Life Happens and It Can Change Everything

By Rev. Rich Sheridan,
Nebraska Synod Evangelist / Director for Evangelical Mission, ELCA

Not too long ago, our church shifted from the Revised Common Lectionary to the Narrative Lectionary. Since making the change, I’ve gotten a kick out of both the gift and the challenge of preaching on different scriptures than I’ve generally been accustomed to in the past. This last month in particular, this meant exploring more deeply the biblical book of Ruth in my preaching.

Ruth is a story that, to my mind, requires a little more explanation than most. It has a kind of soap opera quality with drama and intrigue, a variety of scenes and settings, and several characters with unfamiliar names (at least to my twenty-first century Anglo-American ears!). It can be tough to read just a portion of the book in worship, because the entire book is really one cohesive narrative. At the same time, so much happens in such a short number of verses that it can be challenging to distill just one simple message when reading a particular passage in worship.

But all in all, to me at least, Ruth is a tale about suffering and hardship. It’s about setting off on new adventures with hopes, dreams, and plans – and then, life happens. Things don’t always go as planned, and life doesn’t look the way we at first thought it might. It’s a powerful example of how the unfortunate and unexpected can bruise and batter us. Along life’s way, we sometimes lose people and things near and dear to us. At a minimum, such experiences can cause us to fall into despair or become filled with anxieties—and for the likes of Naomi and Ruth, who could’ve blamed them had they feared for their safety, or even their very survival?

And yet, amidst the fears and hardship and even terrible suffering, God was and is present. God speaks, God acts, God provides. And eventually, God redeems, restores, and even blesses the protagonist family in that book. How reassuring, how inspiring a reminder of the promise of hope amidst even the direst of life circumstance!

Even more though, consider how God accomplishes it: It is through Ruth that God lends support and hope to Naomi in times of trial, and it is through Boaz that Ruth and Naomi’s welfare will eventually be restored. Ruth had a Moabite family to which she could have returned; instead, she insisted to sticking by Naomi’s side. Boaz, a wealthy landowner, could’ve decided not to be bothered with some widow or foreigner. Instead, he showed compassion, using what God had given him to provide for and protect another child of God in desperate need of help.

Amid tough times—in the church, the world, or our personal lives, it can be tempting to turn inward, to resort to a “survival mentality,” to look out solely for ourselves. But as baptized children of God, the Spirit dictates our response in such times to be informed not by scarcity or fear or mere survival, but by our identity and call as saved and free followers, both of God our Maker and our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

May God empower us to boldly, proudly, and joyfully live such lives. And may God’s Spirit help us to trust in God’s presence, provision, and peace—today, and throughout whatever else may come.