When we last saw her, Naomi was
beginning to see the firstfruits of the Lord’s hesed in the actions of Ruth and Boaz. And, having been reminded of
his goodness, Naomi begins, once again, to anticipate his salvation and care,
because he has not forsaken the living or the dead. Upon her discovery that
Ruth has gleaned in the fields of Boaz, a kinsman, Naomi immediately realizes a
hope in this, a potential for restoration of her family line and future. Yet
once again, Naomi is silent. Not a stony, isolated silence like her early
response to Ruth’s vow of hesed
faithfulness to her, but a prudent, patient silence that is a response to a
renewed experience of the Lord’s hesed.
She doesn’t say anything of the plan to Ruth, but instead voices concern
for Ruth. Ruth tells Naomi that Boaz has instructed her to stay with his
young men until the harvest, and Naomi affirms that this is good, for it will
keep Ruth away from danger in some other field, where she might be assaulted.
Further, Naomi amends Boaz’s instructions, telling Ruth to glean with the young
women, not the men as Boaz had
instructed. Having received and seen the love and care of God in Ruth and Boaz,
Naomi is awakened to thoughtful action and care in return, and she now offers
up guidance and protection for Ruth, who obeys Naomi, staying close to the
young women until the end of the harvest.
And
so Ruth gleans, and Boaz finishes the harvest. And Naomi waits. And, when the
time of harvest, of fruitfulness, finally comes, the full redemption of Naomi,
of Elimelech, and of Ruth also arrives. As the harvest draws to a close, Naomi
reveals her plan to Ruth, and in its details we can see Naomi’s craft and
circumspection. Picture, if you will, Naomi mulling over the details,
considering all of the possibilities. She knows from his behavior that Boaz is
a worthy man who has shown favor to Ruth, and what’s more, he’s a
kinsman-redeemer, so surely he should be willing marry Ruth. But, how can an
outcome of marriage be guaranteed? And, when is the best time to approach Boaz?
How can she prevent public humiliation for Ruth if he does reject her? How can
this opportunity be created without a public spectacle? We already know how folks can talk in
Bethlehem, with how quickly news of Naomi’s return and Ruth’s story has spread
about town! And so, Naomi plans for success, knowing that at the end of the
harvest, Boaz will have eaten and drunk himself full of good food and the sense
of the work well done. She instructs Ruth to wash and anoint herself, to cover
herself with a cloak and go at night so she can slip in unseen, to be sure that
she identifies the right man, to uncover his feet and to lie down, and “he will
tell you what to do.”
All
this, Naomi says to Ruth, is because she wants to seek rest for Ruth, that it
may be well with her. And it is, indeed, a chance for that, but perhaps we are
again troubled by Naomi’s ambiguity. Is her concern for Ruth’s wellbeing and
rest, or for the redemption of her own line? Is Naomi expecting Boaz to
chastely propose, then later marry Ruth, or is she hoping that Ruth would
become pregnant, and, in the manner of Tamar, be able to shame Boaz’s
reputation so that he acts as kinsman-redeemer? Is this bold, out-of-the box
thinking that has anticipated and planned for all possible outcomes, or this a
willingness to risk Ruth’s honor in order to take control, to trick Boaz and God
into redeeming as they have said they would? Naomi, has, after all, begun again
to see the the Lord has not forsaken her, but does she yet see him as actively
pursuing his plan of redemption for his people? We don’t know her motives, but
we do know that the Lord uses her plan, no matter how mixed her motives, to
bring about redemption. Ruth listens and acts, and that Boaz calls her pursuit
of him a greater kindness, because she has not gone after younger men.
Ruth’s
commitment to love Naomi shines throughout the rest of her story, uneclipsed
even by Boaz’s eagerness to marry her and act as redeemer. For, in the cover of
darkness, Ruth does all that Naomi instructed her to, taking all of the risks
on herself. What if she were discovered? What might people think of her? What
might Boaz think of her, when he finds her there, on the floor, by his
uncovered feet? And yet, Ruth boldly and courageously goes, but just as she
went to gleaning fields and asked for more than was allotted to a gleaner,
here, too, she goes beyond the plan. She approaches Boaz in the dark, cloaked
and cautious, as Naomi had instructed. She creeps in quietly, pulls the covers
back from his feet, and lies down. And Boaz, startled from sleep and utterly
confused to find a woman at his feet, asks in surprise, “Who are you?” Ruth answers, “I am Ruth, your
servant. Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer.” Don’t
you just love how matter of fact and together she is? She knows who she is, and
she knows what Boaz is called to be. Naomi’s sense had been that Boaz would
take charge of the situation, but Ruth will not take that risk. Instead of
waiting for him to tell her what to do, she boldly commands Boaz to be what he
is called to be, for she would have him act righteously as a redeemer, and she
would ensure for Naomi a hope and a future. Once again, her boldness to go
beyond established boundaries, to risk humiliation or harm to herself, is
deeply motivated by her intentional, persevering, and steadfast love to care
for Naomi and rooted in her vision of a God who is faithful.
You
see, Ruth too, is an ambiguous character in this story. Not in the way of
Naomi, where we see human complexity and the tension of faith and doubt in her
responses and in her motives, but rather, as a character who not only displays
her own individual story, but also functions as a glorious symbol of what we
are called to be as human beings, as believers, as lovers of one another. She
walks alongside Naomi, she weeps with her, she establishes a covenant of love
and care with Naomi, even though it is utterly unrequited. She remains faithful
when met with silence, and she looks for ways to care for Naomi even when they
may present great risk to herself. She is assertive, calling others in the
community to be what they are meant to be in order to care for the widow, the
one who seems forsaken. She goes out of her way to creatively seek Naomi’s good
and to bring her life, to present for her a vision of the faithfulness of
Naomi’s God, under whose wings Ruth has also come to take refuge. From under
the security of those wings, Ruth is able to say to Naomi, “I will stake my
love on you, though it risk my life.”
Many
have read this book as a grand love story between Ruth and Boaz, emphasizing
Boaz’s role as redeemer, seeing in him a picture of Christ. However, Ruth and
Boaz both display hesed and function
as redeemers. These images aren’t only a pointing to Christ, but also a call to
each of us to act righteously as redeemers in community with one another.
According to Paul Miller, “Of the fifty usages of the world redeemer in the Old Testament, eighteen
refer to God redeeming and thirty-two refer to our redeeming one another” [1] Like Boaz
and Ruth, we are called to act as what we are, redeemers of one another, people
who step into each other’s lives and situations to bring healing, to set wrongs
to right, and to live our lives in service to one another.
Naomi’s
suffering and her ambiguous responses often speak to where we are, and Ruth and
Boaz provide for us a symbolic picture of how we ought to love one another
well, at great risk to ourselves. We started this morning with a look at our
unfulfilled desires and expectations, and the fallen reality that doesn’t match
up. How can we make sense of that chasm? How do we respond to our own pain, to
the grief of others? How does the love of God meet us in our despair, and how do we respond in the face of being ignored,
devalued, and rejected by others when we try to love them well?
I suggested this
morning that we often try to make sense of this through self-loathing or by
simply striving to close the gap. When these attempts fail, or the pain
persists, we might take refuge in self-pity, bitterness, cynicism and mockery,
or just withdrawal. We move away from God, we retell our stories so that he is
the enemy, and we make others our enemies as well. In these places of refuge,
we find barrenness, isolation, and death for our souls, like Naomi and
Elimelech trying to find food by leaving Bethlehem, “the house of Bread.”
Instead of turning away from God in times of famine, we are called to turn
towards the Lord, to take refuge in the shelter of his wings. Let me be clear--
this doesn’t mean ignoring the reality of your pain. If God presents himself as
a refuge, there is something to hide from, there is that in which we need
comfort, protection, healing, and care. Don’t deny the grief, or insist that
your job is to pull yourself together and just stop being sad or hurt. Direct your
lament toward God, cry out to him, and move towards him. Bring him your grief,
and continue to love and obey him. Take refuge under the shelter of his wings.
He will deal in hesed with
you. The fruit of this hesed,
however, is not that he will meet your expectations or align reality to them.
He may radically alter your expectations; he may even take more away from you
in order to draw you closer to himself. But know this: his love will always
exceed your expectations. And his love always bears fruit.
Resting in the refuge of his wings is the point
of security from which we are made capable to die to ourselves and love others.
From this vantage point, we are able, like Ruth and Boaz, to see truly. It
transforms our vision of others, our speech, and our actions. Rather than
seeing our friend as too bitter or cynical to be redeemed, we see her as one to
come alongside and love. From under his wings, we are able to speak blessing to
others rather than mockery, praise in the Lord’s faithfulness rather than
accusations of his hatred or unfairness. We are freed from hopeless inaction
and enabled for courageous intervention. We are released from withdrawal and
self-protection and equipped to empathetically and actively move towards other
people. Both our suffering and our refuge equip us to do hesed with one another.
Ruth can love Naomi well because she knows the
faithfulness of God, AND because she knows sadness and loss as well. Nicholas
Wolterstorff, an author and professor at Calvin College, once asked a professor
of obstetrics what advice he gave to his students, who were preparing to be
doctors and nurses working with mothers whose babies had been stillborn. The
professor responded, “I tell them they need two eyes. One eye is not enough;
they need two eyes. With one, they have to check the I.V., with the other, they
have to weep.[2]
The story of Ruth and Naomi tells us how to weep
with one another, and how to continue in faithfulness and hope, fighting for
redemption and healing. And
yet, this story is no mere fable, ending with a moral, and no mere fairytale,
ending with a wedding and a vague description of everyone living happily ever
after. Like all stories that resonate with truth and beauty, it points toward
the great gospel story.
After the
wedding, we are brought back to Naomi. Ruth and Boaz have married, and Ruth has
a son. Yet, we find this boy in Naomi’s lap, nursed and cared for by her,
bringing delight and life to her in her old age. Surely, Ruth and Naomi were
delighted at the outcome of their story, at the birth of a son, at a renewal of
hope and life in Naomi’s old age and their shared situational hopelessness. The
long years of grief, of waiting, of hunger were met with joy, arrival, and
fulfillment. And yet, on another level, they had no idea what the Lord was
really doing, no awareness that they saw only a small piece of the glory of his
redemption. Ruth had no guarantee that her faithfulness to Naomi would mean
that the women of Bethlehem would declare that “A son has been born to Naomi,”
and certainly no inkling that it would result, many years later, in a heavenly
host declaring that “Unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior,
who is Christ the Lord.”[3]
But
we must look even deeper. Ruth is indeed a historical part of the story of
redemption, and she is also a character in a story who models for us what our
redemptive love for one another should look like. And yet, she is also an
image, a symbol of one far greater, who transcends the human activity of
redemptive love, for she takes her son, her only son, whom she loves, and gives
him up, in order to recall Naomi from death to
life and to give her an eternal name. It is the women in town who recognize the
greatness of this act, and they declare, “Blessed be the LORD, who has not left
you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He
shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your
daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given
birth to him.” [4]
It is the nature of hesed to be fruitful, to produce life out of sacrificial death to
self. Ruth’s love points ultimately to the love of the Father, who refuses to
leave us in the wilderness, who weeps with us in our suffering, who brings
others into our lives to remind us that we are not forsaken, and who binds
himself to us in covenant faithfulness. He moves towards us in our stony
silences, he acts faithfully even in our mixed motives. But his redemption also
encompasses the Incarnation, for he gave up his Son, his only Son, whom he
loved, in order to recall us from death to life and to give us an eternal name.
He died that we might live, and we realize that true hesed always contains death, and always leads to resurrection.
I said in the first talk that stories are one
sign that God is good. Ruth’s story, Naomi’s story, the stories and testimonies
you have heard from women here, the stories you may share with others-- these
all help us see more clearly. Stories incarnate truth, giving us images and
deepening our vision of the world. Stories show rather than tell an answer. We
are given, in Ruth, an image of how to respond to our own pain and to the grief
of others. She presents for us an example of what it is to see beyond our
experience of reality and instead to see God. She sees beyond Naomi to Naomi’s
God, and this security frees her to love without fear. During her life, she
never gets to see the whole picture, but her life lived out of a vision of God
tells a story that spans the testaments and reaches into our own stories. Her
love for Naomi creates a path for the birth of the Messiah. Ruth’s love is a
picture of the tender love of the Father, the self-sacrifice of the Son, and
the comfort of the Holy Spirit. If you cannot right now see the hope and the
Lord’s hesed in your own life, can
you see it in this story? in the stories told today? in the love of others for
you? Can you see it in the Incarnation? Can you see it on the Cross, where
Jesus spread out his arms that they might be pierced, bringing him to death
that we might live? These are the wings in which you are invited to find
refuge.
Ruth’s great-grandson heard these stories, too,
and wrote many songs full of similar truths. I’ll close with what David writes
in Psalm 61. Listen for his God-oriented lament, his vision of who God is, how
this vision transforms him to fulfill his vows, and how he looks forward to the
eternal steadfast love of King Jesus:
Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer;
from the end of the earth I call to you when my
heart is faint.
Lead me to the rock that is higher than I,
for you have been my refuge, a strong tower
against the enemy.
Let me dwell in your tent forever!
Let me take refuge in the shelter of your wings!
For you, O God, have heard my vows;
you have given me the heritage of those who fear
your name.
Prolong the life of the king;
may his years endure to all generations!
May he be enthroned forever before God;
appoint steadfast love (hesed) and faithfulness to watch over him!
So will I sing praises to your name,
as I perform my vows day after day.
