I imagine that many of us would resonate with the idea: "Don't tell me what to do. Tell me a story."
That’s because stories are more than fun things. They are divine things. They fire our imaginations and upset our conventions. If a story is told well, it exposes harmful thinking and can change us in a way that rules simply can’t. It’s sad that for many “story” is a word associated with fairy tales and children. The history of the word, however, is a bit more expansive. Originally, it contained the meanings of “wise man” and the verb “to see.” To tell a story well, our forebearers believed, was to see wisely. So we shouldn't be surprised then to realize that stories are of great use to God. Eli Weisel, an author and survivor of the Holocaust, once quipped: "God made human beings because he loves stories." I wonder if a story can help us now. Can a story help us spiritually, socially, and politically, in our time, to see well and think wisely? For the next two months we are going to explore a story and its call on us as a people of faith: the story of Ruth - a widowed border-crosser, a foreigner (even enemy) on land not her own, a character of virtue whose national heritage automatically excluded her from a people she was determined to love. And yet, Ruth the excluded, it turns out, was God's story all along. And God loves stories. So let’s “story” together.
In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. 2 The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.
· Our story begins as most immigrant stories do – with politics, tragedy, and anonymity. The opening lines situate the book as briefly as they can. In the first five verses we confront a national crisis and three deaths. It’s about the time when judges ruled and famine reigned. It sets us in a time of violence (by the end of Judges 1:4, 10,000 men have been killed), famine, even irony, for Bethlehem literally means “House of Bread.” These elements of human need create displacement which moves people. They still do. Most people don’t leave their homes for a whim, particularly for another country and a hated one at that. People don’t leave what’s familiar at great risk for themselves to simply create problems for others. People leave to live.
· Isn’t it interesting that all of the characters are first introduced anonymously and only later by their names. That is so often the immigrant experience. When we don’t use names, what should we call such travelers? What are the words that we use to describe such hungry, border crossers? Are they immigrants, refugees, aliens, asylum seekers? Should we call them illegal (breaking Deut.), God-less (going to Moab), undesirables, job stealers, burdens? When we don’t use names – we get to fill in our own blanks and offer little room for stories. When we don’t give names, we reduce people to demographic statistics and stereotypes.
· So perhaps we should say their names: Elimilek, Naomi, Mahlon, Killian.Perhaps there is no better time to begin this series than on the birthdate of this immigrant nation and to remember that very few of us aren’t part of an immigrant story. Immigrants with names. Naming is always a holy act – a storied act which has real power. My immediate family has two immigrants in it: my wife Marianne and our son-in-law Toki and to name them I want to place a picture of each of them in the trunk before us. I want to invite you to do the same – say their name and bring up their picture or memorial object.
· Alongside these personal names, however, there are bigger names, powerful names, like Moab and Judah and these nations have a history that seeks to determine the future of people. Deuteronomy 23:3-6 enshrined Israelite policy for Moab: 3No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD. 4 For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram Naharaim to pronounce a curse on you. 5 However, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you. 6 Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them as long as you live.
· Deuteronomy is policy because of the historical encounter from Numbers 22, when the Israelites, recently freed from Egypt, were travelling through the wilderness on the way to the land of promise and they camp in the land of Moab. The King of the Moabites, Balak, terrified by the number of people he would be required to supply and aware of their supposed reputation for “licking up everything around them” (Num. 22:4), refuses their request for aid and shelter. Balak even hires a man to pronounce curses on them as he expels them from his land. The story of Ruth stirs up this ancient antipathy between two nations, in order to explore that policy and history with a twist. So follow along – Israelites struggling with famine, flee to Moab, a land cursed by God for their lack of hospitality to refugees, where they themselves are refugees who, we shall soon learn, are treated with kindness and care by the cursed.
3 Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
· Living in Moab was one thing but marrying Moabites was a different thing altogether.
· Not simply alluding to the national problem of hospitality for Moabites. The author of Ruth also seeks to explore another deeply painful and fraught stereotype as well, specifically of Moabite women. The stereotype comes again from a story found in Numbers 25 about supposedly sexually voracious Moabite women who lead poor innocent Israelite men astray, calling them to worship other gods. The account then tells of a policy to execute the guilty and that ultimately 24,000 people died in plague that afflicted the Israelites.
· The first hearers of this story would not have been surprised that Mahlon and Kilion were dead. Of course they were. Their marriages could only end in heartbreak because – in the stereotypes of the world being explored – there is no way these scheming, manipulative Moabite women can remain faithful. Their Biblical thinking would have been direct and straight-forward: “We know the Scriptures. We are certain of their meaning. We know who Moabite women are. We know who God is. Death was inevitable, right?” Certainty often precedes violence.
6 When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. 7 With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah. 8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home.
· At this point we need to remember again that so far it is the Israelite, Naomi, who is a heroic, immigrant woman. In vs. 6 we see her and her daughters-in-law preparing for the journey but in vs. 8 she changes her mind in vs. 8. Why does she change her mind about Ruth and Orpah coming with her? Perhaps she recognizes that their lives would be better if they stayed. She will order Ruth and Orpah to turn back three times (vss. 8, 11, and 12). Perhaps she worries about their reception at home. Perhaps she worries – given the law enshrined in Deuteronomy and national sentiment– that Judah could never be their home, that their reception would not be as kind as that of Moab. And kindness is what is on Naomi’s mind.
May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. 9 May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud 10 and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”
· And now the shoe drops, Naomi offers a potentially radical and traitorous blessing. She offers them a blessing in which their kindness is named as the kindness which God is asked to parallel and reciprocate. In vs. 8 Naomi prays, “May the LORD be as kind [hesed] as you. . .”. It’s a kindness to the dead and the living. And spoiler alert – God is a silent character in this story. God never speaks, is never seen to overtly act, offers no divine interventions. And here God’s own kindness is illustrated by two, pagan women from a country who were never to be a part – ever – of God’s people in the first place.
· A key word in the book of Ruth is this word chesed, often translated as “kindness” or “loving-kindness.” Part of the immigrant question hinges on this word and its relationship to law and policy. In the Jewish tradition, chesed is a vital contributor to tikkun olam, which in Hebrew means “the repairing of the world.” So where does this story leave us so far?
Perhaps one of the repairings of the world and our treatment of foreigners is for the book of Ruth to name our depersonalizing stereotypes and overturn them. That’s what a stereotype is – it’s a general story about anyone without a name which of course means a story about no-one. Such self-examination and challenge, however, so often derided in contemporary politics, as being unpatriotic or traitorous, is considered in the Bible to be virtuous. Ancient readers were forced to face the uncomfortable prospect that Moab welcomes an Israelite family who finds a lasting home there for at least 10 years. Their sons find wives, who continue to care for their mother-in-law even after the deaths of their husbands, when tradition would dictate their obligations end. By not leaving Naomi when they were entitled to and moving on to other prospective husbands they show themselves not to be the sexual sources of temptation they were thought to be but fierce and faithful women who reveal God’s kindness. The book intends to break a circle of blame that actually exists within the Bible itself. This is a radical theological act in which the Bible interrogates itself and moves to a liberating position – not so much a new policy but a new story – one that brings about a new king and even the savior of the world (See Matt. 1). The Bible names and often begins with our exclusions so that inclusion can come in like a hero and save the day. I don’t know why. Perhaps God likes the drama of it all. We aren’t told the reason but we do get to enjoy the story. And God loves stories.
Sawubona is a common greeting in Zulu. It can be translated as “I see you; you are valued to me, and I acknowledge your full humanity”. The traditional response Shiboka is equally profound and poetic, meaning: “I exist for you”. So at the outset, we are invited to see, to learn names, to acknowledge histories, accept kindnesses that fly in the face of stereotypes, and recognize that our enemy can reflect the kindness of God. Sowubona, my friends. Shiboka, dear ones. Amen!
