Second Sunday after Trinity

Ruth Ps. 33 The word of the Lord; Ruth 2:1—20a Ruth meets Boaz; Luke 8:4—15 The parable of the sower

'Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the Lord made her conceive, and she bore a son . . . They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.' Ruth 4:13, 17

A romantic novel

In the Old Testament you'll find one of the oldest and most beautiful examples of what's now called the Romantic Novel. Like many historical fictions it's based on real people and actual events, written up to make a gripping tear-jerker. The name of the book is Ruth.

The story so far

It's a story about events in the past. Ruth wasn't Jewish; she came from Moab, in the mountains south-east of the Dead Sea. Her mother-in-law, Naomi, was a Jew who'd emigrated to Moab with her sons, one of whom married a local girl, Ruth. But Ruth's married happiness was short-lived, for not long after the wedding day her new Jewish husband died. What could she do now? Her own people regarded her mixed marriage with distaste, and she'd never find another husband in those parts. So, to escape starvation, she decided to accompany her mother-in-law who was returning to Israel, a distant land which Ruth had never seen. Ruth said a lovely thing to Naomi:

‘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 ... [not even death will part] me from you!'

They travelled back to Bethlehem, a town whose name makes Christians and Jews alike prick up their ears, and there the local landowner was a man called Boaz. Ruth was a foreigner, an alien, an immigrant; she knew no local people, little of their language, and nothing of their customs. But Naomi had explained to her daughter-in-law a very practical Jewish custom. If a Jewish man died, his widow wasn't left to fend for herself, but the dead man's brother took her into his home, married her, and she bore children to him who were counted as the dead man's children, and would support her in her old age. Now Boaz wasn't a brother to Ruth's late husband, but he was next-of-kin. The next part of the story's very delicately told. Naomi tells Ruth to glean the ears of wheat left behind by the reapers, and Boaz notices this beautiful foreigner. Keats suggested that the song of the nightingale was . . .

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.

Anyway, that night Boaz wakes up to find Ruth lying at his feet. ‘He said, "Who are you?" And she answered, "I am Ruth, your servant; spread your cloak over your servant, for you are next-ofkin." ' He draws his cloak over her; suffice it to say that he goes to court to affirm his right, as next-of-kin to her late husband, to marry the beautiful widow.

Anti-racist

So the story had a happy ending. But actually it's an anti-racist novel, and the sting's in the tail, where it mentions King David – until Jesus, the greatest of the kings of Israel. The final words of the book of Ruth are: ‘Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the LORD made her conceive, and she bore a son. They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.' So the novel was written after David became king, and some think even five hundred years later, at the time when Ezra was telling every Jewish man who'd married a foreigner to divorce his foreign wife, to avoid the abomination of miscegenation, and mixed-race children diluting the purity of the race. ‘Hang on a minute,' the anonymous author of this political novel's saying, ‘even the great King David had a "filthy foreign woman", as you call them, as his great-grandmother!'

Aliens

So this nice mushy romantic story turns out to be very controversial, today, just as when it was written. The Chief Rabbi recently pointed out that the Hebrew Scriptures in as many as thirty-six places tells us to love ‘the alien'. We don't call them that today, as the word has come to apply to extra-terrestrials! We call them foreigners. Immigrants. Asylum-seekers. If they have a darker skin than ours, we have some even ruder words. The Bible says we have a duty to respect them and care for their needs. Jesus was the ‘Son of David', so Ruth was Jesus's ancestor. Ruth the Moabitess, the foreign wife. Surely that lays a duty on every Christian to respect every foreigner as if they were our own family?

Suggested hymns

Brother, sister, let me serve you; Christ is the world's true light; In Christ there is no east or west; We are marching in the light of God (Siyahamba).