November 18, 2012 | 4:00 p.m.

A Sermon Series on Ruth: Part 2

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 46
Ruth 3–4

I love the show Mad Men. I enjoy watching it for a variety of reasons, some of them more wholesome than others, but probably my favorite aspect of the show is the way it provides a corrective to the Leave it to Beaver lens through which TV used to portray the mid-twentieth century. Mad Men doesn’t allow us to get away with insinuations that once upon a time everyone was polite and life was simple. It forces us to acknowledge that life is messy and it always has been that way. In the Bible, the book of Ruth does something similar. In the midst of a larger book that includes a lot of rules that seem pretty black and white, Ruth portrays the ancient world in full color and tells the story of a mixed marriage, a calculated sexual encounter, and the messy but miraculous redemption of two faithful women who seem to be cursed with loneliness and poverty. The book of Ruth is a strong reminder that the Bible is not Leave it to Beaver. And given that comparison, this seemed like a good week to talk about Mad Men.

This week I watched an episode (and don’t worry, I’m a season behind and catching up on Netflix, so this isn’t going to be a spoiler) in which the main plot line involved the street-smart, sexy office manager, Joan, who is propositioned by a client of the firm. A huge business deal is on the line—the kind of thing every member in the firm knows will change all of their lives—when Joan finds out the deal is almost certainly out of the question unless she sleeps with the client. Joan also finds out that if the deal does go through she will get a significant windfall of money out of the deal, and this is no small consideration for Joan, who has a new baby to raise and is going through a divorce.

OK, now let’s review some details from the story of Ruth. Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi, were living in the land of Moab, where Ruth had married one of Naomi’s sons. Both of their husbands die, leaving the two women in a very bad situation. Naomi makes the decision to move back to her homeland in Israel, and at great personal sacrifice, Ruth decides to go with her so that her older mother-in-law will not have to go alone. It’s a story of a broken family, untimely deaths, and great personal risk and sacrifice in an attempt to find a way out of the mess.

The story is already gritty, but it gets even more raw when they get back home. Naomi finds out that she has a distant relative, Boaz, who has some property, and she works it out so that Ruth can go out to his fields and glean—she can follow the harvesters and pick up whatever they miss. This is not the kind of work a nice girl wants to be doing; the story says rather directly that when Boaz finds out one of his distant relatives is gleaning in his fields, Boaz goes out of his way to instruct the workers not to bother her. He does this because sexual assault would have been pretty much expected out in those fields. Thanks to Boaz’s intervention, things seem to go well for Ruth: she’s gleaning enough for her and Naomi to survive, so Naomi takes it up a notch. Seeing an opportunity for Ruth to use her youth and beauty to their advantage, she says this to Ruth: “My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you. Now here is our kinsman Boaz, with whose young women you have been working. See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing-floor. Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing-floor; but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do.”

And Ruth says to her, “All that you tell me I will do” (Ruth 3:1–5).

A little literary background is helpful here. Throughout the Old Testament, “feet” are a euphemism for genitals; it comes up in several stories. So it’s clear what is going on here: there’s a harvest celebration, and Ruth is told by her mother-in-law to get dressed up, go to the party, wait until Boaz is drunk, and then try to get him to sleep with her. If the plan works, the hope is that he will take her as a wife, and both Ruth and Naomi will have their future secure. And you thought this was the Bible, not an episode of Mad Men.

Having established that these two women, Joan and Ruth, share a pretty similar story, I want to also suggest that they must have been thinking a lot of the same things: Do I really need to do this? Am I really that kind of girl? Even if I can go through with it, how am I going to feel about myself afterwards? Is it worth it? What if I go through with this and I don’t get the results I’m expecting—what if this man just uses me?

Well, as it turns out, Ruth is lucky because Boaz is an unusually good man. Ruth goes to the harvest festival to put Naomi’s plan into action, but it’s not clear that Boaz sleeps with her. There’s an aspect of this story that has to do with some of the nuances of the laws that existed in Israel at the time. Because Boaz is the relative of this widow named Ruth, he has a right to take her as his own wife. However, he knows that he’s not her closest male relative, so he doesn’t have the right of first refusal. When he finds out Ruth wants to be with him, he first goes to that other relative and asks permission. Then, once he’s taken the honorable steps, he does in fact go back to Ruth and he marries her. He’s clearly interested in Ruth. We knew that way back when he watches out for her when she’s in the fields. But he decides he wants to be honorable; he chooses not to take advantage of her when she seduces him after he’s been drinking.

The story has an important conclusion that sheds light on everything else. Once the main plot comes to an end and Ruth and Naomi are saved from their dire situation, there is one of these lengthy biblical genealogies at the end of the book where we hear who begat whom, and the whole point of it is to let everyone know that because Ruth and Boaz get together, Ruth becomes the grandmother of King David, the greatest king in Israel, and later we find out that that also makes Ruth a grandmother of Jesus.

The point is obvious: all kinds of people with all kinds of stories are part of God’s story. Ruth is the last person that rigid, legalistic religious folks would expect to be the grandmother of Jesus. She’s not an Israelite, so she’s also not a Jew by birth. She’s a widow; she’s poor and struggling, and she makes a desperate decision to use her sexuality to try to get herself out of a jam. This is Jesus’ family. The main lesson of Ruth is that God doesn’t count anybody out, ever. There is clearly nothing you can do and no one you can be that will disqualify you from being an essential part of God’s work in the world.

Furthermore, it suggests a few helpful things about what God thinks about families. God seems to be OK with people who are in a second marriage or who are part of a family that is ethnically or religiously mixed. God isn’t looking for every family to be a husband and wife with 2.5 perfect children, and if you are not married or are childless, either by circumstance or by choice, there is room in God’s family for you as well.

If you think the Bible gives only a narrow definition of marriage and family that has nothing to do with the way lots of people live their lives in the twenty-first century, this story is a testimony against any suggestion. Nobody’s life situation puts them outside the reach of God’s love.

I think it’s important not to stop there, because this story does not simplistically suggest that God is up for anything; there’s an important theme woven throughout this story that must be remembered. Things work out well in this story because Ruth makes a commitment to Naomi, and Naomi returns the favor. The story works out because Boaz is an honorable man who trusts the customs of his religion. The story works out because Boaz treats Ruth with respect in a male-dominated society where that would not necessarily have been expected. And all of these people, within their relationships, take risks that both stretch the boundaries of what is allowed but also demonstrate the importance of their commitments to one another.

So it’s not a story that suggests God is up for anything. It is also a cautionary tale to anyone who thinks that powerful, sustainable human relationships can exist without faithfulness, honesty, and fidelity—not just between us and God, but with each other, in our human relationships, whether it is with a spouse, a child, a partner, or a friend.

Our commitments matter. It doesn’t matter so much whether those commitments are within a traditional two-parent family or not; what matters is that in whatever relationships we have, commitments count.

There’s really only one famous passage of scripture in the book of Ruth. As I think I noted last week, it gets read at a lot of weddings; couples like it because it sounds like a beautiful declaration of the love between a husband and wife, so they are often surprised to learn that it’s Ruth speaking not to her husband but to her mother-in-law. It’s an affirmation of the kind of commitment that is needed in all kinds of human relationships. And because it is more poetic than anything I can write, and because it is the point of the book of Ruth, I’ll close tonight by returning to Ruth’s words, words of commitment that make any of life’s complicated relationships something well worth having:

Where you go I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people will 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.

Amen.