Ruth 1:1-8
As I read the scripture, I am guessing that two things came to mind: weddings and Oprah Winfrey. Oprah Winfrey was allegedly named for the other daughter-in-law in our story, Ruth’s counterpart. But a mistake on the birth certificate resulted in the name of Oprah rather than Orpah.
Setting aside that little pop culture trivia question, what probably came to most people’s minds is weddings, for Ruth’s speech is a popular choice for marriage ceremonies. “Where you go, I will go. . . . Your people shall be my people.” The promise to stay with another person forever resonates clearly with our vows “til death do us part.” It just sounds perfect for a wedding, doesn’t it? Of course, the full story is more complex.
“A certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab.” You may not have noticed anything strange about that, but you would have if you’d lived in ancient Israel. Moabites were descended from the same line as the Israelites, but they were the descendants of an incestuous union of Lot and his daughters so they were not considered the best branch of the family tree. “Israel’s disdain for these extended family members can be seen in Deuteronomy 23:3 where Ammonites and Moabites were excluded from the assembly for ten generations.”[1] So the fact that the family went to Moab and the sons married Moabite women would have been frowned upon, to say the least.
Still, you couldn’t help but feel sorry for Naomi. She lost her husband and her sons, an emotional grief compounded by the dire straits of having no man to take care of her. When she heard news that the famine was over in Judah, she decided to return home. She told her daughters-in-law to stay in Moab. She referenced the laws that required a deceased man’s brother to fulfill the family responsibility of providing heirs through the deceased husband’s wife. Naomi pointed out that she had no other sons for Naomi and Orpah to marry, so they must return home. Orpah resisted but finally agreed, after many tears.
But Ruth refused. We don’t know why. Maybe Naomi had been a wonderful mother-in-law, and she didn’t want to abandon her. Maybe she had nothing worth returning home for. Naomi does tell her to return to her mother’s house, which suggests her father was gone. Maybe she missed her husband so much, and having her mother-in-law nearby was as close as she could get to him now. Or maybe their shared grief had forged such a bond that Ruth couldn’t imagine yet another loss.
Naomi tried to dissuade her. She knew from experience what it was like to live in a foreign land. She knew the struggles of trying to fit in while resisting the danger of assimilation. She knew people could be cruel. She knew that Ruth would be looked down upon back home. She tried to discourage her. But after Ruth’s touching words of commitment, she gave in.
We don’t know why Ruth insisted on going with Naomi, but then, “we tend to interpret this passage as an instance of free choice. Ruth could either stay in her homeland or leave with her mother-in-law. We understand the passage that way, I think, because in our culture we see life as a flowing array of choices. . . . We choose whether to marry, whom to marry, whether to stay married, whether to have children. We choose our religion, our profession, our social relationships. In our culture, we prize individualism so highly that we assume that choice is the governing principle of life. Even a discussion of ethics quickly dissolves into a consideration of difficult choices. In many ways, however, the most telling ethical decisions are those that a person is never aware of making. Instead, they flow without reflection from whatever character or virtues have been developed. When asked how such a decision was reached, the reply might be, ‘It seemed the only thing to do.’ . . . It is difficult for us to understand that people in other times and cultures did not see these fundamental aspects of life as the result of choices, but as simple givens.”[2]
Perhaps the same can be said for the saints and our ancestors in the faith here in our home. We don’t know why people made the decisions they did that insured the future of this church. We don’t know why people continued to give during the Great Depression or other times of financial difficulty. We don’t know why people took risks and made commitments and worked countless hours for the wellbeing of this community. Maybe their generosity “seemed the only thing to do.” Maybe they weren’t making choices so much as operating on what was a given: that they would give generously to God and to God’s church.
Although I wasn’t able to articulate it at the time, I think this is part of what I had in mind when I proposed our 90 Days of Generosity project. I wanted us to make choices to be generous so that generosity would become part of our “given.” I hear it’s working. On our Facebook page this week we asked for examples of how you had been generous, or a gnerous act you had witnessed or received. Here is one of the responses: “I’m a little shy about posting tales of my generosity in such a public forum, with my identity so obvious. Perhaps this explains why there are so few posts. Please know that this generosity campaign is working, however, because it’s getting to be an unconscious habit, more a state of being than a duty of social consciousness.”
This “state of being” could change not only our church. If the experience spread, it could change our community. And if it could change our community, it could change our state. And on and on until generosity, not greed, governed our systems. Can you imagine such a world? I hope so because our ability to imagine a better world is what makes a better world possible.
In the past few days I have been working on a slide show telling your stories of the most generous gift you ever received. The slideshow will be playing after worship for you to watch but let me give you a preview. There are stories of gifts of $10,000 and gifts of toilet paper when you didn’t have the money. There are stories of a mother’s love that made all the difference and a mother’s death that freed her grown child from living in fear. We tried to type them as you wrote them, correcting only your spelling and occasionally editing for length. There was one story that could include an error, but if so, the error is so perfect I had to leave it. It said, “I was given the gift of God’s unconventional love.” The usual phrase is “unconditional love,” not unconventional . . . but what a perfect reminder that God’s unconditional love is not something we see around us very often.
But I’ve led us astray from Ruth and Naomi so let’s get back to them. When Naomi was trying to convince Ruth to go back to her people, she said, “May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.” The word used here is “chesed” (or “hesed”). Chesed is faithfulness, love, lovingkindness, and loyalty all rolled into one. The word is usually translated as lovingkindness but the best translation is steadfast love. “Steadfast moderates the emotions suggested by love. Love implies the generosity and care that steadfast may lack. . . . Chesed is love as determined willing.”[3]
Yes, this is what Ruth showed: determined willing, steadfast love. Unconventional love. It wasn’t a choice she made—it was a given, based on how she lived her life. I think that’s why this book made it into the Bible: to give us an example of the chesed of God, the steadfast love of God, Love as determined willing. Love that takes the risk of being an immigrant beggar.
Many scholars believe that “The book of Ruth probably arose as a potent critique of the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah in the period of the restoration of Jerusalem. These two leaders tried to purify Israel and cement its ethnic identity by casting out foreign wives and their children from the land. Ruth is a foreign woman and wife who does not diffuse Israel’s essence by being who she is but instead, in a marvelous reversal of expectation, acts as a savior of the nation.”[4] She was the savior of the nation because Ruth was the great grandmother of King David. Think about that for a moment. Ruth, a Moabite woman—a foreign woman, a woman who had worshiped other gods—is the revered great grandmother of King David and therefore, according to scripture, an ancestor of Jesus. And it was because of her chesed, her steadfast love.
“In a polarized world and in a polarized church, Ruth speaks to us of possibilities, great possibilities that can emerge when we live beyond the walls that would define us and confine us. . . . Amid the rhetoric of exclusion, the story of Ruth asks us to consider what can happen when ‘walled worlds’ collapse.”[5]
It is an important lesson as we consider the fate of refugees and asylum seekers in our land. It is an important lesson as we consider the gifts we bring. It is an important lesson as we remember the saints.
Ruth, who embodied lovingkindness, steadfast love, became the ancestor of the One who we see as the greatest embodiment of that love. Is it so hard to believe that if we are steadfast in our love, the world might change in ways we cannot predict?
We don’t know why Ruth stayed with Naomi, but we don’t need to know. We know that she did it. We don’t know why the saints of years gone by made the choices they did, but we know that they preserved for us a great treasure. Similarly, those who kept this church going two hundred years ago through their steadfast love had no way of knowing that today, on November 1, 2015, someone might walk through the door in desperate need of a God whose defining characteristic is not judgment or exclusion, but steadfast love, determined willing. I am grateful for their generosity. And for yours.
[1] Wines, Alphonetta. “Commentary on Ruth 1:1-18.” www.workingpreacher.org.
[2] Copenhaver, Maritn B. “The Only Thing to Do.” https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-15861171/the-only-thing-to-do
[3] “Hebrew has a word for it” podcast. http://5minutebible.com/ot/hesed-hebrew-has-a-word-for-it-1/
[4] Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4. p. 242.
[5] Ibid., p. 244.