"Whither Thou Goest"

With joy Sr. Mary Anne and I greet you from your sister community in Hawaii, Our Lady of the Angels Hermitage. We are honored to worship in this place where He is rightly loved and worshipped.

Our story this morning begins at a place in the center of Jesus' lifeworld, the village of Nain, situated in Galilee. It is situated on the slopes of Mount Moreh, which is called the Hill of the Teacher, which is the meaning of the Hebrew Moreh. Certainly, this is His foremost role, for He is the Teacher, Rabbonai, a name reserved for the most venerated Teachers .... Orthodox would say Elders or Startsy.

From Nain, He may survey the breadth of the fields of His teaching. Just across the Valley of Jezreel — the word means "to scatter seed" (especially the word of God) — He is able to see Nazareth a few miles away. There He can reflect on His earthly identity and especially His family ties .... Joseph, Ever-Virgin Mary. At a similar distance is Mount Tabor, where Origen set the Mount of Transfiguration. The snowy summits of Mount Hermon are also visible in the distance. Both mountains are nominated for the revelation of His Divine identity. Off to the West, He can see Mount Carmel symbolizing the futility of pagan worship (we think of Elijah's encounter with the Baal prophets), which is a primary subject of His teaching, for He was sent into a world in which a new religion was eclipsing the ancient and right worship of God, associated with the word Hebrew. It all lays before Him on this day: the breadth and depth of His unfathomable identities, the incommensurable beauty of His Divine gifts to us, and the end point of our own journeys, which is to follow Him through the highest passes of our own Mounts of Transfiguration, associated with the word theosis.

Of course, I have left something important out, which is His self-sacrificing love, which we know as agape. And this last subject begins our journey this morning into the mists of pre-history and across the Biblical centuries. For directly in front Him processes a group of wailing mourners, which remind Him of a most poignant scene from His own family history: a widow who has lost her only son. She would soon, very likely, become the face of the penury and homelessness. For while provision was made to transfer a man's property to his sons, with the eldest receiving a double-share. No provision whatsover was to be made to his widow. Only a suriving son could save her from becoming the face of blasted and the lost, (faces we now see too often in our own lifeworld today).

So let us open Jesus' family album that we might reflect on the content of His heart and meditations of His mind on this day. Let us journey to Moab, back to the sixth century B.C. that we might share the thoughts of the Master. A famine, we read, has sticken Judah:

But what sort of famine is this? Is it a scarcity of grain and other food stuffs? Is it a drought that has finally emptied the wells of Israel? The word we find in the Septuagint (the only Bible Jesus used in His teaching) rarely appears in Scripture. It is φίμος / phímos the literal translation is muzzle, "a restraint on one's mouth" as in Ps 39:1: "I will restrain my mouth with a muzzle" (also phímos). Every instance of this word in the New Testament expresses a similar meaning: "He was speechless" (Mt 22;12); "Hold thy peace" (Mk 1:25); "may put to silence" (1 Pet 2:15). And the well-known famine in Genesis 41 which causes Joseph to open Pharaoh's granary reserves is not rendered from phímos, but rather with the more common límos, the Greek goddess of starvation. We find only one exception to this rule, so let us stick with the rule, not the exception. What we are learning about this "certain man of Bethlehem" is that he and his sons have been silenced. Evidently, they are political or religious dissidents who have fled to Moab from Judah.

Actually, the landscape is dotted with these families fleeing Jerusalem during these years, for a cultural and religious earthquake has taken place. Influential families had been led off to Babylon (fullly, one-third of the population) two generations earlier. And now they are returning. But these people in nowise resemble the ones who had departed. They dress in strange clothes. They no longer speak Hebrew but rather a Mesopotamian language called Aramaic. They practice unfamiliar customs. And they live under the governance of Mesopotamian overlords. Indeed, these supervisors (the Persians who had counquered Babylon during the exile) are now financing and directing the construction of a new temple on Mount Zion. But when the people see that these intruders have inserted blood sacrifice into the Sacred Scriptures, and have made this a central ritual of the temple cult, many flee in horror. Large numbers migrate to the Hebrew colony at Elephantine even constructings a temple there followoing the pattern taught by the Patriarchs. But the Persians pursue them and say that they and their temple will be destroyed unless they offer blood sacrifice.

Perhaps this helps us to understand the catastrophe that has befallen Elimilech's family:

All three women are plunged into crisis.

The theme of forbidden intermarriage, as we learn from the Ezra tradition, had sent Judah into an uproar. It was a primary thrust of the Mesopotamian strategy.

But now you will have surmised that we are visiting the Book of Ruth, which most scholars agree was written during the period of the return from Babylon. And while Ruth's narrative sets the historical action in the fourteenth century B.C., we must remember that the Scriptures always convey both historical and allegorical meaning. Moreover, the fourteenth century was also an era of crisis for Israel, for this period, following the deaths of Moses and Joshua, was a time when every man did as he pleased (Judg 21:25).

With the loss of a husband and both sons, Naomi and her daughters-in-law suddenly found themselves in grave danger. Immediately, Naomi advised Orpah and Ruth to leave. They had no children. They were still young. They might make new marriages. Orpah wasted no time in packing her bags. But the wife of the younger son, Ruth, did not see it that way. Instead, she considered what would become of her adopted mother. And instead of seeking her own welfare, she cast her lot with Naomi. If Naomi were to become the face of the lost, then they would meet this doom together. Her declaration of compassionate love (her name means "compassionate friend") continues to be celebrated to the present day for its lyrical beauty:

Can we doubt that this story of a cherished grandmother stood out in Jesus' mind as a boy? Immediately, we think of John 15:13:

And this is propethic, for by twists and turns, Ruth did make a new marriage, but in Israel. She would become the great-grandmother of King David. Without Ruth there would have been no Jesus, for both Jesus' earthly parents would descend from the House of David. And certainly these would be the marks of His own life: compassion to the outcast, as we recently saw in His encounter with the Canaanite woman, and intermarriage, as all nations would become a brotherhood of one in the Kingdom of God.

Approaching just before Him today on the main street of Nain is a woman who has lost her husband and now her only son. We cannot imagine her grief: she will be cast out; she will lose everything, even her place in the world; she will live on the margins, where the blasted and the lost huddle with begging cups.

Jesus turns to the back pages of His own family album. He sees David's great-great-grandmother Naomi, facing destitution and destruction under precisely these circumstances. He sees His kinswoman, Ruth — not only the face of self-sacrificing love, but also the gate of life through which His forebears will pass. Thus, in this widow, in this place, He sees the fullness of His earthly ministry and the purpose the Incarnation: compassion towards the lost, friendship to the outcast, and a new kind of world, revealed by the Teacher and practiced by a vast multitudes of followers, where cruelty and death shall have no dominion.

He walks over the coffin where the widow's son lay, lifeless, and with ease calls Him back to Himself, Who is the Lord of Life. His demonstration could not be more clear: Death? What is that? It is a nothing. An illusion. A fakery.

As the Book of Ruth points to corrupt the hybrid religion of Jerusalem, we are reminded that the Teacher has come to redeem the Lost Sheep. And, as He signals to the Canaanite woman, no one shall be left out of His sheepfolds.

Sr. Mary Anne and I leave the Hermitage rarely and long to return as soon as we have left. The Lord Himself has taught us to live apart from the tawdry world. We are to be strangers in a strange land. In this place we find no abiding city. Yet we take comfort being here among you, who have said "No" to the culture of death. We are honored to break bread within this circle of light. Therefore, let us do so. With the widow of Nain, let us take our places in the family album. For of His Kingdom and in His Glory, there shall be no end.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.