'Choosing life' after tragedy
detailed for Seminary's
Preaching Days audience

See also: McClain | McCurley

Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer

PHILADELPHIA (June 2001)--In an evocative sermon style, Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer traced the Old Testament/Torah journey of Naomi, feeling exiled from God after the death of her husband and sons, facing the death of her family line. Her text was from the Book of Ruth.

"Naomi's story reminds us of Job," she said, and the Jewish interpretation (Midrash) leads to questions like, "Did Naomi bring all of this upon herself? Is God a God of wrath? How can we ever see hope in the midst of anger and shame? Where is God in all of this?"

And of course they are everyone's questions at some time or other. She described how noted Psychologist Dan Gottlieb, rendered a quadriplegic after an accident, had told of trying to bargain with God. He had agreed to give life a chance for a year after the accident before deciding whether to end it all. At the end of the year he tried to bargain with God. "If you won't add to my disability, if I can avoid more surgeries, I'll go on," Fuchs-Kreimer described Gottlieb's pleas. But God always said to him simply, "No deals. No promises. Choose life."

Rabbi Fuchs-Kreimer, left, and the Rev. Dr. Adele Stiles Resmer, who directs the Seminary's Academy of Preachers program

Expressively, energetically, Fuchs-Kreimer led an attentive audience through a sermon/lecture/workshop series that comprised the second of three Preaching Days presentations for this year's Seminary event sponsored by the Academy of Preachers. Hers was the Somerville Lecture. Fuchs-Kreimer is Director of the Jewish Identity Program of the Jewish Family and Children's Service of Greater Philadelphia. She is on leave from a teaching post as the Director of Religious Studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia.

Indeed, Naomi was lost, isolated, like so many mourners today, Fuchs-Kreimer said. Could anything good come her way? But the "sweet" part of the story that Naomi could not have known at the time, was how it would end with her nurturing a grandson who would be the grandfather of David, part of a lineage that would lead to the Messiah. "Naomi could not have known, but we know," she said.

The good news for today's faithful, Fuchs-Kreimer noted, is that just as Ruth gave close support to her mother-in-law Naomi in Naomi's time of trial, "someone may choose to love you even when you may not feel there is anything there to love….Another human soul may choose to move you toward life. Ruth teaches us that life is not a quid pro quo…You may be affirmed in the face of nothingness."

In what was a steady affirmation for the profound role of women in Scripture and the Torah, Fuchs-Kreimer said finding a redemptive course in life may require modern-day believers to be "radical activists." That was the role chosen by Lot's daughters, Tamar and Ruth, she said. Their decisions were a "choice for life."

As was the case for Naomi, once a "wretched woman on the road to redemption," we may also find ourselves on a "twisted road," not knowing how it will turn. At such times we may be called to fullness, "called to dust ourselves off and choose life," she said.

Preaching Days has been offered by the Seminary for 15 years. It is an interfaith experience designed to provide an opportunity for preachers to receive mutual support and continuing education related to the craft of preaching. This year's theme has been "Preaching the will of God in the midst of pain, power and loss." The first speaker this year was the Rev. Dr. Foster R. McCurley, Jr., a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Disaster Response Team. The final presenter in this year's series June 13 is the Rev. Dr. William B. McClain, a United Methodist pastor who is Professor of Homiletics and Worship at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.