Discovering Ruth
A SERMON BY REV LINDA A HART
If you aren’t paying close attention when you read the book of Ruth in the Hebrew Bible, you might miss the meaning entirely. And no one would fault you for having done so.
You see, it’s a book that’s concerned with a lot of things that don’t make much sense in our world today. Marge Piercy describes it this way:
When you pick up the Tanakh [Bible] and read
the Book of Ruth, it is a shock
how little it resembles memory.
It's concerned with inheritance,
lands, men's names, how women
must wiggle and wobble to live.
You might easily be misled, and believe that it is all about the possessions of men, though the names of the women are what most people remember. The story becomes convoluted from the very outset when Naomi and her husband and two sons leave Israel and travel to Moab. The sons marry, but because the women are not of their clan or heritage, the marriages are not thought real, they are certainly not legitimate. Still when Naomi’s husband and sons die, she and her two daughters in law are thrown on their own resources which are nothing. There are no men to offer protection and the land dead, years of drought and loss have stripped it clean, there is nothing there. Naomi prepares to return to her homeland, and Ruth demands to go with her while the other daughter in law returns to her home.
This might be your first clue that the story isn’t really about the men and their laws. You might even note at this point that God has not yet become a player in the story at all – there’s been no smiting, no one guilty of anything worthy of any of that wrathfulness that we’re used to in these stories from the Hebrew bible. God doesn’t seem to be interfering one way or another. Aside from being asked for blessings – which seem to not be flowing – God doesn’t seem to be there at all.
But back to the story. So much time is spent explaining all the niggling little details, like the marriages which aren’t really marriages because Ruth is a Moabite, a foreigner, not among the chosen. This is why you’d be mistaken about the meaning. And then there’s all that about Naomi returning to the home of her birth where she may be able to claim an inheritance that belonged to her husband, but only if there’s a male relative who can help her to claim it. So many details about matters that we modern people would struggle to wrap our tired brains around. You couldn’t be blamed for missing the meaning of the whole thing.
Once Ruth and Naomi do get back to the land of her birth, still they are left to make their way in the world without help. In that patriarchal society, a woman without a man was nothing, and a widow without a male relation to help her was as lost as could be. You see what I mean about the details, and the intricacies of the way things were done. Nothing is simple in the story. You nearly need a degree in cultural anthropology to understand it at all.
At least this land isn’t in famine and drought, but they still don’t have food, so are left to glean what is in the fields at the end of the day of harvesting. And following all those niggling little details, of course, they have come to the field of a kinsman of Naomi’s.
Now this might be where the meaning of the story comes back toward the surface. Boaz, the owner of the land, that distant relative, shows some kindness to them. He’s not required to do anything in particular – God hasn’t directed him to be especially compassionate, nor is he following any of the laws laid down for him. He tells the workers to leave a little extra grain at the edges of the field, and tells Ruth to stay there, in his fields, where she will be safe with his servants and workers. He sees that she is fed and fed well. He protects her for it was a dangerous thing to be a woman alone in those times. At the end of the day, Ruth collects enough to feed herself and Naomi for a few days. They will not go hungry.
You might think, then, that the book of Ruth is a subversive sort of book to be included in this collection. I mean, after all, the Bible is meant to be telling us about God and our relationship with that deity, and God hasn’t yet made an appearance and we’re coming up to the end quite quickly now. And the rules – and there were a lot of rules, as you’ve surely gathered by now – the rules that were meant to make for holiness and to keep God appeased, and for a pure and good life – the rules seem rather beside the point, if not out and out unjust, at least to modern sensibilities, perhaps even to the people of the day when it was written.
Back to the story, then, to see if we can stay undistracted by the details and find the meaning, find out what this story is trying to say to us. That night, Naomi sends Ruth back to the place where Boaz is sleeping. The plan is, you see, to exploit the favour of Boaz, and perhaps be taken in as a concubine, and thereby be safe and protected and fed. It is for survival that Ruth goes under cover of night to lay herself at Boaz’s feet and to hope that he will choose to protect her. Don’t get distracted by the details – she sought to be a concubine because she couldn’t be a wife – she is a Moabite, after all, an alien, an outsider, the wrong sort of woman after all, and even though she is young, it is unlikely that she might be considered wifely material. Don’t get lost in the cultural rules and restrictions. A widow, a Moabite, not marrying material.
Don’t get lost in the details, just hear what she did: vulnerable and trusting, she went with the hope of safety, and maybe even a little ease in her hard life, and hoping that Naomi, too, would be gathered in to the household, protection for them both. And when old Boaz – for he was long in tooth, not himself prime marriage material – senses her nearby, he asks who is there. She tells him and asks to be allowed under his covers. And what happens isn’t some tawdry bit of flesh and sweat, but that an old man is opened in love, a young woman is drawn near and a marriage is made. There is no flash of the power of God, but only the quiet intimate working of two hearts. Ruth responds to his earlier kindness, Boaz accepts with gratitude her offer. And the marriage is made, unlikely and surprising.
We are not at the end of the story yet, though. For you see, the marriage couldn’t be that simple, no. There are rules and laws that need to have attention paid. For there was another kinsman who might have claimed the right to her as wife. He would do this by simply purchasing the land that had belonged to Naomi’s dead husband. And by purchasing the land, he would also get the bonus of Naomi and Ruth. Treated as mere possessions, they would have gone to this other kinsman who had first right to them.
And the details again, when Boaz goes to the gates of the city to negotiate for this piece of land, when he seeks to buy Ruth. The elders gather and the two men discuss the purchase. We do not know why, but the other man refuses purchase, removes his sandal to show that all is done, and Boaz is successful in buying the lot – the land and Naomi and Ruth. And what happens is not that they all pack up and go home having had a good day at the office, but blessings are offered from all those around, God’s name is invoked, and prayers are said to hope for children.
And indeed, it comes to pass that a child is born and Naomi takes him as a nurse, and it seems obvious that they live a happy life. And the son that comes is then the father of Jesse, who is the father of David, the greatest ruler of the Jewish people. You might, by this point be thinking that this is merely a story about the dynasty, as in the end there is a recitation of the parentage of David, calling the names of the fathers, and again, you might miss what this is about, miss the real meaning of the story.
Because, you see, this story isn’t about rules and regulations and laws. It isn’t about purity and holiness. If anything, it tells us that those sorts of laws might well stand in the way of goodness coming into the world in full force. If Ruth, the outsider, the non-entity, the foreigner, had not become Boaz’s wife and borne him the child, David would not have come to birth. Rachel Barenblat says it perfectly: ‘a kind of redemption arises in our leaps of lovingkindness, even when those leaps go contrary to the conventional wisdom about who we ought to be.’
The story is not even about God in the way we usually think of God. It’s about the common flowing of life, around the obstacles and the difficulties. It’s about the kindnesses that happen between people who aren’t trying to act in some extraordinary way, but who are simply trying to make their way in the world, putting foot in front of foot when life is hard, and getting through.
Perhaps most deeply, though, it’s a story about blessings, as author Tikva Frymer-Kensky suggests: "The characters in the book of Ruth, themselves act to fulfil the blessings that they bestow on one another in the name of God." God doesn’t intervene in the midst of this story. The blessings that come are the plain, homely acts of ordinary people who are open to compassion, are open to kindness, are open to the goodness of love and loyalty.
The meaning of the story – like the meaning of our story, the story of our lives – can get lost in the details. Captured by the intricacies of law and custom, or simply the ‘ought to be’s’ of our own creation, we can miss the more important moments and meanings and movement of our lives: the lovingkindness offered, the compassion available, the goodness of simply enduring and getting through, and the bright blessings of love that comes to us as it came to them, to Naomi, to Ruth, to Boaz, the humble, saving power of ordinary love.
May it come to us all.
Prayer
Spirit of love and life,
open us in these few moments of quiet,
open us to what is around us.
Seeing the world as it is,
seeing the obstacles and difficulties
and the boundaries we make,
the boundaries we know;
seeing the world as it is around us,
Let us leap in lovingkindness
offer what is in our power
to give,
see the stranger as
our companion,
no less than our beloveds.
Let us leap in lovingkindness,
remember to look for the lost,
to lift up the mourning,
to speak a word of hope
as much as it is in us to speak.
May we remember
the redemptive power of love,
to bind the wounds,
to light what is dark,
to bring comfort where there
is only fear.
In these days to come,
Spirit of love and life,
we would be as
Naomi,
Ruth,
Boaz,
seeing what is possible,
opening in kindness,
and delighting in what can be found
in amongst the details and rules,
the boundaries and obstacles,
still, may we see you, and lift up our hearts
in gratitude.
Amen.