Borders and Belonging

 I'm reading a slim book by Irish poet Padraig O Tuama (and Glenn Jordan) called "Borders and Belonging" .  It's a study on the Bible book of Ruth, but to call it a Bible study is maybe not quite what it is. The book started as a series of reflections and workshops on Brexit and how the Irish communities Padraig worked with could find some kind of Christian take on it, using the book of Ruth as a mediating lens to view it through.

Before, I've loved Ruth for the study of Naomi, a middle aged lady deep in loss and depression - the book read me well at one point in my life.  But this study asks deep, penetrating questions of the text and of us.  In a world of "others" - migrants, economic and assylum seekers, poverty and female vulnerability in a male dominated world.

They certainly aren't "conservative" scholars and they draw on Jewish texts and Bible scholarship - the book is just peppered with contemporary questions and I found it asked me some awkward questions too.

Particularly, it gave me an angle on the horrible passages in Nehemiah and Ezra, where the returning exiles who have married "the people of the land" are forced to divorce them.  Sitting in the rain, listening to the law.  And it always felt to me such a negation of love.

There is a suggestion that Ruth was written down, finally, as a counterpoint, a theology of grace and kindness through story to counter this thread, this stream in the return from exile.  Never thought of that.  Never even knew that it was a possibility.

I just know that if it had been me, sitting in that rain, knowing I was a forbidden person, someone who had wrongfully married a man from the land, I would not have thought much of Israel's God. 

I haven't finished the book yet, but when I do, I think I will go straight back to the beginning and read it again.

Talking in parables

 Talking to a friend last week I explained I have a love/hate relationship with Jesus' parables.  Maybe that's because of the "stories with a single point" explanation - in which case I would rather the single point was made big and clear!  Or because it all seems so utterly totally irrelevant to a 21st century city dweller.

That kicked off a little journey which is ongoing with me reading the excellent Paula Gooders book on parables.  She has helped me understand the context a little more - for example, explaining that in Galilee landlords are mostly a "boo/hiss" type of character - not her words - they are mostly absentee landlords which I guess makes things even more complex - God is not an absentee landlord.

Another option I have found - from a different friend, is that Jesus likes to make us "wonder", as in "I wonder if" .  That's had me "I wondering" about the supremely unfair story of the landlord and the workers in Matthew's gospel, which was Friday's passage to read.

If he's not an absentee landlord, maybe he's a small landholder - and why is he going to rustle up workers for his fields?  Hasn't he got staff to do that for him? What sort of parallel is there today to that highly rural story - maybe an insurance company who pays the teaser rate to it's existing customers? (unheard of!) or - for me, Gregory Distribution, who paid me and my team a large pay rise 2 months into probation - a colleague had been there 5 years. Maybe she felt like the day workers who had slaved all day when the late comers got equally rewarded?

I wonder - about the persistence in sitting and waiting in the hot sun, of the un-hired workers.  Maybe that's all they could do - wait. Show up. Waiting for someone to notice them.

The kicker from Jesus is that the landlord is generous.  And the simple answer is God is generous. And maybe that's what has frustrated me, as you can say that in one sentence but perhaps Jesus likes me to wonder and ponder and ask others and tell him I haven't a clue why his frustrating stories are peppered throughout the gospels.