Love Like This
This is one of those Sundays when I wish there was assigned reading homework prior to worship. Because the book of Ruth is short but amazing – a tight story, one of those where every name and many specific words matters.
The land also tells part of the story, especially against the backdrop of what is happening in Israel as we gather this morning. I want to begin there.
Can I have that first map on the screen, please?
Our story begins with a family from Bethlehem. Geographically, Bethlehem lies to the south of Jerusalem. The family immigrates to Moab in order to find food during a time of economic hardship. That would require traveling from Bethlehem, past Jerusalem, and around the northern end of the Dead Sea, and then a southward journey in order to reach Moab.
Let’s look at the next map to understand that journey against the backdrop of a current map of Israel and Palestinian territories. Bethlehem is located in the West Bank, a large territory that includes East Jerusalem and is made up of districts with varying levels of Palestinian administration, interspersed with Israeli settlements. To be clear, modern-day Bethlehem is a Palestinian city. The ancient kingdom of Moab is now modern-day Jordan.
I ask you to hold on to that geography.
A theme of emptiness and fullness is woven through the book of Ruth. That theme is grounded by wordplays, subtle language references and history – and since we’re not students of Hebrew and not experts on scripture, I think we should unpack some of that.
Let’s begin with the fact that a family – Naomi and Elimelech and their two sons – have left Bethlehem because there is famine in the land. The name Elimelech means my God is king, fitting as the book begins with a clear reference to the time of judges – a time before the Israelites demand a human king to rule over them. Elimelech knows one God, YAHWEH.
The Hebrew root of the place name Bethlehem is beit lechem – words meaning “house of bread.” This story begins with the irony that a family has to leave a place whose name means “house of bread” because there is nothing to eat.
And they travel to Moab, a place that is named specifically in the laws laid out in Deuteronomy 23: 3 - 4, “No Ammonite or Moabite shall come into the assembly of the Lord even to the tenth generation. None of their descendants shall come into the assembly of the Lord forever,
4 because they did not meet you with food and water on your journey out of Egypt …”
So Naomi and Elimelech have left their homeland with their sons because Bethlehem is breadless and they traveled to a place that once offered no bread to their ancestors in the Exodus. And in Moab they find food.
They have moved from a place that is empty of food to one that is full of food.
And in Moab, the two sons take wives. So they have also found family in Moab. Which seems complicated given that law in Deuteronomy. Won’t the sons’ male offspring be forbidden from the assembly of the LORD?
But before the Moabite wives can bear children, Naomi’s husband Elimelech dies. Then shortly afterward, Naomi’s two sons die. If we knew Hebrew we might have seen coming because the names Mahlon and Chilion call to mind Hebrew words that mean “sickness” and “consumption.”
So now, in Moab, there are three widows – one who is from Bethlehem and two who are Moabite.
Naomi and Elimelech had arrived to a land that was full of food and while there, they built a full family, but now there is great emptiness. Naomi sets out to return to Bethlehem with her daughters-in-law, now widows, Orpah and Ruth, but at some point Naomi encourages them to go back to their families instead.
If they turn back and return to their families, there is hope that they might remarry.
The life of a widow in this society was very bleak. Widows were at the bottom of the economic ladder. Unless a male family member took them in, they were left to beg or glean or do other disrespected work for their survival.
Faced with that, Orpah decides to return to Moab, but Ruth makes a stunning commitment to Naomi.
Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people
and your God my God.
The two women travel on together. Their arrival in Bethlehem creates a stir, and Naomi tells the women who recognize her that she is no longer Naomi but Mara – a word that means “bitter.” In Naomi’s grief, she says God has dealt bitterly with her – leaving her empty. Once she was full, and now God has left her empty.
As the story unfolds, Ruth proves her dedication to Naomi by pursuing a suitable match with Boaz, a man who is well-respected and a distant relative of Naomi. There are a lot of loops and turns in the story to get to that point, and it is well worth your time to read it in its entirety. But for the purpose of our prayerful discernment today, what matters most is that Ruth and Boaz marry and together conceive a son.
And the women of Bethlehem praise God because Naomi, who was empty, now has a grandson thanks to Ruth’s faithful commitment to Naomi. Naomi is able to nurse her grandson, an image of fullness and fruitfulness that plays into this theme of empty and full. Naomi, who in her grief believed she was empty, is now full of life-giving milk for her grandson Obed.
Her fullness is a result of Ruth’s commitment to her, Ruth’s inclusion of her, Ruth’s love for her.
The text goes onto tell us that Obed will be the father of Jesse. And Jesse will be the father of David.
One day, David – born of a Moabite woman - will be the king who dances before the Ark of the Covenant.
Please note that Ruth is one of the four women named in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel. Why is that?
It causes me to pay attention to God’s acts of grace in Jesus’ human family. Each of the four women – Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba – are women who bore children conceived in unlikely and sometimes illicit unions. While there is a “law” in the land that drives what is good and right and allowed, the lived human reality is that there is a lot of grace, too.
Look at what God will do even when the law suggests otherwise…
For every text we’ve read this Fall so far, we have encountered God as a significant character in the story…God speaks, God acts. God interacts with people. But in the book of Ruth, God is off camera. There are references to God, but God doesn’t show up to act directly in the narrative.
So where is God in this story? What is important for us here?
This is a story about love – love that Ruth offers Naomi in her grief. It is the kind of love that is sacrificial, committed, undying. Ruth’s commitment goes beyond family ties, cultural norms, and civic duty. Ruth loves Naomi with a love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” to borrow some language from Paul. That kind of love is hard to find. But it exists.
I believe that kind of love is the work of God between human beings. It’s the kind of love that Esther had for her people when she stood before the king. It’s the kind of love that Joseph showed for Mary when she turned up pregnant and he didn’t leave. It is the kind of love David had for his soul friend Jonathan. It is love that goes beyond family ties, cultural norms and civic duty. It is love that works beyond the “rules,” if you will.
It is outsiders (like a Moabite woman) made insiders. It is love conquering all the barriers. It is fullness emerging from emptiness and life coming from death. This is the Gospel good news. Unconditional Love. Accompaniment. A way where there seems to be no way.
This week, we are watching an impossible situation unfold in Israel. We are watching human lives destroyed in a battle where both sides proclaim that the only way to be safe is to destroy the other. We are surrounded by language that suggests that you are either “pro-Israel” or “pro-Palestine.” But real life is not ever just a choice between “A” and “B.”
We believe in a man named Jesus who was born into a complicated time and a complicated place, with a complicated family – a complicated human blood line that echoed the complicated place and time. We believe in a man named Jesus who repeatedly crossed cultural boundaries to embrace the Samaritan, or the women who was unclean. We profess to follow a man named Jesus who loved beyond family ties, cultural norms, political regimes and ethnic identities.
Can we seek to enact that kind of love? Can we be bearers of love that works toward the safety of every living soul? And not just the safety but the actual dignity and thriving of every living soul?
I know we can’t fix the broken world alone – but I believe that we know who to follow, whose guidance to seek. I believe that we are empowered to show love – you know the kind that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
O God of every nation, of every race and land
Redeem your whole creation with your almighty hand.
Where hate and fear divide us, and bitter threats are hurled,
In love and mercy guide us and heal our strife-torn world.
May it be so.
Amen.
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