 (2021)
Illustration
Ruth 1:1-18
Loyalty mattes. The December 1981 edition of Readers Digest shares this story. John Kenneth Galbraith was a noted economist in the early 1900s who was called upon by many dignitaries to help sort the economic markets. He wrote in his autobiography about his housekeeper. “It had been a wearying day, and I asked Emily to hold all telephone calls while I had a nap. Shortly thereafter the phone rang. Lyndon Johnson was calling from the White House. ‘Get me Ken Galbraith. This is Lyndon Johnson.’ ‘He is sleeping, Mr. President. He said not to disturb him.’ ‘Well, wake him up. I want to talk to him.’ ‘No, Mr. President. I work for him, not you.’ When I called the president back, he could scarcely control his pleasure. ‘Tell that woman I want her here in the White House.’”
Emily understood well to whom her loyalty went. So did Ruth. In this passage we have a text that is used often in weddings, though doesn’t actually refer to a marital situation. Ruth pledges her abiding loyalty to her mother-in-law, Naomi. “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” (vs. 16) Thomas More once said, “I die the king's faithful servant, but God's first.”
Bill T.
* * *
Ruth 1:1-18
You’re probably familiar with the phrase “lost in translation,” which suggests that whenever we translate something from one language, we lose some of the richness of the original. And that’s true! However, when author Isaac Asimov wrote an essay about the Book of Ruth, he titled it “Lost in Non-Translation.” By that he meant that when we don’t translate terms like Moabite into the 21st century we don’t get how radical this book truly is.
The story begins with a famine and the relocation of an Israelite family in Moab where they find work and food. How could they find safe haven in a country that, according to the law of Moses, refused them accommodation during their exodus from Egypt? When I tell the story, living in Indiana as I do, I talk about Hoosiers being forced, because of unemployment, to move to Afghanistan, where the sons marry local women. When all the men die, Naomi returns to rural Indiana, not New York or LA where it might not be noticed that two women in hijabs are insisting on following her. She talks one of them out of it, but Ruth insists she’s coming. Notice that Naomi does not respond with a single word to what we praise as a marvelous speech – “Where you go, I will go, etc.” Does Naomi even want her to go?
But as often is the case, we’ll see that an immigrant understands how America works much better than a native-born citizen. And sometimes adult converts know a whole lot more about what it means to be saved than those of us who smugly boast that the last five generations of our family have sat in the same pew.
The Book of Ruth is read in its entirety on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, which celebrates the revelation of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Why would this book be read at a festival celebrating the first fruits fifty days after planting, as well as the law of Moses? This Moabite, this foreigner, will demonstrate in chapter 2 that she understands the law better than Naomi. Naomi gives up, and tells her neighbors to call her Mara, or Bitter. She sees life at a dead end. Ruth knows the law insists that the harvest must be shared with the poor, and she goes out to glean. She displays chesed, steadfast love, covenant loyalty. This characteristic attributed to God in scripture is an active love that expects nothing in return. Ruth acts to heal a broken family and care for a widow when no one else does. In the end, she empowers the whole community to act as it should.
Frank R.
* * *
Hebrews 9:11-14
About the sacrifice of Christ, Martin Luther once wrote:
That is the true sacrifice. Once and for all it takes away the sins of all the world... It deserves to be praised to the utmost and to have every honor given to it, especially over against those other false, lying sacrifices of our own works, which were invented to deny and blaspheme this sacrifice. (What Luther Says, p.190)
John Calvin further proclaims that this sacrifice puts away the need for good works of the law in order to save us (a message crucial on this Reformation Day). He wrote:
All these things tend to shew that the things of Christ so far excel the shadows of the law that they justly reduce them all to nothing. (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol.XXII/1, p.203)
Mark E.
* * *
Hebrews 9:11-14
Burnt offerings, grain offerings, financial offerings, none of these align us with God in the same way the recognition of Jesus as our Savior can and does. We are reminded in this passage that the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus is that which restores our relationship with God. The purity and divinity of Jesus sacrificed for our lives makes us inheritors of the kingdom of God, members of the family of God. We enter that intimacy of relationship through Jesus, with Jesus. How wonderful that is? Jesus laid his life down for justice, for his friends, for the truth of our kinship with one another, and our kinship with God. No matter your opinion of atonement or your religious beliefs in salvation, to know Jesus is to know the depth of love expressed by him and to know our connection to and with God.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Mark 12:28-34
J. Sidlow Baxter’s book, Awake, My Heart: Daily Devotional Studies for the Year, contains a powerful story I’d never heard. In 1934, a British magazine told the story of young Prince Edward and a visit he made to a small hospital where thirty-six hopelessly injured and disfigured veterans of the First World War were tended. He stopped at each cot, shook hands with each veteran, and spoke words of encouragement. He was conducted to the exit but observed that he had only met twenty-nine men. At that point he questioned those present, “I understood you had thirty-six patients here. I have only seen twenty-nine.” The head nurse explained that the other seven were so shockingly disfigured, that for the sake of his own feelings, he had not been taken to see them. The prince insisted that he must see them. He spoke to each of them and thanked them for the great sacrifice they had made and assured each that it would never be forgotten.
Then he turned to the head nurse and said, “There are only six men. Where is the seventh?” He was informed that no one was allowed to see him. Blind, maimed, dismembered, the most hideously disfigured of them all, he was isolated in a room where he would never leave alive. The nurse said to the prince, “Please don’t ask to see him.” But the prince could not be dissuaded.
The nurse reluctantly led him into a darkened room. The royal visitor stood there with white face and drawn lips, looking down at what had once been a healthy soldier. Then the tears broke out, and with lovely impulse, the prince bent down and reverently kissed the cheeks of that broken war hero.
The two greatest commands are to love God and love people. That’s how people will know we are different. John Wesley once said, “Though we cannot think alike may we not love alike?”
Bill T.
* * *
Mark 12:28-34
This story is also told in Matthew and Luke. All three evangelists emphasize different things. What I like about this telling is that while Jesus is being challenged and tested by the religious leaders, in this version one of the scribes gets very excited when Jesus answers his question about the greatest commandment. Jesus, of course, responds with not one, but two commandments, defining our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationship with humanity in terms of love. This so excites the scribe with its brilliance that he responds with confirmation.
This reminds me of the best of Bible studies, when a leader and the other participants interact as equals. For many folks the purpose of Bible study is for the leader to connect a series of unconnected texts, often taken out of context, so that the pupils follow the same path and are made to understand there is only one correct conclusion. While Jesus has a definite point to make her, and guess what – he’s right! – this conversation is one in which the scribe’s contributions are respected and applauded. “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Jesus says. (10:34)
I wonder if the reason the conversation with the other religious leaders stops right after that is because no one wants to be in a position where everyone is respected. They want to engage in the sort of dialogue in which one person is the winner and the others are losers.
Frank R.
Loyalty mattes. The December 1981 edition of Readers Digest shares this story. John Kenneth Galbraith was a noted economist in the early 1900s who was called upon by many dignitaries to help sort the economic markets. He wrote in his autobiography about his housekeeper. “It had been a wearying day, and I asked Emily to hold all telephone calls while I had a nap. Shortly thereafter the phone rang. Lyndon Johnson was calling from the White House. ‘Get me Ken Galbraith. This is Lyndon Johnson.’ ‘He is sleeping, Mr. President. He said not to disturb him.’ ‘Well, wake him up. I want to talk to him.’ ‘No, Mr. President. I work for him, not you.’ When I called the president back, he could scarcely control his pleasure. ‘Tell that woman I want her here in the White House.’”
Emily understood well to whom her loyalty went. So did Ruth. In this passage we have a text that is used often in weddings, though doesn’t actually refer to a marital situation. Ruth pledges her abiding loyalty to her mother-in-law, Naomi. “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” (vs. 16) Thomas More once said, “I die the king's faithful servant, but God's first.”
Bill T.
* * *
Ruth 1:1-18
You’re probably familiar with the phrase “lost in translation,” which suggests that whenever we translate something from one language, we lose some of the richness of the original. And that’s true! However, when author Isaac Asimov wrote an essay about the Book of Ruth, he titled it “Lost in Non-Translation.” By that he meant that when we don’t translate terms like Moabite into the 21st century we don’t get how radical this book truly is.
The story begins with a famine and the relocation of an Israelite family in Moab where they find work and food. How could they find safe haven in a country that, according to the law of Moses, refused them accommodation during their exodus from Egypt? When I tell the story, living in Indiana as I do, I talk about Hoosiers being forced, because of unemployment, to move to Afghanistan, where the sons marry local women. When all the men die, Naomi returns to rural Indiana, not New York or LA where it might not be noticed that two women in hijabs are insisting on following her. She talks one of them out of it, but Ruth insists she’s coming. Notice that Naomi does not respond with a single word to what we praise as a marvelous speech – “Where you go, I will go, etc.” Does Naomi even want her to go?
But as often is the case, we’ll see that an immigrant understands how America works much better than a native-born citizen. And sometimes adult converts know a whole lot more about what it means to be saved than those of us who smugly boast that the last five generations of our family have sat in the same pew.
The Book of Ruth is read in its entirety on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, which celebrates the revelation of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Why would this book be read at a festival celebrating the first fruits fifty days after planting, as well as the law of Moses? This Moabite, this foreigner, will demonstrate in chapter 2 that she understands the law better than Naomi. Naomi gives up, and tells her neighbors to call her Mara, or Bitter. She sees life at a dead end. Ruth knows the law insists that the harvest must be shared with the poor, and she goes out to glean. She displays chesed, steadfast love, covenant loyalty. This characteristic attributed to God in scripture is an active love that expects nothing in return. Ruth acts to heal a broken family and care for a widow when no one else does. In the end, she empowers the whole community to act as it should.
Frank R.
* * *
Hebrews 9:11-14
About the sacrifice of Christ, Martin Luther once wrote:
That is the true sacrifice. Once and for all it takes away the sins of all the world... It deserves to be praised to the utmost and to have every honor given to it, especially over against those other false, lying sacrifices of our own works, which were invented to deny and blaspheme this sacrifice. (What Luther Says, p.190)
John Calvin further proclaims that this sacrifice puts away the need for good works of the law in order to save us (a message crucial on this Reformation Day). He wrote:
All these things tend to shew that the things of Christ so far excel the shadows of the law that they justly reduce them all to nothing. (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol.XXII/1, p.203)
Mark E.
* * *
Hebrews 9:11-14
Burnt offerings, grain offerings, financial offerings, none of these align us with God in the same way the recognition of Jesus as our Savior can and does. We are reminded in this passage that the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus is that which restores our relationship with God. The purity and divinity of Jesus sacrificed for our lives makes us inheritors of the kingdom of God, members of the family of God. We enter that intimacy of relationship through Jesus, with Jesus. How wonderful that is? Jesus laid his life down for justice, for his friends, for the truth of our kinship with one another, and our kinship with God. No matter your opinion of atonement or your religious beliefs in salvation, to know Jesus is to know the depth of love expressed by him and to know our connection to and with God.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Mark 12:28-34
J. Sidlow Baxter’s book, Awake, My Heart: Daily Devotional Studies for the Year, contains a powerful story I’d never heard. In 1934, a British magazine told the story of young Prince Edward and a visit he made to a small hospital where thirty-six hopelessly injured and disfigured veterans of the First World War were tended. He stopped at each cot, shook hands with each veteran, and spoke words of encouragement. He was conducted to the exit but observed that he had only met twenty-nine men. At that point he questioned those present, “I understood you had thirty-six patients here. I have only seen twenty-nine.” The head nurse explained that the other seven were so shockingly disfigured, that for the sake of his own feelings, he had not been taken to see them. The prince insisted that he must see them. He spoke to each of them and thanked them for the great sacrifice they had made and assured each that it would never be forgotten.
Then he turned to the head nurse and said, “There are only six men. Where is the seventh?” He was informed that no one was allowed to see him. Blind, maimed, dismembered, the most hideously disfigured of them all, he was isolated in a room where he would never leave alive. The nurse said to the prince, “Please don’t ask to see him.” But the prince could not be dissuaded.
The nurse reluctantly led him into a darkened room. The royal visitor stood there with white face and drawn lips, looking down at what had once been a healthy soldier. Then the tears broke out, and with lovely impulse, the prince bent down and reverently kissed the cheeks of that broken war hero.
The two greatest commands are to love God and love people. That’s how people will know we are different. John Wesley once said, “Though we cannot think alike may we not love alike?”
Bill T.
* * *
Mark 12:28-34
This story is also told in Matthew and Luke. All three evangelists emphasize different things. What I like about this telling is that while Jesus is being challenged and tested by the religious leaders, in this version one of the scribes gets very excited when Jesus answers his question about the greatest commandment. Jesus, of course, responds with not one, but two commandments, defining our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationship with humanity in terms of love. This so excites the scribe with its brilliance that he responds with confirmation.
This reminds me of the best of Bible studies, when a leader and the other participants interact as equals. For many folks the purpose of Bible study is for the leader to connect a series of unconnected texts, often taken out of context, so that the pupils follow the same path and are made to understand there is only one correct conclusion. While Jesus has a definite point to make her, and guess what – he’s right! – this conversation is one in which the scribe’s contributions are respected and applauded. “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Jesus says. (10:34)
I wonder if the reason the conversation with the other religious leaders stops right after that is because no one wants to be in a position where everyone is respected. They want to engage in the sort of dialogue in which one person is the winner and the others are losers.
Frank R.
