As John was imprisoned on the Island of Patmos, he was visited by God in a vision that helped him and all those persons of faith in the tormented times of the first century understand what God was doing in a world that was wrought with violence and oppression. His vision contained these lines that speak of the coronation of Christ:  “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come … Look! He is coming in the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen. ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:4b, 7-8, NRSV).

The one who is and was and is to come was John’s answer to the harsh realities of his time. John’s vision was a word of hope about all that is in our time that is set against the reign of God. There is hope that the world and all its myriad problems are only a mirage in light of the eternal power and hope of God acting in history to bring all this into line with the values of the kingdom that Christ has come to bring.

Our faith is a historical faith grounded in the particularities of time and space with the revelation that comes from God to specific persons in history who have encountered God and have told the divine story. Unlike other world religions, we’re not separated from the historicity of an obscure being who has no real connection with the world and its inhabitants. The biblical story is told to help us understand that God is integrally involved in the world and time is pointed towards God’s eventual reign of it all.

Imagine the scene in our gospel reading; Pilate met the angry Jewish crowd just outside the praetorium. The crowds pronounced their judgment and pushed Pilate with all their might. Then he retreated inside where he met this Jesus, face-to-face. “Are you the king of the Jews?” he demanded.

“My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus answered. “My kingdom is from another place.”

“You’re a king, then!” mocked Pilate.

“Yes, you are right in saying I’m a king,” Jesus responded.

With this, Pilate went back outside and declared Jesus innocent. Then he had Jesus beaten, flogged and humiliated him by adorning him with purple robes and fitted a crown of thorns upon him as a sign befitting a man whom he calculated was politically-minded but who had lost his base of power to the point that he was more to be pitied than feared. “Hail, O king of the Jews,” he railed.

But trouble still brewed outside where the crowds hounded him at the point of his weakness:  “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar! Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar,” they shouted.

Pilate found himself sandwiched between the two political realities between angering the crowd and betraying the emperor. So he caved to the pressure as all politicians eventually do. “Here’s your king … shall I crucify your king?”

Knowing Pilate better than he imagined, the crowd responded, “We have no king but Caesar!”

So Pilate had his soldiers affix a sign on the cross of Jesus written in Aramaic, Greek and Latin, which said, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Maybe that was the slight he knew would provoke them and perhaps a way he could get in the last word on the matter. They objected, of course. “Don’t write ‘The king of the Jews,’” they clamored, “but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”

It was too late and he was not of the mind to let them edit him, so he said, “What I have written, I have written.”

We struggle with the idea that we serve another kingdom if we’re to be faithful followers of Jesus. When Jesus insisted his kingdom was “not of this world,” he didn’t mean it was merely spiritual nor relegated to a future age just over the horizon of time or even that he was speaking of heaven where all things are eventually made right. He was speaking of a reign that runs counter to most of what we experience in life no matter what your political persuasions. Jesus was talking about the push-pull we feel whenever we attempt to make Christ king in our hearts and lives. It’s that tension we feel whenever we realize the kingdoms of this world are empty of meaning and limited by sin.

Daniel Clendenin says, “In its simplest terms, the kingdom of God that Jesus announced and embodied is what life would be like, here and now, if God were king and the rulers of this world were not. Imagine if God ruled the nations, and not (the world’s leaders as we know them). Every aspect of personal and communal life would experience a radical reversal. The political, economic, and social subversions would be almost endless – peacemaking instead of war mongering, liberation not exploitation … mercy not vengeance, care for the vulnerable instead of privileges for the powerful, generosity instead of greed … embrace rather than exclusion, etc. The ancient Hebrews had a marvelous word for this kind of life, shalom, or human well-being.”

Walker Knight wrote a wonderful sense of this in a thing he wrote some twenty-five years ago, “Peace, like war, must be waged”:

Peace plans its strategy and encircles the enemy.
Peace marshals its forces and storms the gates.
Peace gathers its weapons and pierces the defense.
Peace, like war, is waged.
But Christ has turned it all around:
the weapons of peace are love, joy, goodness, longsuffering
the arms of peace are justice, truth, patience, prayer.
the strategy of peace brings safety, welfare, happiness
the forces of peace are the sons and daughters of God.

Maybe you’re sitting there thinking all this is a pie-in-the-sky way of believing not grounded in reality. That’s okay. If we took up this way of thinking, things would have to change. We might have to give up some important piece of my life in ways that we simply can’t or won’t do. It’s too much for many believers who continue to live in the world that Christ came to change.

I hear you because the only way I can name your weakness is to identify mine. But it’s the way of Christ, we must admit. If I changed and you changed, it would make a difference. If you and I changed and we convinced others to change, what could happen? It would be a revolution of the kind that Jesus came to start.

Maybe then the subversive prayer of Jesus can be prayed by all of us, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Maybe, just maybe, that’s why Jesus stood before the government’s man and let him talk till he found the justification he needed to fend off the political accusations of weakness the Jews used to make him do what they wanted.

“Perhaps the heightened sense of God’s presence is best seen outside the sanctuary, where Jesus is king, not in places of power, but in places where people try to serve him. Perhaps we will see him most vividly, not among those who choose violence as a solution, but among those who practice peace-filled solutions. Yes, Jesus is king, not where people seek advantage, but where people seek to be helpful, not where people seek security, but in a working and breathing community. This is good news! If Jesus is king, not just once a year on a throne but throughout all of time and in every place, then we don’t have to be king, or seek another king. We no longer have to judge one another. We don’t have to control what other people think and feel or force them to fit our expectations. When that happens, the kingdom of God is here and now, here in our hearts, here among us—and out there wherever we carry it. It’s a liberating idea if you think about it.”

And liberation from the old way of doing things is what Jesus was all about. It’s God’s answer to the brokenness of the world.

Out of the vast throngs of the people of faith in our Hebrew and Christian scriptures, Hannah, the mother of Samuel, stands out as a model for spiritual wishfulness. The ancient Rabbis described her as the composer of the first prayer. The Rabbis of the Talmud cited her prayer as a prime example of sincere worship. As such, the Bible presents Hannah as a model worthy of emulation for living the faith-life. Like Ruth and Naomi from the last two weeks, she is a strong and vibrant woman for whom faith is the organizing principle that gives her power and a sacred sense of knowing who she was as a woman in a world of men.

No spirituality is of much value without the struggle of soul that is demanded to make it real. In our honest moments, we must confess that faith, like life, is difficult. An old Okinawan proverb says simply:  Pain makes you think. Thinking makes you wise. Wisdom makes the pain bearable. Most of us who seriously attempt to live our lives in relation to God and in partnership with God can testify that faith calls for the deepest commitment we can muster.

The story of Hannah is dear for many reasons. It’s a tender love story as the story paints love with the quiet, loyal affection between Elkanah and Hannah that ignored the social order of the day, as Hannah was unable to bear Elkanah a male child. In the Bible, barrenness is a common theme and perhaps it’s the metaphor that speaks to us of our many failures and shortcomings before God as we come to learn we have failed to birth God’s goodness in our own habits of being. We, like the childless mothers of the Bible, are failures in bringing life to the world born out of our love for God and God must intervene if that goodness is to emerge.

But the romance and dedication between Hannah and Elkanah created a contentious issue between Peninnah and she. Peninnah had birthed a male heir but did not receive Elkanah’s tender affection, as did Hannah. Love is strange and resists easy explanation. Why is it we love one but not the other? Why is it our heart tells us we have come home in the presence of one but feel strangely unmoved by another with whom we might have many things in common but lack that certain spark that brings us together? Bonnie Raitt sang soulfully of this:

Turn down the lights, turn down the bed
Turn down these voices inside my head
Lay down with me, tell me no lies
Just hold me close, don’t patronize; don’t patronize
Cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t

You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t
Here in the dark, in these final hours
I will lay down my heart and I’ll feel the power
But you won’t, no, you won’t
Cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t

© 1991 Lyrics, “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” M. Reid/A. Shamblin, Almo Music Corp/Brio Blues Music/Hayes Street Music, ASCAP

But there’s more to this than just the love story Hannah shares with Elkanah because Hannah feels desperately in her bones there’s a role she must play if that something more is to occur and so she prays as though prayer is her last resort. Sometimes prayer is simply tossing heavenward to God our deepest wishes, hoping to God that someone will hear and answer. Piety aside, sometimes we pray so fervently Paul’s notion of “groans too deep for words” describes the desperate kinds of prayer we utter.

Sometimes prayer is an exploration of our inner emptiness. Like the campfire that teaches us that the spaces between the logs are as important as the logs themselves. St. Hilary once observed, “Everything that seems empty is full of the angels of God.” So Hannah sought God. Hannah’s desperation was apparent just as it is with those of us who have wanted something desperately enough to step out and act as though it matters more than anything else in the world.

Ever think of prayer in terms of such desperation you would cut any deal you could with God in order to get an answer? Whatever you call it, “cutting a deal with God,” begging or pleading with the Almighty to act on your behalf, prayer is a form of wishful thinking about how things are and about how they should be if we were in charge of things. Hannah took her plans to God, asking God to intervene and do something new with her. What do we pray in those moments? What do we ask of God when certainty is elusive and we dangle wondering whether to be so bold as to ask God for what is in our hearts?

Marcus McFaul has been my good friend for these last few years. Here’s a metaphor he suggested that might help us with these questions as he did this past year in helping his church understand how the winds of God were changing direction in his life. Marcus acknowledged God often speaks to us as in the Hebrew language: A language made up only of consonants but no vowels as in the name of God, Y-H-W-H, a name the Hebrews considered too holy to even be uttered. In this construct of language, God supplies the consonants and we the vowels. With all the faith, imagination and hope we can muster, we must choose the vowels appropriately. So in life, here come the consonants God provides: S-T-P. Having only the consonants, by faith we ask, do we place an O between the T and P, interpreting God as saying STOP? Or do we insert an E, so we interpret God as saying STEP?

McFaul adds, “So we pray, think, listen, discuss, discern – seeking to figure out where God is leading, calling, and we fill in the vowel and trust in God wherever that path leads. Earlier doors have opened and I sensed God’s word to me to be STOP. (On other occasions), to the best that I can know, what I believe is that God (was) saying STEP.”

A similar theme emerged unexpectedly in the concert Wanda and I attended Friday night in Lawrence from one of the lyrics of a sweet Pierce Pettis song titled, “God Believes in You.” Pettis takes the notion of how we limit our faith by imagining it’s up to us to hang on to God as if God has no role to play in faith. So Pettis flips that on its head so we can understand that God is very active in holding onto us in the dynamic relationship of faith:

When you start to doubt if you exist
God believes in you
Confounded by the evidence
God believes in you
When your light burns dim, when your chances seem so slim

And you swear you don’t believe in him
God believes in you
When you rise up just to fall again
God believes in you
Deserted by your closest friends
God believes in you
When you’re betrayed with a kiss, and you turn your cheek to another fist

It does not have to end like this
God believes in yo
When you’re so ashamed that you could die
God believes in you
And you can’t do right even though you try
God believes in you

Blessed are the ones who grieve, the ones who mourn,
The ones who bleed in sorrow you sow but in joy you’ll reap
God believes in you

©  1997, Pierce Pettis, Polygram Music Publishing

Hannah took hold of faith and made her request earnestly to God. It was all she had and she put herself into the fragile faith position where faith and faith alone could make the difference. The inspiration of Hannah is ours to savor and love – it’s also ours to emulate as we seek to follow God, filling in the gaps of what we know with the substance of faith … and so we do.

The Hebrew heroine story of Ruth and Naomi makes us question our assumptions that the Bible was written solely by men. I suspect we’ve grown up thinking that all the writers of Scripture were men. Perhaps it was never said outright, but I think we’ve bought into the idea that it was so. The reason all of this seems pertinent to the story of Ruth is that some scholars think a woman may have written the Book of Ruth. Think of it, why else would this obscure story have been saved? Or better yet, is it even possible that a man would write a story such as this? Imagine with me what’s in this womanly tale…

First, the story revolves around a family. But it’s not a story about the men in the family; it’s about the women and what happens to them. There are men in the story, but recognize the place the story gives them. They’re just window dressing. They have names but we know nothing about them. Besides, in the prologue, the men all die leaving the story to describe what happens to the women. Let’s be historically honest:  When women are mentioned in the Bible, most often it’s because of their role and relationship with men as mothers, lovers, or wives. There are some notable exceptions, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Would this be the focus of a story a man living in patriarchal times would have bothered to tell?

One commentator describes this story in terms of the passage of time. In the first half of the first chapter, time sweeps by quickly. Large events take place with little detail about how the characters in the story are feeling or thinking. But as soon as the men clear the stage, the pace of the story comes to a creeping halt and the women are the main actors on the stage for the remainder of the story until its conclusion. As the narrative pace slows down, the story becomes more and more relational. So after noting all this, could it be possible that this story came from some wonderfully gifted woman Jewish storyteller?

Second, this is a refugee story. Subsequently, the women are on the verge of starvation and annihilation. They are like the refugees in Victor Hugo’s masterful epic story of destitution, Les Misérables. Naomi and Ruth are “the miserable ones” who have little hope of surviving. When you visualize these women, don’t let your mind’s eye put any additional flesh on their scraggly bodies for they are starving. The hair on their heads is falling out and their ribs are protruding from their formless chests. They are gaunt and on the verge of starvation as a result of their malnutrition. They more resemble the victims of the Holocaust than the well-fed images of the Sunday School pictures we were shown as children.

Naomi bravely leads them on the first steps of a long and possibly impossible trip back to Bethlehem where, when they finally succumb to death, they can at least be buried among her own kinsmen and not dumped in some meaningless grave in a foreign land. But on the first day of the journey, she recognizes they will probably die before they ever get back and so she tries to run them off, hoping to send them back to their families. Perhaps if they go home they will have a chance of marrying again and therefore surviving. Orpah, perhaps the more practical of the two, accepts her offer and leaves but Ruth refuses to leave. What is it in Ruth that prevents her from leaving this hopeless cause to do something to save her? All we know about her inner thoughts come from what she says to Naomi:

Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
Where you lodge, I will lodge;
Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.
Where you die, I will die…
There I will be buried,
May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!
(Ruth 1:16-17, NRSV)

They are surely some of the most beautiful words written in the Bible. They are achingly beautiful words of fidelity and the truest feelings of one suffering soul for another. What more can we say this morning? What else can we add to the deep emotions expressed by this foreign daughter-in-law to her destitute and hopeless mother-in-law?

The Bible makes it clear there is more to this story because they do not die together. They survive. They make it back to Naomi’s homeland. Surely it’s Ruth’s strong commitment to Naomi that saves them. Surely it’s what Ruth loaned to Naomi that allowed them both to survive. Out of the resources of this Moabite woman, both of them cross the desert and return to the tiny village of Bethlehem where they find their salvation.

Out of the despair of their story, can we find the words of hope for our own salvation? Robert Capon reminds us that the formula for redemption comes in small, obscure ways and not in the dramatic, sensational ways that we expect. Capon says that salvation throughout the Bible comes to those who are least or little. It comes to those who are lost or last. Salvation ultimately comes to all “the miserable ones” who look to God alone for salvation. And redemption comes whenever we recognize that we are powerless to bring about our own salvation. In other words, we must become like Ruth and Naomi. We must come to our wit’s end and have only one place to look for the strength to continue.

Ruth, a stranger, a woman, a foreigner, becomes our model for faith in her willingness to take what strength of character she has and to join it with Naomi’s need. Ruth, the outsider – Ruth, the Moabite woman – Ruth, the foreign wife of one of Naomi’s sons … Imagine that! Ruth became the salvation-bearer for all of God’s chosen ones! Maybe this is a story only a woman would be brave enough to suggest. Maybe a woman who had nothing to lose but to tell a tale of salvation could suggest an ending as heart warming as this one.