Belonging – A Radical Choice

In the first sermon of our Ruth series, we met three women standing at a painful crossroads. Widowed and stripped of their status and secure future, one decided to return to where she knew she had belonged. Another, Ruth, made a different choice. Instead of returning to what was familiar, she stepped into an unknown future bound to Naomi.

Ruth radically chooses the unknown. Her famous words, “Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God” redefines the meaning of family. She shows us that true belonging is not dictated merely by our whakapapa, our upbringing or our past. It is much more complex than that because it is also shaped by our intentional choices, where we choose to place our sacrificial love, and who we choose to bind ourselves to in covenant commitment. Ruth binds her life to a grieving widow and an unfamiliar God, finding her ultimate home with the people of God.

This ancient story mirrors our reality as the modern Church. The body of Christ is not a social club for people with identical backgrounds, political views or social interests. Without Christ and left to our own devices, we would remain strangers with no reason to gather around any common interest. Yet, Christ calls us out of our isolation and into His family.
We become the embodied Church as we consciously choose to stick together through grief, hardships and in our differences. It is our shared commitment to Jesus and to one another that cements our bond. Like Ruth, we choose to stay. We choose to love when it is inconvenient. In an increasingly divisive world, our intentional, everyday devotion to each other becomes an even more powerfully and radically lived out testimony of God’s inclusive grace.

Colleen