Last week was the first, and quite possibly last, time I will ever preach on Samson. For those who were with us, I wonder if your experience was like mine. I felt like the more I talked about Samson, the more the oxygen left the room. Each deed was worse. Each story more selfish and violent. Even his end was miserable. As I kid, I think I viewed Samson like a biblical superhero. With fresh eyes, I now see Samson as he was — a violent train wreck whose gifts and abilities were utterly wasted and whose lasting impact was to be an example of what NOT to do in serving God.
But then we move just a few pages forward in the Bible and come to the story of Ruth. Her story is a breath of fresh air. It’s like the first signs of life that emerge after a forest fire. The land is renewing itself, and it’s doing so in the midst of the messiness of life. It shows the care of community, expressed between women and men, shown without regard for where one was born, and displayed in tangible acts where people legitimately care for each other. I mean, I really find myself yearning for that kind of world these days. As I read Ruth this week, I was smiling; I was amen-ing; I was thinking, “This is a glimpse of how it looks when God’s reign takes root in the midst of human community.”
When I compare Samson to Ruth, I ask, What world do you want to live in?
We’ve only read the first part of the story, but let me give us a little background on what we read and share with you the broad outlines of the rest. It begins, “In the days when the judges ruled,” as in this story is set at the same era in Israel’s history when God raised up Deborah, Gideon, Samson, and others as leaders. We’ve already explored in detail how each story in Judges shows the descent of Israel into deeper unfaithfulness. Ruth is the antidote.
Ruth’s story is different. There is a threat. This time it’s a famine. The story is set in Bethlehem, which literally means “the house of bread,” an ironic and telling detail. This famine in the House of Bread forces immigration, and a man named Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their sons, Mahlon and Chilion, go from Judah to neighboring Moab, a people who have historically fought with the Israelites. (You may recall a few weeks ago when we talked about the king of Moab trying to pay the prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites, only to have Balaam stopped by his donkey on his way.)
The family settles into Moab, and Elimelech dies, leaving Naomi as a widow. Her sons marry Moabite women — Orpah and Ruth — and they survive another decade, before they both die. (Interestingly, the names Mahlon and Chilion mean “diseased” and “perishing,” so perhaps their fate was sealed from birth.) This leaves the three women in a vulnerable position. In their world, everything flowed through the men.
Word comes that the famine is over, so Naomi, bereft of her husband and sons, decides to return to Bethlehem to live among her relatives. Orpah and Ruth start the journey with her, but Naomi reconsiders. “You’re better off to start again among your own people,” she says and offers them a blessing, “May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.”
That term, “deal kindly,” is an important one to this book. It’s from the Hebrew word hesed, a word we encountered in the story of Rahab and the spies. It is care for another where there is a shared relationship, particularly through action that helps another in need. Orpah decides it’s best to stay in Moab, but Ruth becomes an immigrant herself, vowing to join Naomi in her own land and to look after her. The hesed that Naomi has shown to Ruth will now be reversed in how Ruth extends it to Naomi.
So, after over a decade away, Naomi, whose name means “sweet,” returns home with a new name, Mara, which means “bitter.” She left with three men and returns with one widowed, foreign daughter-in-law. As they settle in, they need to find food. In several places in Jewish law, including Leviticus 19 and 23 and Deuteronomy 24, the edges of the field were not to be harvested. Why? Because these gleanings were to be left for the destitute — the foreigner, the poor, the orphan, and the widow. So, Naomi sends Ruth, the foreign widow, to the field of Boaz to gather what was left behind.
Boaz is Naomi’s relative, and his kindness is evident from the start. He ensures that the harvesters leave plenty for Ruth and that they treat her well. He invites her to share in a meal with the harvesters. He tells the men to let her work without fear for her safety. Throughout the harvest, this is what Ruth continues to do.
As the harvest ends, Naomi pushes things further, knowing that what they are currently doing won’t give them security for the long term. So, Naomi has Ruth get cleaned up and sneak into Boaz’s barn, where she knows he’ll be sleeping. Boaz is pleasantly surprised by Ruth showing up like this, and he wants to marry her. He has some things to arrange to legitimize this possibility, and he’s able to do so in a way that secures the future for Ruth and Naomi.
Boaz takes Ruth as his wife. For the second time, the Lord shows up in the book, helping Ruth conceive (remember she and her former husband were childless). The whole community celebrates. They name the child Obed. His son is Jesse, whose son is David, who will become the model king of Israel. That’s right. Ruth — a foreigner — is the great-grandmother of David.
This is such a beautiful, compelling story. As one of my favorite professors puts it, “It is a human community in which the marginalized person has dared to insist upon full participation, in which the one in the center has reached out beyond societal norms to include the marginalized. It is a community in which children are celebrated and the elders are attentively cared for. It is a community in which all are fed, a community in which joy is the dominant note.”
This story takes place more than a thousand years before Jesus lived, yet I see in it a foretaste of the kind of abundant life Jesus showed. As I read the Bible, I see a clear trajectory from the brokenness and violence that was brought on by our sin to the way God will reign in the fullness of time. Jesus called this the kingdom of God, and in Ruth’s story I see how that kind of living happened — imperfectly, for sure, but it still happened. It’s no mistake that this Gentile woman shows up in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel.
As followers of Jesus Christ, our hearts should beat for this kind of living, and our hands and feet should move in such a way that we’re showing God’s love to all, regardless of where they were born, how they look, or the mistakes they’ve made.
This story is an early example of what this kingdom-living looks like, and so we’d do well to notice that the community of care goes well beyond some of the boundaries we’ve set up in our minds. It crosses national boundaries. Naomi’s family receives care in Moab, and Ruth’s steadfast care for Naomi brought her into the heart of the community in Bethlehem. It extends between men and women, where both Ruth and Boaz boldly work within the rules of their day to secure a good future, and where Boaz ensures Ruth’s safety in a world that could easily have done her harm.
In Ruth, God is there, just like God was in Judges. Except in Ruth, humans are living into the way God created them to be, so “The action of God does not take the form of direct intervention, but happens through the actions of the human characters.” I see in this the way God is still calling us to live today.
Over the past two months, we’ve taken time to walk through some of Greatest Hits of the Old Testament. Some stories were familiar. Some were not. Some were happy. Many were hard and even tough to swallow. But I believe that God is in it all, still speaking to us today. I hope you listened to that voice of God, and I especially pray you’ll hold onto the story of Ruth and this image of beloved community as you seek to live these days well.
