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The Story of Ruth part 4
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Today, we are wrapping up our sex and money and the story of Ruth series. And I hope that this has been a lot of fun for you. A lot of people have expressed that they have found the book of Ruth to be far more engaging than they expected it to be. And that is great. Now, the truth is that I have taught this series sex and money for years now.
Speaker 1:And to be honest, I was just getting a little bit bored with it. I knew it was important. The leadership team felt it was important to keep coming back to these ideas, but I just didn't feel a lot of energy for it this year. And so by changing it up, and instead of going through the scriptures, pulling out scriptures that deal with sex and money, but instead working our way through the book of Ruth this year, which is a story that very much is put in motion by economics, and it unfolds through discussions of sexuality. That's really helped me be excited about this series all over again.
Speaker 1:So hopefully that has come through. I've read Ruth a number of times in my life. I've never taught through the book this way. And so that's been fun for me. Hopefully for you as well, because this is a huge part of what we do here at Commons.
Speaker 1:I think for me, professionally, a lot of what I am interested in is helping people to understand just how fascinating the Bible can be. I think that if we learn to give it room to breathe, and we let it speak on its own terms, and then we give ourselves the room to ask good questions as we read through the text, I think we find some of the reason why this book, the bible, has endured for so long. The reason that these texts were preserved and passed on and passed down for generations. It's because people have found something of themselves in these stories. And then they saw something of God experience.
Speaker 1:And so hopefully, in some small sense, you have been surprised by how much of yourself you have seen in Ruth over these past three weeks. Now today, we have one more chapter in the story. And so we will work towards closing off this tale. But I also want to end with the Eucharist tonight. And so because I want to make sure that we have time for that, I am going to skip the recap that we often do on a Sunday.
Speaker 1:Again, our podcast and our YouTube channel are always available if you ever miss a week. Commons.church will get you all the appropriate links. But let me mention this as well. Every week, our home churches meet across the city to discuss and digest and make sense of what we talked about on Sunday. And so I get it that we can't all be here every Sunday all the time.
Speaker 1:Life happens, I know. But by joining in a home church, you get the chance to do church not just with me on a Sunday, but with people in your life who are wrestling with these ideas and working to put them into practice, IRL, as they say, which means in real life, and I just found that out this week, so I wanted to use it in a sentence. Anyway, point is you may wish a weekend, that's okay, I get it. But I would love it if every single one of us got really excited about the idea of never missing home church. Because that's where things are really at.
Speaker 1:Now, last week we talked about sexuality and about how good sex always flows out of commitment, not into it. Today, have one more chapter in this book. And so what we're looking for is to see how that commitment that Boaz made to Ruth comes with a risk and a cost attached to it. There is simply no way to love without putting something of yourself on the line, and we should all know that going in. But first, let's pray, and then we'll jump into this final chapter.
Speaker 1:God, thank you for the ways that you continue to show us just how fascinating your scriptures can be. Would we learn to read them? Not through the antiseptic lens of systematic theology or pure historical critique. But instead, would we begin to see the very human tales that lie beneath the surface of these words. So that we would imagine ourselves in these stories.
Speaker 1:So that we would see how we might react if we were in these shoes. And then when it comes to our lives in the here and now, the ways that we write our stories in your history. Would we all take what we've seen and what we've read and then transform that into compassion and grace and wisdom for living? May we learn to embody all that we see in you and your word. And so for our money and our wealth, for our desire and our sexuality, we pray that we might be continually molded and shaped into the people you imagine us to become.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Okay. Now, before we open chapter four, we have to go back and pick up some of these odd marriage regulations that we saw pop pop up in chapter three of the book. And let me add here, a few people were kind of weirded out last week when Boaz refers to Ruth as my daughter.
Speaker 1:We know that Ruth is not actually his daughter, but is it not kind of weird if he thinks of her as a daughter and yet still wants to marry her? Yes. That would be weird. But this reference, my daughter, it is literally the word for daughter in Hebrew, bat. But this is a broadly familial term, not necessarily directly a father daughter type relationship or connotation.
Speaker 1:So when you read that, you can think of it as a more general term of endearment, not a creepy kind of thing that's going on, just for that out of the way. Now that said, at the end of what we read last week, we did hear Boaz say to Ruth in verses twelve and thirteen of chapter three, although it is true that I am a guardian redeemer of your family, there is another who is more closely related than I. Stay here for the night. And in the morning, if he wants to do his duty as a guardian redeemer, good, let him redeem you. But if he is not willing, as surely as the Lord lives, I will do it.
Speaker 1:Now if you remember, they're talking about getting married, and Boaz says to her, well, let's wait till the morning. We'll see if someone else wants to do it. If they don't, then I will. Now, that is a bit of a strange idea that someone else has dibs on marrying Ruth. And to be honest, it is a little bit offensive to us.
Speaker 1:But this system, as flawed as it may have been, was actually designed to help protect the vulnerable. It worked like this. It's a little complicated, so bear with me. But the brother of any man who died before his wife had children, or specifically a son, was required to marry that woman and give her a child. This is a polygamous culture at the time.
Speaker 1:Now this was a two fold consideration. First, the woman without a son to care for her was extremely vulnerable. We talked about that in the first week of this series. Second, the brother, now having deceased, has no one to carry on his lineage. And so it fell to the second brother both to care for the widow and for his brother's legacy.
Speaker 1:This is called levirate marriage. Now that term comes from the Latin levir, which means brother, not from Levite, which is one of the tribes of Israel. And so this was a regulation that applied to all Hebrews regardless of their tribe. For reference, Deuteronomy 25 verses five to 10, it outlines the details. You can write that down for reference later.
Speaker 1:But just for fun, here is the consequences of not falling through on to liberate marriage. Deuteronomy 25 verse eight says, if the man persists in saying I do not want to marry her, his brother's widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, this is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother's family line. The man's line will be henceforth known in Israel as the family of the unsandled. And you do not want to be known as the family of the unsandled. Now, here's the thing.
Speaker 1:The underlying point is this. This is largely an honor issue in Israel. And that might seem like people are getting off the hook pretty easily here. There's no fine. There's no penalty.
Speaker 1:It's just you lose your honor if you don't follow through. You also have to realize that this is largely an honor culture that we're talking about. You see, losing your honor in the sight of the group, this is a very big deal in Israel. They are kinda like the Klingons in Star Trek. Anyone?
Speaker 1:No? Alright. No more Star Trek references for next week. But honor is very important, and it's important in a way that we really struggle to understand in our culture. Today, attention is what we crave, not honor.
Speaker 1:If people are talking about you, if people are thinking about you, it doesn't really matter why. That's a good thing. Right? I mean, does anyone here actually honestly understand why Kim Kardashian is famous? I mean, I'm just not sure.
Speaker 1:I mean, she may be a very nice person, but as far as I can tell, she is famous for being famous. That would not fly in ancient Israel. Because attention wasn't the goal. Respect, honor, dignity, this is what was. Now, there can be problems with that too.
Speaker 1:Mainly shame and social ostracization. That can happen very easily in these types of honor cultures when someone loses their honor. But there is perhaps something to be recaptured here as well. Are you interested in the fact that people talk about you? Because I can admit, as much as everyone else here, I crave attention.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, I just wear this microphone around the house just to see if my wife will pay more attention to me. She doesn't. She's very wise. But more than I want likes on Facebook, what I want to want is the right kind of healthy positive influence that you and I were designed for in community. And it is probably worth reflecting on from time to time about what it is that drives us in the social sphere.
Speaker 1:Do we crave attention, Or do we want healthy influence? Because those are not the same things. Now that aside, you may have also noticed that this liberate marriage just doesn't apply here. First of all, Boaz is not Naomi's husband's brother. He's just a relative.
Speaker 1:And second of all, Ruth is Naomi's daughter-in-law, so she's not related to Boaz at all. And so what we are actually dealing with here is, from what we can tell, a very common cultural phenomenon that goes by the terribly technical name of levirate type marriage. It's also a thing you can study in ancient Israel. Essentially, this one was even less of a binding rule. And so there wasn't necessarily honor that went along with it, but it was still a generally accepted best practice that the closest living relative would redeem a woman in this situation.
Speaker 1:Now that brings up another question. Redeem. What is going on here? We're talking about getting married and now we've switched language. Well, this relates to an odd, somewhat obscure term that Ruth uses.
Speaker 1:In English, we have it translated guardian redeemer. But in Hebrew, it is the term go El. And so what we're dealing with here is an incredibly complicated idea. First of all, it's not a noun, it's a verb. So it's not a person, it's a thing that you do.
Speaker 1:And second of all, it has a wide range of different meanings. Everything from an avenger. Not necessarily Captain America, but actually anyone who goes out and avenges someone by blood. So you kill my friend, I kill you, go ale. It can mean anyone who buys something back for money.
Speaker 1:My father falls on hard times, he sells his land, I buy it back, Go ale. Or God uses it this way a lot. It can simply mean to claim something as your own. This is mine. Go ale.
Speaker 1:And why this is important is because once we open chapter four in Ruth, we're gonna see that this guardian redeemer role or action is far more expansive than just marrying Ruth. It involves property. It involves inheritance. And it involves all kinds of secondary considerations. K?
Speaker 1:Now, with all that in mind, let's go to chapter four. This is in verse two here. Boaz took 10 of the elders of the town and he said, sit here, and they did so. Then he said to the guardian redeemer, Naomi who has come back from Moab is selling the piece of land that belonged to our relative, Elimelech. And you can see here already, the conversation between Boaz and Ruth about getting married in chapter three has now, with no explanation, jumped to the idea of Boaz buying land Naomi, her mother-in-law.
Speaker 1:This is the complexity of what I'm talking about in that term go el. Because Boaz seems to think that repatriating his relatives land, ensuring that Naomi is looked after, and marrying Ruth all come as one package. K? This is part of what I meant last week when I said that for Boaz, sexuality flows out of commitment. All of this is part of the commitment that comes before the payoff.
Speaker 1:Remember last week, I said that the question that always comes up every time I talk about sexuality in the church, sex before marriage is simply not an issue in the Hebrew scriptures. Because sex is marriage in the Hebrew imagination. Well, now we see what that means. Nobody is getting off the hook when I say sex before marriage is not an issue in Hebrew. This is still gonna cost Boaz a lot of money.
Speaker 1:He is still going to have to deal with his new mother-in-law. He is still going to have to enter into what is intended to be a lifelong commitment. Now I get it. Sometimes those commitments don't work. And I know as well as you And I have walked through that pain with family, with friends, with people here in this community.
Speaker 1:And anyone who has been through a hard breakup, anyone who has suffered through a divorce, divorce. They know that the best of intentions do not always line up with reality. But again, grace does not end where our sexuality begins. Because the reality of broken relationships in a hurtful world, as hard as that is, it should not stop us from continuing to dream about something better. If you have been in a relationship that did not end well, then please hear this.
Speaker 1:It's okay. You are loved and embraced, but don't give up on the idea of commitment. Because part of the point of grace is to help us imagine a better story than what we have experienced in the past. Now, Boaz addresses this second relative. He says to him directly, I thought I should bring the matter to your attention.
Speaker 1:Technically here, what he says is, allow me to uncover your Really has no bearing on the story, and the meaning is pretty clear. It does give you a little bit of an insight, though, into how colorful and expressive the Hebrew language is. He doesn't just say, I'm gonna tell you something. He says, let me uncover your ear and suggest that you buy in the presence of these seated here and in the presence of the elders of my people, the land. If you will redeem it, do so.
Speaker 1:But if you will not, tell me so I will know. For no one has the right to do it except you, and I am next in line. I will redeem it, he said. And everyone in the room gasped a little bit. Because this is not the ending we want to this story.
Speaker 1:Right? We don't want Ruth to end up with this unnamed boar, this slob who walks in off the street and now gets to marry her just because he's the closest relative. I mean, to be fair, we don't know anything about this guy. He's probably a very nice guy. But again, think novella, think romantic comedy.
Speaker 1:This is the moment where the story has been building and building, and now it almost falls apart on us. Because we fell in love with Ruth. Right? We realized that she was more than just a pretty Moabite face, and we fell in love with Boaz. We come to realize that he is more than just a rich Israelite suit.
Speaker 1:But now, when we're almost here, the wedding bells are ringing in the back of our minds already, and this unnamed relative is about to mess it all up. This is good storytelling. And so just when you are about to yell at the screen, no. Boaz has had a plan all along. And so he says, okay.
Speaker 1:But remember, on the day you buy the land from Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the dead man's widow, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property. Now technically here, we know that Ruth is not the dead man's widow. Naomi was. So there is some debate with scholars here about whether Boaz is trying to mislead his relative, or about whether maybe the language here is understood that Naomi is too old to be remarried, and so Ruth is an acceptable stand in for her. Bottom line is we don't know for sure, but given that Naomi is actually mentioned in the passage, it doesn't seem likely that Boaz is trying to pull a fast one.
Speaker 1:He's not very good at it if he is trying. So very likely, there is some well understood custom at play here that we just don't fully understand. Regardless, this is where our heart hangs in our throat for a minute. How will the story end? Will it be a story about justice where the rules prevail and Ruth and Naomi are cared for?
Speaker 1:But not a story about love where the two people we want to be together end up together. And if you are reading this story, imagine an oral culture being told around the campfire. This is where you pause and you wait and you hang for as long as you possibly can. Wait for it until finally the second relative answers. He says, then I cannot redeem it because I might endanger my own estate.
Speaker 1:You redeem it yourself for I cannot. Now, what he's worried about here is the fact that if he takes another wife and she has another son or potentially sons, then all of his property would be required to be divided amongst all of the sons. Ruth becomes part of his family, then her potential children become part of his family as well. And they are then entitled to a share of everything, not just the land that comes with their mother. Essentially, what he's saying is, I'd like the land.
Speaker 1:I just don't wanna risk the relationship that goes with it. I don't know her. I don't trust her. I'd rather just not get involved. And because we are talking about that levirate type marriage, that is his prerogative.
Speaker 1:There's no issue here. He is under no obligation to buy the land. He has no obligation to marry Ruth and so he simply walks away. And finally, we breathe. Because now we know that the story will end where it was always supposed to.
Speaker 1:Ruth and Boaz sitting in a tree, k I s s I n g. So it's a great story. Right? It's a beautiful story. It's a love story, and we love it.
Speaker 1:But here's the point we have to take away when it comes to this final chapter. Last week, we saw that there is no such thing as love and sex without commitment. Today, we are reminded that there is no such thing as commitment without risk. And as nice as that would be, it just doesn't happen. Because everything that we talked about last week about our sexuality, and everything that we talked about two weeks ago when it came to welcoming those on the margins onto our property and into our lives.
Speaker 1:This isn't designed to protect us. It's designed to make us vulnerable. Do you know what protects you when it comes to your sexuality? Using it exclusively as a tool to get what you want from someone else. You know what protects you when it comes to your sexuality and ensures you won't be hurt?
Speaker 1:Using it as a weapon against someone else. You know what will guarantee that you will never be taken advantage of? Giving a bit of money to a good cause, but keeping it at arm's length and away from your personal life. But do you know what will make you vulnerable and weak and open to the hardest kind of hurt imaginable as a human being? It is to give yourself over to someone completely.
Speaker 1:And so this unnamed relative, this potential guardian redeemer, he says to Boaz, I can't marry Ruth. It might endanger my estate. And we say, of course it will. But it's not just your estate, my friend. It's your heart and your hopes.
Speaker 1:It's your imagination of self. It's everything that makes you you. Because all of that will be at risk if you choose to love. Love, by its very nature, is about opening a piece of your heart to another human being. It is handing them a part of your story and then trusting that they will treat it with the dignity that it deserves.
Speaker 1:And you see, everything that God calls us to when it comes to our finances, when it comes to our sexuality, when it comes to our relationships or to our imitation of him, it doesn't keep us safe. It makes us vulnerable. But that's not a mistake. And it's not a flaw in the system, it's the design of the universe. Because whether you are Ruth or Boaz or this unnamed relative or whether you are the divine force that animates everything.
Speaker 1:Love is when you give your heart to someone and then you wait to see what they will do with it. Even if you are God, to love is to be made vulnerable. It is to risk your heart and your property, your emotions, your identity. And in fact, that's part of what the agony of the cross is all about for God. It's not just the physical pain that Jesus endured.
Speaker 1:It's that God came and he offered himself to us fully and completely and we rejected him. God came and we said, we're not interested in that. This isn't the God that we wanted. This isn't how we wanted you to look or to act or to carry yourself in the world. No.
Speaker 1:We're we're interested in something else. And so God's heart breaks. And some of you read Ruth and you hear this love story and you hear what we talk about and you want to believe that, but it feels too scary. You've been hurt before or you've been taken advantage of by someone you tried to help. Maybe you have been abused in the past.
Speaker 1:And God looks you in the eye and he says, me too. Because love is to risk. And to risk is to be made vulnerable. And to be made vulnerable is to hurt sometimes. But to hurt is to learn empathy.
Speaker 1:And to learn empathy is part of what teaches us to love all over again and to love this is divine. Because love is what transforms us from widows and foreigners and unnamed persons. And invites us deep into the heart of the story of God. And so this story ends with a description of exactly that. We are told that Ruth and Boaz have a son, and then we read as the chapter closes that Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him.
Speaker 1:And the women living there said, Naomi has a son. And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David. But years later, Matthew, the writer of the gospel would pick up on this verse and he would include it in his genealogy of the Christ. And so somehow this small story about a foreigner and a widow that teaches us about the unnamed among us and shows us the need to go beyond the bare minimums when it comes to our care for those in need.
Speaker 1:A story that reminds us that our sexuality flows out from our commitments and not into them? A simple tale that demonstrates the fact that there is no such thing as love without risk? It also somehow leads us inescapably toward the Christ. And so today, as we close our month in the book of Ruth, and as we look toward this unfolding year that sits in front of us, we wanna bring ourselves back to the table of Christ to be reminded that every good story points us here, that every expression of generosity invites us here, to know that every word of love that we encounter, it brings us back to the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus. So if you need to be named today, perhaps you have felt invisible in society or in the people around you.
Speaker 1:Or if you need to be reminded that God goes above and beyond for you, that this is not a God of rules and regulations and bare minimums. If you need assurance that your sexuality can be a good and healthy part of your being. Something that expresses the core of what it means to be human. Or if you need to know that the God of the universe has put everything on the line for you, that he would risk his heart for the opportunity to be in a connection, relationship with you, then I invite you to come to the table tonight. To take the bread and the cup, and then eat together at the table of Christ.
Speaker 1:As an expression of all that is good in the world. So as the band sings, I invite you to come. To come up the center aisle, to take the bread that represents Christ's body, the grape that represents his blood, and then to eat before returning to your seat along the outside aisles. And we'll come back, and we'll pray one more time before we close. Come and eat.