Ruth

Hey friends, welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
Thank you for being with us as we continue through our series,
Real People of the Faith.
A little bit of a change of direction today.
We look at one of the very few women in the Old Testament that gets her own book, her own story,
short story,
but a powerful story,
has repercussions for the nation of Israel
and even into the New Testament.
And I think that you will enjoy hearing part of Ruth’s story.
Yeah, Clint,
we’re thrilled to have you with us in this conversation.
I think you’re going to find in this relatively short story,
as you’ve already mentioned,
so many beautiful themes.
There’s the theme of loss combined with reconciliation.
There’s a sense of grief
that is paired with God’s providential care and love.
There’s some arcs that go throughout Ruth’s story and some other key accompanying characters
that is just absolutely beautiful,
I think meaningful.
And then to put it in context,
Ruth goes on in the story of the people of Israel to have
just a significant lineage impact in the whole people.
So we have here a story that’s different from those that have come before and I think that
in that, I’m sorry, we have a refreshing change.
Yeah, a fairly contextualized story.
It is a story,
you know,
in Israel’s history,
it’s pre-monarchy, it’s the time of the judges.
And actually to get to Ruth’s story,
we enter the story,
the narrative through a woman named Naomi.
Naomi is an Israelite,
but her husband has moved to Moab and there her sons find women
to marry from among the Moabites.
And so Ruth enters this family and then tragedy strikes,
it’s a decade separated,
but first Naomi’s husband passes away and then about 10 years later,
both of her sons pass away.
And it’s significant that in the telling of the story,
we’re told that they pass away at the same
time, which means that had one of them died,
the care of the mother and wife would pass to him.
But the fact that they both died at the same time means that these women are helpless.
They are in a culture in which being a single woman is dangerous,
is lonely,
is hard,
particularly for Naomi as she’s older and the possibility of remarrying is unlikely.
And so they find themselves in an incredibly vulnerable position.
And for Naomi, this hits home as the land of Moab is experiencing a famine.
And she hears that there may be food available back where she was originally from.
Yeah.
And maybe it’s worth teasing out a little bit of that background for you
joining us the conversation.
It’s worth knowing here that the idea of marriage in these ancient
contexts was such that it was not just a sort of social support or an institution by which
children were raised for women.
It was literally the entire sort of protection,
sustenance, caring for.
In fact,
in most ancient cultures,
women couldn’t own property.
That wasn’t even an option.
So everything came through the marriage relationship,
though the woman relied entirely
on that male.
So when first we have Naomi’s husband who dies and then her two sons die,
these women who married into the Israelite family are suddenly now in a position where there’s
nowhere else for their care to be passed down to.
And so in that moment,
our story starts these.
This is the first five verses of the first chapter right away.
We’re presented with the
theme of loss,
the theme of loss of security,
loss of provision,
loss of family.
And in the midst of this, we’re going to see this next theme that comes out in the story.
What we learned about Naomi and Ruth is they are incredibly strong and they have faith.
Yeah.
And so that sets the context
for really what Ruth does.
Naomi decides she will return
to Israel and she tells her daughter-in-laws to return to their people.
She says, “You’re young.
There’s a good chance you’ll still find husbands.
You can make a go of it.
I have nothing to offer
you.” And you know,
Michael, maybe it’s because this is a book primarily populated with female characters.
Maybe it is a little more sensitive to the relational aspect than sometimes stories
in the Scripture are.
But you have right away Naomi,
a woman who thinks of others,
who genuinely cares about her daughter-in-laws and is seeking the best for them while even at
the same time thinking that her go is going to be rough.
Her future is looking a little bleak.
And she doesn’t want to share that with her.
So she tells them go back.
They both initially say,
“No, we’re going with you.” She pushes and she says,
“I insist.
You have to go back.”
And Orpah, one of the daughter-in-laws agrees and they hug and they have this moment of goodbye.
And then we begin to get kind of a theme that we see in Ruth,
this idea of persistence or this idea of faithfulness.
And Ruth says,
“Naomi,
no.” And gives us,
I think as we move into the
last part of the first chapter,
really poetic.
I mean, listen to these words,
“Do not press me
to leave you or to turn back from following you.
Where you go,
I go.
Where you lodge, I will lodge.
Your people will be my people.
Your God will be my God.
Where you die,
I will die.
There I will be buried.
May the Lord do this,
and so to me.
And more as well,
if even death parts us from you.”
This is one of the outstanding speeches of commitment, of committal.
And the fact that
the Old Testament, which is not well populated with strong women,
puts this in the mouth of Ruth, is phenomenal.
It’s a fantastic passage.
Yeah, and it is really worth noting here,
Clint,
that this idea of returning is a phrase that comes up over and over again,
the early part of the story.
And I think it’s significant here because there’s this overarching question
of what does Naomi and what does Ruth have to return to?
Really,
right?
You should return to your mother’s house.
You might be able to find a husband there is what Naomi tells to Ruth.
And Ruth then really commits herself to Naomi’s return to Israel.
She says, you know,
“No matter what happens, I’m committed to be with you.” And that kind of raw,
persistent commitment is a
significant fixture of these two characters that they over and over again persist.
And I think it’s
a beautiful reminder here in the Old Testament that fundamentally,
as we seek to commit ourselves to God’s way,
that God makes a way for us.
Yeah, and I think we see here lots of wonderful interchange
between these two women,
this idea that I’m all the way in.
Naomi,
you’re my family,
you’re my mother,
I’m with you.
And so they set their face toward Bethlehem.
Interestingly enough, in the time of famine,
Bethlehem means the house of bread.
And so they return to Bethlehem.
And
along the way, you know, this is also a sad story.
Naomi, as a character, has experienced a significant
amount of grief.
She’s lost a husband,
two sons within the span of 10 years.
She has an uncertain future.
And she says here,
“Call me Mara.
The Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.” Naomi,
the name, means sweet or pleasant.
And the word Mara in Hebrew is bitter.
So she says, “I’ve had a name change.” And again,
this is fascinating, I think, Michael, because we often see characters’
names change in the Old Testament.
But in nearly every instance,
in fact, in every instance that
I can think of,
it’s God that bestows the change of name,
and it’s for the better.
It’s a step up.
And here,
Naomi for herself says,
“Yeah, don’t call me pleasant anymore.
Call me bitter, because life has been bitter.
I used to have fullness,
and now I have emptiness.”
And again,
maybe it’s the idea that the author of this story or that Ruth’s story just lends
itself well to this kind of emotion.
But there’s a heaviness here that even as Naomi returns home,
it is with a lot of darkness and shadow that she makes the transition. Yeah, it’s interesting,
Clint, to put this book in conversation with some of these other
Old Testament books that have some of these dark themes,
very distant in time that they were
written.
But something like Job,
this book has an entirely different culture.
And I think it does
help us connect to Ruth and Naomi,
because right from the start,
Naomi encounters just heart-rending difficulty.
Just some of life’s most difficult circumstances comes right within the first few verses.
And here,
we see near the end of chapter one,
that she’s not disavowed the God of Israel.
She’s already talking about,
“The Lord has dealt harshly with me.” She’s not put away the God of
Israel while she was in Moab.
She is just owning this experience of heartbrokenness, of the
emptiness that comes when these things have been taken away.
And so, as she goes to return to her people,
we’re going to find that she’s about to encounter God’s provision in ways that she could
have never possibly anticipated. Yeah, and as the story moves into the second chapter and the shift really focuses,
the focus shifts to Ruth,
it may be a good point to stop and say a few things about this story.
It will sound like an obvious thing,
but I think it’s a subtle and important thing.
It helps if we understand this really is a story about women.
In other words,
it is probably
important that we not try to paint women of the Old Testament with the same brush
that we paint men of the Old Testament.
So,
the Jacob story, for instance, has a very different
feel than the story of women who are vulnerable,
who don’t have agency over their own life in some instances.
And so,
the story of Ruth has long been treasured among female interpreters and theologians
as a story of women who rise to the moment of their challenge.
And Ruth and Naomi
don’t give up easily and they have to make their way now in this world.
And it’s important that
we remember they do so as women,
as two women without a lot of help.
And so, as we move into
the story, I think it’s a good reminder that part of what we see in this story,
we see through a kind of subtle lens. We do, and I do think another maybe helpful point here very quickly,
Clint, is this idea that returning to Israel for Ruth is tantamount to taking on a new religion.
And we may miss that if we just come to the text,
but in verse 15 of chapter one,
Naomi is saying, “See your sister-in-law,
she’s gone back to her people and to her gods.
Return after her, go with her.” When Ruth goes back to her people,
Naomi conceives she’s going back to the gods that she began with.
When she married into Naomi’s family,
she sort of took on the god of the family by
nature of marriage.
But it wasn’t assumed that Ruth had owned that faith herself.
When Ruth sets her face to go with Naomi,
it is her disavowing those gods of her family.
It’s to say that the god
that you worship will be the god that I will worship.
And so, this return for Naomi,
what is a return back to home to the worship of God in her own place with her own people,
it is for Ruth
really going to a new place with new people and in many ways a conversion to a new faith.
Yeah.
And the other thing I think we see in this story,
you know, Ruth is a hard worker.
We’re going to be told right away in chapter two.
She sets herself to the task.
She goes and works fields, they’re gleaning.
So, just very quickly,
the law of the Old Testament demanded that
farmers not pick their fields clean,
but that they leave some things out there for the poor and the needy.
And this wouldn’t have been uncommon for people to wander through the
fields taking some of what they could find.
And Ruth is willing to do that.
She does that.
She works hard.
But in honest appraisal of the story, Michael,
we have to admit that even though there
are strong women in this narrative,
their future will be secured in finding a man.
And we might wish it had told a different story.
We might be grateful that that’s no longer the only story
available to women.
But in this story,
that is their task.
If their future is going to have a
need, they need a man to help them.
And that particular man comes into the story as part of
that work.
Ruth is out in the field.
She’s gleaning these things.
And this turns out to be a field
owned by this man,
Boaz, who becomes a significant character in both of their stories.
Yeah. And again, a God-fearing man,
he’s left things in the field as he is supposed to.
He takes notice of Ruth.
He asks about her.
He tells his hands to be good to her,
give her some extra,
send her with extra stuff.
He looks out for her.
He engages her.
He finds out who she is.
There’s some family connection between Boaz and Naomi that is never entirely clear in the story,
but they’re called kinspeople, kinsmen, kinswoman.
And so Boaz takes this kind of interest in Ruth.
Both,
I think we have to say in the story,
both generally in being a good guy,
but specifically she catches his eye.
I mean, I think that’s the clear implication of the text here.
She turns his head.
He orders his servants,
the people working the field,
he says to be good to her,
and she can go drink from the vessels of water that they pull out of the well.
He’s going out of his way to try to make her life easier for her work to be less strenuous.
He, in fact, gives her some bread and lets her dip it right there in the condiments at the table, right?
So fundamentally,
yes,
he takes special note of this particular woman.
Surely there were many
others in the field,
but he singles her out and he makes sure that everyone knows you’re to be good to Ruth.
Yeah. And so there’s an interesting aspect of the story that kind of enters in here, Michael.
And at this point, really,
maybe from mid chapter two on through the end of the story,
this has an element of courtship to it.
It’s not manipulation,
but again,
Naomi and Ruth respond to the opportunity that Boaz presents.
Ruth comes back, she tells Naomi, “I’ve been working this field.
This man was nice to me.” And Naomi says,
“Well, yeah, I know Boaz.
We were told early,
I don’t know if we mentioned it,
it was told early in the second chapter that he was wealthy,
that he has resources.” And so now Naomi,
in a way that you sort of think of as
a mom/mother-in-law,
she begins to say, “Well,
I’ve got an idea,
Ruth.
Maybe we can make this
work to your advantage and mostly to Ruth’s advantage,
although that won’t hurt Naomi.”
And they hatch a plan.
Right.
In fact, I mean, those exact words, “My daughter, I need to seek
some security for you so that it may be well with you.” And so the idea is we’re going to go to the
threshing floor and we’re going to put on some good clothes.
You’re going to go down there when
he’s done eating, when he’s done drinking,
you’re going to go and uncover his feet,
which is an interesting note in the story,
Clint, and gets lots of press.
Yeah.
So this story is one of those
that you could read and maybe not catch some of the nuance in it.
There’s a little bit of risque
in this story.
First of all,
women didn’t go to the threshing floor.
Second of all,
she says, after he’s done eating and drinking,
probably emphasis on drinking,
but when he’s satisfied
and when he lies down,
go to the place and uncover his feet.
Now, in Hebrew,
this is a phrase that
can be open to interpretation and can mean more than his toes,
right, his feet.
I mean, this can be a suggestive phrase,
and many have suggested that it be read that way.
Regardless, Ruth is the one here who makes an advance on Boaz.
And as such, again,
she is a character of strength,
of assertiveness.
She finds a way to secure this potential future.
And it goes, “Well,
Boaz is impressed.” He says, “You know, there are younger men,
but if you’ll have me,
I’ll have you.” And then
he kind of sneaks her off in the morning because she’s not really supposed to be there.
And we would think at this point kind of all is ready and the story is kind of over.
But then we get
this sort of strange legal twist, Michael.
Yeah, right.
So there is technically a person who is
one step closer in the line for this kinsmanship,
this relationship between Naomi and therefore
Ruth and Boaz, and that’s got to be dealt with.
Yeah.
So let’s talk about that a minute.
The idea in the Old Testament is there literally is a ladder and you have a responsibility to care for
people down the ladder if you’re on the top step.
So if you have some distant family member that is in need,
it falls to people one at a time to do that.
And so there’s this man,
he really would have first claim if somebody should bring Naomi and Ruth into the fold.
It’s not clear legally
speaking that he would have to marry Ruth,
but in the context of the story,
that’s very strongly suggested.
And so Boaz goes to him and says,
“Hey, do you want to take care of Naomi?” He says,
“Yeah, I do that.” And he says,
“Well, that means Ruth too.” And he says,
“Look, I can’t do that.”
Doesn’t explain why.
He just says, “I wouldn’t be able to do that without damaging my own
inheritance, whatever that means.” And Boaz says, “No problem.
I will do it,” which is what he,
I think, hoped for all along.
And at that point,
Ruth and Naomi become part of the household of
Boaz.
Ruth and Boaz are married,
and the next step in that is that the Lord blesses them,
and they have a child.
Yeah, this is a significant turn towards the end of the story.
This transaction happens,
Boaz takes responsibility and says, “I’m going to take care of Naomi.
I’m going to take Ruth as my own.”
And this is what the elders who are witnessing that say.
They say, “We are witnesses.
May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah,
who together built up the
house of Israel.” And may you have children bestow a name in Bethlehem.
Clint, it’s not an accident
that the story that follows is,
in fact, the Lord does bless this couple,
and Ruth conceives,
and she becomes down the lineage the great-great-grandmother of down the line of David,
and she makes her name all the way in the lineage of Jesus himself in the New Testament.
Absolutely.
And again,
we have this reference to strong women,
Rachel, Leah,
and pairing them with the future of Israel.
And in this case,
King David, the most celebrated of the monarchs.
And on into the New Testament,
you will find Ruth’s name,
though she’s not an Israelite,
you will find her name in the lineage of Jesus.
And that’s a remarkable story.
And is a, I mean, really kind of a happy ending.
But I think it’s important, Michael,
that turn
toward the future of Israel is important because it makes this more than a personal story.
It certainly becomes more than just a story about Ruth,
this girl who helped her mother-in-law.
It becomes a story about a woman who has all these wonderful traits,
and in the midst of
being blessed partly by her own engineering,
and partly by the goodness of those around her,
and under the heading of God,
secures her place in the future of not only Israel, but the Messiah.
Yeah, she does.
And there’s a real theme in the story of asking whose people are your people,
right?
I mean, that comes up all over.
Is Ruth part of the people of Israel?
No, she came from a different people group.
Naomi’s returning to her people,
but she had left those people.
So when she returns,
what is she really coming back as?
And then you have this question of who’s going to take responsibilities for these women?
And there’s this debate at the gate of the temple,
and Boaz ultimately says,
“Well, I’m going to.
They’re going to come back into my family.” And,
Clint, I think you have to continue
reframing this outward until you see that, fundamentally,
there’s also themes about
Israel here, right?
I mean, in the time of the judges,
we know the story of the judges
is one in which the people hear the Word of God, they reform,
they do well,
then they forget, they start sinning, God brings judgment.
This story is framed as happening in this time frame,
and these speak to each other.
The people of Israel are always in this process of forgetting,
of sinning, of leaving,
of returning.
And yet God, by God’s mercy and grace,
is always standing waiting,
like Boaz,
to step in the gap and to accept.
Even when the Israelites come and they
make this advance to God,
they come and they actively confess their sin,
when Ruth comes and
makes that initial sort of beginning to the conversation about,
“Hey, what about me?”
Boaz responds positively, “So does God to the people of Israel.” It’s a reminder,
I think, that grace extends far beyond the boundaries that we put up for grace,
and that’s good news.
Yeah, one of the things that I appreciate about this story is it’s very ordinary.
There’s no
burning bush moment,
there’s no calling, there’s no, “I’ll make of you a great people.”
There are some women trying to navigate very real difficulties in their life to the best of their
ability to use their gifts,
their tenacity,
their work ethic,
their wisdom,
possibly even their beauty,
however they can find a way forward,
they’re doing what women of their day and people
of their day would have done.
And somehow that story becomes overlaid and intertwined with
the story of God’s people.
This very random story which begins disconnected to everything
becomes a central theme of the monarchy of Israel and ultimately of Jesus Himself.
It’s a fascinating look at the ways in which God uses,
in this case,
very
average people to do some amazing work.
One of the frames we’ve been bringing into most of our conversations is this idea of what did
the character get right and where did they miss it.
I’m curious,
Clint, where would you start with?
What does Ruth get right?
So I went to seminary in the early ’90s, Michael,
and I suspect this is still true,
but those who would claim themselves feminist theologians,
they saw a lot in Ruth to be celebrated.
And rightly so.
She is a strong character.
She’s a faithful character.
She not only says that she loves
her mother-in-law,
she takes this pledge.
She cares for her.
She relocates.
She takes initiative.
She follows through.
She secures a path and a future that would not have been open to them
without her tenacity, without her abilities.
And so,
I mean, what does she get right?
I would argue just about everything.
I think maybe a harder question would be what she gets
wrong.
I don’t know if there’s anything in the story that you point at and say
that the story is trying to tell us that she missed something.
Right, yeah.
As you look at this story,
you see it start with a very similar theme in the
Old Testament.
Lots of characters in the Old Testament.
Their story starts with some
major turn of adversity.
You find that in lots of places.
In lots of those stories,
you’ll find characters who either doubt God and take things into their own hands,
or they
maybe actively sort of go forward and they try to do things on their own.
But in this story,
you have women who have just amazingly horrible things beset them,
and their response to it
is a persistent kind of faithfulness.
And in Ruth’s case,
a persistent kind of conversion
in the midst of it.
I mean,
if you look at it this way,
and you think about the God of Naomi,
and you’re Ruth,
you think, man, Naomi, your God didn’t do so well for you.
I mean, look at all that’s befallen you.
And yet, Ruth’s commitment to the God of Naomi,
and therefore the God of Israel,
which becomes this commitment to be engrafted into the family
of God.
This is very much a story of an immigrant coming into a new family.
I mean, in the ancient world, this kind of stuff is unheard of.
You might marry into a place,
but she’s really adopting the
identity of an Israelite.
And in doing so,
she becomes part of God’s plan.
I think we see in that
invitation to all of us.
I mean, fundamentally, in the New Testament,
we find this as well,
that we are all invited in Acts and beyond to become part of God’s people.
That actually,
Ruth becomes a forebearer,
a premonition of what God’s plan is for the whole world.
That all of us,
Ruth, are invited into this story,
even if we didn’t start in the original story.
Yeah, and another thing that I appreciate about this story,
Michael, and it may sound
strange for a pastor to say this,
but you know, there are parts of the Old Testament and the New
Testament where the will of God and the word of God is writ large.
It is easy to follow.
Characters are given its explicit instructions of what to do,
and they’re given miraculous help.
And then there are these kind of stories where it seems that God is present in that people are
seeking to be faithful,
but God is not present as a character.
God isn’t here.
Nowhere in this book
does it say, “This happened because God did this,” or “This God engineered this.” This is the living
out of our ordinary life.
And what I appreciate about both aspects of those stories is that
we have those rare and beautiful moments where the will of God is crystal clear,
it shines before us,
and we genuinely know what it is we are to do.
However,
in my experience, at least a whole lot
of our real life of faith is lived out trying to navigate the details while we’re faithful to God,
but maybe not in direct communication with God,
or at least not as obviously hearing from God.
And I appreciate a story like Ruth in which real people trying to do the right things for the right
reasons still manage to find themselves wrapped up in the overall story of God,
and it’s unfolding amongst the people.
Would you agree, Clint, that there’s a sense in which we see in this story, in Ruth’s story,
a kind of faithfulness that doesn’t look churchy?
And this is what I mean by that.
We might look in our faith lives for everything to seem and feel religious.
We might want it to
look like stained glass,
going to church and hearing the organ, singing a song,
maybe the goosebumps that happens when someone offers a beautiful anthem,
or you’re in a beautiful space
and you feel that God is close to you.
These emotional connections with God do happen throughout
our life, and those are amazing gifts that we receive.
But what we find in Ruth’s story is not,
as you said,
it’s not the burning bush.
It’s not the dream in which God speaks,
and there’s an interpretation.
It is people,
and it’s not just Ruth and Naomi.
It’s Boaz who’s good to people.
I mean, he’s just a businessman who is practicing his business in a generous way,
and he appears to care enough about people that he’s even able to see this woman gleaning in the field,
right?
He’s not back at home with his feet up on the couch.
I mean, he cares about his business,
and he cares about the people who are the lost and the least.
And in these small acts of kindness and generosity,
of going out of your way to help another person,
somehow,
miraculously,
God’s story is being written in those occasions.
So if you find yourself today planning a family
get together through Zoom,
or you’re trying to find ways to just do the right thing in small ways,
and you’re finding it hard and frustrating,
that may not feel like faith.
That may not feel like faithfulness.
But yet Ruth’s story reminds us that it is in the common that God does the miraculous.
Yeah, and I think there are a couple of good examples of that,
Michael.
When she makes that pledge to Naomi,
she says, “Your God will be my God,
and may the Lord.” And it’s important.
Those are not generic words in the language.
She uses the title Yahweh and Elohim,
which are the words of Israel’s faith.
These are not the…
She’s not talking little G,
God, and small L, Lord.
She is committing to the ways of Yahweh.
And then after she’s had this initial interaction with
Boaz, and she comes home,
and she tells Naomi,
and asks,
“What should I do?” I’m thinking of maybe trying another field.
Naomi tells her,
“You should stick with Boaz’s field,
because…” I’ll read it
otherwise you might be bothered in another field.
In other words,
when you have found someone trustworthy,
don’t risk that you’d be in some other field,
and some other man with power and
influence might not have the same morals,
might not have the same ethics.
You could be in danger.
And so even here,
this story of women navigating the limitations and the vulnerabilities of their place in history,
I think this story has so many layers to it,
and I think that makes it very interesting.
And not unusual,
but certainly because it’s driven by female characters,
it makes it unique.
I think one of the things that we find,
one of those layers,
Clint, comes here in the second chapter.
I just find this potent question that comes in verse 10.
She asks Boaz, Ruth asks Boaz, “Why have I found favor in your sight,
that you should take notice of me when I’m
a foreigner?” I just want to pause there.
What comes next is beautiful,
but before we get to it,
she’s naming right in that moment the elephant in the room,
“Why are you being kind to me
when I’m not even in the group?” And that is, once again,
this thing that God has always commanded
of the Israelites, that you are to be a people of hospitality,
right?
That this is an expectation
to be the people of God.
And Boaz is living it out in real and meaningful ways,
and as Christians seeking to live in the same faith as Ruth and Naomi,
we should be inspired to do the same,
to find ways that we might open our hearts, our homes,
our gifts,
to the use of others.
But Boaz’s answer here is powerful.
“All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death
of your husband has been fully told to me,
and how you left your father and mother and your native
land and came to a people that you did not know before,
may the Lord reward you for your deeds,
and may you have a full reward for the Lord,
the God of Israel,
under whose wings you have come
for refuge.” And Boaz sees himself in participating,
in being a physical,
a real manifestation of God’s
love for Ruth.
I mean, there’s something spiritual in this,
that he’s not just caring for her needs,
but he sees the sacrifices she’s made,
and he’s saying to her,
“I pray that God,
Yahweh, who you have proclaimed your life to,
that that God takes care of you,
and I want to be a part of it.” Yeah, it’s interesting.
There is a lot of blessing language.
For only four chapters,
there’s a lot of blessing language in this book.
Naomi wishes blessings upon her daughter-in-laws,
then there’s this passage where Boaz essentially gives a benediction or a blessing to Ruth,
then late in the book when the child is born.
Well, before that, the men of Israel wish blessing
upon Boaz and Ruth for their faithfulness.
And then after the child is born,
the women celebrate the blessing of Naomi now having a lineage and a line again.
And there is this wonderful interplay, I think,
between starting the story with hardship and then these moments of blessing
that culminate at the end into a new future,
a secure future, a new possibility.
In fact,
a future that at this point,
the characters couldn’t dream of,
that their progeny will
one day be royalty,
will sit on the throne of Israel.
At this point, there’s not even a throne of Israel.
And the movement between difficulty
and vulnerability and blessing and future
is really well done in this text.
Wouldn’t you also say there’s an interplay between powerlessness and protection?
There’s a sense in which these characters are moving from a place of extreme vulnerability
to a place of safety.
And there are many steps in the journey where that safety is not clear.
Yeah, and maybe that’s a good place to kind of try to wrap up,
Michael.
I mean, maybe the challenge of this text is to,
for those of us who are vulnerable,
to be a word of encouragement
and a word of hope.
And for those of us who have some ability to make the lives of others better,
a challenge to do so,
to live out that faithfulness in regard to how we care for others.
And our, our, what seemed like small and average kind of kindnesses of acts of faithfulness.
That’s exactly what came to mind,
Clint.
Do not forsake the small is that fundamentally it’s our
human ideas that convince us that helping that one person isn’t going to solve all the world’s
problems.
Boaz didn’t solve the problem of poverty of all the other people working in his field that day,
but Boaz’s willingness to reach out to this foreigner,
to this woman, to this person who was
an extremely vulnerable place,
to treat her with kindness and love that,
that you could almost
call that a civic act,
right?
I mean, it’s, it’s an expression of his faith in the God of Israel,
but he’s just practicing civility.
And in doing that in this case,
unbeknownst to him, he is participating in, nay,
he is in some human way creating a new way for God to act in the world,
for God’s kingdom to be brought to bear in Jesus’s language.
And I just think that for each and
every one of us waking up this day with today’s challenges,
with the stuff that feels common and
the stuff that feels uncommon,
maybe even too difficult to bear,
wherever you are in your
journey of life and faith this day,
the God who goes with you on this journey is capable of
carrying you through any of it.
And, and the people who meet you and the people that you are able to
help are all key components in that beautiful mosaic that’s being made outside of our ability to see.
Yeah, maybe what we take away is that our,
our, our acts of faithfulness are often not found
in the spectacular, but the average and that the work of God often meets us there rather than
calling us to the incredible accomplishment,
meeting us instead in the simple acts of trying to be faithful.
Friends, I hope you’ve heard in our conversation affection for Naomi,
for Ruth,
for Boaz, for this entire story.
This is an amazing gift to the church that we continue
to receive and hear and be reminded of their story and their faithfulness,
their trust in God.
As we continue on these stories of these real people of faith,
we hope that you are encouraged.
Of course, we hope you learned something about a character who’s in the Bible,
but even more so,
we hope that that character can connect with you and that you can see in that person an invitation
to live this day with a new kind of faith and commitment to the God who lives and works amongst us.
Absolutely. Thank you for listening.
Be blessed.
Be a blessing.
And we will be back
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Thanks, everybody.