"Two Hinges" November 8, 2015

Ruth 1 Mark 12: 28-34 Have you ever had one of those moments that something happens, or is said, catching you off guard to re-evaluate everything else in life? This happened to me twice this week! Perhaps, it is having been away from routine, away from responsibilities for a month, quite possibly being vulnerable. First in the Bible Study Wednesday evening, we have been reading together the story of David in I Samuel, and are at the point of contest between David and King Saul, where the army of each is trying to win, to dethrone the other, but more than that to eliminate them as competition. When the body described that being King is a leadership shift to believing you alone have the answers. And as a knee jerk confession, it occurred to me that in the pastoral ministry this is something we cannot do, that you listen for the needs of the community, you channel the resources of the church to where they are needed, and while I have been in ministry for over 31 years, served with you for almost 19 when I have set goals they have been where I know the body intends to go with leadership rather than what I want to do. The second was sincere and humbling, that at the Y one morning, someone asked how I was feeling and I described the overwhelming support of the congregation in cards and pictures from the children, and gifts of food. To which the other simply said “We love you.” In the ministry, you hear a number of "Nice Sermons", you know the affection is there, but we all need to hear it at different times. Our culture is based on success, on being first. In this regard the Culture of the first Century was not only Survival, about being the First, the Winner, but also that the first set the example, the first stone laid became the cornerstone determining level and the parameters of what was to be constructed. So declaring what is the foundation, what is primary was vital. Jesus response was a foundation of love, love of God and compassion for everyone. How different from a foundation of self-sufficiency, of Law, of security, that our foundation of faith and life is compassion and commitment to God and the world! This week, we participated in a general election, and now we are formally a year away from electing our next President. Painfully, what we hear from every candidate is a single issue of what is wrong with the world, what is wrong with America. There are problems with the world, there are real, legitimate fears, but I wish we could more often hear an affirmation of what is right and good with our world. Oddly, the last many weeks the Lectionary has not had us following the Gospel of Mark. We began there, but as Jesus came into the city of Jerusalem, he is asked by one group about Divorce, by another group about Taxes. The last few weeks we have taken detours to read the Book of Job and Revelation, when suddenly, we are right back in Mark with a Scribe asking “What is the most important Commandment?” To be a faithful Jew, you had to follow 613 Laws from Scripture, over 300 of which were “Thou Shalt Nots” Whichever Commandment he chooses, Jesus will offend someone, so what do you stand for, what is the greatest commandment? Jesus does something no one had ever done before, he chooses two and describes you cannot do the one without the other! Literally his words are “On these two together hinge all the Laws and the Prophets.” This made my mind leap as I recognized that every door, whether the door to your home, or office or bedroom, the door to a cabinet, all have two or three hinges. One hinge will never work, because the weight of the door causes it to bind, but two or three hinges both maintain the connection and the balance of the door. Tiger Woods and Venus Williams excelled because each have families with the means to allow them, and the commitment to devote them, to using all their heart and mind and balance and intellect and effort to their sport, and they did; but we cannot ignore that each also was fortunate to have talent in these sports. I have tried playing golf and I know that no matter how much time and effort and practice I put into this, while I would get better I would but not be a professional. There is a subtlety to Mark's Gospel, that when asked by a Scribe outside the Temple at Jerusalem: what is the First commandment? Jesus replies with the Hebrew “Shema,” the commandment which set Judaism apart from the rest of the world. “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One and God only will we serve with all our Heart and Soul and Might.” But Jesus changed the words of the Bible! Jesus said “With all your Heart and Soul and Might and Mind!” A simple addition, but the difference that makes all the difference is that Jesus is stating “Faith in God is not only about Religion, following the Laws, YOU have to think.” For the last Century in America there has been argument over Science versus Religion, for the last 500 years there has been debate over which held the answers to truth. Here Jesus names that this cannot be an argument over which has more Heat, but which also provides more Light. In Religion you do not simply burn your sacrifice, focus on your sins, NO instead we need to wrestle with ourselves, to wrestle with God, and our responsibilities for others. There are some passages that are equated to one experience or another in your life, the passage read at your baptism, the passage you read at your Confirmation. This passage from Ruth was read at my parents' Wedding. But theirs was not a traditional wedding of two persons starting life together. At 37, my father was already a widower, with three young children. My Mom had been in love with her High School Sweetheart, and the night of the Wedding Rehearsal, after the rehearsal and before the dinner, the groom came to the realization he could not go through with the wedding. And now these two, with broken, imperfect lives found love and compatibility, but also commitment, that they would support and provide for each other. Ruth is not a passage of young love, but of people with baggage with brokenness making a covenant commitment to each other, and in so doing make a commitment to God which lasted for 50 years. Following on the Book of Judges we can assume this was a time when each person did what they thought best, and only afterward considered what God was calling them to do and turned around. Here there is a famine in the land that drives a family of Israel from the Promised Land, from the land of Milk and Honey, literally from the City of Bethlehem which means The Breadbasket, to immigrate to a foreign land, and live amidst a foreign people in Moab. Part of the question of immigration is not only how to accommodate the number of people, how to provide jobs and homes and a quality of life for them, but also where are they coming from, what happened that has driven them to leave. The setting for this story is that after leaving all that they knew, Elimelech's family is further violated by the sudden death of their father Elimelech. Can you be an orphan as an adult? The sons of the family, Mahlon and Chilion take wives outside their religion, outside their race and ethnic group. Then the sons die. The setting for this book of faith is “What represents the family of Israel, when distant from home, culture, religion, when in a patriarchal culture the father and sons are taken, and the family becomes the Mother without husband or sons?” Naomi feels so broken, she no longer wishes to be called Naomi a name which means sweetness, but instead call me Mara, a name which means “bitterness.” In this culture of denial, where the family of Israel is outside the land of Israel, and without family or the resources to provide for family, Ruth: a woman, a foreigner, not of Israel, makes a vow of commitment. The pain of Ruth's identity, is that we do not even have a direct meaning for her name, we know the opposite of Ruth is to be Ruthless, singleminded, to be committed to destruction, committed to violation, without God; which leads us to understand Ruth as being Committed to rebuilding, committed to healing and wholeness, one who is with God. The beauty of those multiple hinges on a door, is that each provides connection between the door and the frame, but also, each hinge keeps the other in balance, not only from gravity which is a reality, but also from being understood in isolation. How different our commitment to one another, when this is not only a contract between two individuals, but sacred before God. How different our faith, when our beliefs are not only about what is sacred and sinful, what is the Law and means of atonement, but also how does our faith in God, our belief in the Law, in truth, in Freedom effect other people? We live in one of the few cultures in human history who adopted an amendment to our Constitution that there is a freedom of speech. I may at times disagree with a neighbor, I may be offended by their actions or ideas, but I also protect their ability to speak their mind as wrong as they are. A Christian Faith hinged on both unconditional Love of God and unreserved Love of Neighbor is not easy. Our assumption about the Pharisees is that they were committed to God's Law, regardless of how this played out for people. One of the assumptions of our culture today, is if the relationship does not work out we can always divorce, we can always walk away. The difficulty of faith is believing in unconditional Love of God and unreserved Love of the other person. That does not create a Venus Williams or a Tiger Woods, who are singularly focused on being the best at their sport; but rather a Ruth who is committed that “Where you go I will go, your people will be my people, your God is my God, and where you die I will be buried as well.”