There is no slow grief. It does not emerge at the tail end of denial, anger, negotiation, depression, or acceptance. It flares up all at once in an all-consuming fire.[1] It takes all the air out, and the blaze leaves you in the ashes.

It doesn’t help, that in your devastated state, people start saying things about your character. Besmirching your good name.

They say I left. I didn’t. I stayed. To be clear, they came to me.

In the days when the judges ruled Israel, Elimelech and Naomi came from Bethlehem. There was a famine, so they moved here to my village in Moab. They had two sons, Mahlon and Chilion. They were handsome. I fell in love with Chilion the moment I saw him. We held hands once when we were walking around the village, and it became a habit ever since. We were married when we were 15 and had 10 blissful years until a complete sickness took the village.[2] My beloved died.

Mahlon had married Ruth, and he died as well in that plague. I wasn’t close to Ruth, as I had my own family. She was a good sister in-law. I knew her from the village growing up, she was a Moabite like me. She was from a small family. I had a large one. She spent a lot of time with Naomi, especially after Elimelech died. They were attached at the hip. And that was fine. I enjoyed my time with them, but I had my own family. I loved them. I still do.

When the sickness came to the village, Ruth lost not just her husband, but her family as well. Naomi in her grief decided to pull up stakes and head back to Bethlehem. Grief makes us do crazy things. She was alike a woman possessed. There is no slow grief. It took her and shook her to her core. Naomi decided to leave.

At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks him or herself are really just about one thing: how should you live your life?[3]

When I close my eyes, I can remember everything that has made me happy. The fragrance of my mother’s skin. That time we ate outside on a nice spring day and fled giggling into a neighbor’s porch to get out of a sudden downpour. How my father would put his forehead to mine when tucking me in. My sister’s hair flowing in a late summer breeze.

Holding hands, walking with Chilion. The warm sun on our shoulders. Our first kiss.

A few moments, really. We have so perishingly few chances to stay in the present, to let go of time and fall into the moment and love without measure. Time when our hearts explode in our chest.

Chilion took me to see the sea right after we were married. The vast freshwater and the rolling waves. It was filled with those chance to stay present that only vacations and holidays can give us. I don’t know why they called it the Black Sea, when the water was that blue. You could see to the bottom. I think back to that time even now like it was yesterday. Our lives seemed to be infinite in that moment. We were just kids, but more than that. Also, adults, but not totally. Old enough to be married, young enough to know we had no idea what we were doing with our lives. All we knew was our happiness, and our young love. That’s all we needed. We thought it is all we would ever need. Despite everything that has happened, I still believe this to be true.

We talked about everything that week. What we really thought of our parents. Our siblings. We gossiped about our neighbors. Talked about how we would arrange our hut when we returned. We laughed the whole time. Chilion asked after my name. He was afraid to before, but I guess since we were married and I couldn’t run away, he asked, “Orpah, what does that mean? In our tongue, it means ‘back of the neck.’ Are you sure you parents didn’t mean to call you ‘Oprah?’ You look more like a young fawn to me, than the back of a neck.”

How I loved him for that. No one saw me like he did. He died too soon. Leaving me a widow at 25. I did my mourning and eventually found love again. I remarried to a kind man. A Moabite like me. We have 4 children. I’m sad to say, that my thoughts would return to Chilion, and Naomi and Ruth. It’s the truth, and you’re supposed to tell the truth in church. I love my current husband, the constant refrain of “If only Chilion could see this.” underscores my life. My husband must have sensed this, as he suggested we should go and visit Naomi and Ruth. The kids were old enough to leave with my parents and sisters.

What I found in Bethlehem. What stories were told about me.[4] They say, “Orpah means back of the neck because she turned her back on Naomi and Ruth.” They said, “Orpah means back of the neck because it was easy for her to leave her dead husband’s family and remarry a dozen times.” All the men that saw the back of my neck, in a lewd way. The things I learned that were said about me. Naomi and Ruth were just as stunned, this information was kept from them. It was my husband who found out this out at a café.
“You hear Orpah is in town.”
“You mean, Oprah…”
“No, Orpah, here’s why she’s named that…”
He is a gentle man, but not during his time in Bethlehem. He was in a rage, so we left early. We never returned. It hurt to hear what was said of me, and how I’m thought about.

At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks him or herself are really just about one thing: how should you live your life? When Naomi closed her eyes, she saw how the sun would set on the hills of Bethlehem. She would hear the bleating of the sheep in the field. The songs of the shepherds as they serenated their flocks by night. Naomi decided she would live out her days in her home country. I did not begrudge her this.

She said to Ruth and me when she was leaving, “Go back each of you to your mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you find security, each of you in the house of your husband.”

We wept aloud. I kissed her and returned to my childhood home. I stayed. Ruth went with her. I don’t begrudge them that. They were always closer. I don’t believe that they held staying against me. The community seems to have held my staying against me.[5]

My life didn’t go how I wanted it to. My first love was taken from me. That grief is still with me. It still clings to me. What has helped is the familiar faces of my family, my hometown, the life we built and what my life has become. Grief doesn’t fade away, it changes. Our lives grow around it, and we find echoes of the love left by the ones we lost. I can hear it and see it so clearly in my hometown, so I stayed. I made my decision.

I would make the same decision a million times over again.

When I look at your culture, and I see the same thing that caused the mean things to be said about me. You’re good at acute compassion, but bad at chronic empathy. You haul strangers out of floods, you give blood, and food, and shelter. Yet you are lousy as legislating safe, sustainable communities, at eldercare, at accessible streets and buildings, safe schools. You don’t like being care workers, you want to be heroes. We don’t need more heroes; we need more care.[6]

I was cared for so much after my Chilion died. By both my village and the people in Bethlehem, after all he was their son too. Once the care turned chronic and my memory faded, the unkind stories started circulating. Why do you insist on pitting women against one another? Me against Ruth. Mary, the always virgin against Mary Magdalene the fallen woman. Barbara Streisand against Bett Midler. Taylor Swift against Katy Perry. Why not hold all women in care? Why not recognize each for their unique gifts?

How should you live your life? I can’t answer that for you. I know only my story. I know the power of staying. I think you do, too.

You have been here on this corner of the Square in this building since 1882. Half of the elementary schools in town are named after members of your congregation.[7] You have made a generational impact here. You have stayed on the Square and have made the decision to be here for the next two hundred years. You know the power of staying. Whether you know it or not, you know the true meaning of my name. It’s what I told my beloved back on our honeymoon on the shores of the Black Sea.

My name Orpah does mean ‘back of the neck.’ Meaning, an unbowed neck. My head is held high! I have pride and belief in myself and what I stand for. No matter what they say about me, I know my worth. I know my love. I know what I’ve been gifted with. No amount of talk and slander will cause my head to fall. No amount of comparison to what others are doing, for that is their own choice. I know who I am.

I love Naomi and Ruth. I still do. We will always be connected. I did not go with them. I stayed. I rebuilt my life. Nor do I talk bitterly of Bethlehem. When others try to raise a ruckus about the Israelites or blame The Jews, I remind them of my happy marriage to a Jew. And of our connection. They are no threat to us. They are our neighbors.

Let us stand with them. Let us not slander them. When people want to try to ban their books of the horrible thing that was done to them in the 1930s and 40s, we say no. We do the same for those who want to cover up the history of bad deeds around issues of class and race. It’s never the good guys who want to ban books.

Each of the stories you have heard in this sermon series, we could have denied our faults. Covered them up. But the bible doesn’t do that. A gift of the bible is how faithful it is in recording unfaithfulness. Israel could have erased all their sins, but they recorded their idolatry, oppression of others, and when they put words in God’s mouth.[8] How the people of the Exodus, former slaves in Egypt, who follow a chain-breaking God… a few generations later built a temple to that God of the slaves using slave labor. Same with the Christian scriptures, how the Gospel of Mark records how the disciples never fully understood what Jesus was talking about. How Paul talks to a church in Corinth on the verge of breaking up and gives them advice.

How your church broke up over the issue of abolition. Some stated that we weren’t doing enough to end the awful practice of slavery, others saying that it was a black issue or a southern issue. You divided. But you did something that churches rarely do. You reconciled. After the Civil War, you came back together.

You have stayed in Medina. Take pride in your story. Let no one cause your neck to bow. “That’s the church that lets in anybody.” Yeah, you’re darn right! Why don’t you? Isn’t that what your Jesus did? Don’t let anyone’s slander cause you to move. Stay. You know the power of staying.

How should you live your life? I can’t answer in specifics, but generally I can advise you to stay with welcoming, loving, and serving. That’s a great way to live your life. Take in all the wonderful moments: the beauty of this space. The faces of those gathered. The music you sing out together. For it all goes too fast. Grief comes all at once when folks leave us either by choice or by death. Through it all, our heads will remain unbowed, even within our grief.

The back of our necks will remain straight. Our chins held high. For in all our life, we had this moment together. We were present for it. We were here, and no where else.

I have made this promise to myself: No matter where I go, I will continue to earn my name with every step I take. I will walk with purpose, trusting my shoulders to bear whatever burdens I must carry. Any scars I receive will be reminders that I am strong enough. And, someday, I will tell my Chilion my story using the map that life has etched into my skin.[9] Until then, I will stay and witness to the moments of beauty with my head unbowed.

Works Cited

[1] Fredrick Backman, Britt-Marie Was Here. Page 285.

[2] Mahlon and Chilion mean “sickness” and “complete” or “destruction” and “pardon.” Put them together, and you get “Complete sickness.” Always pay attention to the names in the Bible. They give hints to the story to come. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/orpah-midrash-and-aggadah

[3] Fredrick Backman, Britt-Marie Was Here. Page 261.

[4] The midrash stories are not kind to Orpah. Trigger warning: depictions of sexual violence: https://jwa.org/blog/orpahs-story-midrash

[5] See also: https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-defamation-of-orpah

[6] @sigridelliss on Twitter on January 26, 2020.

[7] Northrop, Fenn, Root, and Blake were all members of our church in their lifetimes.

[8] The Rev. Ben Cremer, @brcremer on twitter and posted on:  https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10158934966799541&set=a.18543079540

[9] A great midrash that honor’s Orpah can be found here: https://jwa.org/blog/orpahs-story-midrash Rabbi Rachel Bearman and Rabbi Paul Kipnes wrote the lines before my final two sentences in this paragraph.