Something shameful happens in Ruth. We’re not sure what happens. The whole event is alluded to. Shame is an awful feeling. It’s not one we like to acknowledge, and we usually do everything in our capacity to avoid feeling shame.

My school held a canned food drive when I was in the 5^th grade. It was something we did every year, but I remember the 5^th grade one specifically. 5^th grade was when the rose-colored glasses of my childhood started to come off.

We held that canned food drive and brought in cans… only to have those cans show up at our house again. I remember being in the kitchen, doing the dishes. There was a knock on the door and my mom and sister opened it and there was a man with a basket in his hand. He walked in and set it on the table with a big smile, but I was horrified and ashamed. I recognized those cans.

“Mom,” I said, after my mom thanked the man and sent him on his way. “Are we poor?!”

I felt shame. It was the only time that happened in my life. Must have been a rough year for my hard-working mom. But I remember that time and made sure to work hard ever since that day.

I went to high school 15 minutes away. It is a short drive from Dennison to New Phila. Once there, I was called a 922er. 922 is part of the local phone number of Dennison. I didn’t know what that meant. But I learned that being called a 922er was a shameful thing. It meant you were backwards, poor, a nobody.

While at college I took all sorts of classes. There was African American History, Women’s Studies, and the tolerance classes required to become a Resident Assistant. In those classes, I learned of the shame others carry. The shame of being black; how families were torn apart, people bought and sold, the horrible history of lynching. The shame of being a woman; making less, being treated as less, being assaulted because the feelings of women don’t matter. The shame of being gay or different. The shame of what I preached on last Sunday: being a Moabite.

Something shameful happens in Ruth chapter 3. It involves Boaz being drunk and Ruth showing up on the threshing floor. It’s all a plot by Naomi. It’s a planned thing. I’ve read a lot of rabbis and scholars’ writings on the subject and we’re not exactly sure because it’s all alluded to. When the Bible talks about “uncovering feet” it usually means something else… unless it doesn’t. But shame shows up way before we get here.

Naomi must have felt shame upon returning home, ashamed of being where no good Jew would go. Then Boaz, the pillar of his society, is called to responsibility by a foreign woman. And Ruth a Moabite… As we discussed last Sunday, the Moabites are the incestuous good-for-nothing tribe who neighbors the Israelites. Moabites are so bad they can’t join the community until the 10^th generation… Moabites are those we have prejudice against. Yet it is this woman! This woman who brings about the redemption of the community through ways that aren’t easily understood.

She does something on that floor and Boaz upholds her honor. Upholds it instead of bringing shame. Shame is something we try to avoid. Something we carry and don’t really talk about. Yet God can use even the most shameful things to bring about redemption.

I was ashamed of my hometown. All I knew growing up was decline. We used to have a baseball stadium that could seat thousands of people. But that became a rusted relic that was torn down. We used to be this great hub, a train-town called the “Altoona of the Panhandle” exactly 100 miles from Cleveland, Columbus, and Pittsburgh. This mattered when we had steam trains that needed water every 100 miles or so. But when the steam trains left, so did the town. All I knew growing up was decline and shame at having the misfortune of growing up there.

I knew depressed and insular people who were worried about their own survival. There was no sense of community because we were too worried about working and getting enough food to eat. I hated Dennison.

In 1989, a grant was given to rebuild the historic depot and create a train museum. This museum was to highlight the Salvation Army Canteen of World War II. The Dennison Railroad Depot Museum is beautiful. The building itself is beautiful. And it’s a museum about the train industry and it’s set inside train cars! You walk through 5 railroad coaches and interact with various displays. It’s an amazing museum. It tells the story that because of its location, Dennison had up to 20 troop transport trains stopping in town every day. It is estimated that 15% of all troops that went to war passed through Dennison. It was the third largest canteen after New York and Chicago.

The canteen was started by Mrs. Lucille Nussdorfer. She noticed the lonely and hungry faces of the troops as they stopped in Dennison. She decided to raise morale by starting a canteen. Women volunteered to make sandwiches, give fruit and vegetables from their victory gardens, milk from their dairy, they would sacrifice their rations to give the troops a home cooked meal.

One solider, whose letter home is on display in the museum, wrote: “I was feeling just about as blue as a boy can be, all of a sudden the train pulled into the town of Dennison, Ohio, of which I never heard but which I will never forget now. The food warmed by body, and the thoughtfulness warmed my heart. I got back on the train an entirely different person.”

Look at the power of community. A community that offers a sandwich to the hungry. Free of charge, no strings attached. There are quotes like that all over the museum from soldiers who felt so supported they went off to fight in lands so foreign. Many never returned.

Each time I’m in the Dennison Depot Museum, I cry. I am moved. Not because I’m ashamed. But because I am proud. I am from Dennison. I am her son. This is my heritage, and I shall listen to it. My heritage is not of shame, of being poor, of being backwater. That’s not Dennison. Dennison means service and hospitality. Welcome to the passing stranger. Service to the servicemen of WWII.

Welcome is a radical thing. Boaz stands up the very next day and states to the elders of his community that he intends to marry Ruth.

The elders add their blessing by saying, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel.”

Later, Tamar is mentioned. These three woman, Tamar, Rachel, and Leah are remembered as tricksters whose deceptions had reproductive consequences. Rachel was the mother of Joseph who the northern kingdom of Israel was associated with. Leah was the mother of Judah, the southern kingdom’s dominant tribe. Tamar was a Canaanite wife whom Judah was trying to reject. Judah was trying to deny Tamar inheritance, but she tricked him and gained it. She gave birth to twins; Zerah and Perez. Perez has the lineage and he is in the genealogy of Jesus.

What was shameful then is just as much a part of us as the things that make us proud. It is in God’s family tree as well as ours. Yet what is shameful can be the source of redemption.

The shame of being poor can lead someone to start charities or work for nonprofits. The shame of having cancer or the grief of losing a loved one to that horrible disease is what starts cancer marches and fundraisers for research.

Shame is not what defines us. What defines us is God’s providence. God’s love shown through a community. Like the community of the band of brothers that fought in WWII. This is the part of the proud heritage of all of our military service men and women. We should be proud of our veterans and boldly claim our support for them. For many veterans feel shame. More have died from suicide in recent years than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. We cannot claim we support our vets while Veterans Assistance programs are being gutted. We cannot claim we love our military while the biggest threat to them is often here in our own land, their own mental health.

The Good News of the story of Ruth is more about the faithfulness of God than the faithfulness of humanity. We are people who know the shame of being wounded and maligned by other people. Yet we are also the people who join together because God is more faithful.

God can inspire us to take pride in our shame. Our God is the God that bears scars. T

he resurrected Christ still bore the marks, but never wavered in his love for us. So we too must never waver.

Listen to your shame. Listen for the shame of others, for that is where the seeds of resurrection can come from. The shame of taking another’s life in war can lead a vet to start Wounded Warriors or Warriors Journey Home. The shame of a sexual assault can begin a movement of women sharing their stories and saying “Me Too. I won’t be shamed for this.”

The shame of infertility or of losing children too early can make one a warrior for children: accepting, working with and for, advocating on behalf of, fostering, adopting, and caring for the least of these.

I believe we are people who cannot be shamed. Many will try. They will try because they benefit from the silent status quo. Those who act like they come from perfection, that they are sinless; don’t let them shame you for who you are, where you come from, or because your shame looks different from theirs.

You are at home in the world. There are people waiting to love you and to take pride in you. There are those who will not be affected by your shame, but instead understand it and it will be the glue that bonds your souls together.

Speak of your shame and your pride. Meanwhile the world goes on. The leaves are changing and falling, teaching us each how to let go. How to die. How to bear the naked branches that were hidden for so long. And now that it has fallen and has been raked up and carried away… the work of imagination begins. Of imagining new leaves, new life, that can sprout. The barren places where flowers will grow. Without all the clutter, we are free to see our place in the family of things. And with our neighbors, plan a beloved community that accepts the Moabite and brings new life and redemption. Amen.