Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

Ruth 1:1-18: "The Book of Ruth," says Kathleen Robertson Farmer (NIB, p 891), "contains an artistically constructed, kaleidoscopic narrative that is more like an extended parable than an historical report. The story is told with extreme narrative economy (a style that includes deliberate gaps or silences that leave many details unexplained) and with a characteristic disregard for historical or political details. The narrator uses symbolic names (such as the names of Naomi's sons, signifying in advance that they are not long for this world), word play (such as puns and double entendres), and the purposeful repetition of words and phrases to highlight themes and underline ambiguities. The 'sophisticated literary artistry of the author' is marked by 'the conscious intentional employment of multiple levels of meaning in the narrative.'"

We can begin with some of the names that are important in the book:

"Moab" is the name of a country that was an historic enemy of Israel and Judah. The enmity had begun when Israel was in the desert on the way to the Land of Promise. Israelite legend declared that the Moabites had begun in an incestuous union. In this book as in other references, Moab seems to stand for everything that is evil and destructive in life.

"Bethlehem" is the "House of Bread." The irony of the story is that "The House of Bread" is a place of famine, from which the family of Elimelech must flee in search of food.

"Elimelech," husband of Naomi, is a compound name. "Eli" means "my god," and "melek" means "king." It is a confessional name, "My God is my king."

The names of the two sons of Elimelech are Mahlon and Chilion. "Mahlon" sounds like the name of a disease that affected the Egyptians before the exodus. "Chilion" seems to come from the root that means "to perish." Both names speak of tragedy and early death.

Naomi, an Israelite, means "Pleasant." Naomi is the central character of the book and the person in the narrative who most closely mirrors the attitudes and experiences of the people of God.

"Ruth," a Moabite woman, has a name which is an apparent pun recalling the sounds of the words for "woman friend" (as in Exod 11:2) or "full-to-overflowing" (as in Ps 23:5).

The story revolves on the role of women in ancient Israel. Naomi had been widowed in mid-life. She had two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, both of whom had married Moabite women. Both the sons have died, and the three widows are left to ponder their future. Naomi suggests that they should return to their ancestral homes and begin a new life. Levirite marriage (marriage to the surviving sons of a family, whose purpose is to bear a son to take the place of the deceased sons) is impossible for them, for Naomi has no more sons for them, and even if she were to remarry she is too old to bear sons that the women might marry. Orpah took her advice. The women wept and kissed, but Orpah left Naomi. Ruth refused to leave her mother-in-law, and the words she used were some of the noblest in all scripture and certainly the center-piece of the Book of Ruth:

"Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you. Where you go, I go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people are my people, your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if even death parts me from you."

Psalm 146: Praise the Lord, says the psalmist, and such a Lord is the God that we praise. Verses six through ten tell us of God as the psalmist knows him.

- God made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is them

- God keeps faith with his people forever

- God executes judgment for the oppressed

- God gives food to the hungry

- God sets the prisoners free

- God opens the eyes of the blind

- God lifts up those who are bowed down

- God loves the righteous

- God watches over the sojourners

- God upholds the widows and the fatherless

- God brings to ruin the way of the wicked

- God will reign forever, to all generations.

This is an especially important psalm, J. Clinton McCann Jr., tells us in the New Interpreters Bible, Volume 4. It introduces the final collection of the psalter. Like Psalms 1 through 3, it summarizes the fundamental message of the psalter. "Like Psalm 1," said McCann, p 1264, "Psalm 146 pronounces 'happy' those whose lives are completely oriented to God. Like Psalm 2, Psalm 146 asserts God's sovereign claim on the world. Like Psalm 3, Psalm 146 makes it clear that God's help does not mean a carefree existence for the righteous," but the righteous whom God aids are the oppressed and the hungry and the imprisoned. Happiness is not the absence of pain and trouble but the presence of a God who cares about human hurt and who acts on behalf of the afflicted and the oppressed.

McCann also gives the best definition of "praise" that I have found. Praise is the offering of the whole self to God in worship and work. The antithesis of praising God is trusting oneself or trusting human agencies and institutions in place of God. Therefore, sings the psalmist, "I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have being."

Hebrews 9:11-14: As the passage opens, we are introduced to Christ, "the high priest of the good things that have come." This passage is the climax of what has been said in Hebrews about Jesus the high priest. According to Hebrews, Jesus is priest because he fulfills all the requirements for priesthood, and indeed he surpasses them.

Christ fulfills the requirements in many ways: by his human experience ensuring sympathy with human temptations and sufferings (2:14-18; 4:15 ff.; 5:1-3); by being called of God to this ministry (5:4 ff.); by his adequate offering of himself (vss. 12. 14, 22; 2:17; 8:3); and by bearing this offering through the curtain into the Holy of Holies (vs. 12; 10:19-20). Every priest was expected to do these things and could only do them when he was qualified by the guild of priests to do so.

Christ surpasses the qualifications for priesthood for many reasons: because his priesthood is established by God's oath (7:20-22); because he is sinless (1:15; 7:26), whereas other priests sin; because he remains a priest forever (7:23- 24, 28), whereas other priests have the office for a specified period of time; because he is priest in the heavenly sanctuary where he continues permanently (vss. 11 ff, 24; 8:1-6), not an earthly sanctuary such as the priests of Jerusalem serve in; because his sacrifice is "once for all" (7:27; 10:2, 11-14), not continually repeated as are sacrifices at the temple; and because his sacrifice cleanses the conscience (vss. 9-14), whereas questions are raised about the ability of an animal sacrifice to cleanse the human heart. What Christ as high priest has accomplished is clear. His sacrifice means the end of the old sacrificial system, and it brings with it the assurance, to those who hold fast to their confession, of unhindered access to God.

Let's pick up as many of these obscure phrases as we can and try to understand their meaning in their own place and time.

"Tent" - This was the sanctuary in which the Hebrews worshiped God while they were traveling from Egypt to the Promised Land. Because of the aspects of "deliverance" associated with this wilderness journey, Jesus the high priest is seen as ministering not in a temple but in a "greater and perfect tent." This tent was not made with human hands, as was the tent (called the "tent of meeting") in the wilderness but was a "tent" that was "not of this creation"; in other words, it was made beyond space and time by God himself.

"He entered once for all into the Holy Place." "Once for all" is one of the most important words in Hebrews (it is all one word, hapax, in Greek). Jesus comes "once for all." Jesus dies "once for all." The spirit returns "once for all." What Jesus did is unique and does not need to be repeated. But what he did effects us all and not merely himself. "The Holy Place" is different from "the greater and perfect tent." Most likely it refers to the dwelling of God, which itself is beyond space and time.

"The blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of the heifer" refers to the means of sacrifice used by the priests. Goats, sheep, lambs, calves, young bulls, oxen, mature bulls were all used as animal sacrifices. "The sprinkling of the ashes of the heifer" refers to a sacred practice of using ashes from a red heifer to mix with the ashes of the other sacrificed animals. These ashes were necessary if the sacrifice was to be effective.

"How much more": This is a specific way of understanding the work of Christ. The best in human society is presented. Then we ask "how much more" does God in Christ do for us than even the best that human society has to offer. In this instance, it is the whole sacrificial system that is at stake. If through these sacrifices a human being is purified, how much more will the sacrifice of Christ effect us all?

"The eternal spirit." This phrase suggests that, in the sacrifice of Christ, the eternal spirit took the place held by the continual fire that burned in the temple at Jerusalem. The eternal fire was to remind Israelites of God's eternal presence. Now it is the spirit of Jesus Christ that brings us God's eternal presence. The fire of his spirit had replaced the fire in the temple as our messenger from God.

"Blood of Christ" refers both to the blood Christ spilled in the crucifixion and also to the blood as the vital substance of life. The physiology of the day understood that when the body no longer contained blood, then its life-giving substance was gone and death was at hand.

"A death has occurred that redeems them (us) from the transgressions under the first covenant." The "first covenant" was given by God to Israel through Moses on the mountain. But the people had sinned many times since then. There was an abundance of personal sins. There was also the rebellion in the wilderness, when the people built a golden calf to worship. There were the sins of Israel that caused that nation to be destroyed and scattered, and the sins of Judah that caused that nation to be taken into exile. Only a meaningful death could bring an end to these sins committed under the first covenant. That meaningful death had taken place when Jesus died on the cross, and a second covenant, a second chance, was offered to all people through him.

In early Israel a distinction was made between two kinds of sacrifices. Covenant sacrifices were offered to renew union with God. Expiatory sacrifices were made to remove sin. By the time of the writing of Hebrews, this distinction no longer existed. The result is that Hebrews regards the death of Christ both as a covenant sacrifice and as expiatory sacrifice. It is the death of Christ which makes the New Covenant really new. It puts the relationship between God and ourselves on a totally new footing.

"Mediator": The problem of sacrifice is to unite two entities which have hitherto been separate and independent of each other. This can only be done by uniting them both to a third party.

This third party was usually an animal sacrifice; the animal gave its life so that the others may be identified with it. The blood -- the vital principle of the animal -- was passed to both parties to the covenant, and they were united by it. The function of the animal was not that it was sacrificed to God but that it mediated between God and humanity -- the intervening third in whom the two parties should find their ultimate unity.

God stands apart from us. We are separated from God and one another by the fact of human sin. If God and ourselves are to be brought together in a moral unit, there must be a third party, whose life shall be given, in whose life-blood both can be absorbed. Jesus was the one who acted as mediator between God and us.

While the language of this passage is obscure to us, its point is not. Through Jesus Christ we are made right with God, and we receive the inheritance that God promised to us through him.

Mark 12:28-34: It certainly needed simplifying, that Law of Moses. According to George Buttrick (IB2:), the law of Moses in Jesus' day contained 613 commandments, 365 negative and 248 positive. So a scribe, a student of the law, asked Jesus, "Which is the great commandment of the law?" Jesus brought two commandments together, one from Deuteronomy (6:5) and the other from Leviticus (19:18). "This is the first," he says. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. . . . You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There are no other commandments greater than these."

Jesus gives much more emphasis to the first of these. We have to put all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength into loving the Lord. Our hearts: the capacity for affection that we have. Our souls, our capacity for friendship with one another. Our minds, the ability to discern truth from falsehood, reality from illusion, the genuine from the imitation. Our strength, all the resources we can bring into focus. And all this in terms of our relationship to God: we are to bring to God our capacity to respond to God's affection for us, our capacity to relate to God, our ability to discern truly what God is doing in our lives and not to be confused by the actions of something else that tries to take the place that God only has in our lives. The greatest effort of our life, says Jesus, is to devote ourselves to loving God. Everything else falls in place behind this.

We are also to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. That is a large order. Think of the time and effort we put into loving ourselves. We make certain that we are fully educated, fed, clothed, and sheltered. We worry about what will happen to us in our old age. We concern ourselves with our children and grandchildren. We put immense effort and large sums of money into loving ourselves. Suppose we loved others as we love ourselves. We would have to do the same for them. Jesus found just the commandments to describe what is needed in this world. We need to love God with heart, soul, and mind. We need to love our neighbor to the same degree that we love ourselves.

The scribe agreed with Jesus: "You are right, Teacher," he said. "You have truly said that God is one, and that there is no other than God. And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." Jesus responded to this scribe with wholehearted affection. "You are not far from the kingdom of God," he said to him.