Jack McKinney
Texts: Ruth 3:1-5,
An Immigrant’s Story
As a few of
you may have heard, there was an election in this country on Tuesday. Depending
on whom you ask, the Democrats taking control of the Congress is a wonderful
thing or a terrible thing; it signals a sea change in American politics or it means very little at all; it suggests the end of the
conservative revolution of the last two decades or it is, in some strange way,
a validation of that revolution. You see, elections, like athletic contests,
allow two people to view the exact same thing and have opposite reactions. Kind of like modern art.
Interestingly,
there are stories in the Bible that produce a similar divergence of opinion
when read, and our text from Ruth is one of those stories. Let me explain what
I mean.
As a young
person the pattern in our family was to go to church on Sunday and then often
go out to eat afterwards. I recall many a Sunday lunch when the adults around
the table made generic comments about the sermon that day. There was gentle
approval or disapproval of what the preacher said, but rarely much more than
that. However, I recall one time when a feminist scholar from the seminary came
to our church and spoke about the book of Ruth. The lunch conversation that day
was radically different. The women around the table spoke with excitement as
they reflected on the words of the professor and how she had lifted up the role
of the women in the story. It was as though these women had been waiting all of
their lives to hear a strong word about a female character in the Bible, and
for the first time that Sunday it happened. I can recall leaving lunch that day
curious about this book in the Bible I knew nothing about simply because of the
passionate response of those women.
Now flash
forward several decades and a conversation I had with some women last week
about the passage from Ruth that has been read this morning. When I mentioned I
was planning to preach from this text, two of the women, upon reading it, both
said the same thing. They said it made them feel sick to their stomachs. As I
listened to their disgusted reaction to Ruth, part of my mind drifted back to
that lunch years ago when a table full of women talked excitedly about the very
same story. And in that instant a voice came to me that said, “Jack, if you
were a smart man you would drop this like a hot potato and preach something
else.” But, alas, I am not a smart man, so here we go.
The book of
Ruth is either a heroic story about women, or a denigration of women, because
the story itself is filled with heroism and horrors. The two central characters
in the story are Naomi and Ruth. Naomi is an Israelite woman who we are told in
chapter one had to move with her husband out of
And with
that brief sketch you may already be able to see why this book produces such
varying reactions. On the one hand, this is one of the only books in the Bible
that is named for a woman and whose main characters are women. Ruth
demonstrates courage when she breaks out of the patriarchal expectations of the
day and refuses to go home to look for a husband to take care of her. She wants
to remain with her mother-in-law and seek survival under her guidance. On the
other hand, the whole story paints a detailed picture of just how subordinate
women were to men in that world. The death of the men in the story puts the
women in great peril because women were viewed as little more than property
without a man to provide for them. When Naomi and Ruth return to
But here’s
the thing. Regardless of whether you think this story is good news or bad news
for women, it is at its heart a story about an immigrant. Ruth is a foreigner
and she must deal with the same challenges all foreigners in all lands at all
times must face: different language, different customs, even a different god.
And in the midst of all that difference Ruth has to figure out a way just to
stay alive. And the truth of the matter is that if you are an immigrant,
whether 3,000 years ago or today, things are a lot harder if you are a woman.
Choices are fewer, abuse is more common, and destitute women in a foreign land
sometimes face choices no person should have to make. So, before we judge Ruth
too harshly for her choices, we should recognize she really doesn’t have any.
As the
You,
whoever you are!...
All
you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe,
All
you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!
All
you of centuries hence when you listen to me!
All
you each and everywhere whom I specify not, but include just the same!
Health
to you! Good will to you all, from me and
Each
of us is inevitable,
Each
of us is limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth,
Each
of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth,
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.
Where has that spirit gone in this country? I think we all
know. Charity toward the immigrant has been sacrificed in the name of national
security.
Every time
this country goes through an intense period of immigration, and we have had
several in our history, the same basic message gets recycled. That message is
that the influx of foreigners is costing us too much. In previous generations
the cost was calculated in terms of jobs or land. But now the message we are
hearing repeatedly is that the flow of immigrants into our nation is a security
risk. Never mind the fact that the hijackers of 9/11 were in our country
legally. Never mind that the comforts of our lifestyle are born on the backs of
immigrants willing to do work we will not do. Never mind that Walt Whitman
reminds us that “each of us is here as divinely as any is here.” All we are
told is that we must keep them out, we must send them back, we must keep
ourselves safe by building 700-mile fences and placing National Guard troops on
our borders. And the truth of the Psalmist who says “Unless God guards the
city,
the
guard keeps watch in vain,” (Psalm 127) falls on deaf ears. Maybe we should
consider that the real cost in this debate is that our great nation of
immigrants, a nation that has been a beacon to the world, is in danger of
becoming something very different. Our fears are threatening to extinguish the
beacon that is
So, how do
we reshape the current debate about immigration in this country and interject a
more compassionate and biblical perspective? We do it by shifting the focus
from what it costs us to have immigrants in our midst to what we gain by
remaining a generous and open society. And the best way to regain that gracious
attitude is to hear the stories of immigrants. I read such a story this week
that came out of Casa Juan Diego, a Catholic Worker house in
And I ask us, is that the kind of
person we need to be protected from? Is this a person who will cost us too much
to have in our country? Or is this the kind of courageous and compassionate
person we need in our midst? We must keep hearing the stories of people like
Ernesto so that we don’t forget how real their struggles are and how much they
have to offer our society. (Ernesto’s story can be read on the webpage of Casa
Juan Diego: cjd.org)
The book of
Ruth is at its heart a story about an immigrant. Is she a feminist heroine in
this story, or just another pawn in a patriarchal society?
I don’t know. I do know Ruth became the great grandmother of King David and the
Jews were so proud of that fact that they made sure the story of this foreigner
found its way into the Hebrew Bible. And she is an ancestor of a man from