"Call me Mara"

      "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (Ruth 1:16-17)

     Have you ever been to a wedding where these words were part of the wedding vows?
I have . . .  SEVERAL times. They are wonderful vows ~ so passionate, so all-encompassing. They speak of love that is relentless, committed, faithful. Just perfectly formed as vows for a wedding. These words come from the book of Ruth in the Bible. The thing is though, they are not, in that book, spoken at a wedding. While they are spoken by Ruth, she did not say them to Mahlon - her first husband who died in Moab - nor to Boaz - the second husband that she married in Israel. They were not marriage vows. They were words she spoke to her mother-in-law, Naomi.

     Who was this woman? What kind of woman must Naomi have been to fill Ruth's heart with this kind of passionate love for her? I mean, it is amazing, when you stop to think: Ruth begged to be able to go back to Israel with Naomi. The quote above actually begins with, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you."  Ruth clearly loved Naomi. What kind of woman inspires that kind of devotion? Naomi must have been amazing. We see her defeated, leaving Moab alone and arriving back in Israel where she tells her friends who greet her when she and Ruth arrive, "Don't call me Naomi," she told them. "Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me." (Ruth 1:20-21) I think that Naomi was raw with grief at that moment ~ assaulted by the memories of happy days with Elimelech and her two little boys as she stumbled into Bethlehem:" there is where the boys played, there is where I first saw Elimelech as I went to draw water early in the morning, there...and there..." But I do not think Naomi was a broken woman.

     The story of the book of Ruth is a roller-coaster of poignant events. Clearly, the story is "about" Ruth, a wonderful Moabite woman who comes to Israel and became great-grandmother to David the King. But this story is punctuated with characters who are vivid and multi-dimensional. This is a short book, this is a well-written book. The writer of this book was a craftsman ... we don't know who he was exactly, but if he lived today I suspect he would have a vibrant, lucrative career as an award-winning author. For me, it is the characters that this writer drew that fill this short story with dimension and color.

     Have you read the book yet? Really if you haven't ~ really ~ pause now and go take 5 minutes and read it for yourself. It is a delightful book and you can read it in a gulp.

[silent musical interlude while you are reading Ruth]

     At first glance, this woman, Naomi, seems harsh, acerbic perhaps. She seems brash. She does things that are 'odd' to say the least ~ sends Ruth to go lay down by Boaz in the middle of the night ? ? ? Really? On first read, I am tempted to dislike her. But the more I read the book, the more I like her.

     There is an assignment I sometimes gave to students when I was teaching in a classroom. I challenged them to pretend that a movie is going to be made of the story and that they are the casting directors. I asked them to choose an actor who they would cast in the part. For me, giving a face and a voice to a character in Bible stories helps make them 3 dimensional, and helps put a "tone of voice" into the dialog. So...who would I cast in the part of Naomi? Helen Mirren. I searched for images of her and chose this one, not merely because the hair and jewelry sort of make her seems like a woman from ancient Israel (I do love the earrings, don't you?)

     I chose this image because it was one of the only ones where she was not smiling. She has a dazzling smile. But this picture to me is the picture of Naomi, home from Moab ~ old, grieved, shriveled by the losses. In fact, if I were to do a movie of this book I think I would slant the story making Naomi the central character. I would start with the scene of her return to Bethlehem.

      She comes with Ruth, likely stumbling with exhaustion into the market place. One by one the women notice and then slowly recognize her, crying out, "Is that...can that be Naomi? OH ~ look! It is Naomi! Naomi!!" They run to her, embracing her trying to spin with joy, only to have Naomi collapse weeping into the dust of the street. She says, "Don't call me Naomi," she told them. "Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me."
(Ruth 1:20-21)

       The story pours out and through flashbacks, we see the disintegration of this woman.
~ A young Naomi and Elimelech sitting huddled at a rough table, whispering intensely as their two sons sleep on mats in a loft above. Elimelech's face is intense, pleading. Naomi's face is sad. She bows her head, shaking it now and then at some remark Elimelech offers. We hear him say, "... we must. Not even a harvest enough to feed us." "But Moab? How can we ... ?" Naomi responds, tears dripping and pooling on the table.
~ The young family walking shyly into a small Moabite town, the young boys' eyes timid, but intrigued as they take in the sights and sounds of this new place.
~ Naomi, a few years older, walking in the early morning hours to the well with the women who are now her friends. Her eyes light on a lovely, quiet girl drawing water ahead of her. A young man races past, pausing to drop a quick kiss on Naomi's cheek and greet her, before stepping up to the girl and saying, "Morning Ruth. May I carry that for you?"
~ A funeral. Naomi, wailing, "NO no no...Elimelech, what will I do without you? OH God, oh, God..." Her sons gathering her into their embrace, holding her, sobbing with her.
~ A wedding, dancing, singing. As the groom, Kilion, and his lovely bride, Orpah, are ushered off to their new home for the wedding night, you see Naomi's eyes rest on Mahlon as his eyes rest on Ruth, the lovely girl from the well. Naomi smiles.
~ A funeral. This time it is Orpah and Ruth her daughters-in-law who gather in grief with Naomi.
~ Naomi, and Ruth and Orpah packing, preparing to leave Moab and go to Israel. Then . . .

      Then she kissed them and they wept aloud and said to her, "We will go back with you to your people."  But Naomi said, "Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me — even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons—would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you because the LORD's hand has gone out against me!"
At this, they wept again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-by, but Ruth clung to her. (Ruth 1:9-14)

     Ruth and Orpah were still young. There were no children, so I do not think either of them had been married long before their husbands died. Orpah goes home to her family. But not Ruth. It says she clung to Naomi. Then Ruth says, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (Ruth 1:16-17) 

     This quote, for me, tells the story of Naomi. This is why I like her. She must have been an amazing woman. She is a foreigner in Moab ~ an 'enemy' foreigner. Israel and Moab had been notorious enemies from the days of Israel's wandering in the wilderness after leaving Egypt. Yet she comes to live there, her sons marry there. And Ruth, Naomi's daughter-in-law, comes to love Naomi devotedly. What kind of woman inspires that kind of devotion in a daughter-in-law, inspires her to leave her home, and family and culture, going to a foreign country where likely, as two women alone, only poverty awaited them ~ poverty with no hope of marriage or children? Naomi must have been a strong, loving, amazing woman. It is Naomi who has taught Ruth to call God 'LORD', "May the LORD deal with me...".

     And despite what she says about herself and God to her old friends when she first gets back to Bethlehem, Naomi's words are filled with faith when Ruth begins to glean in Boaz's field.  "The LORD bless him!" Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. "He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead." (Ruth 2:20) And God does not "stop showing her His kindness."  She is not "Mara" ~ bitter. She is someone I want to meet and talk to. She is someone I want to emulate.