25th Sunday After Pentecost

 

Ruth 2:1-8; 3:1-11; 4:13-17

We are nearing the end of our season of Women and today we resume our story from last week about Ruth and Naomi and we follow along in this story about vulnerability and risk and the power of loyalty and community in the face of unsurmountable odds.  And so today is a day when we talk about biblical widowhood because widows were among the most vulnerable people in ancient society.  And as such they are mentioned often in the bible, both in narrative stories and in the biblical commands of the Torah, prophets, and Jesus’s teaching.  Because it has always been true that the measure of a communities’ faithfulness, strength and cohesion always lies in how they treat the most vulnerable among them.

And so today we encounter one of the longest sustained narratives about biblical widowhood in the book of Ruth.  And I really wish we could read the whole 4 chapter book here because every word of it is great.  But alas, it is just a bit too long for worship.  But I encourage you, if you have a moment, if you read the bible for devotions, take the time to read the whole thing, a chapter a day for a few days or the whole thing in about a half an hour.  I promise it is worth your time.  But for worship today, I had to cut it down bit, but I tried to keep the very best parts and I will still fill in a few blanks.

And hearing this story today is a good exercise for all of us.  It is good for us to remember as modern women, and as husbands and fathers of modern women just how far we have come.  Not that it doesn’t all feel a bit precarious and that we don’t still have miles left to go, but lest we get discouraged, it is still good to look back at where we used to be.

So remember last week, we heard the beginning of this story.  We introduced Naomi, and learned of her tragic circumstances.  She experiences famine, leaves her homeland, then her husband and sons die leaving her with nothing except her two widowed daughters-in-law.  And women in ancient times like Naomi & Ruth were extremely vulnerable.  They can’t inherit, they can’t own property, as subsistence farmers without land, they usually had little opportunity to earn income.  And without husbands or male relatives to stand up for them, they had basically no legal protections, making these women especially young women, very vulnerable to sexual exploitation and assault.  Which is not something we usually like to talk about in church, but it so central to this story.  The only real hope for widows was within larger kinship networks.  It was the responsibility of extended family to care for widows by either arranging a new marriage or if they were too old, bringing them into a household as domestic help.

So this is where we find Naomi and Ruth and if we remember from last week, Orpha, Naomi’s other daughter in law, all widows, all without sons.  And Naomi is worst off by far.  She too old to remarry, maybe too old to work and far from her family.  Unable to protect them, Naomi attempts to send her daughters away.  And Orpha listens and decides to stay in Moab.  She goes back to her family, which is actually the wise and prudent choice because she is young enough to remarry and she probably actually fares pretty well.  It is really not clear why Ruth doesn’t do the same, other than that she loves Naomi.  She shows exceptional love and care for her mother-in-law in this difficult time.

So instead they return to Israel where Naomi is better off, but Ruth is in considerable danger.  Ruth is young, beautiful and completely without protection as she is a foreigner who doesn’t really qualify for next of kin protections.  And so she goes to work as a gleaner, one of the few jobs available to unmarried women.  Skilled men would come though and cut and bundle the grain, then women and poor folks followed behind them and hand gathered broken ears and bits of grain that fell during the reaping.  It was a sort of like a form of ancient food stamps and there was a biblical provision not to reap to the very edges of the field in order to always provide for something for the poor to glean, but it wasn’t much of a living.  And Boaz sees her working, takes notice and offers her some protection in his field.

And Naomi senses that this is her chance and makes a super daring play.  She sends Ruth after Boaz.  And this scene in chapter 3 is every bit as spicy as it seems.  For better or worse, Naomi does indeed have Ruth get all dressed up and sends her to attempt to seduced a drunken much older man in an attempt to trap him into marriage. It is super dangerous, and if it goes wrong, Ruth could have her reputation ruined and be unable to ever remarry, or she could be assaulted or even killed.  But she uses every ounce of the tiny bit of power and privilege she had, her youth and beauty to make a play to protect even more vulnerable Naomi and to try for a better life.

And I got to hand it to Boaz, he really does comport himself very well in this situation.  Now I am very hesitant to let the one man in one of the few women centered stories in the bible become the hero, but he is worth noticing because instead of just taking what he could, Boaz uses his considerable power and privilege to create space for Naomi and Ruth to thrive.  And it wasn’t quite as clean as it appears in the reading.  In the part of chapter 4 that we skipped, Boaz has to go pull off this scheme where he publicly shames the rightful heir to Elimeleck’s land into handing it over to him so he can set up a new household for Ruth and Naomi and their future children independent of his existing wife and family’s land.

And then finally, Boaz marries Ruth they have a son, Obed and a new line begins.    And Ruth this foreign woman, becomes the great grandmother of Kind David and through him an ancestor of Jesus.  But the path to get there is long and messy and isn’t nearly as clean and happy as we might like to think.  So, what can we learn from Ruth to speak to us today?  What can we learn from her on how to live in these trying times? 

Sometimes we don’t live in fairy tales.  Sometimes thing don’t turn out the way we want.  Sometimes there aren’t easy answers or clear paths to redemption.  Sometimes we have to choose the least bad thing and just keep going.

And most importantly we can learn that we are better when we are together, when we look out for each other, when we use even what little and precarious privilege we have to help one another and to care for the most vulnerable.

And I think this is a lesson we are really going to need to learn, that we are going to need to cling to for the foreseeable future.  None of these people could have gotten this done on their own.  Naomi was clever, Ruth was beautiful, Boaz understood how to play politics, they were all insanely brave and they all worked together to create a space for all of them to thrive against all odds.

And this is still possible for all of us.  I know it is easy to feel powerless right now.  Like a system is churning that we have little say in, like we can’t trust those around us, like it may be best to go every man for themselves.

But we have options.  We can choose to be kind, we can choose to care, we can choose to fight for the people we love and the relationships that matter to us.  We can choose to hold our families together even when it seems like it would be easier to walk away.  We can be brave and choose to love and care for the most vulnerable in our society even if it seems risky or downright dangerous.  We can acknowledge that every one of us has resources and power and privilege no matter how small to deploy for this task.  And most of all, we can choose to keep the faith, we can choose to remember that we worship a God who brings life out of death, who can work all things for the good of those who love Him.  And we can commit this day and every day to continuing to do that work alongside Him.  Amen.