Ruth chapters 3 and 4
We were introduced to Ruth and Naomi last week. This is a very strange book that falls between the time of the Judges and the time of the Kings. As we pointed out last week it is a story that begins with a famine of food and spirit and ends with an abundance of both.
It isn’t a story about a man, though Boaz, who would have been the main character in most Biblical stories does play a very important role, but a story about two poor, desperate widows, who leave the land they have been living in and journey back to Naomi’s home in Bethlehem of Judah. Since this is a story about famine and feast, it is significant to note that the name Bethlehem literally means “the House of Bread” implying a place of hope and abundance. For Naomi and Ruth that is exactly what Bethlehem becomes: a place of hope and abundance.
It is my hope that MCC Seattle will become a modern Bethlehem, a true place offering hope and abundance to all who come here seeking help in their lives. I want us to be known as a generous congregation that shares abundantly from our own time, talents, and treasure with those around us through the ministries that we can offer to our community, through the lives that we can touch by demonstrating to others that God truly does love them, care for them, and accepts them exactly as God has created them. You and I have to begin to transform the world around us into becoming a real expression of what some have called “Heaven on Earth.”
Imagine with me a ministry to the homeless LGBT community where people can find a warm place to stay, with food and clothing, with job counseling and job training, skilled counselors offering psychological healing and recovery. What about a home for gay and lesbian and transgender youth who have become homeless when their parents kick them out of their homes because they have just come out as gay? Did you know that our gay youth are more apt to commit or attempt suicide than straight youth, and that they are more apt to become homeless because of their sexuality, ending up on the streets where they become prey for those who would exploit and abuse them? Why can’t we be a part of the solution to that problem? MCC in New York City offers such a shelter of help and hope to homeless teens and young adults. Why can’t we?
Ruth and Naomi had nowhere to go, no one to help them. Naomi tried to send Ruth back to her own family, but being the widow of a foreigner and childless, she was not what that society would see as an attractive prospect for marriage. Widows could own no property, and as we shall see in today’s story, were still considered the property of their deceased husbands, who could be given away to the next male relative that would claim them. Ruth and Naomi represent to us the homeless and the rejected that fill our homeless shelters in Seattle to overflowing every night with thousands left out on the streets even in the coldest weather. We should be doing something about that. We should become the Bethlehem, the house of bread and hope, for as many of those persons as possible.
Ruth makes her famous commitment to Naomi and they leave for Judah, for Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem. She and her husband had left Bethlehem and gone to Moab because of a famine of grain. Now, Naomi, having buried her husband and her two sons, in a foreign land where she comes to live a famine of spirit, she returns to the only place that might offer her hope.
Did you know that every week people walk through the doors of our church coming with hope in their hearts that we just might be the community that can offer them relationship and care that they aren’t getting from anyone else? Most people come to church because they are seeking community and an escape from loneliness. Are we the kind of community where they can find the relationships they need, where they can experience real community with us and with God?
Naomi and Ruth make a journey toward hope. Naomi has changed her name to Mara which means bitterness. She is sad and depressed and grieving, but Naomi still shows us that she has hope by going back to the one place where she has experienced true acceptance and real community and she has great expectations that these people, these friends and relatives, will offer to her and to Ruth, the chance to start their lives over again.
As your pastor I am privy to the true story of many of your lives. I know for a fact that some of you came to this family, to this community that we call MCC Seattle, because you wanted to find a place of hope and acceptance, a place where you could build real community, find true and honest friends, and start your lives over again. Some of you have found us to be that kind of family of choice for you. I hope many more will experience the same kind of abundance as they begin their lives over again with God and with God’s people.
You cannot take the social situation of the Old Testament and translate the story over literally into the 21st century. We don’t understand the social and tribal history or taboos that Ruth and Naomi lived under. And we certainly can’t apply the social rules and expectations that society had for women or men to ourselves today. Listen, nobody really takes the Bible literally. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, for everyone interprets the Bible in their own special way based upon their own history and social setting. You and I are no different. We do not apply the Biblical rules for the marriage of widows today and force them to marry their brother in laws or another close kin.
A widow had no standing in Naomi and Ruth’s day. They were the poorest of the poor. They were the rejected ones lying on the doorsteps and huddling in a doorway to stay out of the cold wind. They were the homeless and the hungry of their day. A woman like Ruth, a widow and a foreign widow at that, would have been subject to harassment, sexual embarrassment, and even rape. It was expected in that society that such a woman would make her living as a prostitute. Not a wonderful way to begin your introduction to a new community where you hoped to build a live full of hope and abundance. Ruth began her new life about as low down the ladder as anyone could ever be.
Biblical Law said that you shouldn’t take all of the grain out of your fields, but that you should leave the grain that falls to the ground and that might be left on un-harvested stalks for the widows and orphans who could come after the harvesters and scrape together whatever they could for their own livelihood. That is what Ruth is doing in order to support herself and Naomi. She is doing whatever it takes to make sure that they survive.
As luck, or God would have it, Ruth goes to glean in the fields of Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s husband. We don’t know much about Boaz, other than the fact that he is rich and that his name literally means Strength or Strong. Most people assume that he is older, perhaps a widower, but his marriage state isn’t that important, because at this time, a man could have more than one wife at a time, and might have due to a law called the Levirate Law, which we’ll explain in a moment. And so, when Boaz comes to see how the work is progressing in his fields he sees Ruth gleaning. She would have been noticed. She was an exotic beauty, someone not from their community, perhaps dressed in fabrics made by herself with different colors than the local women used, or with a slightly different cut of her dress or the style of her hair. In any event, she caught the eye of Boaz.
He asks about her. Perhaps one could say, it was love at first sight. The story of Naomi’s situation has made the rounds in the community. Gossip always gets around. He is told about how Ruth has committed herself to Naomi and made the journey back to Bethlehem with her. It is an impressive story and one that wasn’t that common. In fact it was an extraordinary story about an extraordinary young lady. Family was important. Boaz had a commitment to extend his care to Naomi and therefore to Ruth out of his abundance. It’s just the way things were done.
So he goes to Ruth and he tells her to stay in his fields when she is gleaning and to stay with his own young women when she is working and to stay away from the young men. Boaz understands his society. He knows that a young foreign widow will be abused and he does what he can to protect her out of respect for her relationship with Naomi, and out of respect for his own relationship with Naomi and for her deceased husband, his own kinsman. Obviously, Boaz, is a man who has great moral strength. Strength, as his name implies, can mean strength in many aspects of his life, but obviously strength in character and concern for others.
He forbids the men to bother her or touch her. He tells her to make herself at home when she is working in his fields: To drink from the water jugs the men have filled; to take her rest in the house with the young women. He provides for Ruth.
Ruth asks why she has found favor in his eyes, and he tells her: "I've been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. 12 May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge."
Ruth thanks Boaz with graciousness. Boaz calls her over and gives her bread and lets her dip the bread in his drink. He gives her some of the roasted grain that has been prepared for the men to eat. This is very significant event in that society. Boaz has a family meal with Ruth. Boaz is including her in his family.
Boaz extends his care for Naomi and Ruth beyond what was considered to be normal. Boaz gives to Ruth and Naomi out of his abundance, out of the blessings that God has poured out upon him by giving them extra grain. He even tells the men to allow Ruth to glean not just from the fields they have emptied, but from the stalks that they have already gathered for the harvest. He wants to be sure that she and Naomi have enough to live on. This is incredible. This is amazing. This is not what was expected of Boaz. It goes far beyond what one could have hoped for.
Naomi celebrates this happy circumstance with Ruth. And she tells Ruth to avoid the young men and stay with the young women. The only hope for survival Ruth has is to not become what everyone expects her to become, what society would have forced her to become: a prostitute.
Boaz has provided them a gift that goes far beyond mere food, but goes toward creating a life that offers hope and opportunity for the future. When we help others in God’s name we offer them hope and opportunity with a future! It doesn’t matter who they are, where they have come from, or even how horrible their own life story up to now, we can offer through our abundant giving of our time, talents, and treasure, hope and opportunity for everyone in our community.
Naomi begins to plan. She is a very smart woman. She has learned all she can about Boaz from her relatives and believe me, people loved to gossip then just as now and she probably knew everything about the man the very next day. She was quite resourceful. The grain harvest is coming to an end. The question of food will again become paramount when that which Ruth has gathered for them becomes exhausted. What will they do then? Naomi begins to lay the groundwork for a future for both of them.
The men will be trashing the grain, separating the grain from the heads, and this is a big event with lots of food and drink at night. The men sleep in the trashing house out in the fields. Drunkenness abounds and a lady slipping into the situation under darkness of night would not be uncommon or unexpected…if you understand my meaning. Naomi tells Ruth to dress up to the nines and to go to the trashing house and wait, but not to be seen by Boaz until he has eaten his fill of harvest foods, and drank enough wine to become sleepy.
She is then to go to Boaz where he lies and to uncover his feet and lie with him.
The Bible uses a lot of euphemisms about sex and uncovering the feet means to uncover the genitals of another person. This is quite a forward kind of act for anyone, in any culture, but this is part of the expectations of the Levirate Law which provides that when a man has died that his brother or other next of kin goes to the widow and takes her as his wife and if she has a child the first born male child is to be known as the child of the deceased man and to receive that man’s inheritance and property. The man is then known as the kinsman-redeemer: The one who redeems them from their situation. It’s so absolutely different from our way of thinking as to be totally foreign and outlandish, but that’s the society that Ruth and Naomi and Boaz lived in and they are acting in accordance with that society’s laws and expectations. Shocked though we might be, it was how things were back then.
Boaz awakes and asks who it is that has come to him in the dark. Ruth identifies herself: "I am your servant Ruth," she said. "Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a kinsman-redeemer."
Interestingly enough, she uses the exact same word which is interpreted here as garment and which Boaz used earlier when he talked about her being under the wings of God’s protection. She is asking Boaz to put her under the wings of his protection when he places his garment over her. Boaz replies:
"God bless you, my daughter," he replied. "This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier: You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor. 11 And now, my daughter, don't be afraid. I will do for you all you ask. All my fellow townsmen know that you are a woman of noble character.
But there is a problem. Boaz continues: “Although it is true that I am near of kin, there is a kinsman-redeemer nearer than I. Stay here for the night, and in the morning if he wants to redeem, good; let him redeem. But if he is not willing, as surely as the LORD lives I will do it. Lie here until morning."
He sends Ruth back to Naomi with a great deal of grain, what some have seen as a wedding gift, a betrothal gift to Naomi for Ruth’s hand in marriage. However, Naomi, too is aware of the complication of another closer kinsman-redeemer and she knows full well that Boaz will take care of the problem quickly.
The story continues with Boaz going to a man who in the Hebrew is identified only as “so and so” or “What’s his name” and he tells the man about Naomi and how her deceased husband Elimelech has some property that the man could redeem by claiming himself to be Naomi’s kinsman-redeemer. The man declares that he will do so, and the property, the land, will become his own, and he will give Naomi a home. Naomi is old and the man doesn’t have to worry about what his wife and children might say. She will have no children. All of the property he gets from Elimelech will go to his own children.
Then Boaz declares that Naomi also has a widowed daughter-in-law and that the man would become the kinsman-redeemer of a young woman to whom he would also be wed and to whom a child might be born who would inherit the land of his grandfather. Now this changes the situation.
I would like to think that this man has a wife who wouldn’t be too welcoming to Ruth and might make the man’s life a living hell if he took upon himself this responsibility. Perhaps Boaz knew this already. In any event, the man says, no way can I do that.
Boaz is then left with the opportunity to become the kinsman-redeemer of Ruth and Naomi. Later when their first child is born, there is great celebration. It is interesting to note that what the women say: “Praise be to God, who this day has not left you without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! 15 He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth."
Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap and cared for him. 17 The women living there said, "Naomi has a son."
The child, Obed, was the grandfather of King David, the greatest king of Judah, who brought a time of success and honor upon the nation. Thus our story goes from one of famine to abundance because of the generosity of Ruth to Naomi, and of Boaz to both women.
We’ve been through much as a church. We’ve been through several years that many might term as famine, when all a small group of people could hope for was just to hold on, just to be here again another Sunday. That was important for you to do. You have been those who trusted in God and kept on keeping on even when others told you that you should just give up. But you persevered! You trusted God and your trust and your patience, and your persistence, and your commitment have paid off. We are on a new journey together toward an abundant future full of hope and grace not just for ourselves but anyone and everyone that comes to be a part of this new community of God.
It won’t happen without you. It won’t happen without your commitment of your time, talents, and, yes, your treasure, your financial resources. Will you take the journey with us toward the future that God has waiting for you and for me and for MCC Seattle. Will you make the commitments that are necessary to help us become that new community of hope that I believe, and I hope you believe, we can become together. Will you offer your own generosity to God, to our church, to our community, by making your love real?
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