Today we continue our series on Heroes of Faith, characters from the Judges, though no longer from the book of Judges. But the setting of our story in that era is made clear in the opening verse of ch 1 of Ruth: "In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land." Our author wants us to connect this story with those of the book of Judges.
So what do we know about the history of the Judges? If you remember from a few weeks back, what we found there was a cycle of events that goes like this: Moral failure, military oppression, a call for help, the raising of a deliverer, victory followed by a short period of peace, before the saviour dies and the cycle begins all over again.
Well, here it seems there’s a similar situation. Not military oppression in this case, but famine. In this context, the famine would appear to be a sign of God’s chastening, just as the oppression of an enemy was elsewhere. And while there’s no formal cry for help, the story resonates with Naomi’s and Ruth’s need for deliverance. But in this case deliverance doesn’t come in the form of a saviour, although as we’ll see next week, Boaz does his bit. Rather, salvation in this story comes about through the faith of Ruth. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.
The story begins with a famine in Bethlehem, which, ironically, in Hebrew means "house of bread". So the land of promise is beset by a famine. The House of bread is without any bread. So the story starts badly and it goes downhill from there. Rather than call to God for help, Elimelech decides to leave the promised land and migrate to Moab. Now things may have been bad in Judah, but in Moab they’d be far worse. The people of Moab were pagans who had made it clear over the centuries that they had little love for the people of Israel. And the feeling was mutual. The book of Deuteronomy declared that "No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD." (Deut 23:3 NRSV) The Moabites were a cursed people, a people with whom the Israelites were forbidden to seek a treaty of friendship. So It’s not a good strategic move for Elimelech to take his wife and two teenage sons to Moab, even if there is a famine in Judah, since it’s almost inevitable that they’ll end up wanting to marry Moabite girls.
What seems fairly clear from these opening verses is that just like Gideon’s family, Elimelech was an Israelite in name more than in action. He still regarded himself as one of God’s chosen people, but he didn’t let that affect the practical decisions of life. And what happens next seems to confirm the ill-judged nature of his actions. Elimelech dies and sure enough, his 2 sons marry Moabite women. And then they too die, leaving Naomi, Orpah and Ruth without any visible means of support. Not only that, but it leaves our story without any male stars. What we have from this point on is a tale all about women. If you like it’s a Tale of 2 Widows. Here are 2 women who demonstrate the sort of faith so lacking in the likes of Elimelech and so many other men in Israel at the time.
Naomi hears that the Lord has again come to the aid of his people by giving them food, so she decides to return straight away. It’s as though Naomi knew all along that what they’d done by moving to Moab was wrong. She certainly recognises that it’s the Lord who has given them food again. So she sets out with her 2 daughters-in-law to return to Bethlehem. But then she stops. She suddenly realises that it isn’t just her who’s involved here. Orpah and Ruth are Moabites. They won’t be returning home. Just the opposite. Bethlehem isn’t the place for them. There they’ll be foreigners subject to who knows what sort of abuse from the local men. So she makes an incredibly generous gesture towards them, urging them to go back to their own families. Never mind that she’ll now be completely alone, without any social support. There’s almost a note of sarcasm in her voice as she says to them: "May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me," as though she’d want to add, "even if God hasn’t acted like that towards me." This sense of bitterness towards God comes out even more clearly in v13 when the 2 young women insist on going with her and she tells them: "it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the LORD has turned against me." There’s a real sense of hopelessness there isn’t there? Almost as if she’s saying she’s a jinx. Or as if she thinks that God has been punishing her and will go on punishing her for leaving Judah to come to Moab and it would be better if they weren’t with her to share her punishment.
There’s something real about Naomi isn’t there? Her mourning for her husband and now her sons has led her to despair, almost to self-pity. When she gets back to Bethlehem she tells the people there not to call her Naomi, which means ’pleasant’, but to call her Mara, which means ’bitter’, because the Lord has afflicted her. She says she went away full, but has come back empty. It’s as though coming back to Bethlehem, to her old home, has brought out all the force of her anger and grief. Someone has translated her words, "Don’t call me sweetheart, call me sourpuss."
Our narrator clearly wants us to feel the sense of loss and despair that Naomi is feeling at this point. It’s a feeling that many have felt down the ages. A sense of God having abandoned them, or even, as in Naomi’s case perhaps, of targeting them for punishment. Her situation is about as bad as it gets. I’m not sure we can fully understand it from the perspective of our liberated society. But she’s now without social support, has no source of income, no-one to protect her from anyone who might choose to do her harm, and even the sense that God is looking after her has gone. In fact as far as she’s concerned, God is to blame for her condition.
And we as onlookers to her situation are invited by our author to empathise with the emotional devastation that she’s feeling. To understand what she’s going through as she directs her anger at God. Just like Job, or Jeremiah, or the author of so many of the psalms, she feels let down, punished beyond what she deserves.
There’s a valuable lesson for us here, for those times when we find ourselves in a similar situation, when we too feel let down by God. God can handle us expressing how we feel to him. There’s no sense in this passage of Naomi being in the wrong for crying out in her pain and despair. Her anger is simply reported as how it is. This is the lot of us humans from time to time and it’s natural to express the anger and hurt we feel. Even Jesus Christ on the cross cried out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
But it’s also important for us to realise at those times that the story goes on. This isn’t where it ends, this is just the beginning. Naomi’s grief won’t last forever. God hasn’t in fact forgotten Naomi, even if that’s how she feels. Here again we find a resonance with what we found in Judges. Just when they feel like things are at their worst, God sends a saviour.
But back to our story. With Naomi’s urging, Orpah decides to go back to her people, but not Ruth. Ruth has seen something in Naomi, something in her character, something perhaps in her faith in the God of Israel that helps her make up her mind. She says to Naomi words that are full of significance beyond what appears at first glance: "Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God." Here is the hinge around which the whole story turns. Here is the decision that affects not only the life of Ruth and Naomi, but as we’ll see next week, the whole nation of Israel. In a sense God’s plan for the salvation of Israel, indeed of the whole world, hangs on this seemingly insignificant decision of an insignificant Moabite widow. Ordinary people doing ordinary things make for an extraordinary story.
How often do we see this sort of thing happening in the pages of the bible. Grace found in unexpected places. A member of a cursed nation turns to God, binding her life to his and is welcomed in. "The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile." (Rom 1:16). But this decision of Ruth is made all the more remarkable by the words she chooses. There’s an amazing similarity to the words of God to Jacob in Genesis 28 "Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." Or his words to Joshua in Joshua 1: "Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go." Or the words of God to his people repeatedly: "I will ... be your God, and you shall be my people." It’s as though Ruth has taken Gods words and used them to bind herself to Naomi and the people of God. There’s something about the way she says it in fact that implies this is a covenant she’s making with Naomi. "May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!" This is a conversion experience for her. The word that’s used in v22 for return is a word that’s equally used for repent or convert. This isn’t just a journey to Judah for Ruth. It’s a conversion. She’s turned away from her pagan past to become a follower of the God of Israel. "Your God will be my God."
So why does Ruth make this irrevocable covenant with Naomi? The only conclusion we can come to is that in the time she’s spent with Naomi she’s learnt an important lesson. That is that the primary moral response expected by the God of Israel from his people is a covenant love like his own. A covenant love that’s expressed not just in our relationship with him, but in our relationships with each other. That of course was one of the great failings of God’s people in this period of the judges. And it continued to be their great failing. Listen to what Hosea said a few hundred years later: (Hosea 4:1-2 NRSV) "There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. 2Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed." He was describing the 8th century BC, but he could equally have been describing the period of the judges. Moral anarchy, a failure of fidelity in personal relationships. People didn’t care about each other. They didn’t trust each other. They weren’t faithful to each other. As a result there was famine in the land. There was no bread even in the house of bread.
Yet here in this encounter between two ordinary women a different pattern of relationship emerges. There may be no faithfulness in Israel, but here, Ruth, the pagan convert, shows the sort of covenant love and faithfulness that God desires to Naomi, one of God’s own people. And so we find Ruth and Naomi returning to Bethlehem just as the barley harvest is beginning. What a coincidence! With the return of covenant loyalty and faithfulness, the house of bread has grain once again.
And so as we read on Ruth is able to go out into the harvest to glean the grain that’s left behind by the harvesters. And God’s grace is magnified as it turns out that she’s chosen (by chance) the field of her relative Boaz, a man of kindness and generosity, as we’ll see next week. It seems that there is some faithfulness in the land still, even if it takes someone like Ruth to bring it out. Boaz makes sure that she’s looked after and protected and at the end of the day she returns to Naomi with a good sized sack of grain. And the first part of our story finishes with Ruth living with Naomi, safe and to some extent provided for. But there’s more to come next week so make sure you’re here to hear it.
When you think about it, the world we live in isn’t so different from the world of the Old Testament. Human relationships are far from happy far too much of the time. People find it hard to make lasting friendships. Erich Fromm in a book called ’The Sane Society’ observed that ’There is not much love to be found in the world today. There is rather a superficial friendliness concealing a distance, an indifference, a subtle mistrust.’ Now, whether we’re any different from past generations is hard to tell but the reality is that lasting friendships, even lasting marriages are hard to achieve. People feel isolated, tensions in relationships are commonplace. Ethnic tension, divorce, suicide, are all on the increase. More and more people are living alone, whether by choice or by circumstances. The words of Hosea are as true today as they were in his day "There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. 2Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed."
But the encouragement that this story of Ruth brings is that you and I can do something about it. We may only be one or two people, but we can make a difference. So often God uses individual believers as the catalyst to bring about change in those around them. What this story has the effrontery to suggest is that a single act of covenant loyalty on the part of a foreign, pagan, widow could be the key to the whole of Israel’s future blessing. So too, we can have a significant effect on the way our world develops by our individual acts of covenant love. That’s why Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment, that they love one another. There’s no more powerful message to this sick world of ours than that it’s possible for Christians to love one another with God’s covenant love.
Here is Ruth, a young widow, who chooses a life of singleness, not because she has no choice, but out of love for Naomi. She could have returned to her own people like Orpah, and would no doubt have been able to remarry and live a normal life, but she gave that up, for the time being at least, in order to care for a lonely, vulnerable person in desperate need of support. You probably know people yourself who have shown, or are showing, that sort of covenant love in their own lives. We mustn’t underestimate the value of such life giving love in the greater scheme of things. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 10: "and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple -- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward." (Mat 10:42 NRSV)
Ruth leaves the security of her homeland to care for a grieving, bitter, old woman. Jesus Christ leaves the glory of heaven to die a lonely, bitter death on a cross. Meaningless sacrifice? Or world changing acts of love? It’s not for nothing that Jesus tells us to take up our cross and follow him. Such individual acts of moral heroism can change the very future of our world.
For other sermons go to http://home.vicnet.net.au/~sttheos/sermindex.htm
