Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“But Ruth said, ‘Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, October 15, 2023
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: The steadfast love of God works in two ways.
In the 2022 sci-fi film Everything Everywhere All At Once, the main character, Evelyn Quan Wang, has the ability to jump between universes. Each one is differentiated by a certain series of decisions she made in her life. For example, she is a professional singer in one universe. In another, she is a martial arts master. In yet another universe, she leaves her home against her father’s wishes when she is very young to be with her true love. And in another, she decides to call off the relationship and stay with her family, instead. Even some smaller decisions shape the trajectory of each of these universes, leaving Evelyn with an almost infinite expansion of realities to and from which she can transition when the need arises.
As viewers, we expect her to choose to stay in one of the more glamorous universes where the pressures of her everyday life can’t get to her. After all, when the movie opens, she is on the brink of divorce, she is caring for her sick father who makes her feel inadequate all of the time and she has a strained relationship with her young adult daughter. You would think that, if she could escape any or all of that, she would. But the love she feels for her daughter is so powerful that, even after seeing so many other lives she could be leading, Evelyn chooses to stay exactly where she is. She can’t imagine spending any amount of time without her daughter, whatever the nature or status of their connection. The love that Evelyn experienced in knowing her daughter literally transformed her and gave her the framework for every other piece of her existence.
That’s the kind of love that our text shows us between Naomi and Ruth. An enduring love. A love so deep that it drives decisions without us even thinking. In this story, Ruth had every reason to leave Naomi after her husband died. For one thing, she was a Moabite—not the same people as her husband’s people—and you might think she would want to grieve and rebuild among the people who had raised her. For another, we assume that Ruth was still young enough to remarry and secure her social status as well as her financial well-being. Lingering for any amount of time with her late husband’s family could hurt her chances of both. And perhaps most important of all, Naomi was explicitly giving Ruth permission to leave.
Ruth found herself with a choice to make between multiple universes. Multiple realities. She chose Naomi, and she promised to keep choosing Naomi. Through thick and thin, in life and in death.
Our promise today is twofold: first, that this brand of love—steadfast love or hesed, in Hebrew—is a kind of love that God inspires in every one of us. In God, we have a divine example of love that models for us how to live faithful lives, transformed. Think of the classic, beloved Sunday School song: “We love, because God first loved us.” We are so moved by God that we are inspired to love like God. But second, the inverse is also true! God is so moved by us that God chooses this universe—this reality—for dwelling and working and listening and delighting and acting. God chooses us. Wherever we go, wherever we lodge, whomever our people, as we live and as we die. God is inspired by us. God is beholden to us. And God wouldn’t have it any other way.
