Yes I'm afraid it's me again. Two weeks in a row! Look on it as a sort of penance for past sin. I'm afraid you haven't got a lot of choice. It's me or nobody. I suppose if you had realised in advance that I was preaching and you hadn't wanted to listen then you could have decided not to come. I suppose even now, you could reach for a convenient Sony Walkman and plug in your earpieces but, in general, listening to me for the next 10 minutes is one of those things that you don't have a lot of choice in.

Choice is actually what I want to talk about for few minutes. This is an age where choice is seen to be all important. The rights of the individual to choose. The rights of a parent to choose a school for their child. The right to choose where we live, what we eat, what we watch on TV or see in the cinema. Choices today are endless and seem to be growing.

Not many years ago when you turned on the television, you could choose between 2 channels. Now if you have a satellite TV, you can choose between 240 (I'm afraid we have Sky and I counted them), including you'll be pleased to know the God Channel! When you go to the cinema, it is no longer a case of going to see whatever is on at the Odeon in Chester. All cinemas are now what they call multiplex offering you a choice of 4, 6 or even 12 different films.

When we used to go to a grocers shop, the choice of fruit and vegetables on offer would depend on the season. In the summer there would be a good variety, in the winter less. Now, you can go to the supermarket and have whatever you want, whenever you want it. If your choice is not met by locally grown produce then don't worry. You can have star fruit from Israel, mangoes from Africa, kiwis from New Zealand; the choice is endless.

People expect, maybe even need choices. Ironically, this explosion of choice has resulted in less time to make those choices. So less free time goes with all these so called freedoms. Much of our free time is now devoted to deciding what to do with all that free time. If you've ever wasted time queuing in a traffic jam to get into a shopping complex or an entertainment park or waiting for a 12 hour delay to your holiday flight to Crete then you'll know what I mean.

An even more depressing consequence of this degree of choice is that as our freedom of choice goes up, so does our ability to make bad decisions. The more choices there are, the more wrong choices we make and the more depressed we get about those wrong choices. Given more and more choices about how we live our lives, we become less and less concerned about making good decisions. To make a really good, well informed decision would take time and effort. To really decide which of the many hundreds of cars on offer are perfect for us, we would need to do a lot of research, visit a lot of showrooms, take lots of test drives, read lots of reviews. So what do we do? We talk to someone over a drink who tells us how fantastic their new car is and we buy one of those.

The point about this choice overload is that we are obsessed with making the 'right choices' about small and unimportant things; the brand of margarine we buy, or the film that we will watch tonight and we shut out the really big choices. The choices that are really important. The choices that represent the big issues in life. Are we so obsessed with deciding on the colour of the new carpet in the living room or whether to stay on as secretary of some group in the village for another year that we ignore the single biggest commitment in our lives? Our commitment to Christ?

As you know, certainly those of you who were here last week, between now and Lent, we are preaching on the Book of Ruth. Over this 8 week period, we will look to see what we can learn from the wonderful story of Ruth and Naomi, their descent into despair at the loss of their husbands, Ruth's stoicism and commitment in sticking with Naomi through the worst of times and of course their eventual shared happiness in the marriage of Boaz and Ruth and the birth of Obed, their son, the grandfather of King David.

Last week, I started out on this odyssey by taking a general overview of the book and this week, I want to focus on the first of the four chapters of the book. This is the part of the story that sees Elimilech, his wife Naomi and their two sons move to Moab to escape the terrible famine that was afflicting Israel, the untimely death of Elimilech in that strange land, the joyful marriage of Naomi's two sons to Moabite girls, Ruth and Orpah, and in turn the deaths of the two men, leaving three widows to grieve. We share in the widows' mourning as they bury their men and watch as Naomi faces total desolation at her loss.

She decides that she must return to her home in Bethlehem to die and tries to free her two daughters in law to return to their families and marry again. The two girls protest but she insists and, reluctantly Orpah goes. Ruth is more stubborn, she digs her heels in and will not leave Naomi and so, the two return to Bethlehem where Naomi declares her despair and bitterness to her old friends and neighbours. This is the piece of the story that I would like to focus on and to come back, through that story to the issue of the choices that face us.

Picture if you will, the scene. Naomi, only days before had been full of hope and joy, watching her two sons and their lovely wives going about their lives. Very much in love, settled, comfortable and thinking about the future. Naomi's mind was probably turning to thoughts of grandchildren and a growing family. Each day, she would probably look at her two daughters in law for signs that maybe soon she would be a grandmother.

Ruth, for her part was equally content, in love and happily married, living in an extended family with her brother and sister in law and her mother in law, all 5 of them comfortable in each others presence. We don't know, but we can suppose that she had found the change of style and custom strange at first as she had come to live in this Jewish household. But now, after several years, she loved it. It was part of her life and she adored her mother in law, who had welcomed her and loved her in return.

Suddenly, this idyll is shattered, not by one tragedy but by two. Both sons are killed; Mahlon and Chilion. We don't know how but we can surmise. Probably an accident, perhaps an accident as they worked together. Suddenly these three women have their lives turned inside out. The death of one son would have been bad enough.

With one still alive, still heading up the family, they could have carried on as before. They could have borne the pain of one death whilst the second son provided for his mother, wife and widowed sister. But there is no such mercy for Naomi's family. Three widows are left alone.
It's hard for us in the modern world with our National Health Service, pensions, benefits and social security to really understand what this meant for them. Widows without a family had no status in society.

They had no way to earn money - that was the perogative of the men - and they had no men to support them. Their only hope was to marry again. This was, of course, not an option for Naomi. She was old, too old she thought to even think about that. Her life had seen so much pain. The loss of her home, her husband and now her two fine sons. All that was left for her was to die -and she wanted to do that in her own home, not in a foreign land.

For her daughters in law though, time was on their side. They were young and attractive and in their own country. They could find husbands, settle down and have children and this is just what Naomi told them when they started to object to her leaving them behind on her return to Bethlehem. But still they pleaded with her. If she wanted to go back to Bethlehem then let them come with her they pleaded. Naomi reverted to bitter logic to dissuade them and to make them see sense.

She told them that if they insisted on staying with her then their only hope for the future , to avoid a life of widowhood and penury would be for her, Naomi, to remarry and have sons. The prospect of her remarrying a man young enough to father children was remote enough. The prospect of her bearing children at her age was even more remote. The prospect of having two children; both boys was almost ludicrous and, even if all of this came to pass, the girls would still have to wait years for them to grow to marry and in their turn father children, by which time Ruth and Orpah would themselves be older and losing their prospects for motherhood.

Naomi's logic was faultless though blunt and it had the desired effect on Orpah who left to return to her family. With Ruth, however, the argument failed - despite the fact that it made absolute sense. Naomi was absolutely right, returning with her to Bethlehem was sheer madness. Ruth would be consigning herself to a life of poverty and misery. Caring for an embittered woman in her declining years and then, on her death, finding herself stranded as a stranger in a foreign land.

Perhaps, you could argue that Ruth's kindness was thought through. Perhaps Ruth figured that Naomi would not live too long. That she would nurse her through her decline, see her buried and return, still a young woman to Moab where she could start to pick up the pieces of her life, confident in the knowledge that she had done the right thing to repay her mother in law's kindness. But that is wrong. Ruth's intentions were far more serious than that. Her commitment was not as transitory. It was absolute. Listen again, to what Ruth says to Naomi in that incredibly powerful speech towards the end of Chapter 1:

"Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people will be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me and more as well, if even death parts me from you!"

There can be few more powerful declarations of faith anywhere in scripture as this one by Ruth for Naomi. Ruth decisively casts her lot with Naomi, not in a half hearted or temporary way; "I'll come back with you to see you settled". Not even in a semi permanent way; "I'll come back and live with you to look after you through your old age". Ruth makes an absolute and total commitment to give up all she knows to commit to Naomi - not for the short or medium term but for all her life. "Where you die, there will I be buried" "Your people will be my people, your God my God".

What is even more remarkable is Ruth's motive for this act of selflessness. She is not seeking any reward - spiritual or earthly. Naomi has no money, she's not going to leave a meaty bequest in her will. She has no other family to look after Ruth when Naomi dies. Naomi's age almost guarantees that she will die before Ruth, leaving the younger woman alone in a strange land as the lowest of the low; a widow without rights and privileges and a foreigner to boot.

So why on earth does Ruth want to do this. She has no obligation; Naomi has made that quite clear in her appeals to the two girls to go back to their respective families. Orpah has already gone back so there would be no shame in Ruth following suit. Ruth - watching Orpah depart is left with a choice (you see - I told you I'd get back to choices!). She can listen to the logic of Naomi's appeals to stay in Moab and follow Orpah's example. Common sense says that this is the right decision. Or she can stick to her guns and go with Naomi back to Bethlehem. Common sense says that this is the wrong decision. On the one hand, she has the chance of a new life, a new husband, children, security, happiness and health. On the other hand she is committing to becoming an outcast in a foreign land, without food, prospects or much in the way of hope. Nursing an ageing woman to whom she has no blood ties and thus no commitment or allegiance.

So a simple enough choice - a bit like the choice of being hit over the head with a brick or being handed £1000. A simple choice for the head - take the money - go back to Moab, think of your future, look after number one, take the safe option, don't be a fool.

But of course, Ruth doesn't choose to go back to Moab. She chooses - against all logic and against the arguments of Naomi to go back with her to Bethlehem. To commit to this unknown and uncertain life in Bethlehem. We of course know, because we've read the whole story, that it all works out well in the end. But there is no way that Ruth can have known that as she made that fateful choice on the road out of Moab. Her choice was driven entirely by thoughts and concerns for another and not for herself. Her choice was vested in a sure and certain commitment to what was right and to a sure and certain knowledge that God would not punish her for doing what was right.

How brave are we in making choices as momentous as this? Do we always do what we believe is right in our hearts - what is right in God's eyes or do we do what is right in our heads - what is right in the eyes of men? Ruth had a clear choice; to go back to the familiar or to go forward in faith to the unknown. That same choice confronts us all today as it does everyday. Are we, from today, going to go back, as we leave this church, to the familiar that has been our lives to now. To the flexible faith that fits with our lifestyle but is conveniently packaged so that it doesn't interfere with things to much. Or are we going to go forward, like Ruth, in faith to the unknown - uncertain what the future holds but certain that God is with us every step of the way.

The second route - the one that leads forward into the unknown requires far more courage than the one that leads back to the familiar. What we can be certain of is that God will provide that courage and will provide the reward for that courage. The reward may not, like Ruth's come to us in this life but come it will. The big question for us all is are we willing to take the first step into the unknown?

Let us Pray

Lord give us strength, like Ruth, to do only what is right in your eyes.
Give us strength to ignore the ways of the world that would shut You out
Give us strength to live according to your Holy Laws; to love you above all else and to love our neighbours as ourselves.
Give us strength to move forward into the unknown and into closer union with you.
We ask this in your name. Amen