Sermon for The Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 1, 2015

B Proper 26 BFC 2015

Ruth 1:1-18

November 1, 2015

The book of Ruth is a parable.  It flips the script.  It’s like a good knock-knock joke that uses word play to introduce language or even the form itself to turn the tables. 

For example, I have a good knock-knock joke.  Let me share it with you.  You start.  Go ahead.  (Hopefully the congregation says, “Knock, knock.” and I say, “Who’s there?” and they realize I have played them).  See?  We all know how the format goes so it’s familiar.  I flipped the script on you. 

The script in the Jewish Scriptures comes from the book of Proverbs which talks about Woman Wisdom or the excellent woman.  In the Jewish Scriptures, the book of Proverbs, ends with a description of this Woman Wisdom or excellent woman, a father telling his son the characteristics of a woman who would be good to marry.  In the last chapter of Proverbs, Proverbs 31, this excellent woman “[O]pens her mouth with wisdom and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.   She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.”[1]  This is a father, speaking to his son, wanting him to find a nice Jewish girl with Jewish values for his bride.  Thus ends the book of Proverbs.

Throughout Hebrew Scripture is that same counsel, from father to son, to listen for and find the wise and excellent woman and eschew the strange, foolish, and foreign woman.  This was an ancient part of Jewish teaching as the Jewish people came into contact with other peoples and other religious practices and faiths. Other religious practices and faiths encouraged men to go to the Temple prostitutes and have sex with them as a way of demonstrating fertility to the gods so that the gods, in like manner, might bring fertility to the earth and bring forth food. Thus, the strange or foreign woman became strongly connected with idol worship and forbidden or mysterious sexuality. To an ancient Jew, sin is largely defined by this idol worship, and idol worship is closely identified with the cultic practices of other peoples involving Temple prostitutes.

In other places in Proverbs, a life of justice, righteousness, and steadfast love is defined by heeding the call of Wisdom or Sophia as she calls from the city gates for people to come in and dine with her. In contrast to the Jewish Wisdom Woman, however, there is a Strange or Foreign Woman who seduces young men with a meal of her own, laced with a strange, forbidden, and foreign sexuality. At times, these teachings became strongly ethnocentric as the Jewish people sought to maintain their social, political, and religious identity over and against other people and their faith practices.

In Hebrew Scripture, the book of Ruth follows directly after Proverbs, particularly Proverbs 31, with its advice about finding the good Jewish wife.  The book of Ruth is a parable because it clearly knows this Jewish script and chooses to flip that script, to critique the well-known story.

The book begins with the patriarch, the one who should be the hero of our story in a patriarchal culture, Elimelech, leaving with his wife Naomi and their two sons because of a famine in the land of Judah. Jewish midrash, or commentary, suggests that Elimelech is a leader in Judah who abandons his community for his own personal benefit.[2]  Elimelech goes with his family to Moab, the geographical area whose founder was conceived in an incestuous relationship after Lot's flight from the destruction of Sodom. In Jewish mythology and story, Sodom is the place of social oppression and inhospitality with dubious sexuality. Elimelech makes a choice for his personal benefit and against his community by going to the place of oppression and inhospitality.  

In contrast to the usual hero of our story, the Jewish patriarch, Ruth is the one who practices Wisdom’s social virtues to save and redeem Naomi and her family’s name.  Could the story draw the contrast any more starkly?[3]

Ruth even calls herself the strange and foreign woman before the feet of Boaz. The book of Ruth flips the script, is a Jewish critique of Jewish ethnocentrism and contemplates a God who is far wider and broader in steadfast love than religious bigotry can imagine.

The book of Ruth is like the father who tells his son, over and over again, “Watch out for those women who wear tattoos and have piercings. They tend to be a little too wild, will lead you down the wrong path, and get you into all kinds of trouble.” And then, Junior introduces Dad to his new fiancé who has sleeves tattooed down her arm, a nose ring, and a pierced tongue. Wouldn't you know, she just happens to be the kindest, most well-read, and most respectful young woman Dad has ever met?  She ends up being the best mother a grandparent could every hope for.  Our prejudices about who is a saint and who is a sinner get foiled by the actual content of someone's character.  

Shallow religion is always telling us to be afraid or fearful of the stranger and their exotic sexuality. Deep religious faith reminds us that sexuality is a gift, that we are responsible for our own sexuality, and that the stranger may very well be bearing gifts that lead to salvation for our community.  

Rabbi Binah Wing, from Temple Beth-El in Rockford, Illinois, once shared with me that Ruth is preached in synagogue as the first convert to Judaism. For, rather than leading her husband away from his faith as a Moabite or foreigner, or going back to her people after her Jewish husband has died, Ruth proclaims her loyalty and allegiance to her mother-in-law in a profound and beautiful poem or love song. “Where you go, I will go. Where you live, I will live. Your people shall be my people. Your God shall be my God. Where you die, I will die and may God do the very worst to me if anything but death parts me from you.” Throughout the story, Ruth practices the Jewish faith in a way that is righteous, resolute, and steadfast.

Ruth saves her mother-in-law, Naomi, and herself by being . . . the righteous Jew.  She is a woman of welcome, hospitality, and loyalty.  Three times in the book, Ruth acts with hesed, a Hebrew word we translate as steadfast love, loving kindness, and loyalty. Hesed is most often used to describe the actions of God.[4]  Without proposal or prodding from Naomi, Ruth goes out into the fields to glean grain for the both of them, reminder of the Jubilee code, within Sabbath mythology, found in Leviticus.  Boaz, the owner of the field, notices Ruth, and from the double entendres that go back and forth, Ruth notices Boaz as well.[5]   (double eyebrow raise)  Ruth throws herself at the feet of Boaz, calling herself the strange woman, the foreigner, the interloper, so that if you had any doubts before, you know now that the conventional Proverbs story is being turned upside down.  The conventional Jewish script is being flipped.

And the story plays and has fun with the mysterious, seductive, and forbidden sexuality of the foreign or strange woman.  Ruth eats the “seed” of Boaz and is “filled.”  Boaz gives Ruth “his seed” so that Ruth and Naomi may be sustained in the midst of famine.  I don't make these things up.

Remember the rest and peace Naomi offered Ruth and Orpah at the beginning of the story?  Ruth proves that sometimes the moral challenge of life requires precisely the opposite of rest and peace.   In contrast to the patriarch Elimelech, Ruth chooses meaningful actions and experiences that permit and demand growth from all those around her.[6]  

Though Boaz is the one who will be referred to as the redeemer in this story, it is Ruth who is making all this happen, creating a new family for everyone. Ruth cuts across the patriarchy, ethnocentrism, and xenophobia of her time to deliver a message that is at the core of Jewish social values, thought, and theology. In the end, because Boaz does do the right thing, the child born from the mixed marriage of Boaz and Ruth goes on to be the ancestor of the famed King David.

Now the easy moral to this beautiful parable is don’t judge a book by its cover.  But we do a disservice to a parable that sought to upend a national narrative, a narrative used to keep and uphold their identity as a people when the Jewish people feared they might fracture or lose their way.  Who would Ruth have to be to scare us, to be a strange and foreign woman to us?  Maybe Muslim?  Maybe, because her sexuality scares us, a person of androgynous sexuality?  For some of us, maybe she’s a tea-partying Republican?   What if we have the national narrative so locked in our skulls that there is no way God has a chance to expand our minds and enlarge our hearts?

Remember that Ruth challenges Naomi to receive her kindness and devotion, and if Naomi flat out refuses, the story ends and Naomi dies.  Remember that Ruth challenges Boaz to do the right and moral thing, but that if he refuses, Naomi and Ruth may live on the edge till they die and that the story ends right there with no ancestor to King David.  God forever offers steadfast love through people like Ruth, but what if, what if we refuse?  What if we refuse? 

I am being forever told by different members of this congregation of the plan to get back all the saints of this church who left at one time or another.  They would like me, I’m told.  I appreciate the compliment intended.  But what if the saints we are being given for the future of this church are the new people arriving every Sunday that we never ask to be a part of a board or a committee, never ask to join the Chancel Choir, never have knowledge of the Sunday School program or the nursery or Melody Choir ready for their children, or never ask them to join us in mission and ministry?  On this All Saints Sunday, what if we refuse to see the saints God has appointed to this congregation because we have a rather narrow view of what a saint is?  Is our religious tradition of saint somewhat shallow and we require something deeper for us to see saints who bear God’s salvation for our community?

The challenge is forever before us.  Strange and foreign, yes, but mind expanding and heart enlarging.  Do not let the story end.  Accept Ruth’s challenge.  Amen.

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[1] Proverbs 31:26-27

[2] Mira Morgenstern, “Ruth and the Sense of Self: Midrash and Difference,” Judaism, Spring 1999.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Amy Jill-Levine, “Ruth,” The Women's Bible Commentary, ed. by Carol A Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), p. 78.

[5] See Amy Jill-Levine’s article for an extensive discussion of this. 

[6] Mira Morgenstern, “Ruth and the Sense.”