Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17
Mark 13:1-8
Today is our third Sunday – our final Sunday – in our sermon series covering the book of Ruth. Ruth is a short little book of the Bible – you can read the whole thing in 15 minutes – and it’s a powerful story – a story of loss, and pain, a story of folks who are hopeless, who have nowhere to turn, and who therefore take risks and find ways to survive in a world that is, at best, indifferent to them, and, at worst, hostile to them. Over the past two weeks, we have seen Ruth travelling far from her homeland out of faithfulness to her mother-in-law, Naomi, and committing herself to a hard life in a land she does not know. Not sure of how to provide for themselves, they journeyed to Naomi’s homeland, Israel. Ruth could have stayed in her homeland of Moab, where they had been living, and where she probably would have been safer, had better odds of survival, but she was relentlessly loyal to Naomi, and took a risk, stepping out in faith, going to an unknown place because she believed that it was where she was supposed to go. We have seen, over the past two weeks, as we have told this story, that God has a habit of calling unexpected people, that God is in the business of creating new and unexpected relationships of love, that God works in unexpected ways, and that, when we step out in faith into places we never expected to go, God goes with us, as Ruth went with Naomi, clinging to us, offering life even when it seems impossible, making a way where there seems to be no way. This is a story of faithfulness, of loyalty, of risk-taking and boundary-breaking faith, and, mostly, of God’s unrelentingly loyal love that continues to drive us into surprising new places and then clings to us and cares for us when we go there.
Last week, we read about Ruth’s search for food, for a close relative who would treat her and Naomi with respect. Ruth was searching for security for herself and her mother-in-law Naomi And we saw the first glimpses of Ruth’s search for a new husband to provide protection to these two women in the midst of an ancient world that was not particularly kind to widows.
One of the ways in which widows, who were, again, very at-risk – one of the ways that widows found protection was through marriage to closely related men from the family of their dead husband. The most closely related unmarried male relative of the husband who died, so for example, an unmarried brother, was expected to marry the widowed woman in order to provide her with safety and to make sure that, when she had children, the family heritage continued to be passed on.
Ruth, in order to survive, has been collecting food – food reserved for widows, the poor, the hungry – from the edges of the fields of a man named Boaz. Remember, as we saw last week, that Israelite law – from what we call the Old Testament – requires that people not harvest everything in their fields, but that they leave the food at the edges unpicked, so that the poor, and widows, and those who are struggling to survive can glean from what’s left order in order to eat. If it weren’t for that law – if it weren’t for God’s people protecting the poor because God had told them to protect the poor – well if it weren’t for that, Ruth would never make it to the happy ending in today’s story. Imagine what our world would be like if more people took that charge – to make sure to always reserve part of our earnings, part of the fruit of our labors, for the good of the poor. This practice, it’s worth noting, is part of the background for us Christian folks practicing generosity – giving what we have away, for God’s work, particularly in and through our churches – and it’s part of why our church prioritizes serving others, feeding the hungry, using what we have to partner with local non-profits and bless our community and make a positive difference in our world. God says, in Scripture, that a portion of what we have is meant to be shared, to be used to bless others, to sustain others, to give life to others.
Anyway, as Ruth is gathering food in Boaz’s field, Boaz treats her with kindness and orders those who work for him to do the same. She’s a foreigner, a migrant, a vulnerable widow, and Boaz uses the power he has to make sure that she is safe – at least when she’s near him and his people. Then, Ruth discovers that Boaz is related to her ex-husband – that he is in a position, as it’s put in this passage of Scripture, to “redeem” her – to marry her in place of her former husband and thereby protect her and continue the family heritage. And, eventually, that’s what happens – there is another male relative who has, we might say, “first dibs” on marrying Ruth, but after a little crafty work by Boaz, that other relative gives up the so-called right to redeem Ruth, and so Boaz, the next in line, steps up and marries her. And the rest, as they say, is history. In fact, it’s not just history, it’s salvation history. As we have mentioned a few times during this series, Ruth and Boaz, become ancestors of central characters in the story of the people of Israel – David, the first great king of Israel, and David’s descendent Jesus the Christ, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the savior of the world.
But, in between Ruth’s meeting Boaz and Ruth marrying Boaz is where things get interesting, and that’s where our story takes us today. To put it directly, Ruth finds a husband – finds protection for her and Naomi – as much through the use of her body as by any other means. This story is at least, in part, about seduction. Now, maybe that make you uncomfortable, but it’s true. The Bible is, if nothing else, real. It’s honest. It doesn’t shy away from how real life works. Too often, we read the Bible and assume that everyone in every story was all pious and holy and proper, and that’s just not the way it works. The Bible is full of people who lie, and cheat, and steal – often in order to survive. The Hebrew midwives in Exodus, when Pharoah tells them to kill all the baby boys born to the people of Israel, they refuse to do it, but then they lie to Pharaoh in order to escape punishment. Noah gets drunk and loses track of his clothes almost as soon as the flood waters recede and he gets off his boat. Lots of people in the Bible do amazing things, and also fail and fumble and stumble and fall apart while they do it. People are people, people are sometimes a mess, and yet God continues to work. And sometimes, it seems, God’s purposes are accomplished precisely through surprising and messy circumstances.
So, back to Ruth and her seduction to save herself. First of all, “uncover his feet” is a Hebrew euphemism for uncovering… how do I say this in church? Man parts. How uncomfortable is it for a preacher to say that? Anyway, even if that wasn’t a euphemism – even if you don’t believe me and are offended at me for suggesting that – well, look at the rest of the situation. Naomi tells Ruth to bathe – something ancient people didn’t do every day – and anoint herself – something like the modern practice of putting on perfume– then put on her best clothes, wait until it’s dark and Boaz is sleeping, and then go snuggle up next to him while he sleeps. Don’t tell me that there isn’t at least a little bit of physical tension, a little hint of intimacy happening there.
And, you know, that’s messy. It’s problematic. It’s not how we expect God’s work to get done. And it says something – something not very good – about the culture in which Ruth lived, in that she may have felt like she had to do this – and put herself at physical risk – because she really had no other option for survival. Maybe Ruth is an empowered woman embracing her sexuality and going for what she wants – or maybe she’s more of a victim of a culture that subjugates women and doesn’t value or care for them as fully human people. I don’t know – I have no idea exactly how to process all of this, and I’m aware that a straight middle class male isn’t the ideal person to analyze all of this for you. But my point is that it’s a messy situation. It’s maybe not what we wish it could be for Ruth, Boaz’s motives are maybe complicated, Ruth and Naomi are on the edge of survival and counting on a complicated set of laws and cultural rituals that maybe will make one of their distant relatives welcome them back into the family. It’s not clean, it’s not pretty, and it’s maybe not how we think God should work.
And, yet, through all of that – through these messy, uncomfortable, problematic circumstances – through all of it, God is working. God is doing something. God is providing salvation to Ruth, to God’s people Israel, and, through Ruth’s descendant Jesus, to the whole world. The situation is messy, it’s not what we might have envisioned or planned at the beginning, it is a moral grey area at best, and, nevertheless, it is precisely through this situation that God works. It is precisely through these complicated circumstances that God does what God does and that salvation comes to the world.
But, here’s the thing – the thing that’s essential for us to remember. God doesn’t require shiny, perfect, uncomplicated situations in order to work. God doesn’t reserve God’s power for people who always behave. In fact, some of God’s biggest workings are messy and look downright wrong at first glance. Ruth seduces her way into being ancestor to our Lord. Let’s not even talk about the moral failings of her great-grandson, king David, who nevertheless is God’s chosen agent to protect Israel and is called one who is “after God’s own heart.” Or, look at the people of Israel – not the modern nation-state, but the people. Through this poor, tiny, frequently conquered and occasionally enslaved, sometimes faithful and sometimes faithless people – through them, God promises to bring salvation and blessing to the whole world. They are a mess, but God works through them. Or, look at Jesus. Jesus is born into mess – born a refugee, on the run for his life, born to an unwed teenage mother, born among the poor – God chooses to be with us, to be born among us, surrounded by our human mess. Sometimes, it seems, that just when things are at their messiest, most complicated, most troubling – sometimes just then is when God is most powerfully working for good, when God is most powerfully bringing salvation and bringing shocking, unsettling, unexpected blessing.
Ruth walks through mess, she walks through pain, she faces uncertainty, she is forced to take risks and leaps of faith – and, through it all, God is at work, bringing salvation to her and to the entire world. And that means that maybe, just maybe, God is at work in and through your life’s messes too.
Because, here’s the other truth that the book of Ruth is meant to teach us: God is as radically loyal to us, as radically faithful to us, as Ruth is to Naomi. Naomi, when she is at the bottom of her pit of despair, begs Ruth to just leave, to let her die. When her husband and sons die, Naomi, we hear, has turned to bitterness, has lost all hope. But, by the end of the story, she has found her hope again, has found her comfort and consolation, sees that God has been at work. But she never would have gotten there without Ruth, without the faithfulness of this person, this daughter, who never gave up on her.
When Naomi was ready to close the book on herself, Ruth knew – she trusted – that Naomi’s story wasn’t finished yet. She saw the hope for Naomi when Naomi couldn’t see the hope for herself. And so she clung to her, kept fighting for her, even when she wasn’t able or willing to fight for herself. That’s what faithfulness is, that’s how faithfulness looks. And that’s what God’s faithfulness looks like – it’s the faithfulness God shows to Ruth, and to Naomi, and to God’s people in and through this story – and it’s also the faithfulness that God shows to each one of us. When we are at the bottom of the pit, when there is no place left to go, no place left to turn – when all hope seems to be gone, God is there, holding us close, holding us up, promising that there is another chapter to our story, that there is light on the other side of this darkness, hope on the other side of this despair, life on the other side of our death.
The God who liberated Israel from Egypt, the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, the God who was faithful to Naomi and Ruth and brought hope from their despair and life from their barrenness and salvation from their story – that same God is loyal to you, is faithful to you, and is at work in your life, even if you don’t know it. God’s faithfulness is what leads God, in Jesus Christ, to go all the way to the cross for us, to accept death in order to bring us to life. God clings to us, God fights for us, God will do whatever it takes for our sake – as Ruth did whatever it took to save her family, to save Naomi. In Ruth, you could say, we see the character of her descendent Jesus – fiercely loyal, walking through death in order to bring others life, bringing forth hope that seemed impossible.
That’s who God is. That’s what God does. And that’s the story that is told in the book of Ruth. Thanks be to God for the God who works through our mess to save us, who is faithful to us no matter what, who brings about surprising and joyous new life – to Ruth, and to us. Amen.