Family Portraits - A Slightly Late All Saints Day Sermon

Today we’re celebrating All Saints Day a week later than the liturgical calendar would indicate, due to my absence last week. But in terms of the scriptures for the week (Ruth 3:1-5; Ruth 4:13-17), I’m actually glad we’re a week late, because the Scriptures work really well for an All Saints observance, for remembering our family members who have gone before us to be with God.

We have some tender, touching passages today from the book of Ruth. We discussed the book of Ruth two weeks ago during our church school hour, but for those who weren’t with us for the discussion, here’s some context – Naomi, her husband Elimelech, and their sons Mahlon and Chiliab are driven by famine from Bethlehem of Judah to the land of Moab. The sons marry Moabite women, Orpah (not Oprah) and Ruth. First Elimelech the husband dies, and then both sons die, leaving Naomi and her two daughters in law bereaved and destitute in a strange land. Despairing, Naomi decides to make her way back to Judah – she heard the famine had eased there. Naomi thanked her two daughters in law for their great kindness to her, and bid them to return to their respective families, for Naomi had no more to offer them. Orpah reluctantly complies, but Ruth clings to Naomi, telling her, “where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people will be my people, and your God my God; where you die I will die and there I will be buried; may the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” So Naomi and her loyal daughter in law Ruth make their way back to Judah, where Ruth gleans grain – picks up the leftovers that the harvesters missed - from the field of Boaz, a kinsman of Ruth. Boaz, shall we say, takes a shine to Ruth, and allows her to glean more grain than usual. Here’s where our reading today picks up – with Ruth, shall we say, working her feminine charms on Boaz. Boaz and Ruth marry, and bear a son, who becomes an ancestor of King David, and ultimately, of Jesus.

In the Bible we encounter many literary forms – poetry, proverbs or wisdom teaching, prophetic teaching. We encounter wide-ranging historical narration and biographical information. In the Epistles, we encounter theological interpretation of how the history of the Jewish people and the life of Jesus are to inform the life of God’s gathered people. God speaks to us in these varied ways, and we frequently find them wide-ranging, heady, covering thousands of years of time and hundreds of miles of geography. Yet every now and then, the focus narrows to a single individual – a Moses or a David, or John the Baptist or Jesus or Paul – or a family – Abraham and Sarah – or, as in today’s Gospel, Naomi and Ruth.

When we think of God’s reign, of God working out God’s purpose in the world, we often think of grand scale events – plagues, manna from heaven, mass feedings – all those spectacular events that were the stuff of the Cecil B. DeMille sagas of bygone decades. Yet in today’s reading, God’s purpose was carried out by a bereaved and at times bitter widow and her foreign-born, yet loyal, daughter-in-law, former refugees returning to a homeland in search of daily bread, eking out a precarious existence from the leftovers of those more prosperous than they, relying on the benevolence of distant relatives. We have an utterly charming, heartwarming family portrait of an ordinary life used in extraordinary ways.

In my almost two years – has it really been that long? – as your pastor, it has often been my privilege to hear the stories of your fathers and mothers, the saints of Emanuel Church. Like today’s Gospel reading, they are often stories of ordinary people – while we had some wealthy members in the earlier years of the congregation, to my knowledge we had no Rockefellers or Carnegies here – for the most part, we were and are ordinary people whose otherwise-ordinary lives God has used to extraordinary effect in carrying out God’s will here in Bridesburg. Ordinary people showing extraordinary generosity and extraordinary commitment to make sure that God’s word could be heard and God’s people served in our little corner of creation. It could be said that they lived out the words of this old hymn:

Do not wait until some deed of greatness you may do,
Do not wait to shed your light afar;
To the many duties ever near you now be true,
Brighten the corner where you are

Brighten the corner where you are!
Brighten the corner where you are!
Someone far from harbor you may guide across the bar;
Brighten the corner where you are!

I wouldn’t want us to narrow our focus to brightening only the corner where we are. Through our United Church of Christ denominational ministries and our ecumenical Bridesburg Council of Churches ministries, through ecumenical and interfaith partnerships known and unknown, we can brighten corners across the city, around the country, and across the globe. As many of you know, last week I was among a group from the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference hoping to share God’s light in some difficult corners of Cuba. And yet it’s true that often God’s cannot be heard in the earthquake or the storm, but in the still small voice; that God’s reign is like the growth of tiny seeds sprouting unseen; that God’s work is carried out, not always in great deeds, but in small deeds done with great love – like the giving of the widow’s mite in our Gospel, tiny to the point of insignificance, yet recognized by Jesus as an act of total commitment - like Ruth’s small acts of loyal care for her mother-in-law, that led to her inclusion of the lineage of King David and his successors, and of our Saviour himself.

As we remember our saints – those in our bulletin today, and those who have been among the unseen cloud of witnesses for many years, may we remember how God was present in their lives. May they be an inspiration to us, we who continue on to run the race, to fight the good fight. May we continue their acts of great love, so that our lives will be among the family portraits remembered by the coming generations of the members of Emanuel United Church of Christ. Amen.