Scriptural Sermons

Since Halloween is coming up, I thought it would be fun to watch the movie classic Frankenstein with the girls -- the 1931 version starring Boris Karloff. I figured that it wouldn’t be too scary for them because of the old, or perhaps better to say, ancient special effects. I figured that the monster would be no more frightening to them than Ming the Merciless was to me when I, at about their age, watched Flash Gordon. The minute Dr. Frankenstein descended to his laboratory; however, they were terror struck and scrambled into my lap. Within minutes they were screaming at the top of their lungs to turn it off. I grabbed for the clicker filled with soothing explanations, but they’d have none of them. That night we all slept together. Not one to admit defeat readily, I decided to try again. I procured, with some difficulty, the 1910 version of the film. I even previewed it before we watched it together. It was a “silent” movie, but for the ridiculously dramatic piano music pounding in the background. The exaggerated gesticulations and facial expressions of the actors were downright laughable, but the bigger joke was the special effects. The monster came to life after various ingredients were added to a bubbling cauldron. First his two skeletal arms emerged. You could see them moving up and down on wires. After some more thundering piano crescendos the monster appeared, fully stewed. He looked like the deranged cousin of Gargamel, who, if you don’t recall, was the antagonist on The Smurfs. I judged that no one of any age could possibly be scared of this version of the film. The girls, however, judged differently. They were even more terrified than before. “Turn it off!” they screamed again. It was then that it dawned on me that my plan backfired because I presumed that the old special effects would make the films less scary for them. The old special effects, as it turned out, made it more scary, more real in a way, because it depicted the realm where, their imaginations had taught them, real monsters dwell. Needless to say, we all slept together again, but this time sleep, as Scripture puts it, “fled from their eyes.” “I am staying up all night,” Avi pronounced. “Why!?” I asked. “Because I am afraid of that monster.” Before I could respond, Gao chimed in. “And I am afraid of earthquakes.” Her orphanage was relatively near the epicenter of China’s earthquake, which occurred shortly before I adopted her. She didn’t experience the earthquake firsthand, but she experienced it through the horror of her caretakers. May then chimed in too. “And I’m afraid something bad will happen to you, Mommy.” I said all the things Mommies say when their children are afraid. Avi then said. “I’m sorry we’re so afraid,” Mommy. “When we’re grownups like you, we won’t be afraid anymore.” When we’re grownups like you, we won’t be afraid anymore. Then was not the time to explain to her that we grownups have our own fears, fears not unlike theirs. We may not be scared of Frankenstein’s monster, or werewolves, or mummies, or vampires, but we are scared of demythologized monsters like serial killers and shooters and terrorists. We too are scared of natural disasters, whether they take the form of earthquakes or tornadoes or hurricanes or tsunamis, or even whether they take the form of disease, which is a kind of natural disaster if you think about it. And too we are scared that something bad will happen to those we love, especially our children. For me this is my greatest fear. I think it’s every parent’s greatest fear. We may put up a better front than they do; we may employ more mature powers of rationalization; we may be slightly less vulnerable; but we grownups share their fears, especially when the danger that elicits them rears its head. And you know, I think we grownups actually do children one better on the fear front. We have one fear that they don’t seem to have, at least not my girls -- but I think it holds true for most children. I guess some fears have to be learned, or they grow with us to maturity. We grownups fear that others who are not like us do not share our basic humanity. If others are or a different race, a different culture, a different religion, a different political party, a different sexual orientation, a different national origin, we fear they do not share our basic humanity. And this fear may be, of all the things we fear, most to be feared. This fear may be, of all the things we fear, the most pernicious and destructive, especially when it is, as it so often it has been, co-opted by demagogues who pose as our leaders. Believe it or not, it is for this reason the book of Ruth was written. It was written to offset the fear that others who are not like us do not share our basic humanity. Ruth, after all, was a Moabite. To put it mildly, the Israelites did not like the Moabites. From the minute the people of Israel took possession of their Promised Land and encountered the Moabites in the vicinity, they did not like them. Why? Because the Israelites had lots of impressions about them, impressions based upon the fact that they didn’t look like them, didn’t talk like them, and didn’t act like them. From what they thought they saw, the Israelites concluded that the Moabites were a dissolute people. They were fast. They were loose. They were low lives. They were the kind of people who couldn’t be trusted. They were the kind of people who were bad influences, who were threats to good and decent and upright society. In short, the Israelites feared that the Moabites did not share their basic humanity. In fact, aside from the book of Ruth, all other depictions of Moabites in Scripture are negative. There’s even a story in the book of Genesis that the founder of the Moabites was born from a drunken and incestuous union between a father and his daughter. The book of Ruth then advanced a bold and controversial, if not to say downright unpopular, thesis. It advanced the thesis that others who are not like us do in fact share our basic humanity. Sometimes in fact they may even serve as role models for us. Sometimes, in fact, we can even learn from them about how to be better people. Consider Ruth herself. Ruth was a Moabite who married into a family of Israelites. It wasn’t by the choice of the family of Israelites. It was by necessity. There was a famine in Israel and this particular family of Israelites was forced to emigrate to Moab or to starve. They were detained there by the famine for so long that the sons came of marrying age. It was either marry a Moabite or not marry at all, and not marrying at all meant the cessation of the family line. So the family held its collective nose while two Moabite women married into the family, one of whom was Ruth the other of whom was named Orpah. In a series of coincidental tragedies, all the men of the family died, leaving just the Moabites Ruth and Orpah and their Israelite mother-in-law, who was named Naomi. After the famine ended, Naomi suggested that each return to their familial home. Orpah did, but Ruth declined. It would have been the easier course, but Ruth knew her mother-in-law needed her. As much as Ruth had lost - a husband, Naomi had lost more - a husband and two sons. Ruth couldn’t leave Naomi all alone with no one to care for her. She may not have been much, but she was better than nothing. She could at least tend to Naomi’s basic needs until she saw her safely placed in her familial home. So Ruth opted to accompany Naomi and go live among a people who looked down upon her because she was a Moabite. When they arrived back in Israel, Ruth provided for them both by gleaning behind some harvesters in a barley field, which was basically an indirect way of begging. The Law of Moses demanded that harvesters leave some of the harvest behind to provide for the poor. When the owner of the field noticed there was a Moabite gleaning on his property, he kept an eye on her. What he discovered was a courageous, selfless, industrious young woman, a woman who so impressed him he eventually took her for his wife. And even after he did, Naomi’s care remained at the forefront of her mind. When she bore a son, it was her greatest joy that she could provide Naomi someone to love again after all the loss she had known. Yes, the book of Ruth was written to advance the bold and controversial thesis that people who are not like us do share our basic humanity, so much so they could well be our kindred. It was written to advance the bold and controversial thesis that they want the same things we do - to be able to provide for themselves, to care and to be cared for, to belong, to be acknowledged and respected for who they are. And it is indeed a bold and controversial thesis precisely because of the fear that seems to be perennial that those who are not like us do not share our basic humanity. Jesus too of course advanced that bold and controversial thesis. You tell by the people he gravitated towards, Jesus too of course advanced that bold and controversial thesis. You can tell by the people he gravitated towards, “others” who were not like the rest - lepers, prostitutes, carriers of contagious diseases, adulteresses, tax collectors, and all those vulnerable, marginalized, and scandalous. But he cast the net even farther. Consider the Centurion. He wasn’t vulnerable, marginalized, or scandalous. He was the commander of a hundred in the Roman army. He was, as he put it, a man “set under authority,” and it was the authority of the oppressor, since the Romans then occupied Israel. But Jesus heeded the Centurion’s appeal, and in doing so learned that the Centurion had a deep love for the Israelites, even built for them a synagogue; and that his appeal to Jesus was out of concern for the welfare of a slave. Jesus advanced the bold and controversial thesis that we need not fear others who are not like us because they do share our basic humanity, but even he was surprised by the Centurion the extent to which this is true – “I tell you not even in Israel have I found such faith.” No one sympathized with our common condition better than Jesus; and it was that sympathy that led him to take up his cross. After the girls finally fell asleep last week, I was wide awake, so I watched my favorite movie, To Kill a Mockingbird . Now that movie is too scary for children to watch, if you recall the near murder of the little girl named Scout. It’s almost too scary for me. In my favorite scene, Atticus defends a black man falsely accused of rape in the Jim Crow South. During the trial, the courtroom is packed, with the black people segregated in the balcony. The black man who was falsely accused of rape is found guilty of course, even though everyone in the courtroom knew he was innocent. As Atticus walks from the courtroom, the black people in the balcony silently rose to their feet to acknowledge the truth that Atticus had attempted to defend -- that others not like him shared his basic humanity. “Stand up,” someone whispered to Scout, who had snuck up to the balcony to watch. “Your father’s passing.” It is one of our crucial jobs as Christians to renounce the fear that others like not us do not share our basic humanity. And if we do not renounce that fear, both within and around us, we may protect ourselves from many fearful things, but we will never help to make a world that is safe for everyone. Amen.

When you are a pastor, people feel compelled to tell you why they don’t go to church. I am not sure why. Maybe they feel guilty or defensive and feel compelled to make some explanation or justification. As I said, I am not sure why, I am only sure that it happens, and it happens a lot. It happens so often I can even state the top five reasons that people don’t go to church (as told to me at least.) Number one is that they are spiritual but not religious. Number two is that Christians are hypocrites. Number three is that the church subordinates women and discriminates against gay people. Number four is that they prefer Eastern Spirituality. And number five is that they believe that there is nothing that anyone can do - not you, not me, not anyone - that’s ever going to make any difference in this world. I have a degree of understanding and sympathy for these reasons, at least for the top four. The spiritual but not religious are basically fellow travelers. My experience of them is that they appreciate nature as God’s handiwork, and that they are all behind justice issues. They have just had a bad experience, or no experience, in the church, and they prefer to go it alone. And Jesus, after all, said “…whoever is not against us is for us.” And, who could begin to argue with the charge that Christians can indeed be hypocrites? Jesus instructed us to remove the plank from our own eye so that we can see to remove the speck from our neighbor’s. He instructed us thus because he knew that there were hypocrites among us. And hypocrites don’t make good witnesses to the faith. And, it is, without question, to the church’s shame that it has created lower tiers within it for women and gay people. The church would probably still have African Americans in a lower tier as well but history wouldn’t let it get away with it. We can credit Abraham Lincoln with that, who, of course, was himself not a church goer. And, Eastern Spirituality is filled with profundity and wisdom unique unto itself that has never infiltrated western spirituality. The world religions became world religions because of their brilliant insight into the human condition. They all, in their ways, offer solutions to the human problem. Their practices can’t be valueless. And they have the benefit of novelty as well. Yes, there’s no sense to take aim at the reasons people do not go to church, except maybe for the fifth reason – that there’s nothing anything anyone can do to make a difference in this world. Maybe I am being harsh, but that reason strikes me as a cynical cop-out, as a poor excuse to do nothing. Moreover, it’s not true, at least not according to the Bible. The Bible, in fact, takes the polar opposite stance. It believes that everything we do makes a difference in this world. It even goes so far as to insist that little things we do make big differences – after the fashion of a mustard seed which grows into a hardy shrub, or a seed that takes root produces grain thirty, sixty, and a hundred fold. Or take our Old Testament lesson as an example. We all know Ruth’s story. No one would envy Ruth her ethnicity. Ruth was a Moabite. The Moabites were stigmatized, particularly by the Israelites. Stigmas, then and now, are based upon stereotypes, and Moabites were stereotyped as being pervasive low lives – low morals, low intelligence, low standards. Imagine if before you walked into a room, you knew everyone in the room was going to judge you, and judge you harshly and unfairly. This was Ruth’s lot in life due to her ethnicity. Ruth had married into an Israelite family, which could have offered her some protection. People normally ascend to the social level of their spouse. But Ruth’s spouse died. Ruth was then left alone with her mother-in-law Naomi, who herself was a widow. The two of them lived together in Moab. It would have been better for Ruth to remain where she was, with her own kind. Why go where you’re not wanted? But Naomi sought to return to Israel, and Ruth knew Naomi needed her. So Ruth braved it. What could Ruth possibly do to make a difference in this world? The people who voice this reason to me are normally prosperous and resourceful. They actually could make a difference in this world. They have the resources. Ruth arrived in Israel with but the clothes on her back, a stranger in a strange land, that nobody was keen to welcome. What could she possibly do to make a difference in this world? Here’s what she did. She gleaned. She simply gleaned. She went into the field of a “prominent rich man,” as the Bible puts it, she followed behind the harvesters, and she gathered what they left behind. In this way she sustained herself, and she sustained Naomi. The Bible recognizes that simply by participating in gleaning, whether you are on the giving or the receiving end, you make a difference in this world. Gleaning was indeed demanded by the Law of Moses. Hear the book of Deuteronomy: “When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left over. It should be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.” By simply participating in gleaning, you participate in the act of provision and you prevent waste. And a difference in this world is made. I can state that with perfect confidence that Jesus would have agreed with what I just said, because Jesus himself was a gleaner. In our gospel lesson, Jesus had just performed a miracle. He had fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish. After the crowd had eaten its fill, he gleaned twelve baskets of leftovers. Think about that. Jesus could miraculously produce food, and lots of it – enough to feed 5,000 people. And if there were 10,000 people there, he could have miraculously produced enough for them too. And yet he gleaned. He gleaned because he, along with the rest of the Bible, believed it would make a difference in this world - just as he believed that healing a blind beggar, forgiving an adulterous woman, welcoming children, acknowledging a widow’s mite, and eating with tax collectors would make a difference in this world. I guess the bottom line is that in fact there is no such thing as the proverbial drop in the bucket. Every drop effects the bucket – it can change its makeup, it can cause ripples, it can add to its volume, it can be the tipping point. This is simply the ecology of existence, as God has ordained it to be, that we all can make a difference in this world. So glean. So compromise. So support. So aid. So ease. So try. So care. So let’s go out there and make a difference in this world, and let’s do it for Jesus Christ. Amen.

We have all had our ups and downs, but our downs, it is safe to say, have been nothing compared to the downs of Naomi from our Old Testament lesson. Her downs were so severe, so sustained, and so numerous that they are nearly impossible even to image. A famine struck her homeland of Judah. She, along with her husband and two sons came to know hunger, and shortly thereafter came to face the prospect of starvation. Facing this dire prospect, they became refugees, and like the countless millions of today’s refugees, were forced to leave it all behind – their vocations, their homes, their possessions, their neighbors, their friends, and the political security that citizenship often affords. They made their way to the nearest country outside the scope of the famine, which happened to be Moab. The Moabites, unfortunately, were the sworn enemies of the people of Judah. And so they were surrounded by people who ostracized and stigmatized them. They lived under scorn and hostility -- precariously at the whims of their enemies. And this was but the beginning of Naomi’s downs, the tip of the ice burg. As the famine in their homeland raged on, her sons grew to marrying age. They were somehow able to take as their wives two Moabite women. Here at last was some small progress. The family grew bigger and stronger, and the Moabite wives could help them to negotiate being strangers in a strange land. But then, in short order and out of the blue, Naomi's husband died, and soon after that both of her sons. Naomi thought she had known loss prior to this, but here now was loss. Anyone who has experienced loss can perhaps glean in some small way what Naomi experienced. Loss is such a strange thing. Viewed from the outside, it would seem that loss is simply about the loss of a loved one - that person’s death, that person's absence from your life, and end of that person's hopes and dreams. And this would surely be enough to constitute loss -- more than enough in fact. But there are so many unforeseen ramifications of loss. You don’t see them coming until they arrive. There is the realization that any semblance of permanence in life is an illusion. We may have long runs of security and happiness, but they aren’t permanent. Loss forces you to learn that what is permanent is not life. What is permanent is death. Then there is regret. There is the irreversible fact that you lived too much for yourself, not enough for the one you lost. There is the irreversible fact that you should have given him or her more time, more affirmation, more appreciation, more understanding. There is the irreversible fact that you should not have left so many things unsaid. But it's too late now. Then there is something else, another ramification. This one is hard to describe. It’s goes to the fact that the person that you have lost is a person that you have cared for, and you will never care for that person again. Sometimes we erroneously think that caring for someone is a heavy burden or onerous responsibility. Best to have no strings. Best to be footloose and fancy free. But this, as I said, is erroneous thinking. This the sure path to emptiness and loneliness. No, if you think about it, we are who we care for. It gives us our identity. It gives us our standing. It gives us our purpose, our mooring, our very reason to be. It is, in fact, our most cherished role. When we suffer loss, we suffer the loss of all this. A woman I know who suffered loss recently told me she now felt like a nobody. This is because it was caring for someone that made her feel like a somebody. I have accompanied many people though grief. And if one facet of grief does them in, breaks their heart beyond healing, it is this. It is losing the one they care for. This then was the lowest of the lows for Naomi. She lost husband and her children. She lost her entire family. She had no one to care for. She was forced to drink from the cup of sorrow right down to the dregs. Famine. Forced migration. They were nothing compared to this. This is why we blithely say, "Nothing matters, so long as we have each other." It's because it's true. Yes, we all have our ups and downs, but our downs can't hold a candle to Naomi's. The famine finally lifted in Judah, and Naomi, desolate, made her way home. As she set out, she sent Ruth and Orpah, her Moabite daughter-in-laws, back to their families of origin. They were young. They could start again. Youth is resilient. But for Naomi, it was over. But not quite over. It was not quite over because of Ruth. Ruth has got to be one of the greatest figures in the entire Bible, in all of history really. She is such an astounding woman. Because of Ruth it was not quite over. Yes, Ruth had known loss of her own -- her husband, her brother-in-law, her father-in-law. But Ruth, unlike Naomi, realized she still had someone to care for. She had Naomi. She had someone to give her her identity, her standing, her purpose, her mooring, her very reason to be. She had that most cherished role. It was due to this realization that Ruth refused to leave Naomi. She refused to return to her family of origin. And Ruth was proved right. Together they returned to Judah. Ruth set up a humble household and found a way to provide for Naomi by gleaning in a nearby field at harvest time. They established a homely routine, not wholly unlike our own -- Ruth laboring by day, returning in the evening and sharing news of the day over their evening meal. And as Naomi's grief and despair eased just a scintilla, she too realized it. She too realized that she had someone to care for. She had Ruth. And like a good Jewish mother, Naomi set about to find Ruth a husband. In their mutual caring, the seeds of healing took root and grew. The book of Ruth yields many truths, one deeper than the next. But today it yields this truth -- that caring for someone, or something for that matter, is one of our most important needs. Being deprived of caring for someone or something is one of our greatest losses. We can't find fulfillment unless we have someone or something to care for, and in caring for someone or something, we find our greatest fulfillment. This is how God created us. This is what God has ordained for us. We are made to care. He is a God of love after all. Today is Stewardship Sunday, and so it bears recalling that God created and ordained us to care, that we are made to care. We are made to care for the world that God created, but more than this. We are made to care for that world that God has created and redeemed through his son Jesus Christ. This means that our caring is dedicated to the God of Jesus Christ - predicated upon his his righteousness, his justice, his mercy, and his love. And place we are formed for this holy caring is the church. That is why we are committed to care for the church - that we may ever be God's caregivers. Amen.

At a family gathering over the holidays, the parlor games came out, as they always do. To tell the truth, I have never been much of a fan of parlor games. Even as child, they did nothing for me. I may be the only person in the country who as a child never played Monopoly. I realized after Hi-Ho Cherrio and Candyland that they weren’t in my line. I think it’s because of my temperament. I don’t like to sit still. And I particularly dislike parlor games that have to do with trivia. This is because compounding the temperament issue, I am particularly bad at trivia. I am impressed by those minds somehow enabled to store away every tidbit of information that they encounter, but mine is not one of them. At any rate, when the parlor games came out over the holidays, I headed for the door to take a walk. I was prevented from doing so, however, by my relations. There was one game that required four players – two sets of partners – and they only had three. If I didn’t play, no one could. Just my luck, it happened to be the latest trivia game. I so much didn’t want to play that I was willing to allow the others to forgo the game. “I am really, really bad at trivia,” I protested. “The last time I played, I didn’t get a single answer right. I couldn’t name a single Beverly Hills Hillbilly. I had no idea who held the all time record for home runs. I didn’t even know the capitol of Wyoming. I’m telling you I’m that bad. I will simply ruin all the fun for my partner. “Oh I don’t mind,” smiled my partner. “Besides, I’m good at trivia. I’ll carry you.” In this way, I was coerced into playing. The first category we drew was entitled, enigmatically, “ologies.” As it turned out we had to define various studies that ended with “ology” like biology, zoology, etc... Astrology was the first one. “The study of the stars.” my partner said. “That’s not quite right,” I interjected. “It’s actually the study of the stars as they are believed to influence human affairs.” She shot me a dirty look, but we got a point. The next “ology” was theology. “Got it,” I said, and proceeded, “The study of God and consequent religious and ethical practice.” We got another point. Next was archeology. “Got it,” I said again. “The study of human beginnings through material remains.” Another point. Next was philology. “Got it,” I said once again, “The study of ancient texts in order to recover their original meaning.” My partner, rather than being pleased with my efforts, lashed out at me. “I thought you were really bad at trivia.” “I am,” I maintained, “but by some bizarre fluke every one of these “ologies” has had to do in one way or another with the Bible.” There was one final “ology” -- teratology. I could tell my partner was completely stumped, but I feared if I said “Got it” again she’d reach across the table and slap me. “Do you have any idea?” she asked desperately. “Yes,” I said, “Teratology is the study of monsters.” “And what does the study of monsters have to do with the Bible?” she asked, again in a tone less than friendly. “The study of monsters has nothing to do with the Bible,” I replied. “Monsters just so happen to be a special interest of mine. I actually consider myself to be something of an amateur teratologist.” “I’ve known you for over forty years,” she charged, “and this is the first time I’ve heard you describe yourself as an amateur teratologist,” I do not think I’ll be begged to play parlor games again. Providence was, in an ironic way, sympathetic to my dislike of them. But in fact monsters are a special interest of mine, and it’s not because I am a connoisseur of evil or a voyeur of freakishness. It’s more in the opposite direction. It’s because way back in college when I first read Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, something struck me about monsters. It struck me that as often as not, the monster is not the bad guy. The hunchback of Notre Dame was not the bad guy. He was born deformed, that is all, and driven deaf because in his deformity he was housed in a place no one would ever have to look at him – a bell tower. But he was a decent man -- pure, sensitive, kind, and most importantly, fully capable of giving and receiving love. Yet the citizens of Paris for a public spectacle placed him on a torture rack in the attempt to stretch his misshapen body. And when he screamed in agony and cried that he thirsted, they were unmoved, but for their derision. The hunchback of Notre Dame wasn’t the bad guy. The bad guys were those who rendered him monstrous so they could justify treating him like a monster. This early realization led me to see this phenomenon all over history. There are precious few real monsters. There is an old widow in the woods, a recluse, perhaps a bit eccentric. But no, she is a witch. She enters children’s dreams and possesses them. Her imprecations cause epidemics. There are the Jews of the Third Reich. But no, they are Satan’s minions. They even bear their master an uncanny resemblance. And they harbor salacious desires for Aryan women. There are men of African descent in the Jim Crow South, struggling to live down their historical enslavement. But no, they are boys, incapacitated for anything but servitude and second class citizenship. The phenomenon is all over history. The monsters weren’t the bad guys. The bad guys were those who rendered them monstrous so they could justify treating them like monsters. And if the phenomenon is all over history, we may wonder whether it is still alive today. And yes, of course it is. It’s bound to be. One of the biggest fallacies out there is that we’ve somehow succeeded history; somehow gotten beyond it. The monsters still aren’t the bad guys. The bad guys are still those who render them monstrous so they can justify treating them like monsters -- immigrant peoples, gay peoples, people of different races or religions, people suffering from infectious diseases. Think of the distorted caricatures that are drawn of them all: They endanger us. They bring crime into our communities. They threaten our livelihoods. They undermine our national security. They seek to destroy our families. They erode public morality. They will infect us. Sure, they are no longer, as a rule at least, being burned and gassed and lynched. But they’re being stigmatized. They’re being excluded. They’re being disrespected. They’re being discriminated against. In short, they’re being deprived of their basic humanity. And why? Why? It’s been the same reason all along. It’s because they’re different. They’re different, and so they’re hated and feared. I guess now that I think about it, teratology has everything to do with the Bible. I guess now that I think about it, teratology is a special interest of mine precisely because it has everything to do with the Bible. Consider this morning’s Old Testament lesson from the book of Ruth. The book of Ruth is considered to be a light and lyrical tale about a loyal and dutiful daughter in law -- irenic and dulcet. In fact, the book of Ruth is none of these things. The book of Ruth is radioactive. Yes, it tells the story of a loyal and dutiful daughter in law. She’s even better than a loyal and dutiful daughter in law. Ruth goes far beyond the call of loyalty and duty. She’s downright heroic. Her mother in law, Naomi, at the death of her son and Ruth’s husband, beseeches Ruth return to her own people where she will best fare. But Ruth disregards her own interest and commits her life to the care of her mother in law. She follows behind hired hands gleaning barley, performs manual labor from dawn to dusk, in order to supply her need. She wins the love Naomi’s kinsman and eventually provides Naomi with a grandson to love and care for. She creates for Naomi against all odds a happy ending. Forget Heroic. Ruth is a downright saint. But Ruth is Moabite. The people of Israel disliked the Moabites. It’s more correct to say I suppose that the people of Israel despised the Moabites. Every depiction of the Moabites in the Old Testament away from the book of Ruth depicts them to be sexually dissolute in the most vile ways imaginable. Yet the book of Ruth portrays a Moabite as a paragon of moral virtue, portrays a Moabite as embodying moral virtue the people of Israel knew well they could not hold a candle to; and that of course made them look like a bunch of ethnocentric hypocrites. How would we feel, by way of comparison, if an Iranian or a Palestinian or fill in the blank; any of those we love to hate were portrayed in such a positive light so as to make us look bad, portrayed as being possessed of all the qualities we deem they lack and that we embody? The Bible recognizes that the Moabites weren’t the bad guys. The bad guys were those who rendered them monstrous so they could justify treating them like monsters. Or consider this morning’s gospel lesson. Jewish cleanliness laws may well have arisen with the best of intentions. And indeed they arose in an attempt to preserve personal purity and holiness. And indeed they recognized that without punctilious and scrupulous effort that was built into the structure of day to day life, personal purity and holiness would likely lapse. But as Paul knew so well, even the law was sold under sin. Jewish cleanliness laws had become means to ostracize those deemed unclean – the gentiles, the unreligious, the diseased. All of these contaminated the clean, carried with them defilement. And so in this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus tossed the Jewish cleanliness laws out. Just like that -- into the sewer. Again the Bible recognizes that the unclean were not the bad guys. The bad guys were those who rendered them monstrous so they could justify treating them like monsters. Yes, teratology has everything to do with the Bible, and if this is the case that brings God into the mix. That means for us that for all of our standards and respectability, when we render others monstrous, God sees them through the light of the rainbow and us in the cold light of day. God sees us as monstrous. Friends, there are no monsters There are only children of God, children that God created, children that God redeemed through his Son; and children God called us to love “not only in word and speech, but in truth and action.” Amen.