Sermon, Sun 17 Sept: people of the Bible series - Ruth, pt 2

READINGS/ Ruth, chapter 3 and 4

SERMON
Let’s pray: may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen...

Last week, we met the family of Naomi,
heard the story of what drew them to the land of Moab;
heard the story of what happened there.
And, in that story, we met another woman, named Ruth...

Ruth had been born in the land of Moab.
Grew up there.
Knew the stories of her people’s gods...
knew the story of her people;
knew from her earliest days that her destiny was to marry a man of her people.
But that... didn’t happen.
Instead of taking the expected path, she headed down the road less travelled –
married a man who followed a different God,
who came from a different nation:
a man whose family had escaped famine –
and who’d travelled the many miles from Bethlehem, in Judah,
and who’d embarked upon a new life in Moab.

Breaking with tradition and culture,
she married a stranger, a foreigner,
and lived with him for about ten years, until he died.
But it wasn’t only her husband who’d died:
her brother-in-law was also dead.
She, and her sister-in-law, Orpah, were now widows,
just as their mother-in-law, Naomi, was a widow.
The mother-in-law decides to return to her homeland,
and the young women travel with her for a little way until she tells them to turn back:
to take the safer option of staying with their own families.
One weeps, hugs her in farewell, and travels along the more secure road...
It’s not a bad choice:
she’s not a bad person...
and the person telling the story doesn’t condemn her for making it.
Presumably, Orpah settles back into her family, her country, ...
it is the safe, sensible choice,
and in making it, she settles into a life of obscurity –
and is never heard of again in this story, or elsewhere.
The other young woman weeps, and begs to go with her mother-in-law:
will not take ‘no’ as an answer.
Having already broken with making a safe choice to marry a man from her own country,
once again, Ruth chooses a different path –
a less secure path...
takes the road less travelled into the unknown.

The two women arrive back to Naomi’s homeland
and begin the task of settling in,
making a new life.
For Naomi, it’s mere survival –
she has no real hope,
has only the feeling of bitterness and a sense of God’s abandonment.
She would rather be known as ‘Mara’ now:
meaning ‘bitter’, as opposed to ‘Naomi’, meaning ‘sweet’.
Names are interesting in this story –
‘Ruth’ means ‘friendship’, ‘comfort’, and can even mean ‘to refresh’.
And we see, as the story continues,
Ruth’s gift of friendship and comfort to Naomi...and, of bringing refreshment to her.
While Naomi lives with her grief and her sense of hopelessness,
Ruth is someone who does hold hope:
she hopes for new opportunities
in this new land,
among new people –
even while she tends to the needs of her despairing mother-in-law.
But being practical, first things first:
they’ll need to eat.
As is the privilege of widows, she heads out to glean the fields –
it’s harvest time.
She’s a hard worker.
She wins the admiration of the local foreman,
who passes on a good report of her to the land-owner, Boaz...
who happens to be a relative of Naomi.
He offers her kindness, and protection.
When she returns home, she tells Naomi of this benefactor.
And, that’s where we pick up this morning:
Naomi is hatching a wee plan,
all of which is based upon the cultural expectations of her people.

Ruth has been an excellent and faithful,
kindly and companionable daughter-in-law.
She has given much to care for Naomi,
and now it’s Naomi’s turn to see what is in her gift to give to Ruth.
Of all the kinds of people in society,
women, and particularly widows, were vulnerable –
who would protect them in what was a time of chaos and turmoil?
The people had no real leader, apart from occasional champions - also known as 'judges'.
Naomi wants to find a way to provide a safety net for Ruth...
to give Ruth some kind of security,
and Naomi’s kinsman, Boaz, might just be the way.
It’s quite a dodgy-sounding plan, to be honest.
‘Go and make yourself pretty’ says Naomi...
‘Go and hang out at night in the threshing room’...
‘Go find Boaz’.
Now, we know from hearing the story, especially in the cold light of the next morning,
that it’s not quite the done thing for a woman to be spending time at night in such a place as this.
So, what’s happening here?
By placing herself where she does, Ruth is putting herself under the protection of Boaz –
asking him to act on his responsibility as a member of Naomi’s family.
He is surprised at her boldness,
he is pleased that she has come to him, when she could have chased after younger men...
she has made the right choice:
the legally appropriate choice, and he praises her,
and, decides he’ll honour her action by agreeing to act in the role of kinsman-redeemer,
that is, if he can...
for, unbeknown to Naomi and Ruth, there’s one other relative who is in the line ahead of Boaz –
he might want the land that would have belonged to Naomi’s husband, Elimelech...
and, if he does, Ruth would then go to him.
He would take back the land – redeem it –
and, take Ruth, and, by marrying her,
and by having a child with her,
redeem the family name...
rescue it from the possibility of disappearing.*
[*plus, some off the cuff comments on women as property/ cultural customs]

We know that Boaz goes out that very morning to find the other relative.
When he does, he asks about the land:
‘do you want it’ says Boaz...
‘Oh, yes,’ says the relative.
‘you do realise that you’ll also be responsible for Ruth, don’t you,’ says Boaz...
‘Ah. You know, it’s fine, you take the land,’ says the relative,
who then pretty much melts away into the distance.
If he takes on Ruth, he will have to split his inheritance... it’s not a great option for him.
And so, we go back to Plan A:
the Boaz option.
In front of witnesses, Boaz declares that he is happy to redeem the land, and to take Ruth as his wife.
Naomi’s hopes are coming to fruition:
Ruth will have her security, her safety-net after all.
And the next plan involves Ruth and Boaz getting married,
which in turn, leads to a child:
and there’s something about a child that is a living breathing hope for the future.

So we have a story that, in the beginning, had hopes dashed – had created bitterness.
But, through the steady, loving-kindess of Ruth,
and, through the faithfulness of Boaz,
God was able to show his own steady,
faithful loving-kindness to Naomi.
Hatching a plan,
she dared to find hope in a most unexpected place,
and in the end,
discovered her God,
her joy,
her hope,
and her future once more.

It’s an interesting story, this story of Ruth.
And it doesn’t end with the birth of her son, Obed.
We’ve got a wee P.S. at the end in the shape of a family tree...
in which we discover someone further down the line who is rather well-known.
And, there’s another P.S. to the story which we can find in the Gospel of Matthew,
in the genealogy in chapter one.
Remember last week, I said the town of Bethlehem might just be important? Hmmmm.

Naomi’s desire to give back to Ruth,
as Ruth had give to her resulted in a rather interesting security plan taking shape,
that went way beyond what Naomi might have foreseen.
It was a security plan:
for Ruth, beloved daughter-in-law,
and for the future of the family... for the family name not to disappear,
but to be refreshed through Ruth...
and to continue along a slightly different path to the one that may have been expected.
But it ended up going further than just one small family –
affecting the future of the nation,
a nation that will later move from the time of the judges, to the time of kings –
for the child Ruth and Boaz have, Obed,
will be the father of Jesse, the father of...
the future King David,
the king chosen and beloved of God.
But it goes beyond even the future of the nation:
for this will affect all people, for 28 generations later,
the outcome of the story will be heard in the cry of a child in a stable,
the child who will be named ‘Jesus’ –
the one who will redeem the whole of creation,
the one who will redeem ...us...
and bring us back to God.

'In the Book of Ruth the whole world is new again.  
Relationships have been righted. 
The outcastes have been taken in.  
The lowly have been raised up.  
A new generation of men—represented by a boy-child—
comes to inherit a cosmos where women are its co-creators.  
In Ruth, we get a glimpse into God’s world and find that it runs just the opposite of ours.
Overall, the sense of mutual commitment between Naomi and Ruth is ultimately 
the source and mark of divine blessing. 
Only once in the entire story is the word “love” used and it is used to describe the relationship between these two strong and determined women. 
This is the kind of love that molds and drives the universe.' 
*Shelli Williams

In Ruth, we are shown a mirror of God’s loving-kindness,
a loving-kindness that is about both relationship and redemption:
God’s love for us,
and, in that love,
God redeeming us, and claiming us as his own,
offering us hope in the most unexpected places,
and the possibility of a future that is richer, better than we can imagine...Amen