Ruthless People

November 1, 2009

The Spanish film director Luis Buņuel was raised as a Catholic by the Jesuits. Later in life when he was asked if he had been deeply affected by his Jesuit upbringing, he replied "Yes, I am an atheist, thanks be to God!" Nobody can make you lose your religion more quickly than some religious people can. Please don’t think I am just pointing a finger at the Catholic Church and hear me when I say that it's not just the church that does this, of course. In their quest to provide structure, human institutions inevitably become oppressive. Governments get bound up in dehumanizing bureaucracy. Businesses put policy over people. And yes, even religious institutions wind up driving souls away from God rather than bringing them closer.

Usually it's just the case of a big system being too inflexible to meet the needs of the individual. But sometimes institutions become rigid out of fear. You hear so much about crime on the news, you might get scared enough to let go of a few civil liberties for the sake of security. You hear enough reports about illegals taking jobs away from Americans, you might support tougher immigration laws. You see your city clogged with traffic, you might support measures to stop all growth.  Maybe that’s not such a big worry in Nekoosa, but it sure is in Chicago. As William Sloan Coffin observes, people in power are always more concerned with talking about order than they are about justice. But it's all driven by fear, and fear makes people angry, hateful, and mean.

The Hebrew people who returned from the exile were afraid. Their numbers had been so decimated by war and famine and disease, they were afraid they might disappear altogether as a people. They were afraid of losing their identity … that the religion of the Jews might even disappear from the face of the earth. So they pushed harder and harder for purity. Their leaders interpreted the scripture to ridiculous extremes. It was against the law to work on the Sabbath. Was it work to take a trip? Better not take a chance, so they limited the distance a person could walk on the Lord's day no matter what the reason. Was it harvesting if you walked through a ripe field and some of the grain got caught in your clothing? Better not take a chance, so it was prohibited. Purity became more important than people.

To promote racial purity, strong religious laws regulated and, as far as possible, prohibited contact with Gentile foreigners. Ezra and the other scribes even passed laws requiring people to put away their foreign wives. Can you imagine that? No matter how long you had been together, if she was not Jewish, she had to go. Your relationship was null and void, and your children disinherited from Israel. This is when all the "begats" of the Bible became so important, and genealogies were written down. It wasn't just something to fill up the family tree page in your Bible … you had to show you belonged to the race of Israel or they might kick you out of the country! Purity became more important than love.

In the middle of this harsh xenophobia, somebody wrote a short historical novel with a dissenting opinion. On the surface, the book of Ruth was just a beautiful love story. But at its core it was radical and prophetic and subversive. The story was simple enough. "In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons" (Ruth 1:1). Sounds like the beginning of a novel, doesn't it? "Once upon a time, a certain man from Bethlehem moved to Moab...."

The Hebrews didn't care for the Moabites much. For good reason I guess…the Moabites had opposed Moses and the Hebrew children way back in the days of the Exodus and pretty much ever since. They remained a troublesome kingdom just across the river Jordan, with strange practices and a different language.  They were worshippers of Molech who required child sacrifice … hostile marauders who would pounce at the least provocation. But this certain man from Bethlehem did what he had to do to feed his family; he moved to Moab with his wife Naomi and their two sons because they had food over there. And they stayed longer than they expected, which is the way these things often go. Life is what happens while you're making other plans. Consequently, their sons married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Sadly, all three of the men died, leaving Orpah and Ruth and their mother-in-law Naomi to fend for themselves. Naomi decided to go back home to Bethlehem. She had some people there, and at least there she would not be a foreigner. She released Orpah and Ruth to return to their Moabite mommas. Orpah did so, but Ruth refused. And here is the first surprise in the story. Counter to the prejudice against foreigners in the author's day, this foreigner, Ruth, was a remarkable model of godly devotion, duty, and love. Naomi insisted, but Ruth insisted harder:

Do not press me to leave you

or to turn back from following you!

Where you go, I will go;

where you lodge, I will lodge;

your people shall be my people,

and your God my God.

Where you die, I will die--

there will I be buried.

May the Lord do thus and so to me,

and more as well,

if even death parts me from you!

What a beautiful, loyal love!

Thus they returned together to Bethlehem, but it was very hard for them there. They were poor, disenfranchised, women trying to find their way in a man's world. Naomi became bitter and depressed. After all, she had lost a husband and two sons. So here they were, in Naomi's homeland, but Ruth the foreigner had to take care of her.

There was a law in the land about leaving some grain behind when you harvested, and not picking the field clean. It was a good law, designed to help the poor, who were allowed to go to the fields and glean what was left after the harvest. Ruth went with the poor to the field of Naomi's kinsman, Boaz, to gather some grain so they could eat.

And there was another law in Israel, the law of levirate marriage, designed to protect widows and orphans. According to this law, the brother of a deceased husband was required to marry his brother's wife, bring her into his household and take care of her. Naomi told Ruth to go to Boaz at the threshing floor, the place where they processed the grain and where he lived during the harvest. She dressed in her finest …went to Boaz that night … and he was smitten. He was especially impressed by her submission to law of the Hebrew God, even though she was a foreigner. She was more righteous than the Hebrew kin, who had left Ruth and Naomi to fend for themselves.

So Boaz married Ruth and brought her and Naomi into his own house to live. They had a son, and here is the clincher to this story. Their boy Obed had a boy named Jesse … who had a boy named David … who was the all-time-top-of-the-line-number-one-greatest King Israel ever had!  Everybody knew someday the Messiah would be one of King David's descendants. Thus this foreigner, this Moabite woman, who was more faithful to God than most Jews, female or male, was blessed by God and became the great great grandmother of King David, ancestor to Israel's Messiah and our Savior. And now you know the rest of the story!

And now you know why I say this little book of Ruth was more than a Harlequin romance in its day, but also a voice of dissent … a subversive story spread by somebody who disagreed with their leader's fear of the stranger and hatred of foreigners. I suppose it became popular in part because of its sentimentality. But I think it also spoke for a lot of people who didn't agree with the ruthless policies of their leaders but were afraid to speak out, because after all, those leaders were supposed to speak for God. The people are usually smarter than their leaders, though, and these people knew you can't legislate matters of the human heart … you can't tell people whom they can and can't love … and when you scratch the surface just a little bit, the stranger is not so different after all.

I think Ruth is a good book for our own day and our own country, even for our own faith. I agree with Henri Nouwen that "Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful, defensive, aggressive people anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion, always expecting an enemy to suddenly appear, intrude, and do harm." The demagogues play on these fears to gain power, and violence usually results. I think this fear of the stranger lies at the heart of racism and sexism and homophobia … in our blood lust to execute criminals … in the drive to cut off the poor … and reject the refugee … and deny the immigrant any share in the wealth of the land. Fear drives the hatred which keeps pouring from our pulpits and airwaves, through the press and too much of our political rhetoric today.

We seem to have more Ezras than Ruths, those who want to be gatekeepers rather than greeters …those who are more concerned with whom we keep out than whom we invite in. There is a lot of fear out there … a drawing into ourselves. But what are we so afraid of? Are we afraid God can't protect the church? Or are we afraid to learn where we have been wrong? Are we afraid to lose our powers and privilege and have to share the blessings of God?  Perhaps we should fear more what we lose by not being generous and loving, forgiving and inviting, learning and growing and gaining from what the stranger can teach us.

I understand people's fears. They aren't altogether illegitimate. But we are Christians. We are the baptized. We're supposed to be different. Monotheism is the first profession of our faith: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One." If we believe indeed there is only one God, then that God must be God of the stranger, too. That God must have created the people who are different from us and their existence must be a part of God's plan. Jesus must have come for them, too, to share God's love for them. And who are we to reject, resent, or hate, let alone do violence to those who are beloved of God? Remember the greatest commandment? "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength," and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus said, "There is no other commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:29-31). Remember the story of the Good Samaritan? The stranger is our neighbor. Remember the story of Ruth? The stranger is our kin.

Therefore it falls to us as Christians not only to accept, but to invite the stranger into the community of Christ. The biblical call to hospitality does not mean a paternalistic "you can be my friend if you will be just like me." It means creating a space where others can discover their best selves before God and where we can share ourselves with one another as equals in God's household. The point of the subversive book of Ruth is that the stranger is our sister … our brother.  Before God we are all kin, and we should welcome everyone into our family.

This is the day when we remember all the saints who have gone before us … those who provided the way. The book of Ephesians reminds us we were all strangers to God at one time, but now, thanks to God, "you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God (Eph. 2:19). I suppose the church will always have its Ezras as well as its Ruths. And I don't know, maybe in God's economy both are somehow necessary. But I don't want much to do with the ruthless people in the church, do you?

God wants to say to everyone, "Welcome home, stranger. Welcome home." We are the people God has sent to issue the invitation. Who is the stranger you need to welcome today?

May we pray?

Thank you, God, for all the saints upon whose shoulders we stand and in whose places we now serve. Make us worthy of them in opening the doors of this church to every person longing to know your love. Forgive us for the people we judge unfit, even those Ezras who are plagued by fear and the hostility it fuels. So fill us with your mercy, so fill us with your grace, we will bring your invitation to everyone we meet that they might leave all fear behind until we reach that place together where in Christ we all hear you say, "Welcome home, stranger, welcome home." Amen.

Rev. Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United Church of Christ
Nekoosa, Wisconsin