Be Faithful To The Mission To The Nations

Saturday of the 20th Week in Course 2023

The story of the Moabite woman, Ruth, has come down to us because of her association with the kingly house of David. She was David’s great-great grandmother. But for both OT and NT authors, her distinction was that she was not descended from the patriarch Jacob, also known as Israel. Why is this important?

In the seventeenth chapter of Genesis, Abraham is promised by God to become father of many nations. Moreover, he is constantly assured by God that “all the nations on earth” would be blessed in him. When the Israelites were freed from Egyptian slavery, hundreds of years later, what is called a “mixed multitude,” or a smorgasbord of races, came out with them. But Israel was tried in the crucible of Palestine. The divine author of Scripture tells us that their trial was due to their consistent abandonment of the One God, and their “whoring after” strange gods and rituals. Ultimately most of them, especially the leaders, were driven from a burning Jerusalem into a new kind of slavery in Babylon. There they learned the hard way what their treason to God had meant, and they determined that they would not fall into syncretism and false worship any more. So when they returned to the Holy Land, they built walls around their cities, and walls around their faith. They had originally been called to summon all the world to right worship of the One True God, but they abandoned that mission pretty much, even turning the Temple Court of the Nations into what Jesus called “a marketplace,” when he drove out the vendors.

The story of Ruth, and her place in the genealogy of the Messiah, is written testimony against that kind of closed faith and worship. Her faith, and her fidelity, made her a fruitful vine in the heart of her home with Boaz. Despite her racial heritage, she was a role model for every Israelite woman.

Matthew records a related event in the life of Jesus. The sect of Jews called “the separate ones”–that’s the meaning of “Pharisee”– even separated themselves from the rest of the Jews, by following all 613 edicts built up around the Law of Moses. Now there were thousands of Gentiles who were attracted by the idea of One God, and the worship of the Temple. They liked the egalitarian spirit of the basic Jewish doctrine, and even more that of Jesus. But what looked like the trivia of Pharisaic practice–not so much. Jesus taught that this kind of stricture on religious practice, and the kowtowing to rabbis that went along with it was not right. Instead, He focuses on living with the Law of love of God and love of neighbor directing all our actions, so that we hone in on serving each other, and especially the poor and marginalized, as our distinguishing mark. Indeed, by the time of Tertullian, a couple hundred years later, Christians were known chiefly by their love for one another. That would be something for us all to pursue with all our heart, soul and energy.