The Way of God’s Economy

Transcripts are computed-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Hey, it's good to see you all here amidst all the…horrors that might be happening personally or just politically in your life…Like Debbie said, I'm Jae, I'm one of the pastors here at The Table, and whether you're here for the first time, or the first time in a long time, it is really and genuinely so good to be with you. And being in a community that after this week means so much to me as a pastor of color, as someone who wasn't born in this country, as someone who's queer and trans, it's good to be with a community that I know sees the fullness of God's image in me. And so to be part of a community where I can then look back at you and see the image of God in each and every person who came through those doors tonight, it's just good.

Tonight we're in a series on the Ways of Jesus. We're seeking to understand and be clear about what it means to follow Jesus in our lives today. And tonight we're talking about economics. Economics, everybody's favorite topic. Everyone loves talking about the economy. That was sarcasm. But tonight I'm going to point us to the book of Ruth. And you might be thinking, why in a series about Jesus are we going read from the book of Ruth? But I hope it becomes clear in this story. So Patti, if you’d just throw that up for me. We're reading from Ruth 4. And it says:

Then Boaz said, "When you buy the field from Naomi, you also buy Ruth the Moabite, the wife of the dead man, in order to preserve the dead man's name for his inheritance.” But the redeemer replied, "Then I can't redeem it for myself without risking damage to my own inheritance. Redeem it for yourself, you can have the right of redemption because I am unable to act as redeemer.” And Boaz announced to the elders and all the people, "Today you are witnesses that I've bought from the hand of Naomi all that belong to Elimelech and all that belongs to Killian and Malon. And also Ruth the Moabite, the wife of Malon, I've bought to be my wife to preserve the dead man's name for his inheritance so that the name of the dead man might not be cut off from his brothers or the gates of his hometown. Today you are witnesses."

Then all the people who were at the gate and the elders said, "We are witnesses. May the Lord grant that the woman who is coming into your household be like Rachel and be like Leah, both of whom built up the house of Israel. May you be fertile and may you preserve a name in Bethlehem. And may your household be like the household of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah through the children that the Lord will give you from this young woman.” So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. He was intimate with her. The Lord let her become pregnant and she gave birth to a son. The women said to Naomi, “May the Lord be blessed who today hasn't left you without a redeemer. May his name be proclaimed in Israel. He will restore your life and sustain you in your old age. Your daughter-in-law who loves you has given birth to him. She's better for you than seven sons.” Naomi took the child and held him to her breast and she became his guardian. The neighborhood of women gave him a name saying, "a son has been born to Naomi.” They called his name Obed. He became Jesse's father and David's grandfather.

So why in this series on the ways of Jesus, talk about Ruth and Naomi, two women who at face value don't have a ton to do with Jesus' ministry? Because they lived 43 generations beforehand. In case you didn't know, Jesus descends from Boaz and Ruth, Boaz's King David's great grandfather and Jesus is from the house of David as prophecy foretold. Which means in this story and the ethos of the generations of Jesus of Nazareth's family, he was raised to know the story of Ruth and Naomi. It was told through generations all the way down to Mary and Joseph and Jesus and it becomes clear how. We can see it through the consistency in scripture.

A little context: Ruth and Naomi, of course, at this point are widowed. As the story says, their husbands have died. They are experiencing a world of chaos. There has been famine, there has been death, there has been fighting. Their lives have completely fallen apart, and now they are the lowest of the low class. They have no social, economic, political, or religious rights, and without husbands, fathers, or sons, they are as good as dead to the world. Naomi blessed her daughters-in-law to leave her. She says, "I am dead to the world, but you don't have to be. You are young, and you can go and find other husbands. It is acceptable for you because you can have children still. You can bear children; you have worth, and I have none."

But Naomi finds that Ruth decides to stay, and so together they seek what’s called a kinsman redeemer. A kinsman redeemer was someone in the family who had the responsibility or the privilege to step in when a male figure in the family died and to redeem their situation, to restore them back into the structure of family, and to ensure their stability for the future in a world that would otherwise be completely and utterly unkind to them.

The first in line—did you notice?—says no. The first in line says, "That will not benefit me. In fact, I would have to sacrifice something great to help this woman, and I’m not about that. I would like a deal that would do me a great service, and only if I got the plot of land that belonged to Elimelech would I have a benefit. I’d get more land, I’d get more money, but yeah, having another woman that I have to take care of and deplete my inheritance in my family? Not interested." So the first says no, but Boaz has already committed to Ruth. He says that he will redeem both Naomi and Ruth, a responsibility that he could have passed down to someone else.

Ruth 4 is a glimpse for us tonight. It is a glimpse for us in how God’s people were called to care for one another in the face of full systemic vulnerability, without a clear financial benefit to ourselves. A relationship that is not about transaction and about what I can be offered, but is about ensuring that the whole of community is cared for. Boaz steps in to be sure these two women are not left to death. They can have a chance. This is an act of sacrificial care and not just a one-time event, but it is a pattern that we see over and over and over in the story of God’s people, down into the Gospels. The Gospels are consistent with what Ruth 4 shows us—this glimpse in the text that Cody originally had suggested for me tonight.

In Matthew 19, Jesus speaks on divorce, on blessing children, and receiving the kingdom of God as children, and on giving up our possessions to the poor. The author of Matthew places these back to back to back, and all of that comes after Matthew 18, where Jesus performs the miracle of feeding 5,000 people who he could have sent away. Each of these conversations he has in Matthew 19 speaks to an economically vulnerable group: women, children, and those who have found themselves without any economic stability for whatever reason. Jesus displays in the entirety of Matthew 18 and 19 a consideration for the socioeconomic vulnerabilities of people in our communities and then commands the listener of all that text to err on the side of justice, to not consider it a transaction meant to be beneficial to you.

When we talk about divorce, it’s not because we have these ideas of sexual purity that we now have in 2025. When he talks about divorce, it’s because if a man decided one day he didn’t love his wife enough anymore, he could leave her to die. So to not be willing to allow men in the community to divorce their wives is a matter of justice, not a matter of romance or purity. It says you cannot just leave this woman for nothing. Jesus fulfills in the law then to make us each children of God, to be bound by this kinsman redeemer rule. So too, in that, does Jesus make us each into each other’s kin, into each other’s kinsman redeemers, so that actually, we each are called to step in as our community members suffer. In the way that Boaz did—not in the way shirking the responsibility, as the first in line did—to look at another person and say, "Helping you out right now in this moment doesn’t need to have a payout for me, because I see you, and I know you, and I want you to thrive."

Martin Luther wrote a book called The Freedom of a Christian. This is where you can tell that I went to Luther Seminary and that I derive from the Lutheran tradition, which, having the front rows empty, makes me very comfortable. (Congregation Laughing) In this book, The Freedom of a Christian, Luther theologizes that we are both free from and free to. We are free from the power and the domination and the penalty of sin or broken trust or pain, of hurt and resentment, so that we might be free to be a servant to all, to encounter every other, and meet their needs at face value. We are free from bondage and yet bonded to all in service.

It’s a paradox of freedom. Freedom from being turned in on ourselves, free from hoarding our resources unjustly, free from fearing that the foreigner might take your job, from only wanting to pay when it benefits you, from resenting those seeking refuge in your hometown, from valuing our profit lines over the profit of God. Freedom to give, to give what we can. Freedom to be in service to others. Freedom to ensure flourishing for all around us. Freedom to serve those who are being targeted by our empires. Freedom to serve those who are being abandoned by our institutions. That is what we have been freed to in Christ.

And in preparing this sermon, I read an article written by a Lithuanian scholar. The scholar described her mother's giving of potatoes to their neighbors during the Lithuanian economic crisis in the 90s. She said her mom kept taking potatoes to the neighbors. She was like, "We have nothing. All we have are these potatoes. Where are you taking them?" She felt it was a dwindling supply, and the author actually scolded her mother, saying, "If you keep doing that, if you keep taking these potatoes wherever you're taking them, we will be gnawing on trees in our yard by early spring." And yet, her mother kept taking the potatoes. What the author would come to find out years later is that in this economy where scarcity was everywhere, her mother had found a way to ensure that abundance would still reign. Her mother was exchanging potatoes for tall jars of sauerkraut so that her family could eat more than just potatoes. For the entirety of this economic crisis, the author's mother kept their family fed with the mutual aid of potatoes for sauerkraut. Sauerkraut for potatoes. Relying on neighbors when institutions like the World Bank or the Lithuanian government had failed their family greatly. The author says this: "In those simple acts of sharing, we kept finding the strangest of abundances. Through mutual care of each other, we circumvented systems of unbridled capitalism and ever-increasing economic austerity measures."

Church, we too, are in unprecedented times, very different perhaps than the Lithuanian economic crisis, but I don't feel hopeless yet. I don't yet feel alone. I was at a conference last week in Atlanta, the QCF Queer Christian Conference. I was with Maggie, Emily, Hannah, and Sarah. It was so wonderful to spend time with them and 300 or so other LGBTQ or allied Christians from all over this country and this world. As I stood and worshiped and sang music, I stayed up till 3 a.m. talking to people about the theology of death. People that I never met, I just said, "Hey, what do you think about death?" That's the kind of person I am, so invite me to your next family function.

As I held people as they cried and as I prayed for people as they panicked, I felt the strength of what beloved community is really for. We have a parent in this community whose daughter is trans, and in prayers of the people, if you were here, you heard that she said, "The government is no longer issuing passports to children or adults who are clearly asking for gender changes in their documentation or who have a history of having changed their gender in their documentation." As we talked and as I prayed for this parent who was so deeply panicked for her family, I said to her after we prayed, "You know that our church will never, never let them take your family from you, and this church will never, never let you and your family suffer a great death like that. Wherever you need to go, we will get you there. Whatever you need us to do for your daughter, we will do. Whatever you can't do because you are busy taking care of your daughter, we will do."

This parent expressed, "I'm so angry. I wanna go in the streets, scream, throw a brick.” Don't we all? She said, "I can't because I need to be there for my daughter." And I said, "This is the kind of community where you surely will find somebody who will go into the street and scream for you, who will pick something up, hopefully not throw it at anything and break any laws, but who will metaphorically throw that brick for you, who will be there. That is the kind of community this is. So take heart.” This is the economy of Jesus, one that steps in and says we are in mutuality with you, we are in a relationship of care with you, and it doesn't need to pay dividends to us.

Church, as we see grants be slashed, programs defunded, people rounded up for deportation, and investigated for the simple act of loving their children, we need to remember who we are, what we gather around, who we say Jesus Christ is, and why we persist in following the ways of Jesus. We must now know deeply, more than ever, Jesus's economic model—a model that doesn't need an investment towards a greater profit for people to have inherent worth, a model that doesn't need somebody to have a net worth for them to be worth protecting and loving.

So if you're in this room tonight and you are deeply vulnerable, you are invited to receive. You are invited to be Naomi, to be Ruth, to be protected. Let me be so clear about that—you are not being asked to be Boaz. But if you have anything—any privilege, any power, any time, any skills, any socioeconomic capital to be shared—you are commanded, commanded to be like Boaz, to be like Jesus, to be a disciple, to give it up for the hurting, the lost, the poor, the oppressed. That is what scripture says time and time and time and time again.

Not whatever this "empathy is a sin" crap is. The scriptures command us to put something on the line for those who are in greatest need. So when they come for trans and non-binary kids who are in this church, how will you show up for their families? When they cut off healthcare for the trans adults in this room, how will you step up to circumvent the insurance industry? When the women in this room encounter a renewal of violence and initiatives seeking control of their bodies, what will the men in this room put on the line to provide mutual care, to protect the agency and flourishing of women in your community?

Let's be clear that we can't save the world. That's not your responsibility. That was never what the commandment was. But it is to engage deeply in mutual care with those who are in proximity to you. That is where we are called. This is what the path of Jesus requires. This is what the economy of Jesus values—not for glory, profit, or power, but for liberation, for love, and for the fulfillment of a prophecy. This is, this indeed is, the way of Jesus. Amen.