On Sinai, amidst thunder and lighting, great noise and a huge crowd, the people received Torah.
I can still hear the echoes of donkeys braying and goats bleating. Parents quieting frightened babies. Young children running around, playing games in the background. Teenagers talking one to other, just waiting to be silenced by an adult. People losing focus and then regaining it.
The messiness of mass revelation…
And they had their whole lives ahead of them…
The wounds from the shackles of slavery still healing…
The taste of freedom still just an imagined palate of honey and milk…not yet even touching the tongue.
When our ancestors received Torah, they were just a newly formed group of wanderers, not even sure yet what to expect.
And Torah, full of her commandments and laws. Rules for a new way of life. A gift. A tree to hold fast to. A way to live…
This was still a new relationship for them. Still figuring things out and how to relate to this God, who both whispered and bellowed, and this Moses, who stumbled as often as he stood. What did it even mean to be an Israelite?
No golden calves yet. Or uprisings. No dashed hopes or longings for Egypt.
Just possibility and future and hope…
Revelation with the promise of redemption.
---
You know, we read another story on Shavuot. The book of Ruth.
Called the book of Chesed, the book of lovingkindness, this tale begins with sorrow.
Naomi and her family live in that Promised Land. No longer just a hope. This is new a reality. Generations after slavery. Kings come and gone. Freedom fully ours.
And Naomi’s town is auspiciously named Beit Lechem, the House of Bread. But her windowsills are empty of rising dough. Famine grips every home. Until one night son turns mother and wife to husband.
And the family leaves the land of promise.
Naomi and her family off. Out of that promised land and back into the wilderness. Hoping for a better life there. The desert not so bleak after all.
They arrive in Moab, bread baskets empty, not a drop of sweetness in sight…forbidden landscape before.
And there, misfortune falls. Husband and sons pass away.
Naomi left with Moabite daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth.
No options. No protection. No future in sight. Calling out to God like her slave-ancestors before: Deliver me.
And so she sets out once again on a journey back to Canaan.
A journey of loss and disappointment and defeat. In Naomi’s mind, there is nothing left.
Orpah turns back and Ruth remains.
Silent steps. No children to cry out, no laughter seeping out of surrounding tents, no animals to bleat or bray, no thunder, no lightning. Whispers so quiet they barely even reach the women’s ears.
Until Ruth, frightened and alone, takes her adopted mother’s hand and says to Naomi “Your people will be my people, Your God will be my God.”
Both women dusty from the journey. Tear lines tracked across their faces. So much devastation. So much sorrow. What is left to see in this world?
No sacred letters etched on stone in the mountains above. No great leader. No voice of God. No scrap of holy text.
Just two women with empty pockets, who lost everything. Alone and a little desperate. Turning to one another. And making a new covenant.
And Ruth intones: That story you sung to me while hanging laundry. That God you cried out to at my husband’s grave. That people whose language you speak. That journey you traced. All that you claim as yours, I claim as mine.
And Ruth promises Naomi redemption. And Naomi can only taste bitterness.
But the two walk on into a town that once again fills its bread baskets. And meet a people who are willing to bend every rule for the good of the women who rejoined them.
This is our Torah they tell them. And Ruth grasps it. This is her tree. And she holds fast to it.
The townspeople sing to them quietly, words of Psalms “She who went out weeping carrying seeds to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves.”
This is a new revelation, born not out of promise but out of the knowledge that not every promise is fulfilled.
This is a new revelation, born not out of commandments, but out of broken rules and changed expectations.
This is a new revelation, born not out of noise and fanfare, but out of the quiet, even the darkness.
And this our revelation as much as the first. Revelation happening not at one moment in time but again and again in our lives. No matter which side of hope we find ourselves upon. No matter which side of the promises we have made or have been made to us.
Torah revealing herself not in one form, but in many, opposites even. Ready for us to add our stories to hers.
I can still hear the echoes of donkeys braying and goats bleating. Parents quieting frightened babies. Young children running around, playing games in the background. Teenagers talking one to other, just waiting to be silenced by an adult. People losing focus and then regaining it.
The messiness of mass revelation…
And they had their whole lives ahead of them…
The wounds from the shackles of slavery still healing…
The taste of freedom still just an imagined palate of honey and milk…not yet even touching the tongue.
When our ancestors received Torah, they were just a newly formed group of wanderers, not even sure yet what to expect.
And Torah, full of her commandments and laws. Rules for a new way of life. A gift. A tree to hold fast to. A way to live…
This was still a new relationship for them. Still figuring things out and how to relate to this God, who both whispered and bellowed, and this Moses, who stumbled as often as he stood. What did it even mean to be an Israelite?
No golden calves yet. Or uprisings. No dashed hopes or longings for Egypt.
Just possibility and future and hope…
Revelation with the promise of redemption.
---
You know, we read another story on Shavuot. The book of Ruth.
Called the book of Chesed, the book of lovingkindness, this tale begins with sorrow.
Naomi and her family live in that Promised Land. No longer just a hope. This is new a reality. Generations after slavery. Kings come and gone. Freedom fully ours.
And Naomi’s town is auspiciously named Beit Lechem, the House of Bread. But her windowsills are empty of rising dough. Famine grips every home. Until one night son turns mother and wife to husband.
And the family leaves the land of promise.
Naomi and her family off. Out of that promised land and back into the wilderness. Hoping for a better life there. The desert not so bleak after all.
They arrive in Moab, bread baskets empty, not a drop of sweetness in sight…forbidden landscape before.
And there, misfortune falls. Husband and sons pass away.
Naomi left with Moabite daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth.
No options. No protection. No future in sight. Calling out to God like her slave-ancestors before: Deliver me.
And so she sets out once again on a journey back to Canaan.
A journey of loss and disappointment and defeat. In Naomi’s mind, there is nothing left.
Orpah turns back and Ruth remains.
Silent steps. No children to cry out, no laughter seeping out of surrounding tents, no animals to bleat or bray, no thunder, no lightning. Whispers so quiet they barely even reach the women’s ears.
Until Ruth, frightened and alone, takes her adopted mother’s hand and says to Naomi “Your people will be my people, Your God will be my God.”
Both women dusty from the journey. Tear lines tracked across their faces. So much devastation. So much sorrow. What is left to see in this world?
No sacred letters etched on stone in the mountains above. No great leader. No voice of God. No scrap of holy text.
Just two women with empty pockets, who lost everything. Alone and a little desperate. Turning to one another. And making a new covenant.
And Ruth intones: That story you sung to me while hanging laundry. That God you cried out to at my husband’s grave. That people whose language you speak. That journey you traced. All that you claim as yours, I claim as mine.
And Ruth promises Naomi redemption. And Naomi can only taste bitterness.
But the two walk on into a town that once again fills its bread baskets. And meet a people who are willing to bend every rule for the good of the women who rejoined them.
This is our Torah they tell them. And Ruth grasps it. This is her tree. And she holds fast to it.
The townspeople sing to them quietly, words of Psalms “She who went out weeping carrying seeds to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves.”
This is a new revelation, born not out of promise but out of the knowledge that not every promise is fulfilled.
This is a new revelation, born not out of commandments, but out of broken rules and changed expectations.
This is a new revelation, born not out of noise and fanfare, but out of the quiet, even the darkness.
And this our revelation as much as the first. Revelation happening not at one moment in time but again and again in our lives. No matter which side of hope we find ourselves upon. No matter which side of the promises we have made or have been made to us.
Torah revealing herself not in one form, but in many, opposites even. Ready for us to add our stories to hers.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment