Tag: Trussell Trust

Epiphany and Covenant Service 2025: The Magi (Matthew 2:1-12)

This is a revised version of a sermon I preached six years ago but which is not on the blog. The text that follows is how I preached it in 2019 and does not exactly conform to the video, because I paraphrased and added some material:

Matthew 2:1-12

Rumour has it that the Nativity Play was cancelled at Parliament this Christmas.

Why? Apparently, they couldn’t find three wise men.

OK, that’s a silly Internet joke I saw during the festive season, along with the cartoon where three wise women bring practical gifts such as a casserole instead of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

But I love the story of the Magi, and with Covenant Sunday falling this year on Epiphany, the feast where the wider Christian Church throughout the world and down through history celebrates the appearing of the Messiah to the Gentiles, we have a story that also says much to the Covenant theme of commitment to Christ.

Here, then, are three aspects of the Magi and their coming that speak to the question of our commitment to Christ.

Firstly, the Magi were Gentiles.

Yes, I know that’s stating the obvious, but it’s important. Matthew is the most Jewish of all the four Gospels, but no Jew comes to worship the infant Christ in his Gospel, only the Magi from the east – perhaps modern-day Iraq.

The Magi represent all that is wrong in spiritual practice in the eyes of faithful Jews. They were astrologers, and astrology began in ancient Babylon. When Israel was taken captive to Babylon, astrology was a common habit of the surrounding culture. In the parts of Isaiah that relate to that part of Israel’s history, astrology is condemned and ridiculed. It is not the way to find truth and purpose in life. For the Jew, that could only be found by following the one true God – as it should for us, too, and which incidentally is why no Christian should devote time to their horoscope.

It is these unsound, unclean people that come in the highly Jewish Gospel according to Matthew and worship the infant Christ. Matthew is telling us that the Gospel, while originating with the Jews, is for the whole world. It’s no coincidence that Matthew ends his Gospel with the so-called Great Commission, where the risen Jesus sends his followers to the whole world with the call to discipleship.

Therefore the first challenge I want to bring from the story of the Magi this morning to us on Covenant Sunday is our call to be bearers of the Gospel to all people, including those who are not remotely like us. Who are the people who to us are unclean or unsound? Who are the people whose lifestyles we would instinctively condemn? Christ lived and died for them, too. Who are the people with whom we would not naturally associate, the people we wouldn’t mix with at a social gathering? Again, Christ lived and died for them.

I’ve noticed that one of the most contentious issues among residents of Byfleet has to do with what happens when travellers come and pitch up on land in the village. I understand some of that reaction, given the mess they often leave and the inconvenience they cause. But one of the great areas of numerical growth in Christianity in the UK these days is among travellers and gypsies. Largely, the Gospel was originally taken to them by our Pentecostal friends. Now there are indigenous gypsy congregations and Christian conventions. We might not want to have too much to do with them. But God loves them and has reached out to them through other Christians.

So I’d like us to consider this Covenant Sunday whether there are any people we might naturally think are unsavoury, but who need God’s love in Christ to be shown to them. Does anyone occur to you?

Secondly, the Magi decided to go.

The Magi go on their long and arduous journey, and when the biblical scholars tell them and Herod that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem, they are still the only ones who go. Those who apparently know their Scriptures do nothing.

Christian commitment involves hearing the call of God and doing something about it. This the Magi demonstrate in spades. They don’t even know the Scriptures, but they follow the call as they have heard it the best they can. The strange sign of the star, the biblical reference from the prophet Micah to Bethlehem, and finally the warning in the dream not to return to Herod. In all these ways they show the characteristic of true disciples: they hear and they go.

I sometimes fear that we in the modern church are rather like the biblical scholars whom Herod called. We have heard and read the Christian message over and over again down years and decades, but do we always allow it to have a challenging or transforming effect on us? Do we hear the Bible read and then move on? Do we just read it and then close it?

I may have told you before the story of the Argentinean pastor who preached on the same text every week for a year.

‘Pastor, when you are you going to preach on something different?’ asked one church member.

‘When you start obeying this passage,’ replied the pastor.

Something like that can be our problem. We are fed a diet of weekly sermons, we think we know the Bible and our faith quite well, but how much have we let it change us?

Yet along come the Magi and for all their learning in other areas they are simple when it comes to matters of faith. God shows them what to do, and off they go.

I believe that sometimes it’s the newer and spiritually younger Christians who come along, get hold of something basic about the faith, and run with it in ways that really the experienced Christians might have done.

One example of this would be the Addlestone (now Runnymede) Food Bank. The person who had the vision for this was a middle-aged woman who had only recently found faith through an Alpha Course, but she quickly grasped that following Jesus meant caring about the poor. Her professional background was as a stockbroker. She was used to managing accounts containing many millions of pounds. She used her managerial and entrepreneurial skills in the service of God’s kingdom to sell the vision of the food bank to the churches, to start it up, organise, and run it, before being snapped up by the Trussell Trust for a national rôle with them. As I say, she was young in the faith, but she heard the voice of God and ran with it.

What more might we do if we allowed ourselves to be that bit less jaded about all the things we have heard over and over again in the Scriptures and in the preaching of the word?

More specifically, is there one particular thing where you know God has been giving you a little poke for a long time? Wouldn’t the Covenant Service be a great time finally to say ‘yes’ to him, ‘I’ll do it’?

Thirdly and finally, the Magi decided to give.

So yes, here we’re onto the gold, frankincense and myrrh. Not a casserole dish in sight.

The popular idea is that gold is for a king, frankincense for a priest, and myrrh to mark death. It’s very appealing, it fits with what comes later in Jesus’ ministry, but Matthew makes no such connections. This interpretation first arose in the second century AD, courtesy of the church leader Irenaeus.

As the New Testament scholar Dr Ian Paul says [in the article linked above],

In the narrative, they are simply extravagant gifts fit for the true ‘king of the Jews’.

And it’s as simple as that. The ‘king of the Jews’ who will come to be seen in Matthew as the king of all creation is worthy of extravagant giving. The gifts presented are worth a lot of money and come on the back of the immense giving of time and energy the magi have put in to come this great distance and pay homage to Jesus.

I wonder whether as experienced Christians our whole approach to giving becomes jaded. The giving of our time and energy can feel no different from a job or from involvement in a social activity or a hobby. The giving of our money can seem like little more than a subscription to a favourite cause, like just another standing order or direct debit from our current account.

Does it take the passion of newer Christians to get us in touch again with what giving could be for disciples of Jesus? Younger Christians are often passionate and inelegant in their worship and their giving. We may look down on their uncouth offering. We may give them a withering look or damn them with faint praise. We may do something similar not just with new Christians but with new churches.

But rather than resort to dressing up cynicism in spiritual language, we might better ask how the giving aspect of our own discipleship might be freshened up. Maybe in our spiritual lives we are tired and worn out. So perhaps that means we need a renewed encounter with Jesus himself.

And surely the God of love and mercy wants to refresh our dry Christian lives. He would love to give us a new vision of his Son through the work of his Holy Spirit in our lives. He would love to bring us to the feet of Jesus again. For there we encounter the One whose whole existence is of self-giving love. He loved us enough to give up heaven for human life – and humble, poor, obscure human life at that. He loved us enough to walk the way of the Cross so that our woundedness might be healed, our sins forgiven, and the power of dark forces broken. He loves us even now so much that he longs to give eternal life and spiritual gifts and blessings.

Yes, when we encounter God the Giver in Jesus Christ, we shall surely be inspired into a renewal of our own giving.

What I’d like to note as we conclude is that in twelve short verses where Matthew tells the story vividly but concisely, the Magi who leave by dodging Herod are men who have been changed from how they were at the beginning of the account. They arrived through the dubious offices of astrology. But they left, having listened to Scripture, having met Jesus, and having listened to God in a dream.

So are we open on this Covenant Sunday to being changed, too? Who are our Gentiles who need the Good News? Are we just sermon-tasters of theoretical Bible students, or are we like the Magi ‘going’ – that is, putting what we have heard into action? And have we encountered Jesus the Giver, who stirs up the extravagant giving of our hearts?

Friends, we too need to be changed. May we be open this Covenant Service and this New Year to the transforming power of Christ through his Holy Spirit.

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Mission in the Bible 10: A Beautiful Act at the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3:1-26)

Acts 3:1-26

A retired minister friend of mine loves posting puns and one-liner jokes on Facebook. I’m sure he gets some from the comedian Tim Vine. Here are a few of his recent ones:

People say smoking will give you diseases…But how can they say that when it cures salmon?

A slice of apple pie is £2.50 in Jamaica and £3 in the Bahamas…There are the pie rates of the Caribbean.

The other day I bought a thesaurus, but when I got home and opened it, all the pages were blank…I have no words to describe how angry I am.

My friend said: “You have a BA, a Masters and a PhD, but you still act like an idiot…” It was a third degree burn.

My girlfriend said: “You act like a detective too much. I want to split up…” “Good idea,” I replied. “That way we can cover more ground.”

Why start this sermon with a series of puns? Because the episode we’ve read from Acts chapter 3 is like an extended pun. Is the story about healing or about salvation? A man is healed, but then Peter calls the crowd to repentance and faith in Jesus as a result. Which is it: healing or salvation?

We shall find the pun made more explicit in the next chapter when Peter, under interrogation, says that salvation is found in no other name than that of Jesus. Except the word translated ‘salvation’ can also be translated – guess what? – ‘healing.’

And the breadth of what is covered in our story today shows us something of God’s big story of redemption, the story we are called to share in as part of his mission. God’s kingdom is breaking in, making all things new, and in Acts chapter 3 we see some examples of that. We won’t cover everything, but there are some pointers to the comprehensiveness of God’s renewing work in Christ.

So firstly, salvation is physical:

This is straightforward in the text: the lame man is healed. There is something innately physical and material about the Christian faith. It begins with creation. It involves a Saviour who heals and feeds people. It turns on the bodily resurrection of that Saviour. Its goal is a new creation, with new heavens and a new earth.

So no wonder salvation expresses itself in physical terms, such as a healing here. God cares about all that he has made. That’s why you’ll hear me saying from time to time that at the time of a death or a funeral the popularly expressed idea that the body was just a shell for the soul and it’s only the soul that matters is an unchristian thought.

If we are going to witness to God’s salvation, one thing we are going to do is engage with their physical well-being and where that needs improvement.

Should we pray for the gift of healing and pray for people to be healed? Yes, why not? But let’s not be limited to that. There are all sorts of things we can do. This is why it’s right that Christians get involved with food banks, and it’s significant that the biggest food bank organisation in the UK, the Trussell Trust, has a Christian foundation. At the same time, it’s also right that we ask the awkward questions about what kind of nation we have become where so many people depend on food banks.

It’s why it’s right that we get involved in issues like disaster relief, be it earthquakes, famines, wars, or any other cause. And when we do so, we seek not only to bring short-term alleviation but also long-term solutions to prevent recurrences where we can.

It’s why it’s right that we get involved in combating climate change – although I prefer the more positive description of ‘creation care.’ We don’t simply do this because we need to save on our energy bills, important as that is. We do it because this is God’s creation that has been damaged and that he intends to make new again. So when this Methodist circuit starts making plans to support churches in making their buildings ‘greener’ (and the ministers’ manses, too!) then I say that’s a proper expression of our belief that salvation is physical.

There will be many other examples we can think of together that illustrate this point, but it all begins with recognising that in the six-day creation story of Genesis chapter 1, God kept looking at all that he had made and saying that it was good. We can no longer say that everything in creation is good, but we can set about partnering with God, following the example of Jesus, in bringing physical healing and restoration to his world.

Secondly, salvation is economic:

The lame man begs for money. There is no Social Security for a disabled person in this society. Yet while Peter and John say they have no silver or gold and do not give him any money, what they do lifts him out of poverty. Once he is healed, he will no longer need to beg. He will be able to work for a living.

In a way, it’s similar to when Jesus raised from the dead the son of the widow at Nain. She too would have had no fallback financially, and would have depended on her son to work for economic survival. His death would have plunged her into a spiral of poverty that could have left her starving to death. Jesus’ miracle has an economic effect for good on her.

And this is why it’s right that as part of God’s mission we in the church get involved in issues of poverty – both alleviating it and also asking the questions about why people are poor and what can be done in our society in the long term to guard against it.

Now that doesn’t mean I’m going to break my promise and give some steer on which party I think people should vote for at the General Election next month. I will remain publicly neutral on that. And I recognise that the economic situation will be challenging for whoever is in Downing Street. I would rather pose the question as a Baptist minister friend of mine couched it the other day. He wrote:

I would hope that every candidate standing for parliament in the upcoming General Election would ask themselves the question, ‘Why am I standing as a candidate in this election?’ Are they standing in order to genuinely benefit all the people in the communities they are seeking to represent… or do they have another agenda entirely? Agendas driven primarily by party politics or personal opinion rather than the good of the people?

If we want to participate as voters in this election in a Christian way, I think that is a good part of what we need to do, especially since so much of the debate is about our nation’s economy. Which candidates and which leaders have the good of the people at the heart of what they are aiming to do?

But we don’t just consider economic well-being at election time. Jesus puts it before us all the time. Blessèd are the poor, he said. Woe to the rich. Those statements are not entirely straightforward but they are still challenging. Who are we blessing economically? We need to ponder that prayerfully.

Thirdly and finally, salvation is spiritual:

Repentance and faith are central themes in the reading. The man walks and jumps, praising God – in the Temple, of all places! He’s not worried about decorum, he is so thrilled with what Jesus has done for him.

And when the crowd gathers in curiosity and amazement, Peter calls them to repentance. You were happy to get Jesus crucified, he says, but God has shown how much in the wrong you are by raising Jesus from the dead. Jesus is in the right, you are in the wrong. What are you going to do about it? He is the promised prophet, and it’s only by repentance and faith in him that you will be blessed.

Central to the whole renewal of creation is renewing the relationship between human beings and God, which is then meant to lead to changed lives. So we cannot remain silent about calling people to faith in Jesus. There may be issues about when and how we do it, but it’s the churches that are the most silent on this issue that are the fastest declining and aging.

Yes, we get nervous about this. And you know what? So do I. And sure, we don’t want a reputation as Bible-bashers, but neither can we be ashamed of the Gospel. Are we more concerned with what our friends think of us than what Jesus thinks of us? Sometimes I think that’s true.

There is an Old Testament story that I find illuminating in showing us the attitude we need to have here. In 2 Kings 7 God’s people are under siege from the Aramean army. They are gripped by famine, and thus the prices of scarce food are sky-rocketing.

A group of four lepers decides that if they do nothing they will die anyway, so they might as well go and surrender to the Arameans. If they are killed, well, they were going to die anyway. But maybe they will live.

When they go to the enemy camp, they discover that God had miraculously frightened them away in the night. They help themselves to food and drink, gold and silver, and clothing.

But then they say that this is a day of good news, and they cannot keep it to themselves. So they go into the city and tell others.

And it is from this story that the Sri Lankan evangelist D T Niles came up with his famous definition of evangelism. He said,

Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.

That’s what we’re being called to do. We are just beggars who have discovered the Bread of Life. Jesus has satisfied our spiritual hunger, and we believe he will do the same for our friends.

And when people find satisfaction in Jesus, we urge them to enlist with us in his great cause, the mission of God, to make all things new.

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Harvest: May The Peoples Praise You (Psalm 67)

Psalm 67

One thing it’s not worth asking me when you arrive at church on a Sunday is, “Did you hear the morning service on Radio 4?” because I never listen to it.

But I do love the story of the harvest festival they broadcast many years ago, where the presenter rather unfortunately explained, “During the next hymn the children are going to bring up their gifts.”

I wouldn’t have liked to have cleared up that mess!

Actually, let me amend my words. Anyone can have a ‘harvest festival’, but Christians can have a ‘harvest thanksgiving.’ The world around us can celebrate harvest by having a festival, but as Christians we have Someone to thank for the harvest.

So I rather like referring to ‘harvest thanksgiving’ rather than ‘harvest festival.’ Although I don’t always remember.

Psalm 67 is full of thanksgiving. The people are exhorted to praise, gladness, and joy in response to God’s blessing in so many ways.

I see three areas in this Psalm for praise and thanksgiving, and all are relevant to a Christian celebration of harvest.

Firstly, thanksgiving for the harvest of salvation:

1 May God be gracious to us and bless us
    and make his face shine on us—
2 so that your ways may be known on earth,
    your salvation among all nations.

So often in the New Testament, and especially in the parables of Jesus, harvest is used as a metaphor for God taking the initiative to offer his grace and love to the human race. If you recall a few of the parables, you will recognise the agricultural context of them. Seeds, plants growing, gathering in the crops, the harvest itself. And so on. Jesus took images from the harvest to talk about what the Psalmist here calls God’s ways and his salvation.

Sometimes we only celebrate the physical, material harvest (which is a good thing in itself) but Jesus and the Psalmist would have us also give thanks for lives made new by the grace of God and people learning to walk in his ways.

I rarely hear this in Methodism. Have we forgotten this? Or is it that in aging and declining churches we have experienced the joy of people finding new life in Christ and following him so rarely that we have forgotten how to do this?

Perhaps we look on with envy at some of the numerically big and growing churches when God would have us celebrate and give thanks for what he is doing there.

But when the occasions come along in our orbit, let us not forget to give thanks for God’s life-giving and renewing work.

In my last circuit, one of the churches used to host an Iranian church on a Sunday afternoon. Sadly, it folded when the pastor retired and they couldn’t find a successor. The members dispersed to other Iranian congregations and around the UK.

One Sunday morning, a familiar face from that congregation turned up at the usual morning service, and had a friend with him, whom he introduced to us afterwards. He and the friend had been flat-sharing, but now a refugee agency had transferred him to our area, where he was living in a flat above a pizza takeaway.

This man knew very little English, but he came every week and also joined in some midweek activities. He had had to flee from Iran as a political asylum seeker, having opposed the government. He had to leave his wife and young son back there. He didn’t know when escaping that his wife was pregnant with their second son.

We supported his application for asylum and one day he asked to be baptised. I met him, along with a church member who had learned the Farsi language of Iran. We asked him why he was seeking baptism. He explained that he was so bowled over by Jesus, by his incomparable teaching such as the Sermon on the Mount, and by the way he treated women, which was so different from what he saw in Islam.

Oh, and one other thing. That second child whom he had only ever seen on Skype on his mobile phone had gone down with a mystery illness that the doctors couldn’t cure. He had asked us to pray for his little boy one Sunday after worship. Unbeknown to us, the boy had been completely healed after those prayers and before there was any further intervention from the doctors.

Jesus wasn’t a theory to our friend anymore. He was real, and he wanted to follow him. I baptised him on Easter Day.

When things like this happen, we give thanks for the harvest of salvation. May God trust us with may more.

Secondly, thanksgiving for the harvest of justice:

3 May the peoples praise you, God;
    may all the peoples praise you.
4 May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
    for you rule the peoples with equity
    and guide the nations of the earth.
5 May the peoples praise you, God;
    may all the peoples praise you.

Maybe this is more familiar to us at harvest. We know that millions of people in our world do not have what they need due to injustices, and so we campaign for justice. It’s clear from this psalm that God loves justice. He rules the people with equity and guides the nations of the earth.

This is why organisations like the Trussell Trust food banks do not only bring short-term relief to people in crisis, they also campaign for government policies that will help the poorest in our society.

This is why All We Can describes itself as both a relief and a development movement. They promote self-help for people in poverty, including conquering illiteracy. They support another project that campaigns for human rights in rural areas, where people have been left in poverty thanks to the work of major mining companies.

Or take an organisation that is dear to my heart, Tear Fund. Yes, they partner with local churches and organisations to bring relief to people who suffer when there are major disasters, like floods and earthquakes, but they do so much more. They are campaigning hard for the development of an international treaty on plastic pollution. Why? To quote one short paragraph from their website:

We’re facing mountains of plastic pollution. 2 billion people have no safe way to dispose of rubbish, and it’s people in poverty who are suffering the worst impacts of this rubbish problem. They are forced to live and work among piles of waste, which is making them sick, releasing toxic fumes, flooding communities and causing up to a million deaths each year.

When our God promises to rule with equity and guide the nations of the earth, and when we know he is doing that as part of his plan to make all things new, then it is a Christian responsibility for us not only to relieve poverty but to campaign against the causes.

And when we see some victories, let us again give thanks.

Thirdly and finally, thanksgiving for the harvest of the fields:

6 The land yields its harvest;
    God, our God, blesses us.
7 May God bless us still,
    so that all the ends of the earth will fear him.

And now the most familiar of all harvest themes, the one we think about when we sing the hymns, even if more people live in an urban setting these days and are more detached from the means by which food is produced. We raise the song of harvest home, we plough the fields and scatter, or imagine ourselves doing so. We decorate our churches with food and grain.

It’s a good thing to give thanks for God’s material provision for us. It reminds us that Christianity is not just concerned with the soul and the spiritual. Ours is a faith in a Creator God. Ours is a faith in a God who raised his Son bodily from death. He cares about his creation and wants to restore it from its brokenness. So the next time someone tells you that Christians shouldn’t poke their noses into material and political things, tell them they have no right to celebrate harvest festival.

Harvest celebrates the God who in his fatherly goodness takes care of his children and is outraged when some humans deny that provision to others. He is the God who does not want us to need to worry about having the basic essentials of life, who has entrusted the human race with the stewardship of this planet, and when it is mismanaged, he calls on us to change our ways.

Food banks aren’t the only way we show this. The local parish church where we lived in the last circuit ran a ‘community fridge’, which took donations of food the supermarkets weren’t going to be able to sell because it was soon to go out of date. Anyone, regardless of their economic status, could come and help themselves, so that the food could be used for what it was made for, rather than wasted. Which is an interesting thought in this county, where there appears to be no specific provision for food recycling.

One of my churches took food from the local Tesco Express that they couldn’t sell and repurposed it at coffee mornings, including leaving some out free of charge on a table for anyone in need. Several widows on limited incomes attended those coffee mornings and benefited.

In a wasteful world, these are reasons for gratitude towards our loving heavenly Father.

Conclusion

So the harvest is wide and broad, encompassing salvation, justice and material provision. Therefore our thanksgiving and our consequent actions shall surely also be wide in their scope.

No wonder Saint Ambrose said,

“No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.”

Maybe it’s the poet and parson George Herbert who summed up our harvest response:

“Thou hast given me so much … Give me one thing more, a grateful heart.”

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Sermon: Ruth Part 1, Together In Suffering (A Covenant Service Sermon)

This Sunday, my two churches begin a five-part series on the Book of Ruth. At the one where I’m preaching this weekend, it also coincides with the annual Covenant Service, where we Methodists renew our commitment to Christ. Hence there is a lot of reference to that in the sermon below.
I should add that before you read it, I owe a huge debt for background issues on this sermon to Daniel I Block’s magnificent commentary on Judges and Ruth in the New American Commentary series.

Ruth 1:1-22

There was no monarch or President. Transport was primitive and you couldn’t go to the shops for retail therapy. There was no Social Security system and women were entirely dependent upon men.

It sounds a world away from our lives, and you could say it is. Yet human nature being what it is, and God’s nature being what it is, the story of Ruth is one that can have a surprising number of connections with our call to be Christian disciples today. Today, as we begin a new year, it can even frame the renewal of our covenant promises to God as we ponder the dedication shown in this opening episode.

Firstly, there is a context to set, and it begins with a famine (verse 1). That might seem a long way from our experience, situated in the middle of fast food outlets and just down the road from a Tesco Extra. But we of course are putting our weight behind the establishment of a food bank, and the economic prospects for Western society remain poor. People are struggling.

Indeed, in that fact there is another potential similarity. The famine in Israel happens ‘when the judges ruled’ (verse 1), and you may recall from reading the Book of Judges that when disaster hits Israel it is usually the displeasure of God at his people’s sins, following on from the warnings in Deuteronomy. This famine, therefore, could well be one of God’s judgments against his people.

Now without wishing to be too dramatic, it doesn’t seem entirely impossible to me to construe some of our current economic woes as a divine judgment on our society. We can blame the banks for selling credit too easily, but in our desire to munch up everything a consumer culture threw at us, we accepted it. As a result, we face stark measures to try and tame our colossal national debts. Could it be that God is letting us reap the whirlwind of our choices to seek pleasure instead of him? I do not think, therefore, that it is too remote an idea to consider that we too face the challenges of discipleship as part of a society which makes God weep, and where his severity is part of his call to return to him.

There are hints, too, right at the beginning, that this story is going to turn from pain to tragedy. We see this in the names of the two sons. Mahlon probably derives from the Hebrew verb ‘to be sick’, and Chilion from the verb ‘to be finished, to come to an end’ (verse 2).

Not only that, if I am right that there is a background of God’s judgment, Elimelech makes a bad move. Instead of sharing in some corporate repentance for the sins of his people, he takes what he thinks will be the quick and easy way out, which is to move to Moab. But this is to embrace one of Israel’s ancient enemies. In doing so, he leaves Bethlehem (verses 1 & 2) – at this time a small and insignificant community, but one destined to be central in the purposes of God. Elimelech misses this, because he wants his instant solution.

Having set the scene of despondency and desperation, the second thing we find is that it all gets worse. Elimelech isn’t saved: he dies (verse 3). And then the two sons marry pagan women, outside their clan (verse 4). In fact, it doesn’t even sound like a normal form of marriage: when our English translations say they ‘took’ Moabite wives (verse 4), ‘took’ is quite a forceful word. It implies they abducted Ruth and Orpah. These were far from pleasant young men. The women are effectively the victims of domestic violence. You wonder what the resulting relationships were like. Certainly, within the understanding of the time the fact that in ten years of marriage no children are born to either couple and then the husbands die (verses 4-5) indicates more displeasure on God’s part.
For many of us, that will all seem rather remote. But the awful truth is that many Christians today are victims of domestic violence (I can certainly think of some people I know), and that means in some cases the violence is perpetrated by Christians. It is not a wild suggestion to make that today in Methodist churches around the world, there will be people renewing their covenant promises who do so against a background of consistent suffering at home.

Yet it is desperate in a new way when these thuggish young men die. This is a society where no men means no hope. Men were the providers. What on earth are these three widows – Naomi, Orpah and Ruth – going to do? Yet into this horrendous situation comes the third element of our story: God’s grace. Naomi hears good news in the midst of her grief:

Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had had consideration for his people and given them food. (Verse 6)

God has visited his people in mercy. ‘His people’: the language of the covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel. Judgment is not the last word in God’s vocabulary, grace is. And he has not simply ‘given them food’, the word is ‘bread’, which is significant for Naomi, as Bethlehem means ‘house of bread’. The house of bread is being restocked. This is grace: not only forgiveness, but provision for needs.

It is grace like this and far more that brings us to a covenant service. The grace of God in which he gives up his only begotten Son for the salvation of the world brings us here. The grace that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself brings us here. The God who not only mercifully withholds judgment in favour of justifying us but who also in grace blesses us with many things we do not deserve – all this brings us to a covenant service. If it were only about the solemn promises we make, this would be a severe and sombre occasion. But we are here because God’s grace is extravagant and healing.

Therefore the fourth movement in this episode is Naomi’s response. Grace has shown her where she belongs – not in Moab but among the people of God, and so she heads home, accompanied by Ruth and Orpah (verse 7). Having heard of God’s mercy to her own people, she offers mercy to her daughters-in-law. She urges them to go home, so that they might have the chance to remarry and thus find their own security in having a husband provide for them – and this time, hopefully treat them better (verses 8-9). Naomi, the one who has come to know grace, must first of all respond in kind to others. In today’s parlance, she ‘pays it forward’ to others. The very essence of our own response today to God’s grace is that we seek to offer grace to others.
Now in the fifth stage of the story, Ruth and Orpah react. Have they been affected by Naomi’s graciousness? Had they all been bound together in their common suffering? They promise to come with her (verse 10). However, Naomi assumes they will be doing so in order to find husbands – not an unreasonable assumption. She moves quickly to show them that gaining new husbands through her is a ludicrous idea (verses 11-13a). But in doing so, it exposes an unhealed, unredeemed side of her. At heart she is angry with God for her circumstances. There is no self-examination, just a lashing out at God. She says:

No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me. (Verse 13b)

It may well be that today we need to reflect on this. We are at our covenant service because we know that God has shown grace to us and we are making a gut response to that of wanting to show our gratitude by demonstrating that grace to others. However, we have those areas of our lives that may be forgiven but which are not yet transformed. Someone has said that the Gospel is about salvation from sin in at least three different senses: we are saved from the penalty of sin (that is, forgiveness), one day we shall all be saved from the presence of sin (when God brings in his new heavens and new earth), but in the meantime God wants to save us from the practice of sin (that is, enable us to grow in holiness).

And if the covenant service is anything, it is a commitment to holiness. I believe that one reason why we sometimes feel uncomfortable about the promises we make today is that they highlight those areas of our lives we have not yet been willing to hand over to Christ for purification. I don’t want to promise to follow Christ with no strings attached: I want to retain a veto over what he asks of me. For Naomi, it was an issue of anger, bitterness and, I would suggest, trying to justify herself. In the final part of today’s reading, we shall see that she still has not resolved it: she says God has dealt bitterly and harshly with her, taking everything away from her (verses 19-21). What is it for us? Can we at least say to Christ today, I do not feel that willing to be changed, but I am willing to be made willing? May we not let it fester, as Naomi appeared to do.

Orpah, then, takes the natural human course and returns home (verse 14a). She is not to be blamed for this. But Ruth clung to Naomi (verse 14b) and from this springs the most remarkable and beautiful sixth phase of this story, where her commitment is worked out in the way she devotes herself to Naomi. It’s really quite astonishing, because we have yet more evidence of Naomi’s rather fragile faith here. She implores Ruth to follow Orpah back to Moab ‘to her people and to her gods’ (verse 15, italics mine). Naomi, a follower of Yahweh, the one and only God, speaks as if the Moabite claim to other deities is true. Sheer heresy! Yet Ruth is attracted to her mother-in-law and her feeble faith. Ruth will travel and live wherever Naomi goes; Ruth will transfer her allegiance from her people and gods to Naomi’s people and Yahweh; Ruth considers herself part of Naomi’s family now, because she wants to be buried in the same family grave (verses 16-17).

Do not let the weakness of your faith prevent you from speaking out for Christ. God does not wait until you have it all together for him to use you. God uses a woman like Naomi, with her unresolved feelings and her theological errors, to draw out a true sense of covenant from Ruth. Come, with whatever weaknesses you know you have, to renew your commitment to Christ in our service today.

But of course, as it is often said, God loves us just as we are, but he loves us too much to leave us as we are. For that reason, aspire less to be like Naomi and more like Ruth. For Ruth becomes a wonderful example of what it means to make a covenant commitment. She is committed to God and to God’s people. This is what covenant means. We bind ourselves to our Lord, because in grace he has bound himself to us. But we do not do so in isolation. God’s covenant is not merely with individuals, but with a community, with his people. The purpose of his covenant is make us more truly into the community of his kingdom, a living, breathing witness to his love. Like Ruth said to Naomi, so we say to each other today, ‘Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.’ And as Ruth also said to Naomi, so we also say to one another today, ‘Where you go, I will go.’

Today, in a context of suffering and judgment, even from the pain of our own lives, let us acknowledge with joy the grace of God in Christ and respond by seeking redemption for our brokenness, and by binding ourselves to our Lord and to each other.

Let it be so.

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