Sermon 65 - FFFF3 - Ruth 1
Matthew 1:3-6
Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,
Perez the father of Hezron,
Hezron the father of Ram,
Ram the father of Amminadab,
Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
Nahshon the father of Salmon,
Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,
Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,
Obed the father of Jesse,
and Jesse the father of King David.
David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife
Ruth 1:16, 17
Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.
I love the book of Ruth. It's probably my favorite book in the Bible. I mean, I love Job, too, but Ruth is definitely my favorite. I'm going to have to do a series of sermons on Ruth, and probably soon, covering the whole book.
For one thing, it's a love story. I don't know why Hollywood hasn't done Ruth, as a movie, more often. I mean, they've done Esther several times. But Esther, while it's gaudy, and allows for lavish set creation, and possibly CGI, these days, and it's a decent action story and a bit of a thriller as well, but it doesn't get into the depth of character that Ruth does. I mean, I'm a grieving widower, so I'm a sucker for a good love story. I'm going to have to be careful to make sure that I don't burst into tears while I'm preaching this sermon. I haven't quite sunk to the depths of reading Harlequin romances, but I watch way too many Hallmark movies.
For another thing, in this love story the old guy gets the girl. Boaz himself mentions that he is old, and, given the fact that Boaz is Rahab's son, and Rahab is mentioned right at the beginning of the return to the promised land, and Boaz is David's great-grandfather, which doesn't come until after the end of the book of Judges, it's fairly reasonable to assume that, yes, Boaz is old. So I love Ruth.
But there is, as I mentioned, the depth of character in the book of Ruth. And the love extends not just to a simple romance, but to the love between Naomi and Ruth. So let's jump right into the story.
Elimelek, Naomi's husband, takes his wife, and his two sons, and heads off to the land of Moab. Moab and Israel tend to have a fraught relationship a lot of the time, but citizenship is kind of fluid in this period. He's trying to avoid a famine in Israel. And then he dies. The sons get a couple of wives. And then the two *sons* die. So Naomi is left alone, in terms of support. She's got no husband bringing in the bacon, and she's got no sons supporting her. And she's got two daughters-in-law to take care of.
So she sets them free. Go back to your parents she tells them: I have no more sons that you can marry. And one of them does go back to her parents.
But Ruth stays with Naomi. And notice, this is a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law. In-laws are not natural allies. We have all kinds of stories, and it's considered a truism, not just in our society, that there is a particular tension between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. In the New Testament, when Jesus is trying to make a point that following him is going to mean that you are sometimes divided from your friends and even your family, a mother-in-law fighting with a daughter-in-law is one of the examples that he uses. And I've always considered, in regard to that particular example, that it wasn't going to be hard to set up a fight between those two.
But Ruth loves Naomi. Ruth is going to stick with Naomi. And right away, in chapter one, we get this absolutely breathtakingly beautiful statement about the commitment that Ruth has for Naomi. She will leave the place where she was born, and probably the only place she has ever known. She will leave her people, and her family, and even her parents. She will go where Naomi goes. She will leave her community, and culture, and she will leave her religion, and follow Naomi's God. She will support and encourage and take care of Naomi until Naomi dies, and that is where Ruth is going to stay.
This is a gorgeous statement about love. We frequently use it as a reading at weddings. But this is not a marriage. This is a very deep commitment to another person who our society doesn't think you are supposed to love all that much. This is a statement about the kind of love that the Greeks called agape, and that we attribute to God.
I'm really tempted to just stop there. But, it's not the end of the story of Ruth, and it's not yet coming to the point where, as I promised you all four of these women would, we get an indication that Ruth is no better than she ought to be. Okay, going on with the story kind of takes away the big reveal, and sets up some spoilers for when I try to use this sermon as the first in a series covering all of the book of Ruth, but we're going to have to go on with the rest of the story. Even if we only do it briefly here.
So, they set off, and they go back to Israel. To Bethlehem. And Naomi tells her woeful tale. And they set up whatever kind of household that they can set up, in a society where the men are the breadwinners, and, even though Naomi does technically own the land that belonged to Elimelek, apparently they can't really get into the farming thing. Everybody in their community knows about their plight, and they just have to make the best that they can of a very sad situation.
Even at this time (probably around 1600 BC), God has had the Israelites set up a sort of a social safety net for women who really had no place in the business of the community. Widows like Naomi are allowed to go into the fields, following along behind the harvesting, and pick up individual stalks of wheat or barley that have been left behind after the harvesters have gone through and cut down the grain, and the women of the household have bundled it up. Having to run back and forth over the field picking up individual stalks of grain and carrying them with you. It must have been a lot of work in order to get the subsistence grain that you needed to survive.
And here we meet Boaz (who happens to be Rahab's son). Boaz seems to be pretty wealthy. He has harvesters working for him, and he has women working for him bundling up the sheaves of grain, after the harvesters have gone through. And Boaz seems to be a pretty decent guy. He has heard the story of Naomi and Ruth. And when he identifies this lone woman who is picking up individual stocks of grain following along behind his harvesters and binders, he makes sure that she has some lunch, he orders his men not to mistreat her (and that must have been a real risk), and even to surreptitiously help her by dropping extra stalks of grain.
Ruth takes home, to Naomi, probably an awful lot more grain than anybody would expect in such a situation. Naomi when she finds out about it the details tells Ruth to stick with Boaz. She also gives Ruth some instructions that we would consider to be extremely questionable. Basically, she tells Ruth to seduce Boaz.
Like I say, this is pretty risque advice. Ruth could get a bad reputation, and could be at even greater risk of being abused in the fields. But, by this time, Naomi knows that Ruth is going to stick by her, through thick or thin, and getting a husband is probably going to be easier on Ruth than trying to support the two of them with this single stalk of grain at a time type of work.
Ruth goes along with the suggestion. And, once again, as with both Tamar and Rahab, she probably has some pretty decent reasons for doing so. Ruth loves Naomi. Ruth is committed to supporting Naomi. It is going to be very hard for her to follow through on her commitment, in the situation that they are in. If she seduces Boaz, he's probably going to marry her (we've seen he's a decent guy), and that will make the job of taking care of Naomi an awful lot easier. So she does it.
But when she does it, Boaz, once again, demonstrates that he's a decent guy, and arranges for the marriage to be done properly. That's another example of real love, right there. And, as far as we can tell, they all live happily ever after. Ruth ends up as the great grandmother of David, and gets listed in Jesus genealogy.
I really love Ruth.
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