RUTH: THE DIVINE / HUMAN MIRACLE OF HESED
Texts: Ruth 1:1-12 and John 15:12-15a

Let me tell you the story of Ruth. It is the story the Jews read every year at the festival of Shavuot, the harvest festival. It is the story our children are now studying in God’s Garden. So let’s hear it along with them.

I Act One

Act One is unrelenting tragedy. Fleeing famine in Bethlehem - - whose name ironically means House of Bread - - Naomi and her husband Elimelech go to the land of Moab.

You should know what the Hebrew people thought of Moabites and what their scripture said. Deuteronomy 23:3-6:

Centuries of hurt and spite lie behind those words. All the Hebrews knew of the Moabites was what others had told them - - which is how prejudice and hatred grow and persist.

But Ruth is not a story of prejudice and hate but a story of love, God’s steadfast love, which in Hebrew is called hesed.

Act One, as I said, is tragedy upon tragedy. Naomi’s husband Elimelech dies leaving her a widow and single mother of two sons in a foreign land. The two sons eventually take Moabite wives, Orpah and Ruth; but within ten years both sons die, without children, leaving Naomi and the two daughters-in-law grief-stricken and alone.

Naomi did not know how to interpret this wave of calamity except that the hand of God had turned against her. She called him Shaddai-God, El Shaddai, an ancient pre-Mosaic name for God.

Sometimes when the worst happens we conjure up from the depths the primitive picture of a punishing and judging God – not the God revealed to Israel and not the God revealed by Jesus. So Naomi says: Don’t call me Naomi - - that means Sweet One. Call me Mara - - which means Bitter One - - for El Shaddai has made me bitter.

II Act Two

In Act Two Naomi decides to go back home to Bethlehem. The famine there has ended. En route she tells her daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, to return to Moab. She knows what the Hebrew people think of Moabites, and she believes they have a much better chance of finding husbands and recovering their lives in Moab.

At her urging Orpah returns, but Ruth decides to go on with her mother-in-law to Bethlehem. What she says to Naomi is one of the most beautiful and memorable of all speeches in scripture:

This is hesed, the steadfast love of God, in matchless words and action. It is faith and faithfulness and courage as rarely seen. Old Testament scholar Phyllis Trible says: "Not even Abraham’s leap of faith surpasses this decision of Ruth’s." Jewish novelist Cynthia Ozick calls her "a second Abraham."

Picture a young African woman with tribal scars and Muslim faith choosing to return with her bereft mother-in-law to the deep South in America in the fifties or sixties, or even today.

III Act Three: Gleaning in the Sheaves!

As they get settled in Bethlehem Naomi is slumped in passivity and despair. But Ruth springs into action. She goes to the fields to glean what has been left in the fields. One of the laws of mercy in ancient Israel was for farmers to leave portions of their crops in the field so that the poor, the foreigner, the indigent would have food to eat. It was part of their God-commended safety net for the poor - - which all virtuous and just nations have.

As Ruth gleans she catches the eye of Boaz, a rich landowner. Who is this woman? he asks his workers. They tell him that she is a Moabite woman who has come to Bethlehem with her mother-in-law Naomi and is gathering food for them.

Boaz instructs the workers to leave some extra grain for her. Her hesed toward Naomi has startled and inspired Boaz and now he begins to return hesed to her. Ruth has set in motion a "contagion of kindness." Love begets love.

Ruth asks Boaz why he’s being so kind to her. Boaz says, I have heard of all you’ve done for Naomi. His words:

Remember those lines. You’ll hear them again.

When Ruth returns and tells Naomi of all Boaz has done, Naomi’s heart begins to revive. Maybe the goodness of God is still alive for me!

IV Act Four: Romance at the Threshing Floor. Or, Love in the Hay

Naomi now springs into action. She tells Ruth that Boaz is a near-kinsman who by the laws of levirate marriage can marry Ruth and with her bear children to and keep the family lineage going.

She counsels Ruth: Go bathe and anoint yourself. Go to the threshing floor when Boaz is spending the night. After he has finished eating and drinking and settles down for the night, go lie down at his feet. "He will tell you what to do."

Being an obedient young woman, she goes. He is asleep. Ruth slips under the covers at his feet.

Startled, he awakes and cries, "Who are you?!" (There was no night light in the barn.) "I am Ruth, your maidservant," she says, and then she proposes to him on the spot! This is how she said it: Remember how you said, "May God reward you and spread his wings over you"? Well, spread your wings over me! In other words, Marry me!

In other words, your kindness to me, this older fellow, is even greater than to your mother-in-law.

Boaz says yes and sets out to marry her.

Act V

The last act is all joy and excitement. Boaz and Ruth marry and have a child, a boy!

The spotlight turns now upon Naomi. Her story began in death and tears. It ends in a grandmother’s unbridled joy.

Ruth hands her new son to Naomi. As Naomi holds him the women of the village gather around and say: Blessed be Yahweh, who has provided this child...and as for Ruth, "she means more to you than seven sons!" Which was quite a statement for that patriarchal culture that valued sons greater than daughters. This book ends with the joyous cry by the women of Bethlehem: "A son is born to Naomi!" You can almost hear the music of Handel: "For unto us a child is born."

Conclusion

So the book ends, but not the story, God’s story. The story of hesed. On it goes! At the end of this book is a genealogy. The son born to Ruth and Boaz is named Obed. And Obed has a son named Jesse, who has a son named David. King David! Imagine, King David has foreign blood in his veins: The blood of a Moabite woman named Ruth who taught the Hebrew people the hesed of God, the nurturing, never-giving-up love of God perhaps best embodied in the feminine.

Of course that’s not all the story. In Matthew’s Gospel we have the genealogy of Jesus, and we discover that Ruth was not only the foremother of David; she is also the foremother of Christ.

What a story! We see it reenacted every day as God’s people are saved and transformed by the hesed of God and now live that hesed.

We see it in the covenant-love of marriage where two people devote themselves to one another for life: For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish all our days.

We see it in love of mother and father, sister and brother and our own dear children. We see it in the deepest of friendships, like Jonathan’s love of David whose "soul was knit to the soul of David" and who "loved him as his own soul" (I Samuel 18:1). We see it in the love of one another in the community that makes us a church.

We see it in the love of Devora for her aging, failing mother described in the silent meditation for today. It bears another reading:

And you?