July 26, 2026 Ruth Chapter 4 Hesed Evokes Hesed: God's Love Is Completed through Relationships

The way the story of Ruth both foreshadows what will happen and remains quietly astonishing as it ends. The story doesn't offer some dramatic miracle, thunder from heaven, a burning bush, or the parting of another sea. Instead, the climax comes in its final follow-through. It occurs in an ordinary village, at an ordinary gate, where ordinary people choose extraordinary faithfulness.

Limiting the end to a happy-ever-after, Boaz-marries-Ruth love song distracts from why Christ's genealogy is included. This is about ḥesed (חֶסֶד) finally completing its circle. Throughout Ruth, every act of ḥesed has invited another. Naomi receives Ruth's unwavering loyalty. Ruth receives Boaz's generous protection. Boaz receives the blessing of becoming a redeemer.

The women of Bethlehem receive hope as they watch despair transformed into joy. Finally, Naomi receives the child Obed into her arms, not as a possession, but as grace she never imagined she would hold again. 

What is remarkable is that none of these gifts could exist if someone refused to receive them. We often think that generosity is the difficult part. Yet receiving can be even harder. Receiving requires vulnerability. Receiving means admitting we cannot save ourselves. Receiving means allowing another person's love to change our story.

Where did the story start? Naomi begins the book insisting she has returned "empty." She cannot yet imagine that God's language is still being spoken around her. Yet Ruth is speaking it. Then Boaz is speaking it. The women of Bethlehem are speaking it. Little by little, Naomi learns not only to witness ḥesed but to trust it enough to receive it. Only then does the story become whole.

Perhaps this is why the genealogy recorded in Ruth matters so much. It is not merely a list of ancestors leading to King David. It is testimony that one act of faithful love never ends with itself. Every act of ḥesed becomes the beginning of another story. Love given creates love received. Love received creates love shared. Grace multiplies across generations. 

This is how God chooses to reveal God's own heart: not primarily through displays of power, but through relationships. The Hebrew Scriptures repeatedly describe God as "abounding in steadfast love", abounding in ḥesed. God's character is not revealed simply in commandments or miracles but in a way of relating to creation. God continually gives faithful love, invites trust, restores dignity, and creates communities where no one stands alone.

A hidden takeaway from this story is how the potential guardian-redeemer, who does not step up to the role, is presented in the story. That guardian-redeemer is not judged; he just remains unnamed, no longer part of this particular story.    

Ruth teaches us that this divine language is meant to become our language. Every act of kindness asks a quiet question: Will you receive what is being offered? Every gift of forgiveness asks: Will you let yourself be reconciled? Every welcome asks: Will you risk belonging?

The miracle of ḥesed is incomplete when it leaves one heart. It is completed when another heart says yes. Perhaps that is why Jesus so often placed receiving alongside giving. "Freely you have received; freely give." The order matters. We cannot offer what we refuse to accept. People who know they are loved become capable of loving. People who have received mercy learn to extend mercy. People who have been welcomed begin opening doors for others.

This is the beautiful rhythm of God's kingdom: ḥesed given, ḥesed received. ḥesed shared again and again. 

That rhythm echoes through Ruth until the child Obed is given, the grandfather of David. Christians hear another echo still farther ahead, to Jesus, whose life embodies God's steadfast love without limit. In him we discover that God's greatest act of ḥesed is not merely spoken but lived among us, inviting us not only to admire divine love but to receive it. And once received, to become its living voice.

Perhaps the greatest question Ruth leaves with us is not, "Whom should I love today?" It is also, "Whose love am I refusing to receive?" For the language of God is only fully spoken when ḥesed travels both directions, from one soul to another, and back again, until an entire community becomes fluent in grace.

That is how God changes the world, one relationship at a time.

July 24, 2026 Hadestown Film Review

HHadestown has been influential in my thoughts and in the Wednesday Bible discussion recently, so I will include a review of the film here. 

Watching the Hadestown pro-shot was a fascinating reminder that filmed theater is not simply a recording of a stage performance. It becomes its own artistic experience, inviting the audience to see familiar moments from new perspectives while revealing details that even devoted fans may have missed in the theater.

This production was filmed during the Friday, February 28, 2025 performance and both the matinee and evening performances on Saturday at London's Lyric Theatre. Although it reunited much of the original Broadway cast, whose Broadway run together ended in 2023, the actors were given an important instruction by the directors: they were not to recreate the performances they had given years before, but to play the roles as they would inhabit them now. That decision proved crucial. Rather than a nostalgic recreation, the pro-shot feels like a mature return to characters the performers know intimately but continue to discover.

One of the first surprises was how much more visible the choreography became. In prior videos I had seen, my attention often gravitated toward the principal characters or the emotional center of a song. The camera, however, continually revealed movement happening across the entire stage. Ensemble interactions, patterns, and transitions took on a richness I had not fully appreciated before. The choreography became another storyteller.

The camera also made it possible to follow the show's remarkable visual language. Small stage props that can easily disappear in a live performance became meaningful narrative threads. A single flower passing quietly from one character to another carried emotional weight because the camera chose to linger on it. These visual connections reinforced the musical's themes of memory, hope, and the way stories are handed from one person to the next.

Patrick Page's Hades offered another reminder that live theater is always an act of adaptation. Performing with his heel in a cast, he adjusted several stage movements, yet the production integrated those changes so naturally that they rarely distracted from the performance. Instead, they became another example of seasoned professionals shaping the show around present realities without sacrificing its dramatic power.

Amber Gray's Persephone felt especially moving. Knowing this reunion was a one-time gathering of the original company added an unmistakable emotional layer to her performance. There were moments when she seemed visibly affected, not in a way that broke character, but in a way that enriched it. Persephone's longing, weariness, and love all seemed informed by Gray's own awareness that this was likely a final opportunity to tell this story alongside this cast.

Her characterization also evolved in intriguing ways. "Our Lady of the Underground" leaned much more heavily into Persephone's sensuality, while also emphasizing her intoxication. The performance became simultaneously more playful and more tragic. The camera heightened this interpretation by following her into the stage pit during the number, placing viewers inside spaces that a theater audience can never fully enter.

One unexpected consequence of watching the pro-shot was that I could not do what I often do with recordings: skip ahead to favorite songs or scenes. Instead, I experienced Hadestown as a complete dramatic arc. That turned out to be a gift. Transitional scenes, quieter conversations, and songs I had previously regarded as bridges between highlights demanding my attention. The musical's architecture became clearer, and I gained a deeper appreciation for how carefully Anaïs Mitchell constructed the entire journey rather than merely a collection of standout number.

I remember a moment in  Flowers: 

"I remember someone / someone by my side, turned his face to mine / And I turned away into the shade. 

You the one I left behind / If you ever walk this way / Come and find me lying in the bed I made"

I hadn't made the emotional connection that lyric in Hadestown, her moment of remembering Orpheus, is of his first turning his face to her.. A lovely, haunting moment 

Perhaps the greatest revelation came in the ending. Every performance of Hadestown reminds us that tragedy repeats itself, that Orpheus will always turn, and that the story must be told again anyway. Yet this production struck me as noticeably more hopeful than the live performances I had previously seen.

After Eurydice quietly asks, "Anyone got a match?", the camera eventually cuts to a close-up of the candle. That cinematic choice transforms the moment. Rather than ending with loss alone, the image becomes an invitation. The story will begin again because someone is willing to carry the flame forward.

That visual emphasis also deepened the emotional impact of the closing encore reprise of "We Raise Our Cups." The song no longer felt simply like a farewell to the audience. Instead, it became a celebration of memory, community, and the fragile persistence of hope. Even after heartbreak, the light remains. Even after the ending, someone lights the next candle.

In the end, the Hadestown pro-shot succeeds because it does not attempt to replace the experience of live theater. Instead, it reveals another dimension of it. The cameras become storytellers themselves, uncovering choreography, symbolism, facial expressions, and visual motifs that can easily be missed from a theater seat. Combined with performances that have matured rather than merely been preserved, the result is not a museum piece but a living work of art. It was weird being in the film audience, watching the Lyric Theatre audience participate while internally clapping and singing while maintaining silence.

Anyway, as Hermes reminds us, it's an old song. But every time it's sung well, we hear something we hadn't heard before.

With tears in my eyes,

Gary

July 18, 20226 _Chhristopher Nolan's Film: The Odyssey: A Mythical Journey:Homecoming

This film has been critically acclaimed, opening new ways of experiencing ancient texts. I will include reactions to the film here.

 

Nolan wants to create on the cutting edge of film technology, so this film navigates between its aim to be a potential blockbuster cultural event and a thoughtful arthouse project. 

 

What is causing controversy in the internet reactions that are flooding in, which are heaping high praise or trashing it disdainfully as not understanding the work at all. Nolan said the success of Oppenheimer led to the budget to make this film possible. This brought to mind Star Wars and Joseph Campbell.  

 
I don't approach Homer as sacred canon that every adaptation must obey. Nor do I think of The Odyssey as literal history that filmmakers have an obligation to reconstruct. I see Homer like Shakespeare or Arthurian legends; the poem has survived because each generation discovers it anew. The question isn't "Was this exactly in Homer?" but "Does this version make the story live again?"

Nolan's passion Is evident everywhere. What struck me most wasn't simply the spectacle; it was Nolan's obvious affection for the source material. Every creative decision feels made by someone who genuinely loves the epic. Nolan's writing reminded me of the excitement surrounding Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein adaptation, but an artist deeply in conversation with a classic. That's the kind of adaptation I enjoy.

Rather than simply retelling the plot, Nolan delights in details that many audiences may not even recognize. For instance, there's Argos. Including Argos wasn't merely fan service. The reunion with Odysseus' faithful dog before he dies is one of the most moving moments in literature. Seeing it honored onscreen communicates that Nolan understands where Homer's emotional center lies. Including the depiction of Odysseus' hunting scar early in the narrative resonates. The dog and scar carry memory, identity, and recognition simultaneously. Bringing it into the film respects one of the poem's greatest storytelling inventions.

I appreciated the Circe and Calypso sequences. Rather than reducing them to fantasy figures, they felt emotionally and psychologically significant. Each represents a different temptation:
forgetting (with Calypso intentionally feeding him the lotus flowers, and therefore keeping him outside ordinary human life, and contributing to the difficult work of returning home. was brilliant to me. Circe turning the men into hogs was uncomfortable because it was not depicted as "magical". Both Circe and Calypso become mirrors reflecting temptations for Odysseus himself.

The way Athena's presence was another favorite moment. Odysseus sees Athena's face throughout the story. Her face turns out to be the face of a Trojan woman who is beheaded as Troy is sacked. The reveal of that face, which Athena has been presenting to Odysseus, was devastating; I think it also captured something Homer often does through language: the gods are present, disguised, intervening, revealing themselves at decisive moments, but it gives a nod to the psychological impact the war is having on him. 

 
Obviously, myths survive because artists reinterpret them. Homer himself inherited stories that were already centuries old. Every retelling, from Virgil to Joyce to Emily Wilson's translation to Nolan's film, is another conversation with the tradition. I told you how much I liked her translation of him being a complicated man rather than cunning. She just gave an interview where she jokingly defended the word by quoting Shaft: "He's a complicated man that no one understands but his woman." Which fits both Penelope and Odysseus

I could go on (it is a 3-hour film) but, for me, Nolan's The Odyssey succeeds because it feels like an act of love rather than an exercise in obligation. I never needed Homer treated as untouchable canon. I wanted to see a filmmaker engage imaginatively with one of humanity's great stories. The care shown to Argos, the scar, Circe, Calypso, and the inspired revelation of Athena all convinced me that Nolan wasn't simply adapting Homer; he was conversing with him and adjusting pieces of the story for a modern audience. That's exactly what living myths invite us to do.

 

July 19, 2026 Ruth 3:1–13: Hesed (חֶסֶד) -Learning to Hear the Language of God through Relationships

There are moments in the Bible when God seems to split the heavens with unmistakable power, a sea parts, a bush burns without being consumed, a voice shakes a mountain. The next discussion, however, remains on our continuing Ruth examination, where God is presumably silent. We have discovered otherwise in our detailed readings over the last few weeks in our gleanings for meaning.

True, no miracles interrupt the story. No prophet appears with a divine oracle. No angel descends into the barley fields. Instead, the narrator invites us into kitchens and harvests, shared meals and whispered conversations, tears and laughter, risk and tenderness. The extraordinary continues to hide within the ordinary.

Phyllis Trible, an author included to our group's commentaries, reminds us that this silence is not the absence of God but another way of speaking. In Ruth, relationships become the language of God.

Perhaps the boldest act of hesed is Ruth's journey to the threshing floor. She walks into uncertainty carrying no guarantee of acceptance. She risks misunderstanding, rejection, and humiliation for the sake of securing life for both herself and Naomi.

Hesed is willing to become vulnerable. Every meaningful relationship eventually arrives at a threshing floor, a place the outcomes can't be controlled. It is the spouse saying, "We need to talk." It is the friend admitting, "I need help." It is the addict walking into the first recovery meeting. It is the church apologizing for wounds it has inflicted. Hesed prefers honest vulnerability over safe distance.

When Boaz awakens in the middle of the night and asks, "Who are you?" Ruth answers simply, "I am Ruth." Hesed begins here with truthful presence. She offers neither disguise nor manipulation. She comes as herself. This is the courage of introducing oneself without pretending to be stronger or more certain than one really is. Relationships deepen wherever masks become unnecessary. Ruth then asks Boaz to "spread your cloak over your servant."

This request is remarkable because Ruth becomes an active participant in redemption rather than a passive recipient. Hesed gives another person the dignity of saying yes.

Rather than manipulating Boaz, Ruth invites him into covenant. It resembles the tough courage of asking someone, "Would you walk with me through this illness?" or "Would you be my sponsor?" or "Would you mentor me?" Love respects another person's freedom. 

Boaz immediately recognizes Ruth's action as hesed. "You have shown greater kindness now than before."

Hesed evokes hesed. No miracle has occurred, yet everything has changed.

Here, hesed becomes God's vocabulary. Naomi's hope, Ruth's courage, and Boaz's integrity weave together into a tapestry of grace. None of them acts because a heavenly voice commands them. They choose compassion freely. They become living witnesses to the character of God.

This is a profound insight Trible uncovered for me this week. The narrator in Ruth never insists, "God caused this." Instead, Ruth happens to glean in Boaz's field. Boaz happens to arrive. Naomi happens to conceive a daring plan. Boaz happens to respond with generosity. The storyteller quietly invites us to discover providence not in divine interruption but in faithful human response. God is hidden, but never absent. God is woven into every act of courage that answers another's vulnerability.

Perhaps that is why Ruth contains so little religion as we often define it. There are no sacrifices upon altars, no elaborate rituals, no priests directing the action. Instead, holiness emerges in ordinary acts of hospitality, protection, and mutual care. The threshing floor becomes as sacred as any sanctuary because there people choose faithfulness over fear.

The story also reminds us that redemption is never a solitary achievement. Naomi cannot restore her future alone. Ruth cannot secure her own safety by herself. Boaz cannot fulfill his role apart from the customs and responsibilities of the wider community. Each person's healing depends upon another's willingness to practice hesed.

Redemption, before it is personal, is relational. Our culture often imagines spirituality as a private journey between the individual and God. Ruth offers another vision. Grace flows through networks of belonging. God's love takes flesh whenever people accompany one another through uncertainty with generosity and courage.

The New Testament echoes this same truth. Jesus tells his followers that whoever welcomes the least welcomes him. 1 John 4:12 declares, "No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us." Long before those words were written, Ruth had already begun unveiling that story.

No one in Ruth sees God directly. They see hesed. They encounter God in the steadfast love of a daughter-in-law who refuses to abandon family. In the renewed hope of an aging widow who dares to dream again. In the integrity of a man who uses his power to protect rather than possess.

Perhaps this is how God most often speaks still. Not through spectacles that overwhelm our senses, but through relationships that quietly transform our lives. Someone stays beside us in grief. An oncology receptionist who will ask each patient she greets, "Where do you find joy?". A stranger is welcomed as family. As Alison commented in our discussion last week, when another person's dignity is guarded and treated with honor.

If we listen only for thunder, we may miss the still, persistent voice of God spoken in the language of hesed. These Ruth readings invite us to become fluent in that language, to discover that every act of compassion is a sentence in God's ongoing conversation with the world.

Ruth chapter 3 teaches that God's language is not spoken primarily through thunder or miracles but through countless relational verbs: to notice, to prepare, to trust, to risk to speak truthfully, to invite, to protect dignity, to bless, to provide, and to wait.

These are not merely human virtues. They are the vocabulary of God. Whenever people speak this language to one another, heaven quietly becomes audible on earth. The God who seems almost silent in Ruth is, in fact, speaking all the time, in every act of faithful relationship. Hesed is God's native tongue, and every gesture of steadfast love becomes another sentence in the ongoing conversation between God and humanity.

As I said, this comes from the perspective of biblical scholar Phyllis Trible and contemporary theologian Emma Nash, both of them cited in our additional commentary that Pastor Emillie provided last week Both, in different ways, draw our attention away from spectacular divine interventions and toward the ordinary, courageous, relational acts through which God's presence is made known. 

Perhaps the question we might ask is not, "Where is God?" The better question is, "Who, today, is speaking God's language?" And perhaps the answer begins with us.

July 12, 2026 Ruth 2:1-23 and Luke 6:36-38 A Barley Field Where Grace Waits

There are moments when life appears to have cast people outside the gates of abundance. Naomi and Ruth now find themselves strangers in a landscape once familiar, carrying little besides memory and hope. Yet it is often there, in a barley field rather than some promised palace, that eternity can whisper our name, and so it is with Ruth.

She asks for nothing extraordinary. She seeks only permission to gather what others have left behind. She stoops to receive scattered grains.  A humble soul understands that greatness may be concealed in fragments. Every life is not built from abundance but from the remnants faithfully gathered.

Nature has long taught this lesson. The forest wastes no fallen leaf. The river refuses no drop of rain. The earth fashions kingdoms from forgotten seeds. Ruth discovers that what appears to be loss is often the beginning of a deeper economy, one governed not by possession but by participation.

Ruth enters the field believing she is searching for bread. She discovers instead that she is entering providence. The remarkable truth is that grace rarely announces itself with thunder. It arrives disguised as coincidence. "She happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz." We are tempted to believe this is an accident, but the awakened heart recognizes another order. 

The universe possesses a moral architecture invisible to our often hurried eyes. There are meetings prepared before this story unfolds. There are fields awaiting footsteps that have not yet chosen the road.

The soul that walks honestly will often discover that what seemed chance was invitation. Boaz himself is not merely a generous man but a living reminder that character is the highest form of wealth. Before he notices Ruth's beauty, he notices her faithfulness. Before he offers protection, he offers recognition. Every human being hungers to be seen not for achievement but for devotion. Ruth is not judged for appearance but for integrity.

There is a profound law here. We become rich not when we accumulate but when we recognize. Boaz sees in Ruth what the world overlooks. In that seeing, both lives are enlarged.

So it is with us. Eyes trained upon appearances behold only poverty. Eyes trained upon the soul behold immeasurable treasure.

Ruth labors through the heat of the day. There is no complaint in the narrative, only persistence. Work, when joined to hope, becomes prayer without words. Every gathered stalk becomes an affirmation that tomorrow is possible. We often seek revelation in mountaintop visions while Heaven waits for us among the ordinary tasks we have neglected.

The Divine speaks fluently through faithful labor. In the evening, Ruth returns to Naomi, carrying enough grain for many days. Yet she brings something greater than barley. She brings evidence that despair is not destiny.

Naomi had left the land believing herself emptied. Ruth returns, proving that emptiness is not the final condition of a life surrendered to love. Hope enters the house quietly, carried in an apron full of grain.

This is the way of the Eternal. Great transformations seldom begin with spectacle. They begin with one faithful act, one courageous morning, one field entered despite uncertainty.

Perhaps each of us stands today at the edge of such a field. We may not recognize its significance. We may believe we are merely surviving, gathering enough strength for another day. Yet unseen purposes accompany every honest step. The future often approaches wearing the clothing of ordinary work.

The lesson of Ruth is not merely that God provides. It is that the universe itself bends toward those who refuse bitterness, who meet uncertainty with courage, and who choose steadfast love over self-preservation.

Luke 6:36-38 enriches Ruth's story because the imagery of the "good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over" naturally echoes a harvest scene. Boaz becomes an embodiment of Jesus' teaching long before those words are spoken, showing that divine mercy is always more generous than strict justice and that abundance is created through compassion rather than accumulation. 

When I reflect on this passage, I marvel at the fields the Lord has ready for harvest and how we can gather what goodness always remains. I long to mirror kindness and compassion before certainty that comes through accumulation. I want to believe that through faithful acts we participate in an abundant harvest that is poured on all our laps.

We may discover what Ruth found among the barley: that grace has been waiting there all along.

Sermon 

July 5, 2026 - Ruth 1:1-22: Love and Loyalty Effect Change

Today's Gathering Hymn was "God, We Gather as Your People (For All the Children)," which appears in All Creation Sings, the 2020 worship supplement to Evangelical Lutheran Worship by David Lohman. Lohman wrote both the text and the tune, WELCOME BE OUR SONG, making it one of the relatively few hymns in the collection created entirely by a single author-composer.

David Lohman is an American composer, hymn writer, and church musician whose work has become increasingly influential in mainline Protestant worship, particularly in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He is especially known for writing music that is highly singable by congregations while expressing themes of hospitality, inclusion, justice, and community.

This was both an open and welcoming song for Bree Theilacker as Creator Lutheran Church's new Music Minister. The setting was what Creator calls the African American setting. Bree accompanied the congregation confidently and robustly, today portending a great future of collaborative worship through Creator.

Pastor Emillie preached on Ruth, one of her favorite books of the Old Testament. She loves the story of Ruth because it  upends expectations. Mother and daughter-in-law love each other and are loyal to each other despite the normal stereotype assumption. Pastor Emillie also identified with what Ruth defined as home, which was not  tied to geography but with the people that matter to you.

This was an auspicious beginning in many ways. I'm looking forward to where this summer series and Bree will take Creator as a community in the coming weeks. 

Sermon 

 

Is this a church or a farm?. The answer is YES!

 The Wild Web: Stories Across the Synod highlighted Creator's partnership with Ally Oredi and FPRP this week. 

As you pull into Creator Lutheran’s parking lot on a Sunday morning you might ask yourself: is this a church or a farm? And, the answer would be: YES!

Located along SE Sunnyside Road in unincorporated Clackamas County, the former church lawn, nearly .5 acres, is now home to rows of lovingly tended greens and roots of all kinds - cabbage, kale, cassava and collards, foods that are familiar and nourishing to African immigrants and refugees and Ally Oredi, the lead farmer stewarding the garden. You may also catch our Synod Vice President, Paul Stromberg, a member of Creator, out in the field with him, checking on the irrigation system they installed together..