Turn Out

She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.  I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” – Ruth 1:20-21

Naomi is usually said to mean pleasant or one who is pleasing, one in whom we delight.  Mara means bitter.  Is there anything more unpleasant than a bitter person?  When bitterness takes root it flowers into poisonous fruit which has the potential to “defile many” (Hebrews 12:15). 

We can understand Naomi’s position.  Her husband had taken her and her two sons into the land of Moab, abandoning their rightful inheritance near the town of Bethlehem because of famine.  Bethlehem means, ironically enough, “the house of bread”, but there was no bread so they left.  Naomi’s two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, after the death of her husband, Elimelech, married women of Moab.  Chilion’s wife was named Orpah, and we do not hear much about her.  She’s seems to have been a good enough person, sensible, pragmatic, and realistic.  She offered to follow her mother-in-law back to Judah but was dissuaded by Naomi’s quite reasonable arguments.

Ruth, on the other hand, has a book of the Bible named for her.  One of her descendants was King David, and when we read the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew, there, too, is the name of Ruth.  She is there because she refused to abandon her mother-in-law.  There was no Social Security, no homes for the aged, no pensions in those days.  An old woman without husband or children might have wished herself to soon depart this hard world.  Naomi could have expected difficulty in surviving apart from the kindness of a few relatives.  She would be a beggar, and a hopeless one.  Her hope for the future had been tied to children.  Hers were gone.  She would have no grandchildren or great-grandchildren.  Her line had failed.

But Ruth, whose name means friendly or loyal friend, goes out into the fields to glean, and her selflessness awakens the gracious nature of Naomi’s prosperous kinsman Boaz who sees to it that Ruth is able to provide for her mother-in-law abundantly.  Ruth’s attitude and love also inspire Naomi.  In seeking to find a way to repay and provide for her daughter-in-law, Naomi stops thinking about herself.

I don’t know about anyone else, but when I get bitter it is because I have become self-absorbed.  I have been treated unfairly, suffered injustice, loss, and defeat.  I always think of Tom Chaney’s line in True Grit after Mattie shoots him, “Everything happens to me. Now I'm shot by a child.”  I feel like that sometimes.  I have all the bad luck. 

It’s not true.  In fact, if there were such a thing as luck, I would have to say I have had extraordinarily good luck.  Naomi, too, had the good fortunate to have one of her sons marry a woman of superlative character and virtue.   Yet while Naomi focused on her own woes, wallowing in self-pity, the full force of this fact was lost on her.  As we were saying yesterday, Naomi comes to herself when she forgets herself and focuses on Ruth’s future.

This is the kingdom way.  If we put our energy and thought and effort into making other people happy, we will be happy.  Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor (Proverbs 22:9).   When we forgive, we find that we have been forgiven.  When we love, we may be surprised to find that we are loved.  When we liberate, we are set free.  When we make peace, we have peace.  And so it goes. 

If I find myself in bondage, in bitterness, joyless, miserable and hopeless, there’s a good chance that I have been too intent on getting my own way and pleasing myself.  The only way that can be fixed is if I am willing to turn away from my fleshly desires and work on making good things happen for those around me. 

There is, of course, one caveat.  You really can’t make anybody else happy.  There are people such that no matter how much you do or how hard you try to please them, they are never going to be pleased.  It’s never going to be good enough; it’s never going to be right or meet their standards or be what they want.  I’ve done it to the letter and had them tell me, “You know that’s not what I meant.”  There’s a tendency to give a two word response, but how they handle it is not my problem.  I just need to keep doing the right thing regardless of the response of others.    

Love and Fear

Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.  Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not!  Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God.  He will come and save you.” – Isaiah 35:3-4

We operate on a continuum with two poles.  A lot of the time, we Christians will say those poles are fear and faith.  So we will say to our fearful and anxious friends – or to my fearful and anxious self – Have faith in God.  I think, though, we can be fooled by the neat alliteration.  Perhaps the other pole -- the non-fear pole, is really love.  When we read those two verses above, we know we ought to buck up and be strong.  Why?  Because God will come and save us.  And why would God do a thing like that?  Because He loves us.

If you look at most of humanity for most of history, it’s not a very pretty picture.  I am fairly convinced of the depravity of human nature.  There’s more proof of it every day.  There are wars and rumors of wars, disasters, oppression, and disease -- it seems, on every side.  Some will say we are surrounded by the wicked. 

I’m reminded of that passage we’ve talked about in 2 Kings 6 where we read of Elisha’s servant terrified by the horses and chariots of the Syrians which had surrounded the city.  Elisha prays that his servant’s eyes be opened, and the man sees that it is really the Syrian army that is surrounded by the Lord’s host – a “…mountain full of horses and chariots of fire …” protecting the man of God. 

Elisha had faith because he knew the love of God.  I was thinking about betrayal and traitors and unfaithfulness last night.  I do not have many good qualities.  I have maybe one:  I am loyal.  I will not turn my back on a friend, even if it means both of us get the crap pounded out of us.  Dante tells us that the deepest circle of hell is reserved for the traitor.  In other words, that is the farthest you can get from God.  So the one Person who will never fail you is God. 

As much as God hates betrayal, so much He loves the traitor.  Right there in the garden when Judas betrayed his Lord with a kiss, Jesus yet called him “friend”.  He would have forgiven Judas the same as He did the rest who fled, and Peter who, in fear, denied Him.  The love of God knows no bounds, and this is the reason we can be strong and be not afraid.  This is the reason we can have faith regardless of the terrors that array themselves against us.  This is the reason we must have faith.        

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.  (1 John 4:18-19)

Dead Reckoning

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. – Romans 6:11

The ESV is a little weak, though correct.  I just like the old KJV word “reckon” better than the more generic “consider”.  It sounds like something Josey Wales might say.  

“They say you’re dead to sin, Wales.”

Spit.  “I reckon so.”

Considering oneself dead to sin makes sense only in light of the preceding statement in verse 2: How can we who died to sin still live in it?  The truth is that reckoning has more in common with accounting than with gunslinging.  When we write down the balance in our account book, it had best be the amount that is actually in the account.  Otherwise we can find ourselves guilty of writing bad checks or perpetrating fraud – unless, of course, we are the federal government.  Come to think of it, “account” would be a better modern word than consider.

We can account ourselves dead to sin because we identify with Christ, or rather He identified with us.  He immersed Himself in human flesh.  He made His obedience and death ours.  We are drawn into and immersed in His death, or, as it is more traditionally put, we are baptized into His death.  This accounting, then, is a matter of recognizing, acknowledging, and operating in accordance with the revealed truth. 

By accounting ourselves dead to sin, we are not like the Little Christian Who Could, huffing, “I think I’m dead.  I think I’m dead.”  We are not by our heroic efforts making a hope or even an uncertainty into a reality.  The illusion is not that we are dead to sin but that we feel the need to sin. 

I suppose I should stop and make the point that when I say “sin” I am just using a shorthand for anything that is perpetrated by the old Adamic nature, anything that is done out of material or animal impulses.  A lot of us have never committed adultery because, frankly, it is a lot of trouble, and we are just too lazy to do it.   Some of us have never committed murder or stolen diamonds only because we are scared of getting caught and winding up in prison; or, we don’t know a trustworthy fence, or because cleaning up the gore after a homicide might cause us to miss “Dancing With The Stars”.  And, really, there is a reason they call it “dead weight”. 

Instead we steal time from our family and friends by shifting our work onto them.  We cut people up with cruel words.  We fill our minds with vicarious adulteries and “romances” and violence via television and the internet.  We manipulate and deceive in order to get our way or not suffer the consequences of our actions.  I could go on, but, as Leonard Cohen says, everybody knows.

If we are indeed dead to the old nature, why do we feel such an obligation to it?  Why does it seem to trap and hold us so much of the time?  Everything is answered in Genesis.  And God blessed them. And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth (Genesis 1:28 – emphasis added).  We are meant to rule.  But equally and reasonably we are meant to be ruled over.  We feel an obligation, a sense of loyalty, and we do not know to what or to Whom we rightfully owe it.  

Did you ever wonder how Lucifer could rule a bunch of fallen angels that were already rebels?  I have.  It looks to me like the devil would be so busy putting down uprising that he would hardly have time to annoy me.  But all of God’s creatures, fallen or not, are built with a sense of loyalty.  This is why we find the traitors punished in the very lowest circle of hell.  No one respects a traitor, not even those who benefit from the betrayal.  Many should be fearful. 

Though Adam has long repented his failure and the transference of his allegiance to the enemy, we followed our father in his disloyalty and rebellion under a new master.  We could not help ourselves.  We were bound to the flesh.  We could not break the curse without becoming accursed.  So it was that God divinely provided an alternative.  I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel (Genesis 3:15).  One would come born of woman but owing fealty to another Father.  He took the curse upon Himself and broke its power.

Now, if we obey only our heavenly Father, no one can account us as traitors.  While many may not desire to have the Lord be their Lord, they do not become rulers themselves but remain subject to the flesh, for all of creation will give allegiance to that which it believes is master -- no matter how base or destructive.  In the midst of a world system that operates on the power of the flesh, we must remind ourselves of the truth regularly.  It is like the illusion of a rising and setting sun.  It is easy to forget that it is a function of the spinning earth.  

… be transformed by the renewal of your mind … (Romans 12:2).