Commitment matters

Scripture: Ruth 2

             Ruth is a terrible book for Lutherans because everything turns out so darn well. I looked and couldn’t find a single mention of sin, the devil, or judgment, so frankly I didn’t know what to preach on. The more “nice” I found Ruth to be, the more suspicious I became that I was reading it wrong. Years of seminary training and bland, tasteless Scandinavian food have taught me to treat all scripture with humility and reverence by finding the part of it that makes me feel like a terrible person long before I look for the hope that my terrible-ness is not the last word. But I’m hard pressed to do that with Ruth, because everybody acts like they’re supposed to. There’s not a bad guy in the bunch. The laws are followed. Ruth and Naomi find a nice, good life. Everyone’s happy.

            …except for me because I don’t have a sermon.

            Seriously, where’s the hard edge in this story? Where’s the part that matters for you and me today when we face the real hard struggles that we face? What happens when it doesn’t work out so swimmingly for us as it did for Ruth and Naomi?

            You know, the more I think about it, the more certain I am that those are absolutely the wrong questions to ask of Ruth. Those are questions that can only be asked by a person who is sitting in a comfortable chair, worried about the bigger picture. This is not a story about how the world is all of the time—that’s where us big-headed seminary-educated theologians get caught up—this is a story about Ruth and Naomi, loyalty and devotion. We big-heads are so focused on big-picture conceptions of God that we find ourselves unable to actually enjoy a story that is encouraging and has a good moral center. We are deeply suspicious of miracles because God sometimes doesn’t do that. And all the while we miss God actually doing things in the world because that God doesn’t fit into our nice, convenient, vacuum packed boxes in which we like God to live.

            If Ruth does have any larger story to tell us it is that God is going to bless beyond our expectations. When it comes down it, there are only three ways that God could possibly interact with the world: God could control everything, which means we don’t actually have free will. God could also control nothing, which would mean we can pretty much give up on prayer. Or God could intercede occasionally—enough to change the world in some cases but not enough to make faith irrelevant. Since the first possibility is out the window given the obvious brokenness of our world, we can either believe that God controls nothing or that God intercedes some of the time. And my fear for us big-headed seminary-trained thinkers is that we’ve decided that it’s better for God to do nothing. It’s better, in short, for Ruth and Naomi’s story to be a story of chance, because then we don’t have to deal with questions of why God blessed Ruth but not so-and-so other person we know.

            All of this is at least stupid but very possibly blasphemous. We don’t get to decide how God intercedes or doesn’t. All those words that don’t show up in Ruth—sin, judgment, and the like—those are our troubles that we bring to stories like this. Meanwhile, the story of Ruth and Boaz in chapter 2 lifts up loyalty and devotion and commitment—things largely lacking in our world; things that we could probably stand to hear more often from our religious leaders in contexts other than confirmation and marriage. This is a story we need to hear, because, in spite of what may come, loyalty and devotion and commitment are things worth pursuing. They are things worth teaching our children and fighting for when they are challenged by others.

            Commitment is scary. You are all afraid of commitment. You know how I know? Because you all have schedules, and plenty of you have them on your fancy phones, and so, when an event comes up, you first check your schedule, and then your schedule fills up, and you become “busy.” Then, your response to every invite becomes “Maybe.” My generation of college students invented the “Facebook maybe” as a way of saying “No” politely, and it meant then (as it still does now) that it’s possible I will come unless something better comes up. Something better might be a hot date, or it might be a night of watching Netflix on the couch, because we’re just so tired. There are so many possibilities; it’s so hard to commit to any one of them.

            Commitment is tough when you have so much potential. I hate this word: potential. Most of the time we mean it positively when we say that so-and-so has so much potential, but the reality of potential is that it means that so-and-so it going to fail a lot and probably do so spectacularly. When you say that a person has a lot of potential you may think you’re being nice, but you’re also saying that they’re going to fail often. To measure somebody by what they could possibly achieve if they did their absolute best might seem like a great way to challenge them to do better, but it also means they can never exceed expectations. Part of the reason that Ruth is in the Bible is because of how little potential she has, and how she exceeds every expectation for her.

Ruth and Naomi have no potential at the end of chapter 1. Ruth has made this incredible commitment to Naomi that she will go wherever she goes, stay wherever she stays, and even die wherever she dies, which means she has given up all of her potential for the sake of her mother-in-law. She is now yoked to a family with no future. That’s a kind of loyalty and devotion that is lacking in a world that lauds following your dreams and chasing your potential. The simple reality is that, in spite of your attempts to shoot for the moon, you will inevitably land some place much less exciting. If the goal of life is to be lauded for reaching our fullest potential, then we have good reason to be anxious.

Meanwhile, Ruth finds a meaningful life—and a family—precisely because she committed to something that seemed to limit her potential. It did, but it also gave her life purpose. Too many of us drift through life afraid of making commitments, and so we commit to nothing other than finishing our Netflix queue. We’re busy—I know—but are we busy with things we have committed ourselves to, or are we busy trying endlessly to fulfill potential—whether it be our potential or the potential of our children?

            If Ruth has any advice for us today it is simply this: commitment matters. In fact, it matters a good deal. There are no guarantees if you commit that things will work our just as you hoped, but if you never commit—if you always bank on your potential and keep your options open—then I can guarantee that you will never get there. Ruth’s choice to stay with Naomi is an affront to her potential. It’s about loyalty and devotion—things we always seem to undervalue—and it’s that loyalty and devotion that makes all the difference.

Amen.