Ruth 1: 6-17                              Who is my family?                     E/DC               May 13/07 1.      Family.  Is there anything we yearn for more, have higher expectations for, or get more angry and disappointed about?  As always, the Bible has excellent real life examples of the difficulties and gifts of family.  Today we’ve asked Naomi to come and share her story as we reflect on those difficulties and gifts.  (put on shawl) 2.      As I walked along, heading back to my hometown of Bethlehem, I thought back to when I walked the opposite way.  How very differently I felt then.  Hungry, but full of hope.  Full of love for my beloved husband Elimelech, and our two dear boys, Mahlon and Chillion.  Hungry for food because of the dire famine in our land.  Proud of Elimelech who was willing to risk moving to another country in order to care well for our boys and me.  A new country in Moab.  Different language and customs.  What did that matter to me?  I had my young and growing family. 3.      That did change a bit for me, over time.  Of course my family was incredibly important.  But the longer we stayed, the more I missed my wonderful, noisy, nosy extended family.  On Sabbath, on special occasions.  Everyone had their parents and brothers and sisters, grandparents.  Why would they even think of us?  And on long days while Elimelech worked, why would they come by to visit while we sewed together?  They had friends and family to spend those hours with.  In the community that measured time in generations, we would always be those people from away.   4.      And then things changed forever.  Elimelech, my husband, my life, died.  As we existed through those first excruciatingly painful and foggy days, I knew people came and went.  Doing their best to comfort and care for us.  But I longed for the tradition of my people of sitting Shiva that would have brought comfort in its very familiarity.  My sisters and brothers would have known exactly what to do.  I needed my mother.  My family.  My boys began to come out of the fog eventually.  In time I walked around as though I were alive, but a large part of me died with him.    5.      A year or so later the boys began to talk of taking Moabite wives.  I was horrified at first.  How could they think of such a thing?  Our family had always been Jewish.  I intended we would go back and find them good Jewish wives.  But they had only known Moab.  It had become home to them.  I was so afraid.  The girls’ families would take in my boys and make them theirs.  And where would I be?  And I had heard such awful stories from the women about son’s wives.  The jealousy, anger and selfishness. “You must have daughters too,” they had teased me for a long time. But Orpah and Ruth, the women they chose were different.  Kind, loving, thoughtful.  They really were daughters to me.   6.      But who can tell what lies ahead in this life.  A sickness swept through our town, and both my sons died.  I thought most of me had died with Elimelech.  But if it had, I could not have suffered the incredible pain I then felt.  I swung between numb and angry, devastated and shocked and back again.  One thing I knew.  I must go home.  I must find family, for a woman alone could not survive.  No husband or sons to work.  I would starve.   7.      So I gathered what I could carry, and prepared to begin the long walk home where the drought had lessened and there was food again.  I tried to say good-bye to my dear girls, but I couldn’t choke out the words.  They said, “Don’t worry mother, we’re going to walk with you a ways.”  Grateful for the brief reprieve, we started out.  Finally I could see I was going to have to be the strong one.  To tell them they must go back to their mother’s house. I prayed that God would deal kindly with them as they had with the dead and with me.  I kissed them and they wept aloud, and refused to go back, saying they would go with me.  I reminded them, though I didn’t need to, that I could have no more sons for them to marry.  I so wanted them to be able to re-marry and have a family.   8.      Orpah finally came to her senses and returned home, but I couldn’t make Ruth understand.  And then she said the most incredible thing.  “Do not beg me to leave you.  Where you go, I will go.  Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.”  She was likely giving up any opportunity to be married and have children.  A family.  She would be condemned to a life of poverty, maybe only able to glean grain in the fields, and subsist from day to day.  “Don’t you want to have a family?” I cried?  “You are my family,” she whispered through her tears.  “How can we be family?” I exploded.  “Two lonely, desperate women.”  “Families come in many shapes and sizes,” was her determined answer as she picked up one of my parcels, and called over her shoulder, “Aren’t you coming?”  I thought she was crazy, but didn’t have the strength to argue.  I caught up and we walked on.  There was lots of time to think on that walk.  To see that Ruth was indeed family to me.  What else could you call such love and devotion?    9.      It was an incredible welcome when we finally reached Bethlehem.  As always, news traveled fast.  It was as though the whole town was in a tizzy!  Friends, family, calling out, “Naomi, is that you?”  Naomi.  I loved my name when I left.  Pleasant it means.  I felt so full of joy, so full of everything pleasant and good.  And now it felt like I was coming back empty.  Afraid of what people would say.  Afraid of how we would be able to live.  Afraid to find out if any of my family was even left.  How would I be able to handle my jealousy for their husbands and children and grandchildren?  “Call me Mara,” I demanded.  Bitter.  That’s what I felt.  Empty and dried out and bitter.  Forsaken by God.   10.  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw Ruth’s face.  If I could have, I would have stuffed them back in.  But of course you can’t.  I’d hurt the one person I wanted to least.  One I loved deeply.  What if this was the rift that separated us forever?  I waited a few days, trying to think of the right thing to say.  Finally I blurted it all out.  “I’m so sorry Ruth, for saying I was empty, had nothing.  Of course I have you.  I love you as my daughter.”  Her wise, bright young eyes smiled.  “Naomi,” she said deliberately, “I know.  But it helps a lot for you to tell me.”   11.  I wish I could tell you it was easy from then on.  Of course it wasn’t.  The pain of loss of my dear children and husband ate at me.  But God had never abandoned me, even though it felt like it.  In time the Holy One helped me to see that out of that pain there was much that I could do.  Family had been such a difficult thing for me for so long.  So now that I had some family around again – sisters, cousins, friends, there were many opportunities to talk about what family really is.  To encourage them to include the stranger in our midst on Sabbath and special occasions.  And even in our afternoon visits.  To see others as different, not wrong!  To not let quarrels ripen and grow, but have the courage to say we’re sorry, and blurt it out, not waiting for the right words.  When people complain about their families, saying “well families should understand, or families should be there for each other, or shouldn’t be too busy to care for each other,” I’d gently encourage them to find the family they needed.  In the synagogue.  Next door.  Their friend’s mother or father.  To believe that biological or adopted is not the only family there is.  That family means way more than that.  And to give thanks daily for the family they do have – just as they are.   12.  You know the rest of my story.  Ruth was married.  I had grandchildren.  But I dare to believe, that even had that never happened, I had learned to be Naomi again.  To see the gifts of family that God had provided, not in the way I wanted, but in amazing ways.  May God bless you with the love you deserve in family.  However that is made.  May you live forgiveness to others and be open to receive forgiveness.  May you truly understand that all people are God’s family and welcome and enfold them into the joy of that gift.  Amen.