Ruth 3: 1-2; Mark 12: 38,39,40

Between love and oppression

Marilynne Robinson, a well known religious novelist in an October 29 lecture at Stanford criticized the fact that universities are not primarily education students, but preparing them to become members of the most skilled working class. Students learn that they are primarily of economic use. A student asked Robinson what the humanities can do for social good.  “Everything,” she replied. “The humanities,” Robinson continued, “make people think about humankind and learn compassion for one another and learn awe relative to what human beings are.” (The Stanford Report).

This can lead to a question: How well do we treat our fellow human beings?  Quite a general question, isn’t it? But that is a question our passages for today pose to us?  Specifically they ask in an indirect way:” How well do we treat the person we consider the “other.” We could also call them “the marginal” or the “insignificant.” Both in the Book of Ruth and in Mark we see the “others,” the “marginal ones” are widows, namely Ruth, Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi as well as the poor widows who are in need of protection in the Israel and Palestine of Jesus’ days.  Widows are the true destitute, the traumatized. They are vulnerable and totally dependent on the kindness of strangers.  The world they inhabit is a cruel one. In the book of Ruth Boaz passes the test of kindness to widows with flying colors.  He is a true supporter of the other, the marginal. He treats Ruth and thereby her mother-in-law with respect and decency. It doesn’t look down on them or exploit them because of their vulnerability.  The opposite is true of the scribes Jesus mentions.  They go around in fine robes, but they demolish the houses of the poor widows. They prey on the week.  There are similar elements to both passages, friends.  Among other there is power: both Boaz and the scribes have power. Boaz has more the power of wealth as a successful farmer.  The scribes have more the power of position and religious authority.  Boaz does not abuse his while the scribes do abuse theirs. How do they treat the marginal and the vulnerable?

Friends, at one point or another we are all marginal.  What is junior high and high school but a huge ongoing battle not to be considered marginal or peripheral.  One of the most beautiful and nearly perfect songs of the Seventies is the ballad “At Seventeen” by Janis Ian.  It was so towering a success that everyone has pretty much forgotten all her other songs.  I cannot think of a song that addresses the experience of feeling marginal at that age more eloquently than that song.

The film “Steve Jobs” is in many ways a study of the marginal.  Jobs was adopted and struggled with this all his life.  He started out the other, the marginal, as much as his adoptive parents loved him.  Then he wound up denying his own fatherhood of his daughter Lisa.   On top of it he was so driven to produce an absolutely perfect product that everyone seemed to be either a tool or in the way.  He knows how to make others feel marginal.  The product was everything. Changing the world was everything. It is interesting how most of the movie takes place back stage before product roll outs. It is as if all those Jobs has pushed away push their way back into his awareness right at those moments.  He is stubborn but also engages everyone and he is very candid with them.  Yet everything is marginal to the product.

In a new tv sitcom called “Grandfathered” (Fox TV) which I have only seen twice, John Stamos is a dashing, womanizing restaurant owner with a cool apartment, a flashy car and impeccable clothes. Then one day he finds out he has a son who introduces himself out of the blue. Not only that, his son has daughter.  Stamos is being grandfathered.  His instinct is to treat these people, including the boy’s mother and former love of his life, as marginal.  He does not want them to butt into his trendy, pleasant life.  But then he begins to realize that he himself has been completely in the margins of their life as some insignificant footnote.

Friends, we know the feeling of being in the margins.  Some of you have known it a lot more than others.  What the Bible through shining light on this issue is saying is that it matters how we treat the people we think don’t matter. These are the people we have decided add no value to our life.  But think it how many times have people we thought added no value suddenly have become important to us.  And do we fully realize how many people everyday make our life comfortable and bearable without us even realizing it?  How grateful are we for them.  More importantly our Christian faith tells us that we are all connected to our Creator through others.  But do we always live like that. Do we perhaps sometimes treat people as commodities or as pawns, as expendable relationships?  Our faith does not allow us to do that.  What it comes to our faith, there really is no such thing as an “other.” May God as Holy Spirit make us aware.