"A Necessary Story" (Ruth 3:1-5 & 4:13-22)

"A Necessary Story" (Ruth 3:1-5 & 4:13-22)

Preached by Sam Locke on 11/11/2018 at St. Peter’s United Church of Christ (Carmel, IN)

Audio File

Genealogy Handout

Ruth and Boaz at the Threshing Floor

3 Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, “My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you. 2 Now here is our kinsman Boaz, with whose young women you have been working. See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor. 3 Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing floor; but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. 4 When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do.” 5 She said to her, “All that you tell me I will do.”

The Genealogy of David

13 So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the Lord made her conceive, and she bore a son. 14 Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; and may his name be renowned in Israel! 15 He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him.” 16 Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse. 17 The women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.

18 Now these are the descendants of Perez: Perez became the father of Hezron, 19 Hezron of Ram, Ram of Amminadab, 20 Amminadab of Nahshon, Nahshon of Salmon, 21 Salmon of Boaz, Boaz of Obed, 22 Obed of Jesse, and Jesse of David.

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Good morning, my friends. I start this morning with a heads-up: today, we are going to talk about sex … and family history … and Christmas. At least one of those topics isn’t always easy to talk about, certainly not in church. We can’t talk about today’s verse without these subjects as we bravely study the word of God together.

I love Christmas. I’m that guy who annoys you every year. I started listening to Christmas music on November 1st, while the remnants of Halloween candy and costumes were still flung all over my house. I smile when Christmas decorations go on sale in what seems like August. My tree will be up, decorated and lit well in advance of Thanksgiving. I can’t wait to wear the ugly sweaters I bought on clearance last year. I am not in the camp of pastors and theologians who only want to sing Advent songs until Christmas Eve. What the heck is an Advent song? You especially don’t like Christmas lovers like me this time of year, it is so close we can taste it, literally, even, in the red Starbucks cups. But Christmas just isn’t here yet, giddy as some of us might be. This past Thursday illustrated the situation well. Lori, Becca, Cheryl, Addie and I met for our monthly worship planning meeting. Imagine my pain as we discussed four Sundays of Advent music with December 24th staring out from the calendar like an oasis in the desert. Can we please just fast-forward to this happy moment?

I’m going to make the case for you this morning that the Book of Ruth, in a sense, is part of the Christmas story. If you are like me and love this holiday, the wait is over, we begin right now. Here is the connection: At the end of our scripture reading today, we get a few verses many of us, myself included, simply gloss over. A genealogy passage. A story as rich and diverse as the Book of Ruth ends like your talkative aunt’s lengthy retelling of her latest discovery on ancestry.com. Let’s hear those words again, the first part is pretty interesting: “13 So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the Lord made her conceive, and she bore a son. 14 Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; and may his name be renowned in Israel! 15 He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him.” 16 Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse. 17 The women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.”

Let’s pause there for a moment, it is easy to get confused. The passage says that a son has been born to Naomi and that her connection with the baby was so close she was even able to nurse him. Remember, Ruth - not Naomi - is the birth mother to this baby. And, yet, Naomi is nursing the baby. I am no expert on matters of lactation, but this seems like a pretty big feat to me.

This first part of the scripture is interesting enough, it might be a nice ending. But, no such luck, the author gives us just a little more than we want, topped off with a bunch of names we can’t pronounce. And, don’t let us pastor types fool you, these are as hard for us as the are for you. The Book of Ruth continues with these closing verses: “18 Now these are the descendants of Perez: Perez became the father of Hezron, 19 Hezron of Ram, Ram of Amminadab, 20 Amminadab of Nahshon, Nahshon of Salmon, 21 Salmon of Boaz, Boaz of Obed, 22 Obed of Jesse, and Jesse of David.”

Now, here is how we get to Christmas. The story continues, not just in the Book of Samuel on the next page of our Bibles but also several hundred pages and several hundred years later in the Gospel according to Matthew. I’m talking about the opening lines of Matthew that we jump over and ignore to get to the angel filling Mary and Joseph in on what is about to transpire. A similar accounting can also be found in Luke’s Gospel. Let’s take a look at the opening lines of Matthew, the opening lines of the entire New Testament: “1 An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers … and more and more and more...and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of King David.”

Insert several more generations of names I can’t pronounce and the author of Matthew continues:“16 and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who will be called the Messiah.”

There is the linkage. Jesus can point to Ruth as his umpteenth great-grandmother the way that aunt at Thanksgiving tells us how we are related to Pocahontas and Queen Victoria.

Many biblical scholars and preachers rightfully lift up the Book of Ruth for its unique literary qualities and movement toward diversity and inclusion. But I don’t believe the early fathers of the church chose to include Ruth within the official book of scriptures because it was a good story, because it was well written or because it was rich in diversity. I wish that were true, but that decision just wouldn’t make sense with the rest of the data we have on the culture of the time.

The Book of Ruth is important to the Christian faith because you cannot get to Christmas without it. You cannot get to Jesus without spending some time with the queer and intertwined story of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz. Again, without Ruth, there is no Jesus. I suspect the church fathers would have rather not talked about empowered women, queer possibilities, transactional sex, mixed-race families, and second marriages. Including Ruth’s story isn’t a grand gesture toward diversity, it is an absolute necessity the creators of the biblical canon couldn’t find a way to maneuver around. Which, to me, makes it all the more powerful.

The Book of Ruth sets off a chain of events that makes our faith tradition possible. One of those weird and providential sequences only God could know was possible. We can all come up with examples of these stories in our own lives and cultures.

What would have happened if I had done this instead of that? What if I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time? I encounter this phenomenon a lot. I am a gay man who was married to a woman I loved dearly before coming out. I get asked different variations of the same question all the time, questions about my coming out. Questions like, are you mad you couldn’t come out sooner? Do you regret waiting so long? If you could do it all over, would it unfold differently? And, of course, there would have been many benefits to coming out sooner. It would have meant the world was a more accepting place, I wouldn’t have caused so much pain for a person I loved deeply, and on and on. But, it’s not how my story unfolded. On the other side of the coin, had I recognized my sexuality sooner, my two children, Molly and Spencer - the two most important people in the world to me, with so much potential in front of them would likely not be here either, I reality I cannot even fathom. Sometimes the best stories - like the Christmas story - are stories that, without a few oddities mixed in, might not have happened at all. This is precisely what we get with Ruth: a beautifully weird story that has a direct influence on the entire course of human history.

Lori began our study of Ruth last week. The lectionary we use moves quickly and only gives us two weeks to talk about this entire book. Lori’s lectionary passage covered the beginning and mine jumps to the end, but a lot has happened in between. Let me quickly fill you in: As Lori explained last week, Naomi’s husband and sons die, leaving her with two daughters-in-law as family. Naomi tells both of her daughter-in-laws to leave - not out of harshness, but in accordance with the accepted traditions of the time. One listens and the other, Ruth, defies tradition and stays. Ruth and Naomi form a wonderful relationship described with some of the most beautiful poetry in the Bible, language that forms the basis for what we commonly use as our wedding vows even today. These two women begin to build a life together. The middle of the story involves Naomi’s recognition that their family - that is, she and Ruth - would not be able to survive without means and resources, so Ruth goes to work and Naomi hatches a plan that would be the envy of the best attorneys in town.

It is clear to me that this is no typical familial relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. If it were a typical relationship, Ruth would have been like the other daughter-in-law and left. Staying wasn’t simply a sweet act of care, it was defiance of cultural norms. You don’t stick around in a situation like this, evidence to me of a much deeper connection. We know Naomi values Ruth more than seven sons and, knowing the value the ancient world projected onto women, that says an awful lot. Loving a daughter-in-law who was a foreigner - a Moabite - over the prospect of seven productive men is a statement a reader then and a reader now should know is absurd, unless there is something more. We know their love is described with words we still use today to seal relationships:

“Do not press me to leave you

   or to turn back from following you!

Where you go, I will go;

   where you lodge, I will lodge;

your people shall be my people,

   and your God my God.

17 Where you die, I will die—

   there will I be buried.

May the Lord do thus and so to me,

   and more as well,

if even death parts me from you!”

Till death do us part. When the women arrive in Bethlehem they are met with ridicule by the other women in town. The Book doesn’t tell us why, though I suspect the disdain isn’t about a widow hanging out with her daughter-in-law. More likely, it was the clarity of their deeper connection. We know Ruth and Naomi built a life together based on respect and mutuality. Ruth was a Moabite. A reader of the time would have associated this term with sexual relationships many in Bethlehem would have thought to be against-the-grain. For me, the evidence is strong enough to suggest that Ruth and Naomi may be a biblically-affirmed same-sex relationship. A relationship not just affirmed but that will become the matriarchal top of the messianic genealogy. To be clear, historians don’t all share this view, but it’s not widely refuted either. It is one possibility among many possibilities. The truth is, like most biblical stories, we just don’t know. But I want to invite you to imagine with me the transformative implications such an affirmation would have on the world today.

You’ve been waiting for this, it’s finally time to talk about sex.

Before we can explore the deep nature of Ruth and Naomi’s relationship, we have a problem. For this genealogy to work, we need a male for some practical reasons. A new character, Boaz, enters the story which takes us to the first section of our scripture this morning: “3 Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, “My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you. 2 Now here is our kinsman Boaz, with whose young women you have been working. See, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor. 3 Now wash and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing floor; but do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. 4 When he lies down, observe the place where he lies; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do.” 5 She said to her, “All that you tell me I will do.”  

The story continues but the lectionary stops us here - likely because a movie version of the next several verses would have to be rated NC-17. Let’s just be blunt - this is a biblical sex scene, though you might not have noticed it. Hebrew literature is rich with sexual innuendo that can pass for boring stories if you don’t know what you are looking for. There are many “code words,” even within the five verses we just read. The term “threshing floor” isn’t an agricultural term in this context, it is a place where people have sex, specifically sex-for-hire. Ruth isn’t a prostitute who regularly visits the threshing floor, so we can infer that, whatever type of sexual relationship this was between Ruth and Boaz, it was transactional in nature. The phrase lie down, in this context, doesn’t mean to sit for a rest, it means to have sex. And our last code word is feet ... the association people joke about between men and their shoe sizes, well, you might not have known that it has Old Testament origins, with feet being a common euphemism for male genitalia. Uncovering one’s feet has nothing to do with socks and shoes.

Take a deep breath. I told you we were talking about sex. But, for the most part, it’s over, you can stop being nervous.

I wouldn’t blame you for being little confused - I just made the claim that Ruth and Naomi were potentially a lesbian couple and then we get one of the more overt sexual narratives in the Bible. How can these things fit together? You might remember Naomi was figuring out the family finances while playing matchmaker to Ruth and Boaz. As it turns out, Boaz is actually a close relative of Naomi’s dead husband. For those of you keeping track of the family tree, that means he is not a blood relative to Ruth.

Since we are dealing with more genealogy, which can be a little tough to follow, I’ve made you a chart. Lori and Becca are going to share those with you to illustrate how all these people fit together.

Sometimes we think about our family trees today and think we are somehow weird because there are so many twists and turns. The Book of Ruth assures us that we are hardly weird - human interactions with one another have been complex and tangled for a really long time.

Under the law of the time, a male next of kin must redeem property rights and, along with it, responsibility for caring for Naomi and, in this case, Ruth. Did you catch the term I used for this legal process? It was redemption. The transaction requires a redeemer. Lest you think I’ve forgotten about the Christmas connection, recall that Redeemer is one of terms we commonly call Jesus. We know the sons are dead and so it is a bit unclear who these rights will fall to. Naomi is presumably too old to bear a child, so remarrying would just lead to the same property dilemma a few years down the road. Ruth has no claim of her own to the property and is young enough she could marry a wide selection of men her own age if that is what she wanted to do. But, no, she coalesces around what I picture as a sweet but dirty old man. Boaz presents the perfect scenario. He is closely related enough to Naomi’s dead husband that, with only a few barriers, he can set up a legal scenario to redeem the property.

We don’t get this from the Book of Ruth, but other Hebrew literature suggests Boaz was twice the age of Ruth - Boaz around 80 and Ruth around 40 at the time of their marriage, hardly a prime reproductive matchup. The same literature suggests Boaz only lived a few days after his marriage to Ruth, and presumably the consummation thereof, the scripture telling us the “Lord made her conceive.” This sounds like yet another connection to the Christmas story. Against all odds, Ruth becomes pregnant. We learned earlier that Naomi nursed the couples baby. If Boaz wasn’t around, we can assume Naomi and Ruth acted as parents to the child together. A baby that, because of Boaz, could now be Naomi and Ruth’s redeemer … a male next-of-kin for Naomi to pass on her wealth to, while gaining security for herself and Ruth in the process. At a point in history where Ruth and Naomi couldn’t openly be what they may have been, these women figured it out together. They found loopholes in the legal system of the day to allow their family to do the things other families could do without any barriers. They did what they had to do to survive, and the chain of events they set into motion are incredible.

Lori shared last week that the names used in Ruth had deep meanings. So, you won’t be surprised to learn that this holds true for Boaz as well. Boaz means a strong redeemer or a pillar of strength. I like to think of Boaz and Joseph, jesus’ dad, as exceptionally strong men. There is no narrative to suggest they were dumb or being taken advantage of. By all accounts, both were willing participants in the stories they were apart of. Boaz and Joseph were strong enough to help women they respected do what they needed to do in a society that otherwise wouldn’t have let them. Are we strong enough to do that?

Boaz and Joseph were comfortable enough with themselves to ignore the norms of the time in order to do the right thing. Are we strong enough to be who we are?

Are we strong enough to build relationships with the people around us who are different?

Are we strong enough to not let a political stance get in the way of our love for someone else?

Are we strong enough to have the self-confidence to ignore what society tells us we should do and, instead, reflect in our actions the irresistible love and grace granted to us by God alone.

The entirety of the Gospel message and, as we’ve seen today, even the Hebrew scriptures remind us we are called not just to accept our loved ones for who they are but that we are also called to dive into the trenches with them, helping them redeem the joy they, too, were promised by God.

Boaz and Joseph were strong enough. And they both, hundreds of years apart, model this fundamentally Christian definition of the word strength - non toxic masculinity, if you will - in a little town called Bethlehem.

I said something earlier that was only partially true. I do start listening to Christmas music on November 1st, at least as the main features of my playlist. But, the truth is, I listen to Christmas music all year long, I never take it out of my iTunes. On a random day in June while walking to work or pretending to workout, a Christmas song will pop into my headphones, and I’ll smile from ear to ear. The hope of the Christmas story is present in our lives all of the time. It was present in this Old Testament account written 500 years before Jesus entered the scene, it was present in the story we’ll celebrate next month, and it is a hope still present for each of us today, if only we take a moment to see it. In this moment, we may have no idea how things we are doing could lead to transformational outcomes, but they may. The sequence of events we are setting into motion could be beyond anything we can even grasp. More importantly, the sequence of events being set into motion by the people who we label other, are just as transformational. That’s how strong our God is. We don’t know when, where or with whom the next transformative sequence of events may start with.

Whatever those events may end up being, I pray we each can do them within relationships as loving and unconditional as Ruth and Naomi’s, however their relationship was defined or labeled. I pray we can each muster up the strength of Boaz, moving quickly with the conviction of our beliefs. And I pray we each find a familiar place, a community of people, or even an unlikely story that reminds us of the redeeming power of God’s unconditional love. Amen.