Ruth

The Twenty-firth Sunday after Pentecost
Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17

The Hebrew Bible lesson this morning reminds me of an old James Brown song. “Man made the cars to take us over the road. Man made the trains to carry the heavy loads. Man made electric light to take us out of the dark. Man made the boat for the water, just like my Bible said Noah made the ark. This is a man’s world. This is a man’s world, but it wouldn’t be nothing without a woman or a girl.”

Ruth and Naomi live in a man’s world. Men own the property; men have the money; men make the decisions; men make the rules. It’s a man’s world. But Ruth is out to prove that it wouldn’t be nothing without a woman or a girl.

While there was a famine in Judah, Elimelech emigrates with his wife, Naomi, and his two sons to the land of Moab, looking for a better life. But while they’re there, Elimelech and both his sons die, leaving Naomi and her two new Moabite daughters-in-law without any support or security. It was a man’s world, and without a man to support them, they couldn’t expect to do anything.

Naomi decides to move back to her home in Judah, where she has heard that the famine is now over. But she tells her daughters-in-law to go back to their families. After all, she has nothing to offer them. She doesn’t have any more sons that they could marry. And as far as Naomi is concerned, if a woman doesn’t have a man, she’s nothing. Naomi feels empty, worthless. She even changes her name from Naomi, which means pleasant, to Mara, which means bitterness. But she knows that her daughters-in-law are still young enough to find new husbands, so she tells them to go. After all, it’s a man’s world.

One of them, Orpah, decides to take Naomi’s advice and return to her family. But Ruth refuses to leave Naomi’s side. She declares her undying love and devotion to Naomi, and promises to stay with her forever. In fact, Ruth’s attitude is something we would expect to hear from a husband, not from a daughter-in-law.

And when they get back to Judah, Ruth takes on the role of husband by becoming Naomi’s provider. As a widow and a resident alien, God’s law allows Ruth to glean from any field behind the harvesters. The field that Ruth chooses belongs to a member of her dead father-in-law’s family: a wealthy man named Boaz. Even in this man’s world, Ruth finds a way to make her own way.

It seems fairly clear from their first meeting that they both fancy each other. Boaz gives Ruth all sorts special accommodations. And Ruth seems to share the feeling.

But there is a problem. You see, Ruth is not just any ordinary woman, she is a Moabite woman. And despite the fact that Ruth had been married to an Israelite man before, Moabites were considered blood enemies of Israel, and there were restrictions on those kinds of inter-ethnic marriages. In fact, Moabites were so looked down upon that there are special provisions in Deuteronomy saying that a Moabite can never become a member of the house of Israel. There is really no way that a respected man like Boaz could marry a Moabite widow like Ruth, nor does it seem that Boaz thinks Ruth would ever be interested in him.

Naomi, who has always thought that Ruth needs a new man to take care of her, suggests that Ruth put the moves on Boaz. To understand what’s going on, you have to know that in Hebrew, the word “feet” is a euphemism for another part of the male anatomy. So when Naomi tells Ruth to go down to the threshing floor once Boaz is good and drunk, and says, “Go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do,” she’s not talking about a pedicure.

Naomi seems to be pimping out her daughter-in-law, Ruth, and there’s not really any way of getting around it. But I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. If you look closely at the nuances of the conversations that Ruth has with Naomi and with Boaz, it seems clear that Ruth is actually the one who’s in control of things. She massages the facts when she’s talking with each of them. Being an outsider, both a hated minority and a woman, Ruth has to be able to work the system, has to be able to bend the rules if she is going to be able to do anything. And it seems that Ruth does it expertly.

The plan works. Ruth and Boaz find each other. And through some clever legal maneuvers involving the redemption of land and levirate marriage, they find a way to make their relationship acceptable to the community.

Through Ruth’s devotion and determination, she is able to bring about a new life for herself, a new life for Naomi, even a new life for Boaz, and she is able to bend the rules of society in order to get what she wants. As an often-quoted Harvard historian writes, “well behaved women seldom make history,” and Ruth is no exception to that rule. Powerful people are able to get what they want by following the rules, because the powerful make the rules. But sometimes, in order for the powerless to get what they need, they have to find a way around the rules, a way to bend the rules, sometimes even a way to break the rules.  

And that’s precisely what Ruth does. By rights, Ruth should have remained a powerless and destitute outcast. According to the rules of her society, rules in large part set down in the Bible, Ruth should not have been able to be much more than a beggar. She had no rights. She had no prospects for a future except if some man were to have pity on her and marry her. But Ruth handles all those problems by taking control of her own situation. She finds a way to make a living for herself. And when she and Boaz get together, it seems more like she’s having pity on him than that he’s rescuing her.

Ruth defies the social norms. She even defies the rules laid down in the Bible. The kind of behavior she displays should have resulted in stoning. But instead she is lifted up as a hero of Israel. Instead, she is revered as the great grandmother of King David. Women were never included in ancient genealogies, but Ruth is. Women never made history, but Ruth does. Women were never the heroes, but Ruth is. This may be a man’s world, but Ruth proves it wouldn’t be nothing without her.

So what can we learn from Ruth’s story? Well, we have a few rules too. We have all those commandments written down in the Bible. We have the rules of our nation, codified in law books and pored over by lawyers and judges. We have the rules of our church, written down in the The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church. We have the unspoken rules of our society, just as powerful as any written law. And it’s important to have rules. Without rules we’d be stuck in anarchy and chaos.

That being said, though, our rules don’t always get it right. Sometimes our rules serve to exclude people, rather than bringing people closer to God. Sometimes our rules make it easier for the powerful to take advantage of the weak rather than protecting the weak from the schemes of the powerful. Sometimes our rules get us tied up in minutia and mechanics when we should be focusing on mission. And sometimes, our rules need to be broken.

It’s said that well-behaved women seldom make history. Well, neither do well-behaved disciples. Paul is a hero of faith, not because he followed the rules, but because he broke the rules, and he died for it. Martin Luther didn’t spark a reformation in the church by following the rules, but by violating the rules that insisted the people weren’t fit to hear or interpret the bible in their own language. John Wesley didn’t start a movement of Methodists by following the rules; he did it by bending and skirting and even disobeying the rules about who should be allowed to exercise their God-given gifts and where. Martin Luther King didn’t win the admiration of a nation by following the rules, he did it by defying the rules of that very nation in order to reach a greater justice…

My sisters and brothers, sometimes the rules have to be broken. When the rules are unjust, or when the rules exclude, or when the rules distract us from our true calling, sometimes the rules have to be broken. Sometimes in order to follow God’s call we have to stop being so well-behaved. Sometimes the thing that we must do is the very thing we are not supposed to do.

And sometime you may find yourself in that position, where you have a choice. You could follow the rules, walk away, do nothing, and allow something that is legal, but wrong. Or you could break the rules, defy the expectations, risk everything, but know deep down in your heart that you had done the right thing. Our God does not want automatons who blindly follow the rules, but disciples who will do what is right, even if that means breaking the rules. I don’t know when you might find yourself in that position, having to choose between what is legal and what is right. But you will know it when it happens. And I pray that when it does, God will give you the wisdom to know what is right, and the courage to see it through.