Dr. Rodney Plunket

Ruth (Ru) 1:1-18, our Scripture reading this morning, is a densely packed passage.  In just eighteen verses we learn of a famine so severe that a Jewish husband and wife and their two sons left their home in Bethlehem.  They headed off to the southeast, to the other side of the Dead Sea, and settled in the land of Moab.  There the father Elimelech dies.  The two sons marry Moabite women.  Then those sons die leaving no children.

Naomi, the mother, heads back to Bethlehem.  Her daughters-in-law head off with her; but, after a time, Naomi strongly exhorts them to turn around and go home.  She gives good reasons.  In the ancient world a woman had little power and was highly vulnerable to poverty and oppression unless she had a husband or a grown son to protect her.  Naomi says to her daughters-in-law, “The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband.”  The text then says, “ . . . she kissed them, and they wept aloud.”  It also says that both daughters-in-law insisted that they were going all the way back with her to her people.  In response, Naomi intensified her urging.  She said,

Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me?  Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands?  Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband.  Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you then wait until they were grown?  Would you then refrain from marrying? (Ru 1:11-13b).

Naomi is truthfully presenting the reality of the situation.  She is saying, ‘I can offer you no security, no protection, no dependable means of support.’  It took all of that pleading, but finally one daughter-in-law, Orpah, follows Naomi’s very sensible advice and heads home.

Ruth, the other daughter-in-law refuses to turn around.  Instead, she gives one of the most beautiful speeches of love and loyalty ever heard (Ru 1:15-18).  This speech is often used in wedding ceremonies today, and the kind of love that Ruth expresses should be expected of a husband for his wife and a wife for her husband.  But the wonder of this speech is that its love is directed to a Jewish mother-in-law by a Moabite daughter-in-law.  That’s not expected; it’s not required.  It was and is above and beyond.  Ruth’s love for Naomi was extraordinary.

The next portion of our story reveals Naomi’s emotional state.  Upon returning to Bethlehem, the women of the village see her and ask, “Is this Naomi?”  Naomi responds:  “Call me no longer Naomi, call me Mara” (Ru 1:20).  The name Naomi sounds a great deal like two Hebrew words, the word for “pleasant” and the word for “sweet.”  Those attributes don’t fit this woman.  So she asks them to call her Mara, which is the Hebrew word for “bitter.”  She goes on to say:

          for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.

I went away full,

          but the Lord has brought me back empty;

why call me Naomi

          when the Lord has dealt harshly with me,

          and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”

You can feel her pain.  You can feel her profound sense of loss.  But you can also feel how much she needed the loyal love of that younger woman named Ruth.

In ancient Israel they had a way for the poor to have something to eat.  They would follow the harvesters of grain and pick up what those harvesters left behind.  The Law actually commanded:

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest.  You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien:  I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 19:9-10).

It appears that soon after their arrival in Bethlehem Ruth set off to glean, according to the Law’s provision, so she and her mother-in-law would have something to eat.  She gleaned in the field of a man named Boaz, who was a relative of Ruth’s late husband.  In a village the size of ancient Bethlehem, everyone knew everyone else.  Boaz spotted this unknown woman and asked who she was.  The servant in charge of those who are harvesting the grain said this is Ruth, the Moabite woman who has come to Bethlehem with Naomi.  Listen now to what happens next.  [The Scripture reader will read Ru 2:8-12].

I hope you noticed that wonderful line in verse 12, the line where Boaz gives Ruth a blessing.  He says, “ . . . may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!”  Ruth’s love for Naomi had indeed caused her to come under the wings of God and to seek God alone for refuge and security.  She certainly had no other person who could provide that.

The time or two that I have seen this story dramatized, the producers went out of their way to make Ruth a super-model and Boaz very handsome.  The text, however, shows not the slightest interest in how either of these characters looked.  The focus is on Ruth’s faithful love for Naomi.  It is that to which Boaz refers when he gives her special privileges.  And his later words of commendation also refer to her character, never to her appearance.  Yes, they do marry.  They have a son, Obed.  Obed becomes the father of Jesse, who becomes the father of King David, through whose line comes Jesus the Christ, the Redeemer from God.

And the fact that Ruth is in the line of the great Redeemer is so incredibly appropriate.  You see, this is a story about redemption.  This story is only eighty-five verses long, but it uses the Hebrew word for “redeem” and its derivatives 22 times to keep that theme constantly before the reader.  The question is, “Who is redeemed?”  Kathleen A. Robertson Farmer in her commentary on Ruth gives, I think, the right answer.  Naomi is.[1]  Redemption, you see, has to do with reversal.  We all know Naomi’s state in the first chapter of this book.  Listen to the reversal described in the final chapter of this story.  That reversal description fittingly comes from the mouths of those same women who absorbed Naomi’s bitterness when she and Ruth first arrived.  They say:

“Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; 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 borne him.”  Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse (Ruth 4:14-16).

What a promise this story holds out.  It lets us know that when we place ourselves under God’s wings like Ruth did, not only are we blessed; we can also bless, even redeem, others.  Ruth went above and beyond.  She took an extraordinary leap of love and God used that leap to redeem.  As we partake of communion together, let’s commit to the kind of love for one another that redeemed Naomi through Ruth.  Let’s faithfully place ourselves under God’s wings and God will raise us up to that kind of love.  As you partake look around at others in this assembly.  Let’s bind ourselves together with loyal and sacrificial love, a love that goes above and beyond.  Our next song will encourage that kind of love as it pre­pares us to partake of the bread and the cup.  Let’s sing together.

[After Communion].  Earlier in the service this morning I was able to see something from up here on the platform that probably no one else could see.  I watched as Karen Flores took little Tristan Xavier Flores to the nursery.  What made that event special for me was the look on Lee’s face as he watched Karen do that.  His smile lit up the first couple of rows of seats.  Many of us know all that went into the adding of Tristan to the Flores family.  We know what an incredible blessing he is.  The love and joy on Lee’s face was extraordinary.

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