Rev. Kevin M. Pleas

Ruth 1:1-18 May 10, 2009 - Mother's Day

Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die - there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!" When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.

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Mother's Day is always a challenging Sunday to prepare for. Technically, it isn't a "church" event at all. Mother's Day is a social/cultural holiday, but it has never actually been part of the theological calendar. Sad but true. Even so, the churches I've known have almost always celebrated it in some way. We do love our mothers, and most of the clergy types I know feel they ought to be celebrated at least once in a given year. But the fact that Mother's Day isn't officially a church event means that it's hard to find prayers and hymns that were written with the theme of motherhood in mind. There aren't very many, which is why the choir was singing "Faith of our Mothers" this morning. Obviously, a new verse has been added to the old familiar "Faith of our Fathers," which is nice, I suppose, even if it's after the fact and a little late in coming.

The same is true of Father's Day, by the way. It is not an official part of our theological calendar. But because the times out of which our church, our scriptures and most of our hymns have come have had so much patriarchy woven into them, and because the church's dominant image for God has always been "Father," finding appropriate materials for Father's Day is a piece of cake, by comparison.

It isn't fair, I know, particularly when we realize that, throughout the history of the church women have done most of the work while men have gotten nearly all of the credit. That may be what inspired the old Spanish proverb, "An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest," or in this case, minister. Still, until someone starts producing worship appropriate materials that celebrate women and mothers, we're left to muddle through with what we can piece together. Please understand though, that what we do piece together comes with a great deal of love and respect. Mothering is one of the toughest jobs there is, assuming you care about doing it well. And, either by being one or by having one, it touches all of us.

A few years ago some young children were asked a number of questions about "Moms." Some of the answers they came up with are just fabulous.

Why did God make mothers? To help us out where we're getting born.

How did God make mothers? Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring.

What ingredients are mothers made of? They had to get their start from men's bones. Then they mostly use string, I think.

Why did God give you your mother and not some other mom? We're related.

What kind of little girl was your Mom? They say she used to be nice.

Why did your Mom marry your dad? My grandma says that Mom didn't have her thinking cap on.

Who's the boss at your house? Mom doesn't want to be boss, but she has to because dad's such a goofball.

What's the difference between moms and dads? Moms work at work and work at home, and dads just go to work at work.

What does your mom do in her spare time? Mother's don't do spare time.

What would it take to make your Mom perfect? Diet. You know, her hair. I'd diet, maybe blue.

If you could change one thing about your mom, what would it be? I would like for her to get rid of those invisible eyes on in the back of her head.

Wonderful aren't they. Children are often more insightful than we give them credit for. And there aren't many subjects they know more about than their mothers.

I find myself wondering how I would answer some of those questions. If I could change one thing about my own mom, what would it be? My mother died the week before Easter nine years ago. She was a dynamo; highly educated, well respected, with a long string of personal and professional accomplishments. She used to work from the moment she got out of bed until she fell asleep on the couch watching the evening news. We both loved and respected each other, but it wouldn't surprise you to know that we rubbed each other the wrong was at times. I'm sure she could have spelled out quite a few changes she might have liked to see in her son, but if I could have changed one thing about her, I would have wanted her to give herself a break once in awhile. Still, all these years later, I realize I think of her as something of a heroine in my life. She set high standards for herself and everyone around her, and there are few people I've ever known who got quite so much done in a day.

Actually, I like the idea of my mother being one of my heroes. We need heroic people in our lives. Which is why, in thinking about today's sermon, I wanted to talk about Ruth. Do you know the story of Ruth? If you've hung around the church long enough you probably do, at least in broad outlines. It's a wonderful story; one of the loveliest and most touching in the entire Bible. And it's short, too. You could read the whole thing in about fifteen minutes. The setting is Israel, after the exodus, but before the beginning of the monarchy, which would put it around 800 years before Jesus. It was in the days of the judges and there was a famine in the land.

A certain man of Bethlehem, Elimelech, decided that moving his family to the neighboring country of Moab was the only way to save them from starvation. So he packed up his wife, Naomi, and their two sons, Mahalon and Chilion, and headed east. At first the move proved to be a good decision. They seemed to be settling well into their new lives, but it wasn't long before disaster struck. Elimelech died, we don't know how. Soldiering on, Naomi worked hard to keep her family together in this foreign land. Mahalon and Chilion eventually met and married Moabite wives, Orpah and Ruth. But then the sons too were struck down, we don't know how, and Naomi was left with two daughters-in-law, no means of support and few options.

She decided to return to Bethlehem, where she could at least survive on charity, but she knew she had nothing to offer Orpah and Ruth, and she encouraged them to return to their own families. In those days, we need to understand, virtually all of a woman's value lay in her ability to produce male heirs for the continuation of the family line. No one believed in any kind of "afterlife." There was no "life after death," to hope for. People either lived on in their children, in the continuation of their family name, or they didn't live on at all. In Naomi's case, all the normal channels for producing the next generation had already died. Though she still lived, her family was literally at a dead end. That's why she tried to send Orpah and Ruth away. Maybe, she thought, somehow, they would have a chance to continue someone else's family line. Naomi's trying to send them away was an act of desperation, but it was also an act of compassion.

Orpah, tearfully, accepted Naomi's judgment and returned to the home of her childhood. But Ruth was having none of it. She clung to the mother-in-law she had come to love, declaring that, come what may, she wanted nothing more than to remain at Naomi's side. Ruth was willing to give up her home, her people, her God and the only chance she had for any kind of immortality, if only Naomi would let her to stay.

There's a fair bit more to this story - about how they returned to Bethlehem, how Ruth set to work gathering up the overlooked grain kernels in the fields so they would have something to eat, about how Ruth caught the attention of Boaz, who took her under his wing and eventually married and had a son with her, thus ensuring the family line after all. It's a beautiful, and heroic story of faith and fidelity, which is precisely what makes it so perfect for Mother's Day.

At the risk of acting like I know more about being a mother than you well know I possibly could, given the circumstances of my gender, I believe that faith and fidelity are the essential heart of what mothering is all about. To care for others when it clearly requires sacrificing our own personal self interest is, I believe, a necessary and essential part of a mother's job description. Ruth is a hero because she placed Naomi's welfare above her own. If I had to guess, I'd imagine Ruth herself would have said she was only doing what she wanted and needed to do. But what she wanted and needed to do was care for others, and that is heroic, and that is, at least in part, why we celebrate the spirit of mothering every year on the second Sunday of May.

Let me close with one more story:

A little girl sitting on her mother's lap one day, was looking up into her mother's face and said, "Mommy, you have a beautiful face, sparkling eyes and lovely hair. But you are your hands and your arms so ugly?" The mother replied, "When you were just an infant, I left you sleeping alone in your crib one evening, the first time that I had ever left you alone in the house. I went down the street to visit a neighbor for a few minutes. While I was gone, our house caught on fire. When I realized that it was our house that was burning, I raced up the street. I dashed in through the flames and grabbed you up out of your crib. I held you close to me and tried to protect you from the flames with my hands and my arms. As we ran to safety, my hands and arms got badly burned. That's why they are so ugly." With tears in her eyes, the little girl looked into her mother's face again and said, "Mommy, you have a beautiful face, sparkling eyes and lovely hair. But your hands and your arms are the most beautiful of all."

That, I believe, is a perfect illustration of the spirit of mothering. It is a spirit that, regardless of our gender, needs very much to live in all of us. So, whether you are or are not a mother in fact, I hope you will take to heart that compassionate and self-sacrificial spirit that we call mothering. And may we all have a Happy Mother's Day.

Amen.