Three weeks before Christmas, 1993, Wolfgang Dircks died while watching television.Neighbours in his Berlin apartment complex hardly noticed the absence of the 43-year-old.His rent continued to be paid automatically out of his bank account.Five years later, the money ran out, and the landlord entered Dircks’s apartment to inquire.He found Dircks’s remains still in front of the tube.The TV guide on his lap was open to December 3, the presumed day of his death.Although the television set had burnt out, the lights on Dircks’s Christmas tree were still twinkling away. It’s a bizarre story, but it shouldn’t surprise us.Every year thousands of people are found accidentally, days or weeks after their solitary deaths, in the affluent cities and suburbs of the Western world.If a person can die in such isolation that his neighbours never notice, how lonely was he when alive??Forget about the information age!We live in the age of loneliness.

Are you lonely?Even if you are often surrounded by people, are you actually lonely?Are you lacking friendship?The real, deep friendship that we human beings need so desperately?Do you have a community of people to support you?Or can you relate to the guy who died watching TV?(I sure hope not!)Human beings were created to need interaction with other human beings!Our world is filled with people who are lacking that interaction.People who are lonely, and have no one to love them.And even more sadly, so many of those people are also lacking God!They are lacking God because they are lacking relationships with other people.It is through relationships with other people that we meet God! God communicates his love to us through the love of people.The story of Ruth shows us this…

In Bethlehem, 150 years before David, and 1150 years before Jesus was born there, there was a famine which forced a God-fearing man, his wife, and two sons, to leave their neighbourhood, their community, their people, and move someplace they could find food.They had to leave their spiritual community, where they were connected to God and his Word, and move to Moab, an enemy country filled with pagan worship.Not ideal, but they needed food!

However, as they moved into the new “neighbourhood,” where idol worship was the way of life, people sacrificed children to their gods, and lived in constant fear and guilt, imagine the impact they must have made!“Elimelech,” a name meaning “God is my King,” and his wife, “Naomi,” meaning “Lovely, pleasant,” and their faith in a loving God must have gotten people’s attention.They brought love, friendship, and hope for the future to a community that was pretty low on hope.This was a wonderful opportunity for Elimelech and Naomi to change lives around them by sharing their loving God! But their witness would come in the midst of hardship.Elimelech died.The two boys married unbelieving Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth.Ten years later, the boys die.Now both Naomi’s husband and sons were gone.A series of tragedies? Yes.But also a chance for Naomi to display her faith in eternal life from a loving God.

Look what else that comes out of this.A very strong bond developed between Naomi and her two daughters-in-law.In ten years, they had become quite close.And in that time, the hope that kept Naomi going in life had the chance to rub off on them.And when Naomi knew she had to move back to Bethlehem, Orpah and Ruth want to go with her!So they set out.But Naomi realizes that it was possible the girls would remain unmarried for life.Without husbands, all three of them would have been pretty poor.So Naomi, in her love for them, urges them to stay home.There were many tears and hugs.Orpah finally says a tear-filled goodbye.

But not Ruth.She says: “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.”Ruth’s promises here reveal the success of the Holy Spirit working through the witness of Naomi and her family!Ruth here confesses knowledge and faith in the true living God!

In Hebrew, Ruth spoke four words that I want to focus on:Your people, my people; your God, my God.Ruth learned about a faithful, loving God through faithful, loving people!In the ten years she had known Naomi and her sons, her life had been changed by the warm, selfless, hope-filled love of this family!They had made her a part of their family, their community!Look at how strong the bond of community is here!Your people will be my people.If this is what you people are like, I want to be a part of you people!If you are going somewhere, I want to go where you are going, because I want to be a part of that!It’s more important than place, or financial security.I want to be part of your people!I want them to be my people!

Naomi and her family filled Ruth’s emotional “love tank” of friendship, took away any loneliness, and gave her family and community.But more importantly, that warm fellowship they shared created a connection to share their loving God with!Naomi’s bond of family, community, and friendship with Ruth endeared Naomi’s God to Ruth!Ruth learned about a faithful, loving God through faithful, loving people!Now Ruth was saying, “I want to belong to and be a part of your people, and since you are the way you are because of your God, I want Him to be my God, too!”Ruth learned about love from Naomi.But even more importantly, she learned that that love came from Naomi’s loving God!And through Naomi’s witness, Ruth came to faith in her Savior.That faith knit them together.The faithfulness that Ruth showed to Naomi, by leaving her country to be with her, was a direct result of God’s faithfulness to her!

So, because Naomi’s people were people Ruth wanted to belong to, Naomi’s God became Ruth’s God.Their faith in God led these two women to believe that the Lord would take care of them as they moved to Bethlehem.And God again helps them with the love of other people, the community they became part of in Bethlehem! Ruth, this former-idol-worshiping Moabitess, ends up marrying Boaz, a God-fearing man, and becomes the great-grandmother of King David!She becomes an ancestor of the future Savior promised to her!

Ruth’s story shows us how important community is, how important it is to be surrounded by people loving you with God’s love.And people to love back.Friends, we live in a place people are coming to from all over the world.Are we being a loving community for the people around us?Are we getting to know them, caring for them, and loving them?Would your neighbours see something in your life that would make them want your people to be their people?Do you even know your neighbours?I mean, really know them, not just as casual acquaintances?I have to admit, that I have a long way to go to be that kind of neighbour, even on my own street.But I believe that when I do make those connections with God’s help, people will also want to know more about my loving God.

Am I the only one who is guilty of this here?Or are the rest of you, too?Well, I have some good news: even though we have been unfaithful, God is still faithful.That’s the theme of our scripture verses today.Even though we haven’t always been people who make others want to be a part of us, God still wants us to be a part of Him and his community in heaven!We have a loving God who loves you and me so much He made sure we will live with Him forever by sending his Son into the world, born from that family that Ruth became part of!

Ruth’s story shows us how important it is to get to know our neighbours.I am going to try my best to do that.Let’s make the people who meet us say “I want to meet more people like you!”Live in such a way that your neighbours will say of you “Your people will be my people!”And when you love people like that, by God’s grace, they might also someday say “Your God will be my God!”Let’s admit it, there’s nothing more wonderful than winning your neighbour for Christ!There is nothing greater than having someone want the loving God you worship be the loving God they worship!So love people as your expression of thanks to God!Create connections with others that give you the chance to share how great He is!Give your community the reasons to say with Ruth, “Your people, my people; your God, my God!”

It really works.One way that it really works today is through “house groups,” Christian people who invite a group of people into their homes, and share God’s Word, prayer, and concern with them on a regular basis.A group of people in a community who also enjoy life with each other.Here is testimony from a couple with two daughters: “We both grew up in families that attended church every Sunday and assumed this meant we were Christians.It was not until we became adults that we knew differently.Surrounding yourself with Christians in a House Group has definitely been for us a spiritual awakening.Since joining a House Group we have become closer to Christ, our family, and our neighbors.We never have a shortage of people who will take our kids in a pinch, walk our dog, or even wash our dishes when we’ve had a big dinner.We have a special bond with these neighbors.

Since becoming Christians and joining our church in January 1999, we have tried to become more of a messenger for Christ.Sharing the message of Jesus with our neighbors can sometimes be a difficult subject.Then there are other times – as is the case of one couple who lives across the street from us – when we speak often about how the church and knowing Jesus Christ has affected us. Quite often when we are together with them, we discuss our House Group and tell them how interesting and meaningful it is in our lives.We soon found that they were asking more and more questions about church.We were at their home one night to watch a football game and met some of their old friends from college.When we were being introduced, one woman immediately said to us, “You’re the couple who is getting my friends back to church.”What a great feeling it was to know that not only were we spreading the word of Jesus to them, but they also were now speaking to others about it.One Sunday morning in church, it was fantastic to see them sitting in the pew with us.This couple also has grown children, and when they visit, it’s always a joy to see them together, attending church.We witnessed the Holy Spirit working through our community group and church, as in January of 2000, the wife came to faith in Jesus as her Savior.Her husband is getting closer in his spiritual journey as well.Our neighbourhood Home Group will be there daily to nurture them to maturity in Christ.”

Your people, my people; your God, my God.Friends, do you see how it works?When God’s love for you shines from your lives into the lives of other people, they will want your God to be their God, too.If we are going to be a church that believes this truth, and lives it out in all of our lives, then we’re going to have to work together and be community for those around us.

One day in Sunday School, the teacher was talking with the children about the church.To illustrate her point, she folded her hands together and said, “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple; open the doors and see all the people.”She asked the class to do it along with her – obviously completely forgetting that one small boy in her class had been born without a left hand.When she realized that a moment later, she was horrified.But before she could do anything about it, the little boy’s friend, who was sitting next to him, reached out his left hand and said, “Let’s do it together.”The two boys proceeded to join their hands together to make the church and the steeple.You know what? This hand exercise should never be done by an individual, because the church is not a collection of individuals, but the one body of Christ.A body who, just as its Head has done for it, loves, serves, forgives, and celebrates with the people around them, so that the people we come in contact with, through the Holy Spirit’s work, can’t help but say: “Your people, my people; your God, my God!”Amen.

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