A Message from Pastor Kaji
Click here for Pastor Kaji’s sermon playlist
Dear Church:
Happy Juneteenth!
It may not be obvious, but half of my family comes from Texas. Growing up in DC, we celebrated Juneteenth. We traveled for Juneteenth, out into the country, for parties and cookouts and…some people camped. (Wanna hazard a guess about whether or not we did?) But amongst my Black friends and classmates, we were almost the only ones who did. It certainly wasn’t a holiday granted to everyone, so it generally went by, unnoticed. Not today. I have mixed feelings about this change. There is something sacred about retreating to celebrate. An IYKYK (if you know, you know) sitch. But to the degree that this inspires a celebration of Black liberation? Great. And for the half of this country, who would love to see anyone other than themselves in shackles? Maybe this day can make them a little less angry.
As for us?! I hope that you will join us in celebrating, for the second year in a row, with C. Anthony and Mika and so many others who will be performing at Dizzy’s tonight! Ticket info is linked here.
On to Sunday. Our text today comes from the Book of Ruth, which opens “in the days when the judges judged” (Ruth 1:1). This is a time of instability in Israel’s history, roughly 1200 – 1020 BCE, before the first kings were anointed. It was a period marked by violence, famine, tribal conflict, and deep uncertainty. That’s the setting of the story.
But most scholars agree that the book itself was likely written centuries later, during the Persian period (around 500-400 BCE), after the Babylonian exile. This was a moment when Jewish identity was being redefined. Some leaders (like those in Ezra & Nehemiah) were enforcing strict rules about “foreign” wives and national purity. Read our text from Ruth within that context. Ruth was a Moabite (foreign) woman whose story ends in full inclusion, in spite of the odds. Read into Ruth’s redemption a direct theological challenge to those exclusionary policies.
Know this: at the time the story is set, women had no legal status independent of male kin, which means that their very survival was tied to fathers, husbands, or sons. They couldn’t own land, control inheritance, or act as legal agents in public life. Widowhood was economically and socially dangerous…especially without sons. Even marriage could involve deeply unjust power dynamics, especially across national or ethnic lines (see Ruth 1:4, where Dr. Gafney’s translations reads that the sons “abducted” Moabite women, a word with clear coercive undertones).
Ruth, Naomi, and Orpah are navigating this world as women with no remaining male protectors. Their choices are very much existential.
I share all of this with you now because no one wants all this Bible study in a sermon! But I’m sure Rev. Richard and our faithful Bible Study group will get into this and so much more.
Meanwhile, I invite you to consider these questions for your journaling and worship prep:
- Where do you see yourself in this story? Are you clinging like Ruth, returning like Orpah, or releasing like Naomi? What do you need in this season?
- What systems around you feel like they were never built for your survival? How do you resist, adapt, or endure within them?
- When have you been called to hope in a time that felt hopeless? What signs—if any—reminded you that God was still writing?
Can’t wait to get into all this with you on Sunday!
Pax Christi,
Pastor Kaji
SCRIPTURERuth 1:1-14 (Year A, p. 358):
1 In the days when the judges judged it happened that there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and their two sons. 2 And the name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. 3 Then Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left, she and her two sons. 4 They abducted Moabite women for themselves; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the second, Ruth. And they lived there about ten years. 5 They also died, both of them, Mahlon and Chilion, and the woman was left without her two sons and without her husband.
6 Then she got up, she and her daughters-in-law, and she returned from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the FAITHFUL ONE had considered God’s people and given them food. 7 So she set out from the place where she was while there, with her two daughters-in-law, and they journeyed on the road to return to the land of Judah. 8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return, each to your mother’s house. May the HOLY ONE deal kindly with you, as you have done with the dead and with me. 9 The SAVING GOD grant that you may find security, each in the house of your own husband.” Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. 10 They said to her, “We will return with you to your people.” 11 Then Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Are there yet sons in my belly that may become your husbands? 12 Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to be with a man. Let me say I have hope and even was with a man tonight and give birth to sons. 13 Would you then wait and hope until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the SAVING GOD has turned against me.” 14 Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
