9.4-Where You Go I Will Go

Well, we are gearing up for one of my favorite times of year: football season. College ball kicked off last week and pro starts this week. I can’t wait! As a Texan, you can probably guess where my allegiances lie. Now, college football has always been my favorite, and my family has traditionally been a Texas Longhorn Football family. When my brother, Tomas, went to A&M, though, our loyalties shifted ever so slightly. We would still root for Texas and tended to follow their games more closely, but when that long-awaited “Lone Star Showdown” game comes along every Thanksgiving, we found ourselves torn between supporting the Horns and supporting Tomas’ alma mater. Even now, I am more likely to turn on a UT game, but this Thanksgiving I will more than likely be on the fence about just who to cheer on.

When it comes to the NFL, though, I have been a Cowboys fan for as long as I can remember. I can remember watching the games with my dad as a kid, getting to meet Emmitt Smith at the Pro Bowl in Hawaii one year, and cheering the Boys onto victory in Super Bowls XXVII, XXVIII, and XXX. They were unstoppable in my mind, a veritable force to be reckoned with.

Then the Cowboys apparently decided to take a break from winning… for about 15 years.

I don’t know how many of you follow a certain sports team, but when your team is in a slump it can be rough. It does, though, show you where your true allegiances lie. True loyalty is only realized after you’ve pushed through game after losing game, season after losing season, and yet you still refuse to walk away. You cheer on your team, sport their colors, and with grim determination keep coming back for more even when it hurts.

Sadly, I’ve had to get really good at this because my baseball team is putting me through the same steps right now…

Friends, this is the lesson of Ruth the Moabite, whose loyalty and faith were strong enough to keep herself and her mother-in-law alive through some of the greatest hardships imaginable. Her husband, brother-in-law, and father-in-law have all died. Naomi, her mother-in-law, is returning to her homeland, and Ruth is left with a choice: She can (1) stay in her country where she could easily find another husband to love and provide for her or (2) follow Naomi into a foreign land full of foreign people with a history of violence toward outsiders who worship a God that is a mystery to her and different from everything she grew up believing and hope that someone will show mercy on the two of them.

And which one does she choose? The path of true loyalty. “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”

That sounds like a Cowboys fan to me.

Ruth makes an oath, a covenant between Naomi, herself, and God, to remain with Naomi no matter where she goes or what she does. She forsakes her own land, her own people, her own gods, and her own identity out of love for Naomi. It is through her faithfulness to Naomi that God works to bring her out of a time of desolation and into a state of integration. From the hardship of living off of the meager amounts of grain that the harvesters missed while working the fields, God delivers Ruth and Naomi into the hands of Boaz, a close relative who redeems them from the lives of widows and brings them into his household, going so far as to marry Ruth. Ruth then bears Boaz a son, who will later be the grandfather of King David, making Ruth—a Moabite woman—a direct ancestor of Jesus Christ Himself.

And all of it was possible because Ruth was willing to give up everything and leave behind everything out of love for her mother-in-law.

Brothers and sisters, the hard truth is that as Christians, this is exactly what we are called to as well. For the sake of Christ, we are called to give up everything and leave behind everything out love for our God. We are called, even in the hard times of life, to cling hard to our Savior and to cultivate an unwavering faithfulness toward God.

And this is not always comfortable. In fact, a lot of the time, this call causes us to become and remain quite uncomfortable, for we are called to leave behind the ways of the world even while we yet live in the world. Like Salmon in a river, we are called to swim upstream, called to move against the current of the world. We are called, in a word, to be radical.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great man who stood up for what he believed in. Many people rallied behind him and were moved to action because of his words and deeds. He was the face and voice for much of the Civil Rights Movement, and around the nation oppressed peoples flocked to his banner. Even today, he is seen as one of the most influential people in United States history as an agent of peace, an instigator of change for the good, and a revolutionary bent on seeing freedom made truly possible for every man, woman, and child regardless of their race.

But did you know that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was adamantly against the Vietnam War and was almost ostracized from the NAACP because of it? He zealously preached peace, a message eaten up when it came to the Civil Rights Movement, but a message rejected outright when it came to the war. Many of his friends and supporters turned away from him because of his views and his speeches in protest to the war. But Dr. King would not budge from his stance, would not waver in his cause. He remained faithful and loyal to his beliefs even when it meant he lost popularity because of it.

Are we willing to do the same? How many of us compromise our beliefs, our loyalties, our faith, because it leads to an easier life? How many of us falter in faith because everyone around us is telling us that another way is easier? How many of us see the hardship ahead of us and are unwilling to go the distance?

I pray that we will all be able to learn from the lesson of Ruth and strive to remain loyal and faithful in the midst of everything that this world throws at us. I pray that we will be able to truly and sincerely look to Christ and say, “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and you will be my God.” And I pray that in those times of slumps, God will grant us the strength and endurance we need to make it through to the other side.

Because it’s easy to be a fair-weather Christian, but the real fans are those who refuse to give up.