In the time of Judges.

This is how the book of Ruth begins, In the days when the judges ruled. We are used to democracy in this country, so we might imagine that if there are judges, there is justice. But in this case, we need to look again. At the end of the book right before Ruth, the book of the bible called Judges, we read In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes. The judges ruled unevenly, sometimes unjustly, and the people did what they wanted. It was already a precarious time and then. came. famine.

And so, as people still do today when life is unpredictable and danger looms near and there is food insecurity, families migrate. Elimelech, his wife, Naomi and their sons Mahlon and Kilion, migrate to Moab, a land that was not always friendly to the people of Judah. For a little while, life is good but then Elimelech dies. Now, Naomi is a widow and has only her sons to protect and provide for her.

Eventually joy finds the family when Naomi’s sons marry women – from Moab. This mixed family of Israelites and Moabites make a life together in Moab.

Then tragedy strikes again. The sons, Mahlon (meaning sickly) and Kilion (meaning frail) also die. Now Naomi (meaning pleasant) is a foreigner and a widow in Moab; and she must care for two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, who are not her own people. What are three widows to do?

Naomi, ever resourceful, hears that there is once again food in the land of her own people. She decides to return to Bethlehem. Ruth and Orpah, having married Naomi’s sons, are part of Naomi’s household, so without question, all three begin the journey to Bethlehem. But as they travel, Naomi begins to realize that life may be hard for Ruth and Orpah in Naomi’s country. They may experience the same kind of alienation in Bethlehem that she often felt in Moab. So she releases Ruth and Orpah from their obligation to her; Naomi tells them to go back to their own mothers, to stay in their own land.

These three women have been together as family for more than ten years. They know how to run a household together. They have shared joy – and pain when month by month there were no pregnancies, no grandchildren. They have shared the pain of losing their husbands. And – Naomi understands that Ruth and Orpah stand a better chance of a good life if they stay with their own families, their own people, in their own land. Amidst all this love and complexity, they weep.

At the first suggestion of this separation, both Ruth and Orpah refuse the idea. It may just be a polite, knee-jerk reaction, “Of course we can’t leave you on your own, dear mother-in-law.” Or maybe they can’t imagine breaking with the tradition that they are part of her family now. But as Naomi becomes more insistent, Orpah reconsiders the offer. She begins to see the reason in what Naomi proposes: Orpah can reconnect with her own mother and family, her own traditions, her own religion. There is more of a chance for Orpah if she stays with her own people.

So amidst more tears, Orpah (which means “neck,” perhaps the “back of the neck”) turns her back on Naomi and Ruth and goes back to Moab. She is a widow alone, going back to her family, hoping they will receive her.

Often when we read this story, we pass right over Orpah. She is inconsequential. I have said her name just now more often than it appears in the whole book of Ruth (which is two times.) Orpah seems to be present in this story only as a foil to Ruth, the good daughter-in-law, whose name means “compassionate friend.”

Always for the underdog, I feel sorry for Orpah. In my mind I create a backstory for her: she wants to return to her family because she is committed to her indigenous culture, like the Apache Stronghold that was here in September. Or like the Muwekma Ohlone group that traveled to DC from California in October. These indigenous groups want to stay on their own holy land, want to preserve their families, their spirituality, their traditions. I imagine Orpah returning to her own mother and her family after living among Naomi’s Israelite family. I imagine Orpah returning to her family home with relief, grateful to stay where she knows the language and the culture, where she might even marry again.

But my imaginings are not at all what we find in the Jewish midrash, (the commentary attached to the ancient biblical text.) Orpah (who is sometimes understood as a sister to Ruth) is remembered with disdain.The midrash depicts Orpah as sexually promiscuous. Tradition has it that she was Goliath’s mother and mother to three other Philistine giants who are killed by Israelites. (You remember Goliath, the giant that young David slays with five small stones and a sling.)

In the Jewish tradition, Orpah comes from wicked power and returns to wicked power. She comes from Moab – and the Moabites are the people “we hate.” In this understanding, Orpah is anything but the underdog, she is the enemy and the mother of “our enemies.”

On the other hand we have Ruth, the “compassionate friend.” Though she too is a Moabite, she throws her lot in with Naomi. Ruth chooses Naomi and the trek back to the land of Judah. Ruth is willing to go to a land she doesn’t know, to a people she doesn’t know. She pledges to become Naomi’s people, to embrace Naomi’s God, to stay with Naomi until death, which is all too familiar to both of them.

This short story of Ruth and Naomi is in stark contrast to the biblical books around it. The little book of Ruth comes after Joshua and Judges (stories of warriors and powerful judges) and just before I and II Samuel (stories of prophets and eventually kings.) This tiny book of only four short chapters can easily get lost between the much longer stories about those who hold the power.

And yet this very particular story of widows in the time of judges survives. Ruth and Naomi make a way out of no way. Using their vulnerability and audacious trickery, they are depicted as faithful. They are heralded as heroines for their bravery and cleverness. And Ruth, a foreigner who comes from enemy land, becomes the grandmother of revered King David. Ruth’s commitment to her mother-in-law, and Naomi’s commitment to Ruth’s survival, is a model that endures. (And the poetry of this commitment often makes it into weddings, both hetero and queer.)

I wonder how our own family situations and history affect how we hear this story… Many of us here are like Orpah. We claim this land as our own, even though it was stolen from the Piscataway and Nacotchtank people many generations ago. Some of us are like Ruth, who have more recently arrived to build a better life for ourselves and our families. And some of us are like Ruth and Naomi, a blended family: a recent arrival committed to one whose family has been in this country a long time.

In this time of judges, when people with power will do what is right in their own eyes, when the powerful demonize immigrants, what are we to do with this story? Will we see those who speak another language as murderous, giving birth to enemies of the state that will grow larger than life, like Goliath?

We must remember that in this biblical text, the one that does not migrate, the one who goes back to the land she knows, is the inconsequential Orpah. It is the one who has little power, who take risks with her chosen family to find a better life, who is cherished. Ruth, the compassionate friend, is the one blessed by God.

These past two weeks I have been in meetings where we wonder about our neighbors like Ruth. Our immigrant neighbors and their allies are worried, and scared. Will they be able to stay in the land where they want to make a home? Who will look out for them? Will they find someone like Naomi who can care for them? Will their vulnerability be used against them? Will they have to offer themselves like Ruth does on the threshing floor? (in chapter 3) Will they find someone like Boaz to show them mercy? Someone to claim them as family?

These pointed questions address the particular fears in Ruth’s story. But the flip side of the message of Ruth and Naomi is the hesed that they show to each other. Hesed is a Hebrew word that means steadfast love, kindness, goodness. Hesed is a complex love that is not disturbed or derailed by the rule of law. Hesed is the love that Ruth declares to Naomi: where you go, I will go, where you live, I will live, your people will be my people, your God will be my God. Hesed is a covenant love, like the covenant of love that God offers and which we are invited to live into in return.

I wonder what it looks like to live hesed in these times of uncertainty – recognizing that uncertainty and danger for some is mostly theoretical and for others it looms large and heavy as chain link and concrete.

What does it look like to cultivate loving kindness and steadfast love?

Where do we already see hesed?

What might it look like to live hesed with those who are most at risk?

How do we cultivate hesed even as we cultivate community and deepen joy?

Friends, living into hesed means being deliberate. Living into hesed takes practice. And hesed involves risk. Loving fully and completely, unending goodness and kindness, these are all risky endeavors. And when we are followers of the Jesus way, we take risks, we step toward the unknown, knowing only that we are held in Love, held in hesed.

Maybe this small story survives because in the midst of epic stories of warriors, judges, prophets and kings, we need to hear about the regular people. The book of Ruth is the story of one family in the time of judges. And it is a story that keeps happening over and over again, amidst war and famine: in Gaza, in Ukraine, El Salvador, Sudan. Wherever there is war, there are also families where love endures. Even amidst violence and famine, fear and uncertainty, hesed shows up – in the divine and in humans.

May we keep learning and practicing this kind of love so that we can show up and share it where it is needed: in the land of Moab, in the land of Judah, on the unceded land of the Piscataway and Nacotchtank, in what is now known as Maryland, in the DMV, in the United States of America.