PARTNERS IN PROVIDENCE November 12, 2006 John W. Vest Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church Ruth 3:1–5, 4:13–17 I began playing football when I was in third grade. I wasn’t very good at any other sports, so football became a major part of who I was. My summers and falls revolved around practice and games, and when I got to high school, much of my spring was devoted to off-season conditioning. In small-town Florida, the week began and ended on Friday night. That long time between the end of one season and the beginning of the next was a period of dormancy and anticipation, brightened only by a short breath of life during spring training. I really loved football. There was something special about the combination of intense team competition and equally intense individual efforts to improve yourself and excel at your position. From seven in the morning until two in the afternoon, our teachers had us, but after school we entered a different world. The field house was our sanctuary and our fortress, its walls emblazoned with our creed: “Bigger, Faster, Stronger.” A piece of earth 120 yards long and 160 feet wide was our sacred domain, our holy land. I remember it all like it was yesterday. I still remember the smell of fresh-cut grass in the late summer and early fall. I remember the electricity of pep rallies, like Pentecostal tent revivals. I remember those first weeks of soreness. I remember how we wore the bruises on our arms like they were like medals. I remember grueling two-a-days in the unrelenting humidity of August in Florida and the chill of an autumn evening in November. I remember undefeated seasons and years when we were barely able to win a single game. My best friends were made on the football field, friends I consider my brothers to this day. Together we experienced life at its best and at its worst. “Blood, sweat, and tears” were not stale clichés for us. Even with those players you didn’t get along with, our differences stayed on the sidelines, because on the field we were a team. You had your teammate’s back and he had yours. But then one day it all ended. The beginning of my junior year of high school should have been one of the greatest times of my life. I was set to be a starting offensive lineman on the varsity team. But a nagging pain in my lower back developed into a serious back injury that ended my football career forever. I was crushed. Part of me died. I remember with crystal clarity the day I turned in my equipment, holding back tears and trying to be strong when in reality I was utterly defeated. Having to quit football was just about the worst thing my teenage mind could comprehend. It was the end of the world as I knew it. What was I to do? Where was I to go? And for a young person growing into faith, I wondered where God was. How could God allow this to happen to me? What was God thinking? ·     ·     · Six years later I moved to Chicago to begin seminary at the University of Chicago Divinity School. That same week my Uncle Buster went into the hospital. At first we didn’t know what the problem was. Those uncertain days are the scariest of them all. Several weeks later he was diagnosed with cancer, and it was a shock to all of us. He was only sixty-four years old. I had spent a lot of time with Uncle Buster over the years. My extended family was always very close, and we regularly traveled long distances to visit each other. This particular aunt and uncle lived in Texas, and when I moved to Houston for college, they welcomed me with open arms. I spent two wonderful Thanksgivings in their home, for me a home away from home that was a much-needed retreat from my college dorm. I always wanted to spend more time with them than I did, but time flies when you are in school, and time was something I thought I had plenty of. Uncle Buster was one of my greatest supporters. He and Aunt Annette took a special interest when I felt called to ministry. My visits with them were always filled with theological discussions and thoughtful conversations. Uncle Buster was especially intrigued as I moved away from my Baptist roots toward Reformed theology and the Presbyterian church. There were certain points of doctrine and practice that we never saw eye to eye on, but he always listened in a very pastoral way. I very much looked forward to the great discussions that seminary and ministry would bring. But that was not to be. Uncle Buster died on December 2 that winter, just a few weeks before his sixty-fifth birthday. Sitting alone in my studio apartment in Hyde Park, so far from Texas, it was hard to connect with all that was going on. It was hard to feel the full impact of what had been happening. As his final days came to an end, I could barely bring myself to call him. Quite honestly, I was scared. I didn’t know what to say. I felt a great weight upon me, especially as someone preparing for ministry, to have something profound to say. But I was paralyzed. And sitting alone in my studio apartment in Hyde Park, I eventually got angry. Where was God in all of this? Where was the God we read about in the Bible, a God that restored sight to the blind, made the lame walk, cleansed the lepers, allowed the deaf to hear, and brought the dead back to life? If God could do this so many years ago, why wasn’t it happening now? My family had been praying fervently for Uncle Buster. Did we not have enough faith? Were our prayers not good enough? Where was God? ·     ·     · Two years later, on a pleasant September morning, I drove to McCormick Theological Seminary in Hyde Park where I was serving as a teaching assistant for an introductory Hebrew class. I heard something on the radio about an airplane accident in New York City and didn’t think too much about it. Not long into our lesson, however, we were torn away from ancient Hebrew and confronted with the very present realities of 9/11 unfolding before our eyes on television screens hurriedly set up in common areas of the seminary. Class was eventually cancelled, and I headed out to suburban Clarendon Hills, where I was beginning my second year of pastoral ministry, still a student and only a few weeks out of an intensive summer stint as a hospital chaplain for my Clinical Pastoral Education. Our church hosted a community ecumenical candlelight vigil that evening. It was a moving service that provided much-needed comfort in the immediate wake of the tragedy. It was my first year working in a pastoral position with youth. Several members of our youth group were in attendance that evening, and we spent some time talking with them, processing the unthinkable events that had just happened. We had a youth retreat the following weekend at Presbyterian Camps in Saugatuck. We began that retreat with a somber time of candlelit prayer in Camp Gray, and I admit that I was glad to be away from the city for a few days. Two days after the attacks, I began to teach an adult education course that surveyed the entire Bible. It was an incredible moment of history to gather with a group of faithful Christians and open up our sacred scriptures, looking for answers, wondering what this ancient collection of writings might have to say about the situation we found ourselves in. Once again, I was faced with the same question: Where is God in all of this? Did God cause this or did we? ·     ·     · Five years later I’m standing here in this pulpit with the very same questions. Indeed, the questions raised by these and many other such experiences have continued to shape my studies and my ministry over the past decade of my life. The theological concepts explored by these questions come under the heading of “providence.” Don’t let this word scare you. What we are dealing with are some of the fundamental questions of ultimate concern that reflective people have asked from the beginning of human history. Where is God in our lives—during the good times and the bad? Does God have a plan and a purpose for my life? For all of humanity? Does God control my destiny or do I have the free will to choose a path on my own? Does God relate to us in the same way that God relates to Israel and other peoples in the Bible? Is there such a thing as luck? Or chance? Or fate? Or karma? I know that I’m not alone when I ask these questions. Several years ago I fell in love with the popular children’s book Holes by Louis Sachar, which is one of the most creative and thoughtful reflections on providence I have encountered in popular culture. More recently, I have become addicted to the hit television show Lost, which, especially in the first season, explores how our lives are intertwined and asks whether our fate is determined by forces beyond our control. And today I was reminded by one of our young people that another one of my favorite television shows, My Name Is Earl, is a sustained reflection on the concept of karma. These questions carry me to many different places, but when I follow them back to the Bible, I often find myself with stories like that of Ruth. Ruth is one of my favorite stories in the Bible, a deeply human story of tragedy and triumph, yet also a profoundly theological reflection on how God works in human lives. Indeed, it is the coming together of these concerns—the human and the divine—that I find most fascinating about Ruth, a short little book that has become one of my greatest conversation partners within the canon of Scripture. The story of Ruth begins with a tragic event that in the world of the Bible has God written all over it: a famine. Because of this famine, a man named Elimelech takes his wife Naomi and their two sons and travels from their home to the land of Moab. While in Moab, this family’s tragedy is multiplied. Elimelech dies, and after taking Moabite wives, the sons die as well, leaving Naomi and her Moabite daughters-in-law to fend for themselves. One of these Moabite women, Ruth, returns to Judah with Naomi, and they set about the task of finding security for themselves. At this point in the story, God has all but faded from the scene. To be sure, God is mentioned frequently in laments, blessings, and prayers, but in stark contrast to many of the stories in the Old Testament, God is no longer an actor in this story. Or so it seems on the surface. If we dig a little deeper into the unique way in which sophisticated theology is done in the Hebrew Bible through the telling of stories, we find that God may not be as absent as a casual reader might suppose. Through superb and artful storytelling, the narrator of Ruth leads us to discover that the blessings invoked in God’s name work themselves out through the autonomous actions of the human characters. Prayers are directed toward God, but instead of waiting around for God to miraculously intervene, those who pray also act to bring about the very ends for which they pray. And when those ends come about, God is given thanks and is blessed. There is an important word in Hebrew: hesed. Like many Hebrew words, it is difficult to adequately translate into English, but we usually try with something like “loving-kindness.” Essentially, hesed is the love, kindness, and loyalty that bind humanity to God and to each other. Hesed plays an important role in the unfolding of events in Ruth. In our story, the hesed of Ruth and Boaz reflects the hesed of God. More than this, the actions of Ruth and Boaz are an expression of God’s hesed—God’s faithful love and care for others. Because Ruth and Boaz, who clearly act on their own free will, act according to the hesed of God, the ends that God desires come about. In this way, you can say that God’s providence and human actions work together in an integral way. Ruth and Boaz become partners in providence with God. In the passage we read earlier this evening, we see the fruits of this partnership. On a personal level, Ruth and Naomi find security and are given a child. On a national level, this child becomes a critical link in the genealogy of David, the great king of Israel. Tragedy is transformed into blessing. It can be this way in our lives too. Now don’t get me wrong: not every story will have a happy ending. God’s providence is full of mystery, which means that every question doesn’t always have an answer. For every football injury that turns into an unexpected path toward one’s true calling, there is an uncle who dies despite doing everything right. And then there are stories like 9/11, whose ending is yet to be written, which is where we come in. In our individual lives and in the beautifully interconnected life of the world, God is calling us to be partners in providence. May we be like Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz and be brave enough to answer that call to walk with God in love, justice, and peace. Amen. .