Ruth 1:16-17 and 4:13-22
Our worship series in this season is called, “Scripture Sisters: Saints and Sinners”. It came as a result of asking you last fall to tell us your favorite Bible stories. We couldn’t use them all, but we saw a pattern. And based on what you turned in to our Worship Design Team, we selected five Bible stories that all revolved around women characters in the Old and New Testaments. Then we added a sixth topic that looks at Jesus and the women of his day. Above all in this season of Epiphany, our goal in this series is to find how God is revealed in the stories.
The story of Ruth is remarkable among the books of the Hebrew Bible for several reasons:
· Only a handful of main characters, and apart from Boaz, none of the other characters are mentioned anywhere else in the Bible
· The story’s focus from beginning to end is the plight of a single family, held together by a woman, Naomi. She’s the only character who is present from beginning to end. A good question to ask is why isn’t this book named after Naomi who master-minds the plot to keep the family together?
· Maybe the most noteworthy aspect of Ruth is the way the book uses a Hebrew concept, chesed, or in English simply hesed. In the Bible, chesed is used to mean kindness, mercy, or loving-kindness. The word is used in three places to mean “kindness” (2:20), “loyalty” (3:10), and “deal kindly with” (1:8). The word means more than kindly deeds toward another person. It has to do with the relationship that exists or ought to exist between two parties who are in covenant with each other. When referring to God, chesed means steadfast love. The love that never quits. It is compassion and faithfulness in a committed relationship. In that sense, the Ruth’s story is not just about Ruth, or even Ruth and Naomi; it is also about God.
Now for the story:
· The setting begins in Bethlehem, which means “house of bread”; it’s ironic because we quickly learn the family is in trouble due to a famine in the region surrounding the “house of bread”.
· The whole story takes place in Judah and Moab, located on either side of the Dead Sea.
· It turns out that famine is only the first crisis to hit this family, because while living in Moab, first Naomi’s husband Elimelech dies leaving her alone in a foreign land to raise two Hebrew sons; the two sons marry women from Moab, Orpah and Ruth. After living in Moab about 10 years, the sons die as well.
· Naomi, Ruth and Orpah are now widows; Naomi, an Israelite, decides to go home where she has property through her husband, and also kinfolk.
· The daughters-in-law start back with her and then Naomi stops; she urges Ruth and Orpah to stay in their own country, find new husbands, and have babies
· Orpah goes home, Ruth stays with Naomi (1:16-17)
· Two women travel back to Bethlehem where they are greeted by women of the town, who recognize Naomi. Their timing is perfect, because it is the time of the harvest…chapter one ends with the plot thickening.
· It turns out that a prominent citizen of Bethlehem was related to Elimelech’s family; his name was Boaz.
· Ruth has it in her mind that she didn’t come back to Bethlehem to remain a widow, so she decides to make a connection with Naomi’s extended family. She goes to a field owned by Boaz, and begins to glean the grain from the edges of the field. If you like to read between the lines of a story – and in Hebrew stories you really should – then you might say that Ruth had a plan.
· Soon Boaz shows up at the field to see how the work is going, and notices someone new among the reapers;
· Servants tell Boaz who it is, and because she is family, he tells her to stay in his field, for her own safety. You never know what might happen to a foreign woman working in another man’s field.
· Mealtime arrives and Boaz invites Ruth to lunch, and after lunch she returns to the field, and they must have hit it off because Boaz gives special instructions to his servants to keep an eye out for this new one.
· Night arrives, Ruth goes home, Naomi asks her about the day, and Ruth tells Naomi she thinks maybe Boaz is ready for harvest along with the grain. And the wheels in Naomi’s head begin to turn…
· The end of the harvest comes, and with concern for Ruth’s future in mind, Naomi tells Ruth she’s heard there is a party at the old threshing floor; it could be time to make their move on Boaz.
· Ruth dresses up, and to be perfectly honest about this, she heads over to the party armed with Naomi’s advice to try not to make a scene; stay under the radar until Boaz gets hammered. Here comes the R-rated part of this story…
· When Boaz falls asleep Ruth steals her way over to him and crawls under the covers. It helps to know more about Hebrew euphemisms here, but their are children present, so we’ll just move on. Later Boaz wakes up and realizes what’s going on. He knows he may have a problem because technically speaking, there is a kinsman who is closer in relation to Naomi’s family than he is, and that man would legally have the rights to anything that belonged to Elimelech. In that day, since women were considered property, that meant that Ruth came along with the land. Boaz, prominent upstanding citizen that he was, couldn’t afford to be caught with Ruth if someone else has first dibs.
· Boaz devises a plan; he’ll call the guys together so there are plenty of witnesses; he addresses the one relative who is closer to Elimelech than Boaz. The speech goes something like this: If you want the property, you have a right to it. If you don’t, then tell me, because I’m interested.
And oh, and by the way, there is some small print in the deal; when you buy the property, you get Ruth too.
· The other relative gets nervous; he doesn’t apparently grasp the idea of kindness. He is more concerned about his own reputation and relinquishes his right to the property. He leaves the picture allowing Boaz to step in. Boaz is happy, Ruth is happy, the village is happy; Naomi’s happy.
· Everybody wins!
I said last week that in our series we intend to ask a question about each woman’s story: What does each one teach us about God and God’s relationship with us. So with Ruth, we want to ask, why does the story appear in the Bible?
What is the unique contribution of Ruth’s story to our faith?
Notice that Ruth brings an element to our faith family tree. This branch that Ruth adds begins not with pure Israelite blood and not with traditional practices in the little town of Bethlehem. Instead, it starts with the bold and daring faith of a foreigner, a Moabite woman named Ruth, and with her unique combination of kindness, courage and determination to embrace the God of Israel and make a bold journey to a new land.
Here it is: Faith can be far more tolerant and open than we often understand it to be, and we can give our ancestor Ruth a great deal of credit for this tradition.
There are those who believe in a rigid view of religion. Their fear is that too much elasticity is dangerous; identity is lost. Religion is meant to bring formality to faith; structure, boundaries and limitations so that one’s faith doesn’t get corrupted by outside influence.
To those who say that about Christianity, I offer a Moabite woman named Ruth, whose courage in crossing over to a God not her own, freed her to show kindness, loyalty and devotion beyond geographic, national, and cultural barriers. In her act of faithfulness to Naomi, she became an ancestor of ours, grandmother of King David of Bethlehem, the one whose lineage eventually produced Jesus, the savior of all people.
I want to end by returning the idea of Epiphany. This is the Christian season following Christmas when the focus is on revealing God to the world.
So every week in Epiphany we want to look for God in our story.
Where is God revealed in the story of Ruth?
God is present in the kindness and loyalty of the characters; acting through them all throughout the whole story.
Naomi, Ruth and Boaz each act as God would act toward us, by taking extraordinary responsibility for one another and by performing extraordinary acts of kindness.
In the book of Ruth, we see how God and human lives work together to accomplish God’s will.
Those who, like Naomi, Ruth and Boaz fear… those who respect … those who honor … those who are in awe of God … those who follow God in complete and total trust…it is these lives that show us what God’s kindness is like.
The story of Ruth gives us a glimpse of the One Lord God, who loved the world so much that in order to redeem the world God visited earth in human form; God is the One who crosses over geography, culture, nationality, race, language, and time to offer us life abundant.
Ruth did that for Naomi; Naomi did that for Ruth; Boaz did that for both of them.
