When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

And they lived happily ever after.

I don’t think those words – from our childhood fairy tales - existed on the day that Ruth, the Moabite woman, married Mahlon the Jew, son of Elimelech and his wife Naomi.

But I’ll bet that was the hope and the wish that all of the guests had for them, that they would live happily ever after. It is the wish that we carry to weddings when we go as guests, the prayer that sometime after the white lace and promises, after the honeymoon, there will come a rather constant and stable and lengthy period of time when the young couple will live happily ever after.

But it doesn’t happen.

It didn’t happen then and it doesn’t happen now.

And when it starts to not happen we wonder what happened.

I hear some people blame God, after all we came to the Church and we asked God’s blessings and we got the minister to say the magic words, so why are we so unhappy?

I hear others blame the culture, after all we have to worry so much about the cost of housing and food and paying for the kids braces and college and weddings and there just isn’t enough money to go around or the demands of the job require so much time and there just is nothing left in the tank to give.

I hear others who realize that they made a bad decision, or they made a decision that left no room for personal growth, or they made a decision that pleased other people but not themselves, or they made a decision that was right at the time but grew wrong along the way.

And even among those for whom married life is, and has been, a rich and wonderful and rewarding experience, there are moments when happily ever after seems more dream than reality, times when the distractions and distortions of the world out there have kept them from seeing the holy and beautiful nature of the relationship that God has given them. But they all start out so well.

I often point out at weddings that I have never had a couple who didn’t say that they were in love on that day, but I have also never known a couple – whether I did the wedding or not – who has known a stress free life of happily ever afters.

So it was with Ruth and Mahlon.

When they were married they intended it to be the beginning of a good and joyous life in Ruth’s homeland of Moab.

And then, Mahlon died.

And his father, Elimilech died.

And his brother, Chilion died.

All three deaths seem to have happened in a short period of time, leaving three women stunned, shaken and clinging to each other for support in the midst of their shared tragedy.

And in the middle of that sorrow, God sets the stage for three of the great love stories of all of scripture, three of the great love stories of all of literature.

And the second one I don’t want to spend a lot of time on, David Taylor will be preaching here next week, Debi and I will be away, and he is going to be covering the love story of Ruth and Boaz and if you really want to do yourself a favor, go read the story later today and think about it a bit. It is a wonderful look at what a young couple, with some help from an interfering Mother-in-law and the legal system and some aggressive flirting, manage to overcome on their road to happiness.

It is a really good story, go read it and enjoy it and come next week and hear what David has to say about it.

But that second great love story doesn’t even happen if the first one doesn’t.

And it is the first one that I want to call your attention to for a moment.

It is the love between two women, Ruth and Naomi.

And no, I’m not getting into issues Episcopalian in nature, sooner or later those chickens will come home to roost for all us, but today is not sooner.

But I am always touched when I read this story and I think of all the men and women that I have loved in my life, not romantically, but deeply, as Ruth loved Naomi, as Jesus loved John.

We’ve gotten better at this, we Americans, especially we male Americans, we’ve gotten better at recognizing the love within us and finding a way to express it. It used to be a stiff handshake and a nod, now the hug and even the kiss find their way into our emotional repertoire, and there is no doubt in my mind that we re healthier for it.

But Ruth and Orpah and Naomi had it down pat so many centuries ago as Naomi left the place of her sorrows, the place where her husband and her two sons had died, to return in mourning to her home.

And with tears and hugs and kisses she told her two daughters-in-law to let her go on alone, for they would have no future as the hated Moabites living among the Jews.

Reluctantly Orpah agreed to go.

But Ruth didn’t.

The love that she had for Naomi ran so deeply that she made the pledge that works for friendships, for marriages, for all of the commitments of the heart that we make along the way in life to each other, spoken or silent.

“Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge;

Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

Where you die, I will 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!”

That’s love.

Let yourself think for a moment, no don’t think, let yourself feel for a moment the depth of passion that filled those two women. You know those moments when you and I are most vulnerable, those times when sorrow and tears and loss and loneliness have drained us and left us without our game faces, left us open to the person who says “I am sorry”, “What can I do to help?”, the person who lets us know that they care about us as are, the way that God loves us, and we are filled with appreciation and affection and we wonder what we ever did to deserve a love like that and we know that we are feeling the evidence that there is a God and this person in front of us is the personification of that God’s love for us.

Those are special, sacred moments, moments when the Holiness of life is right there for us to touch and taste and feel. That’s what Jesus was getting at with the scribe that day when they spoke of what the key and great commandments were and Jesus said “Love God with all that you are and love your neighbor and” as I told the children “love yourself.”

And when we have that balance, that self-care, that other-care, that awe-filled sense of wonder, we are experiencing life the way we were created to live, we are in the same category as that scribe to whom Jesus said: “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And the only way that Ruth and Naomi were able to have ever experienced that love was because they allowed their love to move on, to grow and to change with the seasons and circumstances of their lives, they kept their love in motion, not tying it to a single moment or person or relationship or place, not pretending that one great defining moment of love could result in a guarantee of happily ever after, but rather they let God lead them by the hearts.

That’s what we are called to do with each other and with God, to grow and change and evolve into the individuals and families and circles of relationships and Church that we need to be for our fulfillment and for the fulfillment of others.

And there are times when that leads us into some unhappily after periods of time, times when we fall short of our vows, times when friends wound us with the unkind word or casual neglect, times when we feel forsaken by God.

And then we are as surprised by God’s love coming to us as Naomi was by Ruth’s persistence, it is that love that shapes us into what we are becoming, it was Ruth’s love that gave Naomi a purpose when they returned to Israel and that purpose was match-making!

But it was the willingness to love in new and different and changing circumstances that allowed the love story between Ruth and Naomi to play out.

Which brings us to the third love story in the Book of Ruth.

The second, of course, is the Ruth and Boaz romance, the first is the Ruth and Naomi love, but the third is the one that involves us, personally, in ways that the writer of the book of Ruth could never have dreamt possible.

For Naomi’s home town, the town to which Ruth pledged her future and promised to dwell in, the town where she would fall in love with and marry Boaz, the town where she would give birth to her first born son and name him Obed, that town was Bethlehem. And Obed would have a son named Jesse, and Jesse would have a son named David and it would be a great-great-great and so on, grandson of King David who would be born in that same town of Bethlehem to Mary and Joseph.

For you see, the third great love story of Ruth, and all of scripture is the story of God’s love for each of us, a love that comes before our love for ourselves or our neighbors, a love that comes before our love for God, “for God so loved the world” all of it, each of us “that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

That’s the love story that triggers all of the others, that’s the one that makes the happily ever afters ultimately happen after all.

God’s love is there in the love of Ruth and Naomi.

God’s love is there in the love of Ruth and Boaz.

God’s love is there when we love our neighbors.

God’s love is there when we love our God.

God’s love, God’s kingdom is there when we nibble on bread and when we sip on wine and when we laugh and cry and love and live with each other, we are never far from that love as long as we love and allow ourselves to be loved in all of the ever-changing conditions of our lives.

It is that simple and it is so complex that it will take the brightest among us a lifetime to figure it out. Consequently, he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him.

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”