New Loyalties

Ruth 1:1-18 

Introduction

We all have loyalties that help to guide us in the decisions we make and in the people we want to interact in. This is found in numerous areas of life from politics to religion to ethnicity to local community. I have been watching and observing a little too much of American politics. It is like passing a car accident on the highway, I know I should not look and yet I am drawn to it anyway.Traditionally, there has been strong loyalty to the two main political parties, at least among the most outspoken of the population. For a certain segment of the people, it is clear that the Republicans are the only option and for another segment, that the Democrats are the only acceptable option. However, recent events have shaken some of that loyalty. Some staunch Republicans are having doubts as the official policy on abortion has weakened and some staunch Democrats are having doubts over the President’s age and mental faculties. This has created some emotional distress because those loyalties can be so strong. Some people’s loyalties have remained unshaken. Sadly, someone was killed during the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump. The President called the widow to express his condolences but she did not take the call because she didn’t think her deceased husband would approve as they were very strong Trump supporters. 

I’m not sure that Canadian politics has that much drama, but we all have our loyalties. On the religious side, we may see our primary loyalty with Christianity, or with Baptists, or with Brookfield Baptist Church, or even a certain era of Brookfield Baptist Church. Those loyalties may intersect with other loyalties that we may hold. I knew of a lady that attended a Baptist church that traditionally been made up of upper middle class people and who grieved when the church became more diverse and included people she disapproved of. In that case, her loyalties collided. The same things happen to us in perhaps less noticeable ways. We are constantly reshuffling our loyalty cards, putting one above another, and even exchanging one loyalty for another.

I share this because the story that we are going to look at is about this very thing. It is a story about loyalty and about exchanging certain loyalties for others. 

Ruth’s Story

There are a number of stories in the Bible that begin with a famine.Most ancient people had very little if any food reserves. When a famine hit, people would have to move to a place that was not experiencing the famine to the same extent. We see this in Genesis with the story of Joseph and his brothers, as the children if Israel move to Egypt in order to escape their famine. Something similar happened only two hundred years ago, during the Irish potato famine, when approximately a quarter of Ireland immigrated to the United States.

In our story, two Israelites named Elimelech and Naomi, along with their two sons faced a famine and were forced to move to the nation of Moab. Moab was a nation to the south-east of Israel. That they would move to Moab says a lot about the nature of the famine, as there was much conflict between Israel and Moab. But parents have to make difficult choices when the survival of the family is at risk. The two sons ended up marrying two women from Moab, one of whom was named Ruth. This should have been the beginning of a beautiful new chapter for this family but things did not work out. Elimelech and his two sons all died and this left three widows. Unfortunately, there was no such thing as survivor benefits, insurance policies, or pensions. Widows were put in a difficult place. The only positive thing was that both Ruth and Orpah were young and had good chances to get remarried and restart family life.

Naomi, being someone wise about the world, came up with a reasonable plan. Naomi would return to the southern part of Israel, known as Judah, and Orpah and Ruth would return to their families so they could find new husbands. It made perfect sense. With some reluctance, Orpah agreed, but Ruth refused to leave Naomi. Ruth intended to go with Naomi back to Judah. But that made no sense. The Israelites had no love for Moabites, and in fact saw them as inherently bad people. There are numerous stories in the Old Testament that highlight that it was Moabite women who had led the Israelites astray. Not only that, the Bible had some harsh things to say about children born to the union of Israelite and Moabite parents. Yes, Ruth had an Israelite husband, but that was while they were living in Moab. What are the chances that Ruth would find a husband in Judah with the reputation that especially Moabite women had? As the story goes, the chances were better than anyone thought but Ruth did not know that at this time.

Ruth would have felt a certain loyalty to her Moabite homeland and people. But she also felt a loyalty to Naomi, and not just to Naomi but to Naomi’s people and their God. Even though Ruth was being put into a very vulnerable position, both as a woman and a foreigner, and that she had an uncertain future, Ruth chose Naomi and all that went with that. This is one of the bravest things anyone did in the Old Testament.

Our Story

If we are thinking of the story of Ruth as a story of choosing loyalties, what does this story have to say to us? The lowest hanging fruit would be for us to say that our loyalty must be primarily to Jesus. And to this, I would completely agree. For myself, that is my top loyalty, and I hope it is the same for you as well. The only problem is, what does that look like? What is the working out of loyalty to Jesus? I hope that our recent series on What Does Jesus Want helps us all to figure that out.

I would like to explore a little more about what happens when there is a clash of loyalties, such as when Ruth has to choose between her identity as a Moabite and that of following Naomi and her God. These choices always have a cost and they continue to face us today.

Here is the challenge, it is much more than just articulating that our loyalty is with Jesus. It often require much reflection and wrestling with how we understand our loyalties. I will give an example from my own life. In addition to to my role as a pastor, I am a military chaplain. How does one juggle loyalties to Jesus and to the Canadian Armed Forces? One of the things I am involved in is recruiting. It is very interesting to see how different people wrestle with these contexts. We have encountered pastors who, once finding out that you cannot proselytize as a military chaplain, immediately know that military chaplaincy will not work for them. To them, loyalty to Jesus means sharing the gospel in an explicit way in every context. So why am I a military chaplain? For myself, I see my role as a follower of Jesus to be more about being a Christian presence in a non-Christian context and so I do not experience conflict. There are other pastors who are attracted to the chaplaincy aspect but because of their adherence to Christian pacifism, cannot be a part of any military. I have been told: “You cannot be a Christian and in the military.” I am not seeking to criticize any of these positions. I only want to illustrate that we need to take into account our loyalties.

What might that look like for us in our context? It is difficult for me to generalize as we are all so different but I will make an attempt. What happens if you hold two different convictions: one that you want as many people as possible to encounter Jesus and the other that you expect the worship service to look a specific way so that you receive the greatest personal enjoyment? Both of those things are important to you. What do you do if a change is suggested that is aimed at reaching more people for Jesus but is not in line with your own preferences? A choice has to be made. I have seen two responses. Some people say: “Church should be designed for the people who are here and not for the people who are not here.” I have also heard: “I don’t like the change but I understand it and will tolerate it so that others will meet Jesus.” This is shared not to convince people to change but to get us to recognize that we have competing loyalties.

This might sound like bad news but it is actually just life. Early on in our life we face the competing loyalties to friends and parents. Navigating that is part of the maturing process. We are always making decisions that reflect the fact that our allegiance to one group or idea is greater than that to another. The point is that we need think about these things and make decisions about what we are willing to compromise on and what we are not.

Conclusion

Ruth was a Moabite woman. She was born there and was raised there. She would have been taught early on the language, the culture, and the religion. It was in Moab that she was first married, even if her husband was an Israelite. For some reason, she chose her loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi and the God of Israel over that which she was raised with. In her case, should could not have both. She made a choice that was dangerous and uncertain. It had a happy ending in that she met and married another Israelite, Boaz, and from that family came a few generations later, King David, and many more generations later, a person known to us as Jesus Christ.

We too live in a world in competing loyalties. While in the best of situations, those loyalties will not come into conflict, there are times in which they will. It is not enough to simply say “My loyalty is with Jesus.” We have to figure out what allegiance to Jesus means in this world, that is understanding what are the actual teachings of Jesus, and what are with just traditions or are  our personal preferences. We may find that there are times in which we have to change the way we do things, but in such a way that does not compromise our loyalty to Jesus. This calls for a thoughtful faith that reflects Scripture and that is consistent with the ways of Jesus.