Now they return to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. While this is Naomi’s hometown, it is Ruth who takes the initiative, knowing that she must find a way for the two of them to survive – whatever the risk. There was an option – by law the poor were allowed to glean the harvest, that is, they were allowed to follow the reapers through the field and collect any scraps left behind by the harvesters. But of course this was potentially dangerous work for a young woman like Ruth – a woman, alone in the fields with strange men, with no local family to protect her, no male protector in the community ready to avenge any liberties that might be taken by the workers.

Despite the danger, Ruth runs the risk, and her courage is rewarded. She attracts the attention of Boaz, the wealthy landowner on whose field she is gleaning. He takes her aside, tells her to glean only on his fields, and reassures her that he will instruct his men not to harm her. Ruth tries a little flirting, which apparently goes pretty well because we find out that Boaz later instructs his men to do a poor job of harvesting, so that plenty might be left for Ruth to pick up. The upshot is that Ruth is able to bring enough grain home each day to support the two widows, right through both the barley and then the wheat harvests.

But now, Naomi senses, it is time to seal the deal, if only Ruth can be brave once more….

We have our own story, right here at West Parish, of another woman, unmarried, childless, who in her own time authored another story of rebirth, who in her own right was, like Ruth, a “restorer of life.” Elizabeth Crocker Jenkins was born here in West Barnstable in 1874, faithfully attended services and Sunday school here at West Parish Congregational Church, was one of the first graduates of the “new” high school in Hyannis, and left the Cape in 1902 to complete her education at Radcliffe, Oxford University, and the University of Wisconsin. At the age of 46 she returned to West Barnstable. On her return she found this church clinging to life support, at best. No longer was there a full-time pastor – West Parish shared a pastor with South Church in Centerville. Attendance seldom exceeded a dozen, in the winter at times perhaps only four or five came. At the Christmas service in 1921 there were seven people in the congregation. This Meetinghouse itself was run down and shabby, a mere shadow of its former glory.

And yet, in this most unpropitious of times and circumstances, Elizabeth Crocker Jenkins set her mind and her time and her personal financial resources to saving the church through restoring the Meetinghouse. Over the next three decades, through the Great Depression and the Second World War and Korea right up to the time of her death in 1956, she courageously and persistently pushed forward towards the goal. Unmarried, she took on as a life-partner Christ’s church here in West Barnstable. Childless, she authored a birth story of her own, the re-birth of the West Barnstable Meetinghouse. Elizabeth Crocker Jenkins, together with Ruth, truly deserves the title of “restorer of life.”

Today, on the day we set aside each year as “Founders Day”, we remember with pride and thanksgiving all those faithful and courageous women and men who in their own day labored against long odds and in the face of daunting challenges to bring forth something new, to bring hope out of despair, new life out of barrenness. We remember the Rev. Henry Jacob and the brave men and women outside of London in the year 1616, gathering together to form the first congregational church – an act which led to imprisonment, loss of property, exile and unfathomable hardship. We remember the Rev. John Lothrop and the courageous men and women who risked the stormy Atlantic, leaving safety and security and family behind to sail to the New World and to make a home here in Barnstable. We remember the faithful women and men who built this Meetinghouse in 1717, we remember the indefatigable Elizabeth Crocker Jenkins and all who labored through three hard decades to restore the Meetinghouse, and yes, we remember the discipleship of all those who carried on the work of furthering Christ’s mission here in West Barnstable and Sri Lanka by participating in our recent Founders All capital campaign. Truly we can see, not only in the story of Naomi and Ruth, but also in our history as a congregation, that God works through whomever God chooses to accomplish mighty deeds, to deliver hope to God’s people and their generations.

Ruth and Henry Jacob, John Lothrop and Elizabeth Crocker Jenkins, each and every one of you who have heard God’s call to build something new here at West Parish, whatever the often meager resources, skills and time you may possess, have demonstrated the uncommon courage that can arise in the most ordinary of lives. I think that most people don’t think of themselves as especially brave or courageous. I know that is true for me – I tend to agree with Michael Jackson on this one, I’m a lover not a fighter. I think it is also true for most people, even for those who we laud as especially brave and courageous, such as war heroes. Most folk who we honor as war heroes readily confess that they don’t think of themselves as braver than anyone else – they just did what they had to do for their comrades, for their community, for their nation. No, most people don’t think of themselves as especially brave and courageous, and yet we know, through the story of Ruth and the Founders and indeed through our own history here at West Parish, that covenant and hope can still call forth acts of courage, can rouse us to action, can cause us to risk ourselves for each other and for the safety and health of our community.

Friends, I believe that such a time is at hand once again. And while on Founders Day we usually focus on this church community and this Meetinghouse, today I feel compelled to speak with you about a call to courage that is wider in scope. For now that the elections are behind us -– elections unprecedented in terms of nastiness, of the pervasiveness of attack ads, of the depth of pejorative labeling and down-right lying – we might ask whether we are being called to author a new chapter in our common life together, our common life as a church, as a community, as a state, and indeed as a nation. Maybe now is a time when we are being called to rebirth, to be restorers of life to our communities and our nation.

Numerous respected commentators have noted that this has been the sourest electorate they have seen in memory. If one disagrees with the way the war in Iraq has been prosecuted – a war longer now than World War II – one is not only labeled as being “unpatriotic”, but also is accused of being a “terrorist sympathizer”, as someone who “wants the United States to lose the war”. If one questions the rush to restrict civil rights, if one wonders aloud why we would pass a law that would allow government agencies to pick someone up off the street and detain them indefinitely, without being charged with a crime or even given a hearing, solely on the grounds that they are an “enemy combatant” – then they are accused of “coddling terrorists”. If one suggests that “waterboarding” and other forms of inflicting pain on suspects is unworthy of the greatest nation on this planet and puts the men and women of our armed services at risk of being similarly tortured, then they are branded as “forgetting 9/11”. If one supports the right of two committed, loving adults to enter into a binding legal relationship “’til death do us part”, then they are “anti-family” and are “endangering the welfare of children.” Legitimate, rational argument, honest difference of opinion, is no longer enough – now we demonize, label, “spin”, we embrace the politics of division and diminishment.

But beyond these process issues, deeper than this national slide into the politics of negativity and demonization, lie the substantive issues, the real problems that face us as citizens of this state and this nation and this world. Here I am talking about issues that are treated more as political footballs to be lobbed back and forth and less as life-and-death issues which go to the heart of what it means to be part of a community, together. Issues like access to health care being a right, not a privilege dependent on economic and social standing; issues like a fair immigration policy which balances our need for new workers with a demand for fair competition and respect for the rule of law; issues like a tax burden which falls disproportionately on those least able to pay; issues like how to work hand in hand with other members of the international community to counter international terrorism; issues like a federal budget spending our tax dollars like a drunken sailor on shore leave, leaving our children with a skyrocketing national debt of unprecedented magnitude.

Friends, there is a growing national consensus that our commonwealth, our body politic, is sick, much in the same way as the West Parish church and its Meetinghouse were sick in the time before Elizabeth Crocker Jenkins, much as were the prospects for two childless women on the margins in the time of Ruth. And so the question arises, can we find the courage to work to restore our common heritage, to bind up the wounds, to be restorers of health and to birth again a nation founded on principles of openness, fairness, justice, and free and open exchange of opinion, no matter how passionately those opinions might be held? Will we be willing to risk ourselves, to take what might at first be an unpopular stand, to restore our government, our society, our culture, so that we might truly be that “city on a hill” the earliest settlers on these shores covenanted together to be? Do we have the gumption for the long haul, do we have the stamina to stick it out together in the face of baser foes, do we have hearts brave enough to work with each others across party and ideological lines and so return to a vision of government as a communal undertaking, as a shared enterprise? Can we be builders of bridges and coalitions, authors of a new story, restorers of life for our community, our nation and the world?

We are not, I believe, naturally constituted to believe that we can do such things. And yet the story of Naomi and Ruth, the story of this congregation, and your stories, all affirm that God works through ordinary people, like me, like you, to do extraordinary things. They assure us that God will grant us the courage for the facing of these challenges, for the accomplishing of these mighty deeds, for the building up of our community. And they assure us that when we bend our backs to the work of building up community, when we boldly step out to transcend a dysfunctional past and find a new way, we will not be alone – we have each other, and we have a God who will not leave us, and who works with us, just plain ordinary folk, to be builders of a better tomorrow. -----------