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 Defining Moments |
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12 November 2006 It’s easy to read the story of Ruth on a purely sentimental level, at least for me. For me, sentiment is always my first connection with this story. Sentimental because my mother-in-law, Bette, was the soprano soloist in her churches for many, many years. So when John and I were married, Bette blessed our wedding with a beautiful rendition of the best-known passage of this book: “Do not press me to leave you It’s the passage that is the defining moment in Ruth’s relationship to Naomi. It’s the passage in which Ruth commits herself to Naomi, a passage which captures the commitment leading to faithfulness that is the hallmark of all committed relationships. Maybe it’s because the Christmas decorations are in full array, but I was reminded that Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is about more than the personal transformation of a crochety old miser into a generous philanthropist. In the same way, the book of Ruth is more than the story of two widows who find a means to survive and thrive within their culture. Like A Christmas Carol, Ruth shares Dickens’ passion for those on the margins. Even the biblical name of Ruth betrays that concern. The story’s namesake means compassion–just as ruth-less identifies those without compassion. The book as a whole examines these two extremes by looking at the personal impact of cultural and societal practices. I’m not saying that studying Ruth would cause the us to reconsider its ill-advised deployment of personnel and its expenditure of an untold amount of resources along the US-Mexican border, but it wouldn’t be a bad place to start. Long before the Exile, from the time of the Exodus onward, treatment of the widow and the orphan are identified as moral and social issues for society as a whole. Exodus reminds us that the Hebrews struggled to define themselves as a people whose God demanded a nation that did not look like Pharoah’s. Even in those ancient writings, the widow and the orphan are singled out as falling under God’s protection, and therefore, under Israel’s care. The stunning thing about the book of Ruth is that these issues of the foreigner and the widow are joined. And they are joined in a way that reminds us that moral and social issues almost always wear a human face. That human face may even be an infant’s. Last week’s news reported a new federal policy in which children born in the United States to low-income undocumented immigrants will no longer automatically be entitled to health insurance through Medicaid. Talk about ruthless! In the past, once a woman received emergency care under Medicaid for the birth of a baby, the child was covered for one year from the date of birth. Medicaid pays for more than one-third of the roughly four million babies born in the United States each year, so the number of illegal immigrant parents is likely to be in the tens of thousands.[1] Dr. Jay E. Berkelhamer, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, says the policy “punishes babies who, according to the Constitution, are citizens because they were born here.”[1] This new policy is yet another defining moment for our nation. But it is not in keeping with the compassion to which our faith calls us, nor is it in keeping with the best of this great nation’s spirit. As we move into the changes wrought by the elections of this past week, we will be called to revisit these same issues. How do we care for the most vulnerable members of our society in ways that are consistent with our faith, and with those moving ideals inscribed on the base of our own Statue of Liberty, welcoming the poor and those longing to be free? My friends, defining moments come to individuals such as Ruth and Naomi, to nations such as our own, to continents such as Africa. We live in a complex world, and these kinds of issues are not going to go away. They will continue to challenge our sense of who we are and whose we are. And we are not alone. It is no secret that HIV/AIDS is devastating the continent of Africa. One of the reasons it continues to spread so rapidly is that many traditional African cultures treat their widows much as Ruth and Naomi were treated. In those African cultures, a man in the widow’s extended family is expected to have intercourse with her. Presumably this ensures the birth of children, and indicates that the widow now has been accepted within the supposed circle of protection by another male. It may even have been a cultural expression of compassion at some point. But in a region where HIV/AIDS is rampant, one partner commonly infects the other, and so the disease continues to spread. We know from our contacts with the United Church of South Africa that it will take national policies to change those cultural practices, and even then, those changes will be very difficult to bring about. Their challenge is to remain true to their own cultural expressions and yet make the changes necessary so that widow and orphan alike will find the support and the protection they need. A defining moment. Churches also have their defining moments. Martin Luther inaugurated the Protestant Reformation with his list of concerns posted on the church door in Wittenburg. The Protestant Church in Germany had theirs during the rise and prosecution of the Third Reich. As I suggested in this month’s newsletter, the United Church of Christ has had theirs, now posted on the internet in an impressive list of ‘firsts.’ To name but one, the UCC's Office of Communication was formed in 1959 to advocate on behalf of the public interest in broadcasting. At the time, Southern TV stations had imposed a news blackout on the growing civil rights movement. Under the leadership of Everett Parker, the UCC organized churches and successfully challenged the FCC license renewal and wins Federal court ruling of Jackson, Mississippi's WLBT television for its blatantly racist programming in the 1960's. That challenge led to the ruling that the airwaves are public property. It was a defining moment that brought together the church’s passion for those on the margins and addressed one of the many policies that suppress their voice. Today, in the communications and the civil rights communities, the WLBT case stands as a defining moment in the civil rights movement. In September, I was privileged to attend the Parker lecture and banquet at the National Press Club that commemorates that case. Our defining moments may not achieve the celebrity status of C. Everett Parker or the storied grace of Ruth. They may be far simpler. Our defining moments may be the vows we exchange at marriage, the kind of job we choose, the purchase of a particular house or car. But they have this in common: when reviewed over the span of our lifetime, they will reveal the character of our faith and our commitment to compassion not only for those closest to us, but also for the broader community, and even for the world itself. What we do matters; even small actions can become defining moments. *** [1] The New York Times, “Medicaid Wants Citizenship Proof For Infant Care,” by Robert Pear, nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A04E5DD103FF930A35752C1A9609C, November 3, 2006 |