delivered 8 November 2009
by Rev. Dr John Evans
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
Mark 12:38-44
There is a word, a concept, which now dominates modern life but amazingly this word does not appear in all of scripture – at least in the New Revised Standard Version of scripture. The word is risk.
Today we have almost become obsessed with managing risk: risk to our life, health, wellbeing, safety, our money, or career or whatever. We approach social ills – like, gambling or drunkenness – with policies that seek to reduce harm and minimize risk to the community and to the individuals involved. We, it seems, abhor risk. And can you believe it, the Synod of Victoria and Tasmania, has a Risk Management Committee, and the Church, as an institution, has recently also endorsed a risk management policy.
Anyone who has worked in even a small organisation will be aware of the modern fetish for risk management. There are policies on everything – and risk management can become the wonderful sport for the anally retentive. It can be monumentally frustrating as one is burdened with layers and layers of compliance requirements – about money, and quality of service delivery, about safety, about health and so on while what you meant to be doing, say, actually helping people and changing lives, seems lost in the maze of regulation and risk management.
I am perhaps too jaundiced. There is good which can be achieved; people should not needlessly suffer or be hurt. Achieving safety and personal security are laudable objectives – but sometimes one just wonders whatever happened to plain common sense, and my very 1970s attitude of hanging loose. Perhaps after all, common sense is not at all that common, and we have to legislate for it.
My more radical critique of all of our contemporary risk management stuff, is that it assumes that we can actually live with no risk at all within our lives: our whole life can be predictable; we can be totally in control; and that we will never encounter any risk or likelihood of harm. We can do this by not venturing out into our risk-laden world. I still remember a cartoon from one of my government textbooks in my university days, some time last century. There was this character standing there, looking quizzical, with the caption, “Can you think of anything that you cannot blame the government for?” Try it. Even with the weather, extreme weather, we will blame the government for not giving the right notice, the right emphasis and appropriate warning about the situation. The weather warning over Black Saturday, 7 February, 2009, is surely a case in point.
Why? Because we believe we in the 21st century we can manage risk, and because of that then we can blame someone, some other person, at the very least, the government, if something goes wrong. We gloriously avoid personal responsibility and the reality [that] life is complex, not always plain sailing, and the inexplicable and surprising occur.
So what has this state of affairs got to do with the story of Ruth, and our widow at the temple? Both are stories about risk taking; risk taking with an assumption that life is to be lived, not with us in control – and indeed needing to be in control – but lived in our utter dependence on God.
The clearer of the two stories is possibly Jesus at the temple. Jesus was strongly criticizing the scribes, the religious bureaucrats of the time. Now his criticism was at a basic level – they were hypocrites, said one thing and did another. They lorded it over the people. They were arrogant. They were cruel – they “devoured the widows’ houses”. And in matters of religious piety, well, they were show- offs! We Australians have an in-built ability to spot a scribe! We know the sort!
Jesus however, takes his critique further when he observes a widow who placed just two small copper coins in the temple treasury. Meanwhile others gave much, and no doubt with much fanfare. Sort of like a Bill Gates giving away to a good cause one of his stray billions. Meanwhile the widow contributes out of her poverty all she has; again like a person here on the Carlton Estate who may give away their pension to a person in need who is down the corridor. No fanfare. No publicity.
It is a vivid story at many levels. It is also a story about risk. Those rich people who came to the treasury box that day, remained in control. Although they gave much, they did not risk much at all in their service of God. The widow, on the other hand, risked everything – such was her devotion and dependence on God.
The story of Naomi and Ruth also is about risk, and risk-taking behaviour. You will recall what went before in this story. Naomi, a Jew, having moved to a foreign land found herself widowed, and with just her sons’ widows: Ruth and Orpah. It was tough in Moab for a foreign widow. So she resolves to return to her people, to her homeland. Surprisingly Ruth, a foreigner, resolves to accompany her. She makes that famous affirmation:
“Where you go I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge ;
your people will be my people,
and your God will be my God.” (1: 15)
So these two widows find themselves back in Naomi’s home country and amidst her people. Life is still precarious, however, and Naomi says to Ruth:
“My daughter, I need to seek some security for you so that it may be well with you.” (3:1)
Naomi comes up with a risky strategy of – well, using Ruth’s feminine wiles and falling on the good grace of a kinsman named Boaz. In other words the sub plot, or the main plot was: “Get noticed, dear – and he, Boaz, will be our salvation.” The verses we heard politely belie this strong sexual overtone, but the strategy is clear, and ultimately successful. Ruth gets her man – and her and Naomi’s security is assured.
It could have failed . . . and they could have been worse off. But it didn’t; and significantly the unfolding presence of God within Jewish history is shown as Ruth and Boaz become the great-grandparents to David, King David . . . who, according to the genealogy of scripture, was a forebear of Jesus himself.
These two stories, we today would say are about risky behaviour, or perhaps calculated risks – but for the participants their actions, whether of the widow in the temple, or of Naomi and Ruth, were signs of their dependence and trust – their faith in God. Their actions were not risky – they were a sign of great faith.
And this is a great challenge for us today as Christians and as the church. On the one hand what we might do and say would seem to be “risky”, not wise, in terms of our risk adverse culture; but that very action may also be seen as a sign of great faith and indeed an example of what we in the Uniting Church have always said we are on about as a Church, namely, being prepared to risk the way of Jesus. Risk taking and faith go hand in hand.
One is thus tempted to say what we need to do is to get the balance right. On the one hand, being risk adverse in our personal life, or the life of a congregation, but on the other take a bit of risk. Risk that relationship and say, ‘Well actually I am a Christian – this is what I believe.’ Or risk our financial prudence by giving to the church even though it may not be a tax deduction; or being like the widow and not being all that prudent with giving away one’s money; or as a congregation risk a deficit budget or undertake building works, say, because we seek to serve the community in a new and different way . . . and we don’t have the money in the bank.
However, is all of this really about getting the balance right? Or is it really about Christians and the Church providing a critique of the view that everything – the whole of life; womb to tomb – can be managed and risk eliminated? One of the features of our contemporary risk management style for orgnaisations, and I think also for people, is that, the place for spark, innovation, openness to the spiritual, and a place and time for the movement of the Spirit can be squeezed out and even squashed. The mindset that we as humans can and need to control everything fails to comprehend the great partnership we have with God and the hope we may have by being open to God, and the joy and wonder we may have as we ponder the beauty of creation.
If nothing else, our risk-averse world is boring and dull.
While away I read a biography of the person we have come to know as Saint Francis of Assisi: an amazing person. I think we know his story of giving up a rich and self-serving life of privilege and opportunity, to then live a humble life of poverty and service. A life of utter dependence on God. A risky life.
And within a few short years there were thousands and thousand of others who had done similarly, joined his group and sought to serve their communities and assist the marginalized and outcast. He was an inspiration in his time; and still his.
What strikes one about his story is his persistent, one might almost say stubbornness, to consider risk averse behaviour – say even about the need for order and structure, a Rule, within this emerging company of the poor or lesser friars. Yet he is amazingly open to beauty and joy in the wonder of creation – the animals and birds, which we know, but also in the beauty of our environment generally. Utter dependence on God has its blessings.
Christians run counter to a lot of our society’s prevailing ways. We are not just contrary, or bloody minded, or cussed. We really do see that with our dependence on God, as revealed to us in Jesus’ own life of risk taking, ultimately risking his life for us, that there is a way to a full life, a deeper understanding of who we really are, and the hope we have as children of God.
Risking the way of Jesus, is difficult; has its costs; but it has too its benefits.
