For Eastertide, we’re doing a short sermon series on the Book of Ruth. Here is my offering on Ruth 2.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus is in the middle of teaching a multitude when some scribes and Pharisees drag a woman through the crowd. Someone— presumably her cuckolded husband— has caught the woman in flagrante delicto.
She is guilty.
And the commandments are clear.
She is not a teaching object.
She is a trap.
They attempt to put Jesus in their crosshairs by reminding him in front of the crowd, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act. Now the scriptures command us to stone such women. What do you say?”
Jesus refuses to respond with the immediacy they demand. Jesus will not grant the moment the emergency they decree. Instead, like a child at ease and with all the time in the world, he bends down to the ground and he begins to draw in the dirt. With his finger. His lack of urgency only exacerbates their righteous anger; “they continued to ask him their questions,” John understatedly reports.
“Teacher, what do you say?”
“Settle it, Jesus.”
“Should we or should we not?”
Finally, his finger-painting nearly finished, Jesus stands up and offers an invitation, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And then Jesus kneels back down in the dirt, more absorbed in a fleeting drawing which foot traffic will disappear than he is interested in her sin.
“If you think you’re sinless, by all means— go right ahead; there’s plenty of rocks lying around.”
One by one the crowd dissipates, refusing to give the indignant scribes and Pharisees the audience they desired. Finally, after all the multitude that had gathered around him departs, Jesus looks up from his impromptu art project and he asks her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
The adulteress replies to Jesus, “Not a single one.”
Not one of them reached for a rock.
That’s…remarkable?
As soon as she accompanies her mother-in-law Naomi back to Bethlehem in time for the barley harvest, Ruth is immediately identified twice as a Moabite. It’s no wonder she bears the only name in the book whose meaning is not clear. Naomi means “sweet;” just so, the name she takes in her widowhood, Mara, means “bitter.” Elimelech, Naomi’s dead husband, means “my God is king.” Boaz, Bethlehem’s benefactor, his name means “strength.”
But Ruth?
The meaning of her name is ambiguous.
Because she is a foreigner.
Because she is from Moab.
And precisely because she is from Moab— no less than when the woman caught in adultery is cast before the Nazarene’s crowd— when Ruth goes forth to glean ears of grain in Bethlehem’s fields, we should all be holding our breath. Because Ruth is in danger.
Because Ruth is from Moab.
After all, the very same biblical commandments that provide for the poor and the widow and the immigrant to collect food from the edges of Israel’s fields, prohibit God’s people from extending any aid and comfort whatsoever to a Moabite.
Why does the law draw such a stark line against someone like Ruth?
Just as Bethlehem means “house of bread,” Moab means “from Dad.” A morally disparaging derivation, the Moabites are the descendants of Lot’s incestuous union with his oldest daughter. Actually, today we’d say the daughter date-raped the Dad. Birthed in scandal, the Moabites soon developed a reputation for unspeakable wickedness. For instance, when the Israelites fled from slavery under Pharaoh, they sought bread and water from the Moabites— just bread and water, nothing more. Not only did the Moabites give them neither but they also hired a prophet to genocide the Israelites. Still worse, the Moabites worshipped Chemosh, another name for Moloch— a pagan deity who desired child sacrifice.
The Moabites were worse than strangers and outsiders.
Thus in the Book of Deuteronomy the LORD commands his people not give aid or comfort to the Moabites— to the tenth generation.
When Naomi first sets out from Moab to Bethlehem, she says to Ruth, “Go, return to your mother’s house. May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with me.” Naomi attempts to dissuade her daughter-in-law from following her to Bethlehem not simply because the old widow has foreclosed any hope for her own future. Naomi has no reason to believe that Ruth, Moabite Ruth, will receive anything but scorn and condemnation in Bethlehem.
If you know the scriptures— and Ruth knows Naomi’s Bible well enough to know they permit the desperate and hungry to glean for food— then you know what a momentous risk to her personal safety Ruth takes when she leaves Naomi and sets out for the fields.
Ruth may as well be caught in adultery as be a Moabite in Bethlehem.
But instead of a single stone cast her way, Ruth finds only blessing.
“Teacher, what do you say?” the scribes and the Pharisees press.
And Jesus responds by kneeling down in the dirt, as if what he wants the accused woman to see is not him but the community gathered around him, the multitude he has been teaching. After that multitude departs, Jesus says to her, “Neither do I condemn you.”
Scripture says no more about the woman caught in adultery.
Critically—
Just as we do not know her, she did not know Jesus.
We read the near-stoning incident in John 8 as a revelation of Christ. In refusing to condemn the cuckolding woman, we think Jesus is revealing the merciful heart of Israel’s LORD and that’s not wrong; it’s just not what the woman knows. She has no notion of the man to whom the accusers bring her. She knows not that Mary’s boy is the Father’s only begotten Son. In the very next chapter, all the man (who had been born blind) can say of Jesus is, “I don’t know who he is. All I know— he put mud on my eyes, I washed, and now I see.” The woman caught in adultery doesn’t know any more than the man born blind. As far as she knows, the scribes and the Pharisees have brought her to one just like them.
She does not know him.
And therefore, the pardoned woman’s astonishment is not that she has met the LORD who showed her mercy. The woman’s shock is that— being dragged there in condemnation— she chanced upon an entire community all of whom resisted the letter of the law.
Not one of them grasped for a stone.
We read this passage as a story about Jesus— and rightly so, but from the woman’s perspective it’s not that she met the messiah. It’s that she encountered a surprising community. Caught in the act, they pulled her from the bed, dragged her through the city— probably naked, and they thrust her into the midst of a small group gathered around this rabbi.
And not a single one of them reached for a rock.
That’s…remarkable?
Instead of stones cast her way, Ruth finds only blessing.
Rather than curses, Ruth finds herself the object of a conspiracy of kindness.
When Boaz arrives from the city to his land outside Bethlehem, he invites Ruth to leave the edges of the field and to reap in the field alongside his servants. With no transactional expectation, Boaz offers Ruth to gather up not the tiny ears of the grain but the more abundant sheaves. He instructs her to drink from his own supply of water. Where her people had refused his people bread and water during the exodus, Boaz gives Ruth bread and wine and roasted grain at lunch. Ruth sits among the reapers during the meal, and they pass her food like she was part of the family. Though she is single and vulnerable, Boaz's men do not threaten her. While Ruth is young and beautiful, his maidservants do not scorn her. And at the day’s end, Ruth returns to Naomi with over half a bushel of barley.
Not only do the people of Bethlehem not cast any stones, they do not even use words to do violence to Ruth.
Notice, verse five— when Boaz arrives from Bethlehem to his fields and asks “Whose is this young woman?” his foreman in charge of the reapers is not short on details.
He informs Boaz:
“She is the young Moabite woman, who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. The Moabite woman said, “Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the reapers.” So she came, and she has continued from early morning until now, except for a short rest.”
The little town of Bethlehem has been talking. The grape vine has been as busy as the grain harvest. But their grape vine is not like our grape vine so often is. They know Ruth’s whole story. But the community has been spreading only "good gossip” about Naomi’s Moabite kin.1 They have spoken about Ruth merely what is good and true. They have not slandered her. They have not preemptively judged or shunned her. Not a single member of the community has stirred up any enmity towards her even though their scriptures and their history justify such antagonism.
In fact, at the end of the story— spoiler alert— when Boaz makes this Moabite widow his bride, scripture says every last member of the community in Bethlehem blesses their wedding. Just as no one remains to condemn the woman brought to Jesus, no one misses out on blessing Ruth’s marriage to Boaz. Every item on the Crate and Barrel registry is purchased and gift wrapped. The whole community gathers at the city gate and declares, “We are witnesses. May the LORD make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel.”
From beginning to end, no one in Bethlehem shows any hostility to Ruth. Indeed, the Book of Ruth is unique in the Bible (and possibly in all of literature) in that the story contains no antagonist. There are no bad guys in the Book of Ruth. There is drama in the Book of Ruth, but there is no conflict. In Bethlehem, there are only good, gracious people, only people who bless; as though, Bethlehem is a little kingdom of kindness-conspiring priests.
Given that the story takes place during the time of the judges— it’s more than a nice story.
It’s…remarkable?
In 2006 the Irish poet Seamus Heaney suffered a debilitating stroke, a blow which dealt him a devastating new awareness of his own vulnerability. The stroke’s aftermath frustrated the poet’s ability to conjure words. It also made him acutely aware of his dependence on others— nurses, doctors, family, neighbors, and friends—for basic physical needs. In interviews, Seamus Heaney spoke often of the profound sense of being carried, not just emotionally but physically carried, by others— carried from one place to the next.
Heaney’s stroke led him to write a poem for a 2010 collection entitled, Human Chain. In the poem, Heaney interprets the scene recorded in the Gospel of Mark in which the friends of a paralyzed man dig a hole through the roof when they cannot get their crippled friend through the crowd to the one with the power to heal him.
In his brief poem on the Gospel of Mark, Seamus Heaney writes:
“Not the one who takes up his bed and walks
But the ones who have known him all along
And carry him in —
Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked
In their backs, the stretcher handles
Slippery with sweat. And no let-up
Until he’s strapped on tight, made tiltable
And raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing.
Be mindful of them as they stand and wait
For the burn of the paid-out ropes to cool,
Their slight lightheadedness and incredulity
To pass, those ones who had known him all along.”
Seamus Heaney titled the poem “Miracle.”
Just as the title is the key to Heaney’s poem, the first verse of the Book of Ruth is the interpretative matrix to the whole story, “In the days when the judges ruled…” The first verse of Ruth is a continuation of the concluding verse from the Book of Judges which comes before it, “In those days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” In the table of contents, Ruth comes after Judges, but in time the story of Moabite Ruth finding nothing but blessing in Bethlehem occurs during the period of the judges.
In case you don’t know:
The Book of Judges is the most horrific in all the scriptures because the time of the judges was the most horrible in all of Israel’s history.
For example:
Seventy miles from the fields Ruth gleans in Bethlehem, the judge in Gilead, Jephthah, foolishly vows to sacrifice whatever comes out of his house first if he is victorious in battle. Thus when Jephthah’s daughter steps out to welcome her father, he sacrifices her as a burnt offering. Seventy-five miles from the House of Bread, a paranoid judge named Abimelech murders seventy members of his house, including all his children, in order to secure his grip on power. Eighty-three miles from Boaz’s threshing floor, in the Jezreel Valley, the judge named Gideon defeats the pagan Midianites only to become himself the oppressor and fall prey to idolatry himself. Twenty miles from the little town of Bethlehem, Samson slaughters one thousand with the jaw bone of an ass. In Gibeah, Benjamites brutally rape the concubine of a Levite— it’s the most terrifying text in the Bible. And in response, hoping to ignite a violent retaliation, the Levite dismembers her dead body and dispatches the remains to all the other tribes of Israel. The Levite’s vengeful plot works and the ensuing civil war leaves only six hundred survivors in Gibeah.
But only twelve miles away, in Ruth’s new home, when Boaz arrives at his fields from Bethlehem, he greets his reapers with the blessing of Aaron from Numbers 6, “The LORD be with you!”
The scriptures have not been forgotten by Boaz.
And upon greeting them, the reapers in the fields respond in kind, “May the LORD bless you!” This is not an incidental or unimportant exchange. These are not quaint or precious greetings. This is a liturgy of blessing.2
And somehow, with the whole world seemingly going to hell, during the time of the judges, this biblical back-and-forth of beatitude is still alive and conforming a community a dozen miles from Gibeah.
And in the field when Ruth is knocked back by Boaz’s grace and kindness, the question she asks him is the very same question the grieving Hagar asks after Abraham and Sarah have exiled her and her son Ishmael away, and she is surprised by none other than the LORD Himself. “Why have I found favor in your eyes,” she asks, “that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” Ruth speaks to Boaz as Hagar does to God. In other words, Boaz sees her as God sees.
The LORD be with you.
May the LORD bless you.
Why have I, a foreigner, found favor in your sight?
Like friends alongside a stretcher, these are such small, mundane details.
It’s easy to miss the handiwork they reveal.
———————
Last week, I spoke on a panel at the Mockingbird Conference in New York City. On the way to the restroom Friday morning, I ran into a woman named Debbie (with an —ie). I preached to Debbie’s congregation in California several years ago and now— thanks to the difference in time zones— she worships with us online before she heads to her own church. I stepped past the registration table towards the men’s room when Debbie pulled at the arm of my blazer from behind.
“Jason,” she exclaimed, “I wondered if you’d make it here!”
Her large round glasses were perched on top of her head and her grab bag full of conference swag hung from her forearm. She smooshed my hat against my chest as she hugged me.
“I’ve been praying for you,” she said, “Look at you! You look so healthy and fit, no one would ever know you have cancer.”
I smiled and nodded.
“It’s a miracle,” she said uncomfortably loud.
I blushed, balking at her assertion.
“I don’t know that I’d call it a miracle,” I hedged, “The new chemotherapy drugs are amazing but the last few months have been pretty ordinary— nothing miraculous.”
She frowned. And then she put on her glasses, as if to verify I was not an altogether different person.
“What do you mean “nothing miraculous?” You’re here aren’t you? You’re alive when you didn’t you would be alive. What else do you call it?”
“I just meant,” I hemmed, “If you look back over my life this past year, you wouldn’t see any hand of God kind of moment, nothing extraordinary.”
“What kind of preacher are you? How else do you think God works miracles but in ordinary ways? How in the world is your life any different than the tree that drinks up the light?
And then she braced me, each of her hands on either of my forearms, and, looking me dead in the eyes, she said, “Remember this, Jason, the next time you start doubting the miracle-making in your life: God does not need our attention; he does not need to be noticed.”
“Why have I, a foreigner, found favor in your sight?”
During a time when others do whatever is right in their own eyes, Boaz sees with the sight of God.
You see—
The Book of Ruth is not simply a nice, sweet story.
It is a miracle story!
Seventy miles from Shechem, twelve miles from the Levite concubine’s corpse, twenty miles from Samson’s slaughter, here are a people committed to the kindness and wisdom of their faith. Here are people practicing liturgies of blessing. Here is a community with God’s own vision. No matter what is going on in the world around them, this is a community living the will of God in everyday, ordinary ways.
They are as mysterious as a tree drinking up the light.
The Book of Ruth is not a meet-cute.
It is a miracle!
When the prophet Elijah slumps over beside a broom tree and laments to the LORD that he is the only faithful one left in Israel, God chastises him that while Elijah has been busy battling the prophets of Baal, the LORD has been quietly creating and nurturing faith in over seven thousand other Israelites.
Likewise—
When the Book of Judges concludes with the grim, sweeping indictment that in the days when there was no king, everyone did what was right in their own eyes, the Book of Ruth rushes in to rebut.
“Not everyone! Not everybody! No matter what the headlines read, the LORD has been busy. In Bethlehem.”
He has been working miracles.
God does not need our attention.
God does not need to be noticed.
“God creates from no need. God redeems from no need. God perfects from no need. God has no ego.”3 He does not need our attention; therefore, if we are going to see him at work in the world, we have to pay attention.
For example—
Just last Sunday, I sat behind the pulpit as my friend Todd preached and I watched as Ted Torsch (Ted, who every Tuesday copies and mails the Sunday sermon to our shut-ins) listened to the sermon and then— in real-time— preached a different sermon on that sermon to Randy, who had come to worship drunk and was weeping and near drowning in self-loathing.
That’s not just a sentimental story.
A year ago this week, I stood in the atrium and I watched through the glass, as transfixed as at any movie theater, as Mike Moser, already dying of lung cancer, his sweatpants hitched up to his armpits— I watched as he stubbornly struggled to shovel out a grave for the body of a person he never knew.
It’s not simply a nice story.
Brad Todd!
Politically-speaking, Brad is somewhere to the right of the Ayatollah. Nearly every day every week, he is on CNN espousing views with which approximately half of you disagree. Nevertheless! Not a one of you has done anything but bless him.
Given the days in which we live, that’s more than remarkable.
God does not need our attention.
Just so—
If we are going to see him at work in the world, we have to pay attention.
For instance—
One of you, a former fundraiser for the Republican National Committee, provided the down-payment and first year’s rent for an apartment to house a refugee family sponsored by this church.
A family who has another baptism on the way.
It’s just a detail in a ledger.
But it’s a miracle.
Look—
Let’s face it.
You don’t need me to cite the news sources.
In our days, there are far too many who do whatever is right in their eyes.
The news from all around us is not good.
By sight alone, the times are dark.
And yet!
The loaf and the cup are evidence.
The LORD is busy otherwise.
So come to the table.
And before you do.
And after you do— for God’ sake
Pay attention.
Chris E.W. Green
Green, The Fire and the Cloud.
ibid.
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