Ordinary 28C Episcopal Reading Ruth 1:1-18 For the love of a Mother-in-Law

Naomi & Her husband Ed moved to Austin, TX, from Norman, OK, in the 1980s because of the oil bust. They bought a house near Austin but they never lost their ties to Oklahoma. Especially Oklahoma Sooners football. Every year they cheered for Oklahoma. They wore red and white when everyone around them wore an ugly color of orange. They were saddened when their two sons, Mark & Charles decided to attend University of Texas instead of University of Oklahoma, but they could do nothing about it. What hurt them more was when their sons married Longhorns. Mark married a University of Texas cheerleader. Ruth did not even own anything red and white. Her car was orange, her shoes were orange, even her apartment was painted orange.

Time passed and Ed had a heart attack and died. Mark & Charles took good care of their mother, along with their wives Orpah and Ruth. One awful day Mark & Charles were driving home from a Red River Shootout game and were hit by a drunk driver. Naomi, Orpah, and Ruth were devastated. Naomi decide she would return to Norman, OK. She managed to sell her home in TX and buy her old family farm outside of Norman. She offered a home to Orpah and Ruth. They are packing the U-Haul when Naomi turns to them both and says, Orpah, dear, Ruth, darling, you don’t have to come with me. Go back to UT get your master’s degrees or maybe meet another man and remarry. Orpah gets in her orange pickup and drives away. Ruth says to Naomi,

"I will go with you to Norman. I will buy a Sooner T shirt. I will learn to listen to Boomer Sooner without choking. I will wave an OU flag. I will paint my car red. I will leave behind my loyalties to Texas and embrace Oklahoma because I love you and want to take care of you."

Ruth. Identity. Who is she now that her husband is dead and she is a foreigner? Will those labels haunt her? Foreign poor widow woman? Yet she loves Naomi. Is love enough to give us identity? Last fall I experienced one of the longest illnesses I have ever had (next to depression anyway). I was diagnosed with mono. Yes, I’ve heard all the jokes, and the only people I kiss were not sick (my husband & 2 daughters) and they never caught it.

Anyway, for a few days I did nothing but sleep. I got up to take my kids to school and pick them up, grab a bite to eat from the fridge, and fell back in bed. I missed so many weekends with my daughters as their daddy took them to the state fair, etc, while I lay at home on the couch with swollen glands, sore throat, and extreme fatigue. Walking from the car to the house wore me out. Walking for 20 minutes put me in bed for 2 hours for months afterward. At one point I look at the ceiling and asked God if I would ever recover. He answered what if you don’t? Then I ask what good am I to my family if all I can do is lay here? A question I’m sure many of the ill ask. God told me all I had to do was love. Loving my husband and daughters was enough. Yes, I did recover. A year later I can finally walk 3 miles at a time without having to sleep for days. I can do aerobics again and stay awake all day (most of the time)…but I find myself much more sensitive to the ill.

Ruth loves Naomi. She lets that define her. The cruel labels of poor foreign widow do not.

We glimpse the Kingdom of God and we find out God’s world is just the opposite of ours. The women have power and baby boys become king.


“What you see around you are people unable to love each other.”Ruth teaches us to love. She left everything to love an old mother-in-law. That is the true loves story here. It is not a young attractive woman finds young attractive man, fall in love, get married & have a baby. It is a cursed foreigner (here I ask you to insert whatever slang term you have heard for foreigners in our land. I won’t say them aloud) the only home she knew and the only god she knew for the love of an old woman and her mother-in-law to boot. God took that and turned it into this story about the ancestor of King David.


An old woman and a cursed foreigner took a huge risk and called a powerful man to use his power to save them. They risked everything. If Boaz would have called upon his servants to kill her, no one in power would have ever missed a foreigner. If Boaz would have refused to listen to her and simply assumed she was there why most women came to the threshing floor, to take advantage of the men’s drunken state in hope of making a few bucks. If he had even called the men’s attention to her by speaking loudly…her reputation would have been ruined forever.


They called up on him to follow the law of God and save them. Reminds me of a group of people that called upon a president to sign a certain bill. JFK signing the civil rights bill. Reminds me of a group of religious leaders who rose up to protest their gov’t’s doubling the gas prices and oppress the people. Reminds me of a group who asked congress to call a mass killing of a certain race what it is: genocide


Many times this asking of people in power to change doesn’t turn out so well. For Ruth it did, but it doesn’t for everyone. Some people--including one of her descendents--end up on the cross when they challenge the powers that be.

The Sounds of Silence, a sixties hit by Simon and Garfunkel, describes people as afraid to love and afraid to hope because of their disconnect with each other. When I preached this sermon on Oct. 14, 2007, I ended with a video of Simon & Garfunkel singing this song...let their words inspire us to love each other in order to change the world: as Ruth did. Click the link to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZGWQauQOAQ

Ordinary 15C Luke 10: 25-37 Small Town Social Justice

Monday, Sept. 24, my 2 daughters & I took a road trip to a state park. After we swam for a while, we drove to a small SW OK town where I went to high school. I only lived there 2 years, but graduated from HS there....had not been back for over 10 years and neither one of my children had ever been there. It is a town of less than 2000, so there is not much site-seeing to be done...


After a brief hike cut short by the sound of a rattler in the grass, we got in the car and drove the 10 miles to M------. If you have never driven in SW Oklahoma or West Texas you cannot imagine what it is like to drive where the land is flat, flat, flat, and you see so much sky you wonder why God made hills. We are about to M----- with the music cranked as high as it will go and my 7-year-old says, "Mommy, I just heard a pop." I said, "So." She said, "Mommy the car is shaking." I still didn't notice anything...then I heard this awful sound...and well, turned off the radio. Blowout. We are in the middle of NOWHERE. M---- is about 2 miles away...so I drove at 25 with blinkers on until we got to town. Pulled off in a parking lot and got out to look at my shredded tire. I started digging in the back of the station wagon for the jack and spare. A loud, old 68 Ford pickup with 2 guys in the truckbed rattles by. I see them turn around. The 2 guys in back jump out before the truck stops. They almost have the tire off the car before the hit the ground.

"Need some help?"

"Sure. But my jack is sorely lacking."
"Don't worry. We can lift the car if we can't get the jack to work. We ain't afraid of work."
The two guys bent over the tire are 20-somethings...wiry, tall, heads shaved, wearing nothing but boots and jeans. Tattoos cover their heads, faces, backs, chests, arms, hands....Their dad and older brother stood back and watched If this had been the city I might have been scared, but I figure if I started talking we'd figure out we went to high school together.
"I'm Kelly."

"We're the _______." They say in unison. I vaguely remember the family name. I ask them if the remember my brother.
The guy behind the truck. "Yeah I remember him."
They have the tire changed by now, and tell me where I can get a decent used tire for a fair price. They jump back in the pickup and tell me to follow them to the tire shop. So I do. Tattoed arms waving, they point to a tiny auto shop.

I don't know how you remember high school, but there are certain families that are labeled in small towns as losers. I don't know how it started with this family, but they had a certain label. It may have been something their great-grandpa did...but teachers and kids at school have a certain idea of a kid with a certain last name. Sometimes the kid chooses to live up to it, sometimes they try hard to overcome it.

Here I am in a tiny farming town in southwest Oklahoma living inside the parable of the Good Samaritan. Believe me, no one would have guessed the dust covered 90 Ford Taurus I drive is the car of a college professor. At the moment I looked like an Okie (I do say it proud, Vince Gill, but I did look like one). My station wagon is loaded down with junk cause we have been on a day trip at the lake. My 2 kids & I have just been swimming and digging clay. I had my hatch up and junk spread around on the gravel, just trying to dig for the spare tire. Did cars drive by and see my distress? Oh yes. Who was it that stopped? The guys that got beat up in school because their family was labeled. I have never seen myself in the parable as the one on the side of the road....

Ordinary 19 C Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 What is a hero?

My perspective on heroes changed as I lay flat on my back once again looking at the ceiling of an ambulance. One hero inserted an IV into my left hand as the other hero attached the heart monitor. The first hero kept assuring me I was stable now and to try to relax as I shook with horrific shock. I knew I must be stable when I did not hear the sirens as we drove down the country road at 70 miles an hour. Yes, they were speeding, but I must be ok. I'm breathing, my heart is beating, I must be OK.

Earlier that evening as I worked at church camp on the Oklahoma/Texas border I had made the stupid mistake of wearing flip-flops in the grass. I KNEW I was allergic to fire ant stings since I had another ambulance ride 3 years previous due to a tiny sting. Why had I done something so idiotic???

As I felt my heart race and my face swell, my daughter saying, "Mommy, use your shot!" (EpiPen), she & I ran to the camp nurse instead. Let's just say there was a horrible mistake and the EpiPen did not go into my leg. I fell on the floor and told Lisa (a close friend) to call 911. Someone ran to get my husband.

Everything is foggy from then on until I got in the ambulance. For 10 minutes I faded in and out...never quite losing consciousness but "zoning" and not able to speak or move. Lisa and her husband, Doug, took control and found an inhaler and a nebulizer to try to keep me breathing.

Lisa and Doug are heroes. Dwight, the camp director and a long time friend, is a hero. I heard his voice through the haze...and he drove my husband to the hospital and drove us both back to camp...I heard the prayers of the camp director through the haze as 200 campers were in chapel and knew what was going on in the back of the room....Yes, a little ant can cause such a fiasco.

Hebrews 11 is about heroes of the faith. When Abraham set out on his journey he was simply obeying God and not planning to be a hero. When Sarah gave birth to Isaac she simply did what mothers do...love their sons. None of these biblical heroes set out to be famous. They did the task in front--sometimes with protests (Moses)...yet finally obeying God...and the community of faith remembers the journey they took.

Lisa, Doug, Dwight, Chris, Shane, you are heroes.