32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proper 27), Year B

Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the LORD, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; and may his name be renowned in Israel!”
~Ruth 4:14
 
The book of Ruth is a story about immigration. Naomi and her daughters-in-law are climate refugees forced to flee Bethlehem (“house of bread”) because there is a famine. No bread.
 
The story raises for us, then, questions about how to take this story and the persistent claims within our Judeo-Christian story that blessing comes when you offer hospitality, when you embrace someone you aren’t supposed to, when you give of yourself in ways that go against your best interests, when you take a chance—especially when many of our neighbors seem to see it differently. To make an uncareful one-for-one comparison across the years and cultures is probably not helpful, but there are good questions to ask here for us as a worshiping community, and for us as a people.
 
There’s a clear-eyed sense in the biblical story that those pushed to the margins of polite society get taken advantage of. Regularly. They get assigned last place by default. You get the sense that there are systems that are so ravenous that they have no limits when it comes to what and who they will devour.
 
Mark and Ruth both introduce us to such ones who are in threat of being annihilated at the hands of those who have more than they need. And yet, they both are revealed as rich beyond our imagination in terms of faith, resourcefulness and strength, and God as a defender of them. What might we learn in our own time about the foundations on which wholeness, well-being, and possibility are built?
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings:  Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17 † Psalm 127 † Hebrews 9:24-28 † Mark 12:38-44
 
 
About the Art: Katie Hoffman, The Widow’s Mite, from katiehoffman.com, [retrieved October 14, 2021]. 

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