A Place at the Table

SCRIPTURE TEXT:  Ruth 2:14-17a, Rev. Monte Marshall, Senior Pastor

We continue today on the theme A Place to Call Home.  In most of the places we call home, there’s a table around which food is shared.  And while food is shared around the table, life is shared, stories are told, and decisions are made. 

Some of the fondest memories I have of growing up at home revolve around the table and the meals we shared together.  I remember my favorite foods:  barbecued chicken, steak and mashed potatoes, roast beef on Sundays after church, my mom’s goulash and cornbread.  My grandmother Marshall was known in the family for her chicken and dumplings; my grandfather Montgomery for ending every meal with maple syrup poured over a biscuit or roll.

I remember where we sat around the table in each of the houses where we lived.  My earliest memories are of four of us around the table:  my mom and dad, my brother Mike and I.   My youngest brother, Matt, came along in 1958, raising the total around the table to five. 

Now I don’t remember anything in particular from our mealtime conversations, but I do recall the sense of belonging, of connection, and of safety.  Love was shared around the table even when there were disagreements and disruptions of one kind or another.  Speaking of disruptions, I do remember a time or two when I had to sit at the table long after everyone else had left because I refused to eat everything on my plate. 

I am grateful for these memories.  But now, looking back on those places I called home, I realize how exclusive our table was.  For example, up until I was a young adult, I don’t remember sitting down at the table in our home with a poor person, or a person of color, or a person of a different ethnicity.  The pattern changed when my brother Mike began dating the woman who is now his wife.  My sister-in-law Marcella’s dad is an Anglo from Canada, while her mother was an Hispanic from Mexico.  Later on, my youngest brother’s wife was welcomed around the table, along with her two children.  They too are Hispanic.  While I am certainly grateful that some of the barriers came down within my family, I regret that for so much of my life, there was not a place at the table for people who were different from us.

I now realize how far off the mark we were from living God’s dream of home where there is a place at the table for all of us no matter who we are, or what we’ve done, or where we’ve come from, or what we look like, or who we love.  As far as God’s concerned, we all have a place at the table.  As the song says:  For everyone born, a place at the table.[1]

This is a point made repeatedly throughout the scriptures.  Indeed, the point is made in this morning’s reading from the book of Ruth.  As commentator Barbara Ferguson notes: “This Old Testament book is a story of many good people who love and care for one another…There is not an unkind person or a villain in the piece.  There are only ordinary people showing love to family members and, beyond the family, to strangers.”

While there is some scholarly debate on the matter, Ferguson concludes that Ruth’s “story as it now stands comes from…a time after the Exile when Nehemiah and others were trying very hard to preserve Israel’s unity and purity by limiting the people’s relationships with outsiders…. Some saw foreigners as evil, inferior, or both.  To many, God seemed to be a God of Israel alone.  Ruth’s author opposed this exclusivism.”[2]  

In fact, this morning’s passage illustrates a breach in the barrier of exclusivism.  The story is set in Israel.  Ruth is a Moabite.  As Linda Day writes: “Moabites, especially Moabite women, are typically presented in the Bible as Israel’s enemy.”[3] 

 Ruth is in Israel.  She has left the place that she calls home to resettle in an inhospitable land so that she might care for her aging mother-in-law, Naomi.  Ruth has few rights or protections in Israel.  As a childless widow, she is among the poorest of the poor.  She is at risk in that culture.   

But then she meets Boaz, a wealthy Jewish landowner in Bethlehem.  In this morning’s text, Ruth has been gleaning in the fields when she receives an unexpected invitation to take a place at the table: “At the lunch break,” Boaz says to Ruth, “‘Come over here; eat some bread.  Dip it in the wine.’”

So Ruth—the Moabite—the foreigner—the enemy—takes her place at the table among the harvesters.  And Boaz feeds her.  He passes the roasted grain to her.  She eats her fill and even has some left over.  Boaz then instructs his workers to make sure that she is able to glean an abundance of grain—even some of “the good stuff.”  “Give her special treatment,” Boaz says.

In this story, the barrier of exclusivism is breached as Ruth takes her place at the table.  Later on, Boaz marries Ruth and widens the breach even more.  In the New Testament, in Matthew’s gospel, Ruth is one of five women referenced in the genealogy of Jesus.  So much for exclusivism!

In fact, all of the gospels seem to reflect the influence of Ruth’s story on Jesus.  After all, Jesus was known for eating with outcasts— even those labeled “sinners”—even those we might call “enemies.”  And during Jesus’ last meal—the meal before his death—there was still a place around the table for Judas, the betrayer.  I suppose that when we get caught up in God’s dream of home, this is the kind of thing that happens:  For everyone born, a place at the table.[4]

And every time we come to the table in worship, we’re caught up in God’s dream of home: For everyone born, a place at the table.[5]  That includes you and me!

And every time we come to the table in worship, we’re able to practice an inclusive hospitality that we can live out in our daily lives, in our own homes.  Isn’t this the point of our prayer at the end of every meal with the bread and cup: “As we gather around our own tables in the days ahead, might we be reminded of this table where all are welcome and love always is the answer to hate?”  O how I wish that in my family, as I was growing up those places I called home, we had practiced this kind of hospitality more frequently than we did!

David Augsberger tells a story that illustrates something of what our daily lives might look like under the influence of Ruth’s story and the experience of Holy Communion as the barriers of exclusivism are breached and “outsiders” and “enemies” are given a place at the table:

“’Yes, I ran that horse and buggy off the road,’ the man said.  “I’d run all the Amish out of the country if I could.”

The angry man, a neighbor to my oldest brother in Holmes County, Ohio, is one of the last of a large, historic Lutheran community that settled these beautiful rolling hills in the 1800s.  Now they have virtually all moved to the city, and Amish families have claimed their farmlands.

“Like his parents, the neighbor tells scornful stories about the Amish and jokes about how his Lutheran forebears drowned the Anabaptists in the sixteenth century.  He makes light of their simple lives, horse-drawn buggies, and old style of dress.  His hassling of Amish people on the road or at the store is a facet of community life.

“On a humid day last summer an electrical storm broke out.  The air crackled, and the neighbor’s barn burst into flames and burned to ashes.

“By the time the ash heap cooled, he had begun to hear word of his neighbors’ plans.  Amish people from all around gathered to begin clearing the rubble, drawing up plans, cutting timbers, and scheduling a barn raising.

“When the day came for the event, the neighbor’s previously off-limits barnyard was swarming with men in straw hats and barn-door denims.  By evening, the great framework was complete, the roof was sheeted, and the siding was going up.

“And the neighbor stood in the driveway, shaking his head wordlessly, tears running lines down his face.  The barn stood fresh against the sky, and long tables of food and drink—homemade bread, noodles, chicken, date pudding, and rivers of lemonade—welcomed him into the circle of tired celebrants.”[6]  For everyone born, a place at the table![7]     

So dear friends, here’s the question:  Who do we invite to sit around the table in the places that we call home?  And may God help us practice what we preach!  Amen.