21 July: Proper 11, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church

Ruth 1:1–14; Psalm 80:1–7; 1 Thessalonians 5:12–24; Mark 12:41–44Let us pray:

May God who is Majesty, Mercy and Mystery speak words of life, hope and healing through these words. Amen.

How long O Lord?!

The cry of the psalmist is the cry of God’s people across the ages, how long? How long will this go on? The “this” changes from age to age but the how long does not change. It is a cry full of hope and faith and trust in the faithfulness of God.

How long O Lord is a cry that begins with the knowledge of God: I know who you are and what you can do. I know your great power. I know your words of love and covenant and promise. I know what you have done for my ancestors. I know you. You are a God who lets yourself be known. I know you.

 How long O Lord is a testimony to the power of God: You are the God of Hagar’s spring of salvation, saving water in the desert that would have killed her and her child. You are Miriam’s walkway through the waters of captivity. You are Deborah’s sword and Delilah’s escape plan. You are Esther’s courage, and Ruth’s security. You are the God who saves. How long O Lord is a cry that signifies relationship.

How long O Lord is not a rhetorical question. It seeks a response in the same way as, “how long will you let the dishes pile up in the kitchen sink” or, “how long are you going to keep dealing with that pain rather than go to the doctor.” It does not necessarily seek a response in words or a specific measure of time, though that would be acceptable. It is a call for action.

How long O Lord is bold and brash and full of sass like womanist biblical interpretation, for it includes a note of accusation. How long O Lord is an accusation in that the question assumes and presumes that were God to turn her attention to the matter at hand, she could resolve it in the blink of an eye, at the flutter of a divine eyelash, but for some unknown, some unfathomable reason, God is not intervening. God is not responding to the pleas and prayers of the psalmist or her people.

How long O Lord is a declaration that something is wrong in and with this world, something that only God can repair.

In the psalm appointed for today’s reading, the psalmist asks, “how long will you fume at the prayers of your people?” How long will you be so angry with us that you won’t even hear us and turn your head in disgust at the sound of our prayers? How long O Lord?! How long?!

We don’t know how long the psalmist and her people have been crying out or what it was that led to this prayer. We just know that her prayer has gone unanswered long enough for her to knock on heaven’s door and cry out, “How long O Lord?!” As her prayer of petition continues the psalmist reminds God of her saving work, of her might and miracles from ages past but, having received no response or divine intervention, concludes the psalm by continuing to cry out, “How long O Lord.”

This is the hard word of today’s lessons. One we already know. Sometimes we pray and cry and nothing happens. Sometimes God does not answer us or even seem to hear us. We pass the mantle of prayer down from generation to generation hoping that if God does not answer our prayer, she will hear and answer the prayer of our children or our children’s children. Sometimes waiting on God is an intergenerational affair. But sometimes God is waiting on us.

Naomi got tired of waiting and she decided to take matters into her own hands. Her husband had died and left her with two sons and they went into Moab to kidnap women to be their wives. That Ruth and Orpah were kidnapped is clear in the text in Hebrew but not always translated correctly. There is a long tradition of protecting the reputations of certain characters in older translations of scripture; which is ironic because so many characters in scripture already have bad reputations and the text loves to show that God can and will work with and through anyone and sometimes anything, whether it’s a talking donkey or dirty David. That’s why we biblical scholars continue to translate the scriptures and publish new Bibles and new works of translation.

And just as Sarah’s and Abraham’s scheme to provide the heir God had promised them on their own by forcing the young woman they enslaved to become pregnant and carry a child she did not choose to conceive failed, leading to perpetual conflict between Ishmael and Israel, Naomi’s plan failed and her sons died without providing her grandchildren. She had no male heir or protector to claim the family land and provide her with security in her senior years or even at the present moment. All she had was her two daughters-in-law who had every reason to abandon her to her own fate because she and her sons had essentially trafficked them, forcing them into marriage and intimacy they did not choose.

One of her daughters-in-law, Orpah, seized the freedom Naomi offered and returned to her native land; perhaps this was an answer to her prayers which go unrecorded in scripture. The other daughter-in-law stayed with Naomi, their lives and fates intertwined and interwoven throughout the rest of their stories. It would be through this woman, Ruth, that Naomi’s prayers would be answered; it would be through Ruth’s body that Naomi got her security. But we know nothing of Ruth’s prayers. Ruth and Naomi may not have been praying the same prayers.

Sometimes we are the answer to our own prayers and sometimes we are the answer to the prayers of someone else. And sometimes we are the answer to the prayers of someone who has done us wrong, done harm to others, or done great harm to this world. Sometimes the answer to “how long” is how long will it take for us to respond to the needs around us and let God use us as the answer to someone else’s prayer. But be clear, letting God use us is not the same as letting other people use or abuse us. And when God takes the tattered threads of our lives after we have been ravaged by someone else, and weaves a new story for us out of answered prayer, that does not ever justify harm or abuse at the hands of someone else.

The small line in our epistle reading from 1 Thessalonians shows us how we might just be the answer to someone else’s prayer, always seek to do good to one another and to all. Always keep your eyes open for opportunities to serve and to bless someone else. Some of us learned from Mr. Rogers that in moments of terrible catastrophe when we feel overwhelmed, like the wildfire on Maui a year ago, that we should look for the helpers, those who are doing whatever little bit it is they can because the work of helpers multiplies with each set of hands set to the task, each inventive problem-solving mind brought to bear and each coin given to the cause. Look for the helpers and become the helpers yourselves. I know this hale pule, this church, is full of helpers because that is aloha, ka uhane o Hawaii, the spirit of Hawaii.

That was the spirit of the wahine kane make hune in the Gospel, the poor widow woman, who gave all she had. When Jesus taught us that her two copper coins were more than the silver and gold of the others making their offerings, he offered us away to think beyond overly simplistic understandings of equality and equity. Some might say that if everyone gives five coins, that’s fair and balanced because the same standard applies to everyone. But everyone doesn’t have the same resources so for one person five coins might be sofa change and for another it might be their livelihood for the entire month. Jesus told us that she gave less and that in giving less she gave more. The widow, a woman whose poverty existed solely because of the structures and conditions placed on her by society, by her fellow human beings, by her own religious community, had nothing left, nothing left to buy bread for tomorrow. In our giving, we are called to give like this widow, gifts that are meaningful because they cost us something and not gifts from our excess that we won’t miss.

The epistle praises and encourages those who do the work to support the weak. But there are some folk today who would say that a program benefiting widows is inherently unfair because it excludes men. Even though men who lost their wives in the world of the text did not suffer the same disadvantages as women who lost their husbands, there are folk who would sue to get the church’s widow relief program shut down or expanded to include men who didn’t need the help. There are people today who spend their time looking for opportunities to keep those with only the equivalent of a handful of copper coins or even less from receiving what they need using false notions of equity and equality. Yet Jesus taught us that less is more, last is first and the values of the Majesty of God are upside down to this world.

But it is the values of this world and not the values of the Majesty of God that hold sway and keep women and children in poverty. How long O Lord will we watch the widow give her copper coins, praise her for her gift and do nothing to address her poverty? How long O Lord will we who benefit from the widow’s poverty be content to continue to accumulate and count our coins? How long O Lord will we continue to create a world in which women and girls are treated like second-class citizens and even in the wealthiest nation on earth can only ever hope to earn a portion of what a man makes for the same work? How long O Lord will we let the patriarchy in the church go unchallenged and uncorrected? How long O Lord will we be forced to live with the lie that this world ain’t no place for a girl child? How long O Lord will we accept the evils of this world like human trafficking and legislated legalized forced pregnancies? How long O Lord will we tell immigrants like Ruth and Naomi fleeing poverty and famine that they must stay on the other side of the border and we will not share our bread with them? How long O Lord will we simply accept the inequities of this world, shrug our shoulders and keep on perpetuating them? How long O Lord will folk cry to heaven like the psalmist because of the oppression we permit and perpetuate? How long O Lord?! How long?