Sermon Starts at 12:25
Good Morning St. Andrew’s
I feel like the tension has been a little to high recently, and I’m not always great at reading a room, so it must be pretty obvious.
But I don’t really know why.
People have been driving crazier than usual,
People have been a little off; shoulders tensed, jaws clenched
Now I know that this message will be seen by tens of people, but I’m still going to do my part to ease the tension around us.
With that in mind, I think it’s time that we had another round of St. Andrew’s trivia Sunday!!!
(hum a game show theme song, cut off short)
I’d keep humming the rest, but we don’t have the copyright.
Okay, okay. Here is the first trivia question for this week.
In recognition of All Saints Sunday and our celebration of Souls and Ancestors yesterday evening, Ruth, from our Hebrew Bible reading this morning, was the ancestor of which famous biblical character?
King David
Second Trivia question: Who was the first woman to vote in a US election?
Susan B. Anthony. The famous suffragist went to her polling place in 1872 and demanded to be allowed to vote.
After making several arguments with election officials, she was allowed in.
She was subsequently arrested two weeks later for illegally voting.
Women would not be allowed to vote for another 50 years.
Now, what precipitated Susan B. Anthony’s insistance on voting was the recent passage of the 15th amendment two years earlier, which had endowed the franchise to black men.
Until that point, the women’s suffrage movement and the reconstruction civil rights movement had been allies.
Susan B. Anthony, in fact, had been a lifelong abolitionist. However, when black men were given the right to vote and women were not, a deep divide began to open up between the two movements.
And Anthony, being repulsed by the idea partial suffrage - that black men could vote, but women could not – went to the polls to cast her ballot.
And with that, we’ve come to the end of another stirring episode of St. Andrew’s Trivia Sunday.
But Susan B. Anthony is not the only woman that I want to preach to you about this morning.
I’d like to talk to you about a particular woman of color from the ancient world and a black woman from our own time, who made national news this week.
And I’m moved to preach to you this morning: Who does God Elect?
I’m not sure exactly why, but this week I have had elections on my mind.
Anyone else?
In this political season, there has been no end to information, dis-information, truth, lies, media, social media…
You know I love my lists.
There are t-shirts with clever slogans, t-shirts with un-clever slogans, symbols and images that are on point, and some that make you scratch your head and go, “huh?”
For instance, I saw a t-shirt in a news clipping from North Carolina, it was sitting among t-shirts that said things like “I’m voting for the felon.”
(I won’t tell you which candidate this was for, also, I’m not making that up)
But this particularly confusing shirt had a cartoon evergreen tree and the caption at the top said, “appeal to heaven.”
Anyone? Me either. Oh well, moving on.
The first woman that I want to talk to you about is Ruth.
She is one of only two women in the Bible to have her story named for her. (the other one is Esther)
I know I called her a woman of color just a minute ago, which is maybe a bit anachronistic, because the idea of whiteness has only really been a thing for a few hundred years.
Yet, it’s a good reminder as we read this through our modern lens to remember that what it means for her to be a Moabite is that she was a woman with some pigment.
Also, as a Moabite, she was a woman who was considered an outsider, as less than, in comparison to her Hebrew husband and his family.
The Judaean Hebrews and the Moabites were kin from way back. In the biblical telling, the Moabites were descended from Abraham’s nephew Lot in Genesis 19.
It’s a rather risqué story of Lot and his daughters escaping Sodom and Gemorrah, only to think that they are the last people on earth.
So the daughters get their father drunk and then (hum the theme song to gameshow)
Then Tada! 9 months later baby Moab is born.
That’s not a polemical story at all is it? my enemies are so gross, their family line began with incest. It’s like an ancient version of those old Arkansas jokes.
Or that song, “I am my own grandpa.” (I’m also not making that up)
In any case, this is funny, but it also had real world implications.
The Moabites and the Judaeans fought battles and territorial wars for centuries.
Some of these we know about from the Bible, and some we know about from the archeological record.
There is a stone inscription that the Moabites made after the time of King David that tells their side of the story and their defeat of King Omri, one of David’s descendants.
These two people groups hated one another.
And, I bet, if you asked either one of them whose side was God on… well the Judaeans would say God and the Moabites would say Chemosh, who was their bull-headed deity.
Anyway, you get my point. These two people groups hated each other to the point of denigrating each other’s character, and name-calling.
Now, the text of our Ruth passage was most likely written many centuries after these battles occurred, and yet the ethno-centric hatreds persisted.
In the parts of the story that we will miss from chapter 2, we see the divide even more clearly.
When Ruth and Naomi came to Bethlehem of Judaea, all of the people are shocked to see Naomi, a Hebrew, with a daughter-in-law, who is a Moabite.
We see their conception of Moabites in their interactions with Naomi.
First of all, everytime they talk about her they emphasize, “the Moabite.”
“you mean Ruth…. The Moabite!?!?”
The fact that they don’t actually talk to Ruth, but only talk to Naomi about Ruth, as if Ruth isn’t safe to talk to, because she’s so strange and different.
“Wait, you mean when your whole family died, she didn’t abandon you the first chance she got? That’s weird, I didn’t think Moabites could be loyal.”
“Wait, she’s a hardworker and is going out to do extra work to put food on the table? I can’t believe she isn’t lazy and no good.”
The surprise that they have concerning Ruth is kind of like when someone in our times says that they just spoke to a “very articulate black woman.”
What else did you expect her to be?
That is how the Judaeans from Bethelehem treated Ruth.
And what we see here in our reading from chapter 1 is the set-up for an amazing story about reconciliation across strict lines of difference.
“Where you go, I will go. where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people; your God my God. Where you die, I will die, there I will be buried.”
The utter transcendance of this moment is amplified even more, if you know the history behind the divide,
Just like our stories of racial reconciliation, 400 years of history goes into every story of progress on civil rights and social justice. Without that knowledge, the jubilation doesn’t make sense.
It’s one of the reasons why many in the white community don’t get it. They don’t really know the history outside of the major landmarks,
And what they know of doesn’t seem to justify the jubilation, because we are not consistently taught the full breadth and truth of our common history.
I could unpack that more, but I want to get to election.
In Ruth’s story, we see God’s election of someone who has imigrated to a new land to become a part of the fabric of a new people.
God chooses someone unlikely, someone from an oppressed people group, and God – against all odds and expectations of the Hebrew people – makes Ruth the ancestor of their greatest king.
This shows us that when God elects, God mostly chooses to defy our expectations.
With that in mind, I want to transition to how God’s election touches on a more modern story of a black woman from our time.
Breonna Taylor.
You may have missed this, and no one could fault you, if you have; but this week saw the first conviction of an officer in the Breonna Taylor murder case.
Almost 1700 days since that tragic night, justice is finally beginning to come down like waters.
What does this have to do with election?
I’ve alluded to it earlier, but let me lay it out plain.
Election is a major theme in the Bible. It is big in the New Testament as a specific term to talk about who God is choosing to bring into the kingdom of God.
The last few weeks have seen people approaching Jesus on his Way to Jerusalem.
And essentially, they are all after the same information.
What does it take to get into the Kingdom of God, who will be selected, who will be chosen.
This week’s gospel lesson follows on the same lines. And it is based on the election theme from the Hebrew Bible; where election is about being a part of the chosen people.
In that version of election, God chooses based on race and religion.
Jesus’ ministry is about modifying the election and giving the franchise to more people, to unexpected people.
He tells us that God does not choose people based on clout, on power, on racial identity, or strict religious adherence.
Getting the answer right on the commandment question only gets this Scribe “close” to the Kingdom of Heaven, because it is one thing to know that you need to love God and your neighbor,
And it’s a whole other thing to do it.
To love your neighbor across the social, religious, and political divides of whatever time you live in.
We are not the only ones that have lived through a time of division. Ruth did. Our ancestors did. And now we are.
What’s different is that we, now, could be among those who learn that God’s election is different than our elections.
Jesus did not invent God’s kind of election. It is actually the type of election that God has been telling us about throughout the entire Hebrew Bible’s salvation history.
God elects all people, and God especially elects those on the margins; those who are far away from the center of power.
If we haven’t “gotten it” over the past few weeks as Jesus has been choosing children and blind men over Pharisees and rich men;
If we haven’t “gotten” that Jesus is not denigrating the powerful as people or telling them they have no chance, but simply trying to reorient them toward a Way that cares about people over power, right over riches, and sight over blindness, and love above everything;
I am going to vote today as soon as the polls open at 1pm.
Today is the last day of early voting and the polls close at 5pm.
I won’t tell you who I am going to vote for, but I will tell you this.
I care about my soul more than money, so I won’t be trying to enter heaven through the eye of a needle like the rich young man.
I think that a messiah would ask us to love one another – as Jesus did - rather than do everything he can to rankle our bigotries and fears to gain power.
So I won’t be trying to justify myself to God by saying that I knew all of the commandments, but didn’t follow them like the scribes and religious authorities of Jesus’ day.
What I will do is ask myself, who does God elect? Who has God consistently chosen in our collective biblical heritage?
Could we ask for a more poignant or pointed reminder of this than our Psalm for today?
I want to end today by giving the Bible the last word:
“Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, *for there is no help in them.
When they breathe their last, they return to earth, *and in that day their thoughts perish.
Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help! *whose hope is in the Lord their God;
Who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them; *who keeps his promise for ever;
Who gives justice to those who are oppressed, *and food to those who hunger.
The Lord sets the prisoners free;the Lord opens the eyes of the blind; *the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
The Lord loves the righteous;the Lord cares for the stranger; *he sustains the orphan and widow,but frustrates the way of the wicked.
The Lord shall reign for ever, *your God, O Zion, throughout all generations.Hallelujah!”
(Pause) Oh! That’s weird!
Actually, the last thing in my sermon manuscript is a (comma)
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