May God our Father, who has brought us together again this morning to feed us by His Word and Sacrament, be praised! Our readings today direct us towards love.
Character is defined by the Merriam Webster dictonary as “the complex of mental and ethical traits marking and often individualizing a person, a group or nation”. Character can therefore be understood as the pattern of behavior or personality found in an individual or a group. For our purpose this morning, we shall deal with the Individual, bearing in mind that a group cannot be without individuals.
One’s character is related to how reliable and honest one is. If someone is of good character, they are reliable and honest. If they are of bad character, they are unreliable and dishonest. However, character is mostly used in a positive way to mean qualities that are admirable, interesting and unusual.
Although not uniquely a Christian term, character is a true Christian quality which is sadly lacking in much of the Church and in many Christian circles today. How a Christian deals with the circumstances of their life speaks of their character. A crisis does not necessarily make character but reveals it. Hardships, difficulties or adversity in our lives of faith at times bring us to a place of choice where we have to choose either character or compromise. Jesus was and still is the perfect example of character and every time we choose character, we grow more into the image of Christ.
Character is more than talk. Anyone can, and in fact most if not all – thugs included – do say that they are persons of integrity, but action is the true mark. Character is a choice. It is not genetically passed but is chosen by an individual. Character helps us live for others and not just for the self. Character in a Christian understanding is therefore “who you are when no one is looking”. The reason I am putting us through this elaborate description is that we encounter a woman of Character in our first reading this morning who helps us understand what true love with no strings attached is; a love that helps us understand what Christ’s summary of the law and prophets as loving God and neighbor is all about.
We heard our first reading today from the Book of Ruth, a very short book that starts with situating the story at the times the Judges were ruling and ends with the genealogy of David. I highly recommend you read this book for your Lectio Divina or Bible study this week so that you can see how God works in situations, even bad or the most desperate ones, for the good of those involved and through them for humanity. You will see how God writes straight in crooked lines!
Now, the time the Judges were ruling was a time of lawlessness in Israel and every now and then Israel was dominated by foreign powers that made life extremely difficult. The story of Naomi and her husband Elimelek happens during this period and it is a tragic story. They move from Israel because of a famine and head to the land of Moab where they settle as refugees. While there, the husband and her two sons, Mahlon and Kilion, die leaving Naomi a widow with two widowed foreign daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, whom the sons had married in this foreign land. Imagine a once-thriving family of a woman and 3 men reduced to a house of 3 widows, none related to the other by blood because they are all childless. To make matters worse, this is happening in a society where fathers, husbands, sons or male relatives provided family security and hence the three women are left in a hopeless and very dangerous situation.
You may have reached a point in your life where you have endured it all and seem to have nothing to look forward to or be thankful for. Life is difficult, tragedy may have struck you as it had Naomi. Be encouraged, because God walks with you even in times of tragedy as He did with Naomi. He is able to turn your tragedy into triumph. He is able to turn your mourning into gladness, your sorrow to joy, and your faint spirit into a heart of praise.
After conditions improve in Israel, Naomi decided to return to her town, a return that will be shameful. She encourages her two daughters-in-law to return to their homes, because she felt they might fare better there since they would have a chance to start over. They seem to have had a very strong bond, because the two younger women burst out in tears.
Ruth, a woman of character, however seems to be so much attached to Naomi that she would rather be a foreigner herself than be separated from her mother-in-law. I am sincerely impressed by these two women. I come from a culture where say 95% of mothers-in-law don’t see eye to eye with their daughters-in-law, and the more I travel the world the more I realize that this situation is not unique to my culture. There is something that just doesn’t go between them and maybe the mothers-in-law or daughters-in-law in attendance today can educate us during coffee hour what usually causes the beef!
It is in this setting or background of utter hopelessness that Ruth uttered her very familiar and amazing speech… “Do not force me to abandon you or turn away from following you. Where you go, I will go. Where you live I will live. Your people shall be my people and your God shall be my God. Where you die, I will die and be buried. May God do worse to me and even more, if even death separates me from you!” (Ruth 1:16-17)
This speech has been ‘hijacked’ as usual by churches and even by seculars for use at weddings and I believe that its continued use either in speech or song has watered down its intensity, for it is a speech of immense weight.
Ruth shows an immense capacity to love by offering her seemingly uninterested mother-in-law her present, her future and even her eternity, without giving reasons or even an attempt to justify it. Her allegiance to Naomi, a hopelessly poor widow and refugee, and to the God of Israel, is unshakable and unto death. Ruth made her choice to love no matter what. She chose to love the one true God and His people over her own gods and people. She could be said to have tasted salvation and can claim to be born again! Despite the tragedies and turbulence in her life, despite the trials and things that did not make sense, she was willing to give up everything and move into the unknown, armed only with the hope and trust that God knows best. That too is our call this morning; to give up everything, to leave everything behind for the love of Christ.
Ruth’s is the kind of love that Jesus is speaking about in our Gospel passage this morning when he summarizes The Law and The Prophets as love for God and neighbor. He presents us with the lesson that we should have the freedom not to attempt to be our own gods but to be worshippers of the true God and also to live in freedom to love the other as God through him has loved us in selfless love.
In this Gospel passage, Jesus is answering a question from a Scribe, who were experts in the Jewish law of the day. He therefore quotes for him from the Book of Deuteronomy, a verse that every devout Jew would recite every morning and evening. He reminds the scribe and us this morning not only that we are commanded to love, but also the One we are supposed to love, the one and only true God. If we are to love this God well and faithfully, then we must know Him. We must occupy ourselves with knowing who He is and what He has said or requires of us. We are therefore being called to love God with all that we are. Heart, mind, soul and strength; our entire being. This involves our emotions, thoughts, actions, intellect and body.
Jesus goes on to extend the call of loving God to loving our neighbor. This is significant in the sense that our true love of God can only be seen through our love of neighbor. The letter of 1 John 4:20 tells us that those who love God supremely also love others sincerely. Our love should be genuine and directed to all, however painful it gets at times.
A most important point of this passage of the gospel today that is easy to overlook comes at the end. The Scribe who asked this question wasn’t surprised at all by Jesus’ answer and seemed to agree with him. He seemed to know the law and seemingly went a long way in trying to keep it. However, keeping the law is not a guarantee for anyone to enter the Kingdom of God. The only way to enter the Kingdom of God is through Jesus Christ. That is why Jesus tells the scribe that he is not far from the Kingdom of God. He was close but not in it! He was yet to believe in Jesus, the source of salvation, the way, the truth and the life.
My brothers and sisters, we are called this morning to love God and neighbor and by so doing we will have fulfilled the law. However, we have also been reminded that knowing the law and fulfilling it may bring us near to the Kingdom but not necessarily into the Kingdom. Jesus died to bring us into the Kingdom not near to the Kingdom. Let us then strive to be men and women of character by choosing to encounter Christ in person and trusting in him despite our circumstances so that we can form a relationship with him that will lead us into the Kingdom of God for which we were created and for which all our striving should be geared toward. Let us heed the advice from the passage from the letter to the Hebrews that we heard this morning which clearly tells us that only the Blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, can purge our conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14)! Therefore nothing else, good works and all, really matters at the end of it all if they do not emanate from a personal encounter and a relationship with the Saving Lord. For those who have not had this encounter or are yet to make the commitment, Come! The time is right now and the place is right here! For those who have had the encounter and made the commitment, renew it, strengthen it, and live it more intentionally and more intensely.
Character or Compromise. Simple but very profound truth to consider in the tough times. Thank you.
Thank you, Luc, for reinforcing the Truth that God is with us in even the most dire situations, such being the situation we here in the States are now facing after our presidential election this week. I want to keep open to experience where God will break through and transform our lives during the next four years – convinced that there is a reason for these results that will be a both a benefit and a blessing in ways we cannot perceive now. Please pray for us.