“…Jesus knew that who he was and the things he had done were the far greater testimony than all the logical arguments he might have tried to make. And I believe that here in our passage for today, he’s calling his listeners–and us–to a way of life that cannot be contradicted, a life of peace, justice, mercy, righteousness, and endurance in the face of all that would tear those things down. That is our greatest witness, our deepest wisdom…”

What Jesus might be asking his listeners to do is to let go of our ways of defining life that are helplessly intertwined with the reality of death, and to entrust ourselves to a reality which exists without any reference to death at all.  Is this even possible?  The Divine is sheer aliveness, thriving outside our own small experience of death, holding everything in being and a continual Source of life leading to life.  “To God, all of them are alive.”

Psalm 1 is a prayer that every person and community would see themselves in that thriving, healing tree, growing by the water. 

“…What draws me into the story is the relationship between Naomi and Ruth. What profound love must exist between them that Naomi—who is an immigrant in Ruth’s Moabite land, and knows the danger she faces in solo migration to Judah—insists that Ruth remain. What profound love must exist between them that Ruth, who knows the risks that she—a Moabite woman about to immigrate to Judah, might bear—goes anyway.”