Ruth 2:8-12

Brothers and sisters in Christ,

This evening’s Bible passage is Ruth 2:8-12:

⁸ Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now, listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. ⁹ Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping, and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn.” ¹⁰ Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” ¹¹ But Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. ¹² The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge!”

The book of Ruth is sandwiched between Judges and 1 Samuel. Judges is preceded by the Pentateuch and Joshua. 1 Samuel is followed by all the history books from 2 Samuel to Nehemiah. Or, to put it another way, the books that stretch away on either side of Ruth are full of war, murder, slaughter, rape, power politics, violence, selfishness, rebellion against God, and sin of all kinds. Okay, not entirely. There are interludes when God intervenes, either to punish corrupt power and idolatry or to show his covenant grace despite Israel’s sin. Praise God for those moments of grace, and praise God that Christ eventually came to shine a bright light into the darkness. But, like the modern media, so much of what we find in these books deals with the discouraging behavior of human beings, especially men in power. It’s not a pretty picture.

And, then, in the middle of all this, we stumble across the four short chapters of Ruth. Although the first five verses establish a back story of famine and death, the rest of the book is startlingly full of kindness, love, generosity, gentleness, good health, and redemption. There’s not an act of violence, meanness, or any other kind of sin reported anywhere.

The story begins in Moab, a Gentile nation on the eastern edge of the Dead Sea. Facing famine in Moab, a widowed Jewish woman decides to return to Judah. She’s not the only widow in the story. Her two sons have also died, leaving her with two widowed Moabite daughters-in-law. She loves them both. One chooses to remain with her mother’s family in Moab. The other (Ruth) insists on returning with Naomi to Judah: “Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (1:16).

Although she’s been away for ten years, Naomi is welcomed back to her home village of Bethlehem with open arms. She’s arrived at the beginning of the barley harvest. Ruth volunteers to glean for grain at the edges of the fields being harvested. She happens to work “in the part of the field belonging to Boaz” (2:3), a relative of Naomi. Boaz sees Ruth. He learns that the young woman is Naomi’s daughter-in-law, about whom he has heard only good things. Boaz charges “the young men” working for him to treat her with respect and to make sure she gets enough water to drink. He speaks to her of God as a mother bird under whose wings she has found refuge (2:12). Boaz is unlike so many of the powerful men in Judges, Samuel, and the other history books. His faith in the God of Israel bears good fruit in kindness to and protection of an immigrant Moabite woman.

I don’t need to tell you the rest of the story in detail. You can read it for yourself (it’s well worth it). Suffice it to say that Boaz “redeems” a piece of land that had belonged to Naomi’s husband, so ensuring that it remains in the family, and he marries Ruth. Naomi and Ruth are delighted. Ruth bears a son, Naomi gets to be a loving grandmother (4:16), the “women of the neighborhood” name the boy Obed (4:17), and Obed turns out to be the grandfather of King David, the royal ancestor of Christ (who will also be born in Bethlehem). The book of Ruth is a love story, a story of God’s mother-bird protection and grace, a story with a happy ending to be told to the grandchildren while tracing the family tree, and a story that warms the cockles of your heart.

The nineteenth-century British historian Lord Acton famously wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” It’s easy enough, whether we are reading Old Testament history or the news media during a pandemic, to fall into the trap of thinking this is all there is to human nature. But the book of Ruth reminds us not only that God remains gracious at all times, but that ordinary people can be loving, generous, and kind. There’s no great virtue in blithely singing “Everything is beautiful in its own way” in the midst of suffering, but there’s no great virtue either in applying Lord Acton’s adage to all men and women everywhere.

May I suggest that you spend as little time as you can feeding on the news media during this pandemic. And when you do scan the media, may I suggest that you give at least equal time to the stories of patience, love, and kindness displayed by ordinary men, women, and children. There are many of them out there. History may focus on the Ahabs, Jezebels, and Nebuchadnezzars, but there are also many others whose names we may never know who are much more like Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz. Praise God for them. And praise the God under whose sheltering wings you, too, have taken refuge.

Your brother in Christ,

Max