Ru 1:1,3-6,14b-16,22, Ps 146:5-10, Mt 22:34-40
Today’s readings are about love and commitment. In the Gospel, Jesus summarizes the whole of the Jewish law and the prophets as love of God and neighbor. But I think we might get a better idea of what loving God and neighbor looks like if we focus on the story from Ruth.
The portion of Ruth that we have is a story of disappointment and extreme loss. Naomi, her husband and two sons had come to Moab because of a famine. Now ten years later Naomi finds herself without a husband or sons. Notice there are no grandchildren either. At this time, a woman without a relationship with a man has no status and is helpless. This is perhaps the ultimate Biblical definition of a powerless person: An old woman, no husband, no sons. Living in a foreign land, she is not even among her own people. She recognizes that she needs to go back to her people. At least, at this point, they have food.
Ruth however does have a choice. Her sister-in-law Orpah sees the same issues as Naomi and like Naomi, goes back to her people. Ruth, however, is committed to her mother-in-law. She chooses a connection that would seem foolhardy. Leave the land of her people and go with an elderly woman to, what for her, is a foreign land. She will be the one who is at even greater risk than Naomi in that setting. But Ruth makes a statement that rings with the same love that Jesus proposes in the Gospel. Ruth says, “Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you! For wherever you go, I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people and your God shall be my God.” I suggest to you that this is exactly what Jesus is saying in the Gospel when he talks about loving God “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is a statement of heartfelt commitment. It has the added beauty of wrapping the commitment to a person in terms of both their human and religious connections. Ruth is accepting everything about Naomi and saying yes. We often say that you don’t get to choose your family but in this case that is exactly what Ruth is doing. Sight unseen she is choosing Naomi’s people, her circumstances, (which are downright awful at the moment) which mean she is also choosing whatever future lies ahead of them.
To choose all this, is to choose Naomi’s God. Even though Ruth names Naomi’s God as a separate item, I would suggest to you that this kind of loving commitment has already included the divine because what is chosen is that total and that complete. There is no part of Naomi’s life that Ruth isn’t going to be part of.
This is, in fact, that kind of intimacy that is true on God’s part toward us and it is the kind of commitment God asks of us, when Jesus says, “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” It is descriptive of the intimate connection that exists between spirit and flesh in this world. That is why Jesus can connect love of God and love of neighbor as being “like each other” because human and divine relationships are fully intertwined in all of creation.
Ruth’s statement of commitment to Naomi is a little window into the great love and connection that underlies all of life. We have the same opportunity as Ruth. We can choose to commit ourselves to what Jesus offers, to go where he has gone, to live as he lived, to accept people as he accepted them and in so doing to establish His God as our God too.
