The Unbusy Pastor, 12 November 09

The book of Ruth is fascinating. It's not quoted by anyone else anywhere in the bible (as Job and even Jonah are), it's not used in any part of the liturgy and you won't find a reading of it on any of the 112 Sundays of the 2-year lectionary cycle. There are no great theological pronouncements. To the best of my knowledge Ruth is never used as a proof text in systematics. God's chosen people Israel are bit players, part of the unnamed chorus. It is an utterly unremarkable book but for one fact:

Ruth is the grandmother of David.

How does that happen? According to the story, Naomi is married to Elimelech. They have two sons and are members of the tribe of Ephram living in Bethlehem. When a famine strikes Israel the family leaves their ancestral home for the Gentile land of Moab. What the story assumes you know is this: it was a big deal for an Israelite to leave the Promised Land for a foreign country. After all, God had JUST brought them through the blood bath that was the entrance into the land God promised them almost a thousand years before. Each tribe was given land as part of the covenant, and that land was fiercely defended by the covenant's terms. No one was allowed to sell their land, trade it or even give it away. This is why the confiscation of land to satisfy debt was such a big justice issue later on; the prophets spoke against it all the time. The point is, it belonged to God not to them. The Land is everything at this point because there is no Temple. The Land is where God dwells, and to leave it is to abandon his favor and blessing. So, leaving Bethlehem, even during a famine, was to run toward disaster and not away from it.

Scene two. Naomi and Elimelech's sons find wives in Moab. Though the story makes no moral pronouncements about this fact, it's a BIG no-no. The Law specifically prohibits Israelite men from taking foreign wives for a number of reasons. Strike two. The narrative never explains why the family violates the Law and breaks with tradition in such a big way, but one might infer that they weren't all that "observant"...not terribly religious, you might say. They were "carnal" Israelites, to use a modern term. Over worldy or something.

Scene Three. Elimelech dies in Moab, leaving Naomi a widow. While tragic, it's not the end of the world because she has sons. When both of her sons die, then Naomi is in real trouble. She can't own land or property. Everything she has must be claimed by a male family member, but the only family she has now are her two daughters-in-law. Add to this injury the insult of the fact that all of this happens in a foreign land, which is precisely what the audience would have been thinking...that's what you get for breaking God's law. Of course they lost everything. They spit in God's face and lived with pagan foreigners. They got what was coming to them.

Scene Four. Naomi announces that she's packing up and leaving for home. She urges her daughters-in-law to go back to their families, which would have been their right. One of them does exactly this. The other is Ruth, and she does something utterly unexpected: she insists on staying with Naomi, and goes so far as binding herself to Naomi using clear covenant language (1:16, 17). To make a long-ish story short-ish, they go back to Bethlehem, Naomi matches Ruth up with Boaz, he "redeems" the family (I hope you're making the gospel connections here) and tragedy is turned to triumph when Ruth gives birth to Obed, the father of Jesse, who is the father of David. From the line of David would come the Messiah, Jesus Christ, about a thousand years later.

So, out of Law-breaking, untrusting, non-covenantal, irreligious behavior comes the story of the redemption of not only Naomi and Ruth, but of all of humanity. A non-Jew, a foreigner from a pagan land who presumably knew nothing of God, a person Israel would have viewed as utterly outside the promises of covenant, land and blessing, becomes the great-grandmother of God's beloved. Naomi knew nothing of Israel's history or their covenant; she knew nothing whatsoever of Egypt, Sinai, 40 years in the desert, the Law or the Tabernacle. She was just one of the masses of the excluded. Yet, here she is, right there in a book of the bible that bears her name, giving birth to the first in the messianic line. Not only was she a part of the story, she's a CRITICAL part of the story. By her persistent love and faithfulness to Naomi, millions upon millions upon millions would be saved.

Who do we not know yet? What critical role will they play? They'll come from places totally foreign to the culture of Christianity. They won't know the lingo or Christian history. They won't be familiar with canon or creed. They won't be able to recite any memory verses. The idea of loving an unseen God will seem mystical and maybe a little fruity. But they'll be critically important. Through them one or two, or dozens or hundreds or thousands will come to know Christ. Because of them families will be "redeemed", and the impact will be felt for generations afterward. They will never forget their lives before...just the opposite. They'll be used to the glory of God; his name will become greater because of them, and they'll be aware of all of it.

I can't wait to meet them.