Ruth 2:1-23
Mark & Jane’s story: seeking
Martin Luther, the great 16th century reformer who spoke about life being about God’s grace being all about God’s work and God’s story once said
This life, therefore is not righteousness but growth in righteousness
Not health but healing
Not being but becoming
Not rest but exercise.
We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it;
The process is not yet finished but it is going on;
This is not the end but it is the road.
All does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified.[1]
So when you become aware of a shortcoming in your life, do you find yourself treating it as a great crisis? Do you find yourself run to despair, do find yourself reaching for excuses, do you wish for instantaneous perfection or deliverance.
So often we face the question for ourselves
What is our life like
What’s your story
Last week as an exercise I asked you to think about if you could use only 6 words to describe yourself, what would sum you up what would you write? A 6 Word Autobiography…
Like Mother, Father, Brother, Sister, Friend
Seeker, Finder, Sought-After Found
Fearful, Forgetful, Ambitious, , Angry
Trying, Stumbling
6 words you’d use to describe yourself truthfully- not 6 words others have given you but 6 words from yourself
Naomi’s first word was Emptiness
Today Naomi adds another to hers returning
we start intersecting the lives of where we live
Where the things from our past are significant and we need to know
That they do not determine our future
so the recap on the book of Ruth so far
We started out with the story of a family from Bethlehem
Who head out to Moab to chance their hand at better fortune
After severe drought devastates the land they know
Elimelech leads his family out, his wife Naomi
His two sons Mahlon & Kilion who then marry a couple of local girls from Moab
The story we soon see spirals downwards
In this new town trying to settle in and make a new life
Within 10 years both Naomi’s husband dies followed by the death of her two sons
Naomi returns to Bethlehem
It’ s during the time of the Judges and everyone is doing what they think is right in their own eyes
Naomi’s return is a reminder for her of the loss and bitterness of the life she has now left behind in Moab
Moab is now the burial place for her husband and her only 2 sons
On the way to returning Naomi spells it out for her 2 daughters in law Orpah returns home Ruth clings to Naomi
The Moabitess will leave her land having never been before part of this new community except through marriage
Ruth sees things this way
16 “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”
Naomi is bitter in her soul, she has returned empty and lacking
She too is on her journey with God and we soon see
God is about to show her grace
It is all about to turn because this is about the great story of God
Grace is something we receive even when we don’t go looking for it
Sometimes isn’t our story that in the hard things of life
We can keep seeing bitterness
Ruth will be for us that window to display the grace of God
It’s been a long start
But now we shift our gaze and come upon the story of a Moabite widow, the daughter in law to Naomi to the story of Ruth
In Bethlehem the Barley harvest has begun
Production is in full swing
It was all hands on deck
now two widows are about to see mercy reach out to them
As we read in Ruth 2:1-3
1 Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelek, whose name was Boaz.
2 And Ruth the Moabitea said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.” Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.”
3 So she went out, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelek.
Naomi and Ruth were living on the edge of poverty
In Boaz we meet a wealthy man, a man of standing
we are also about to meet a kindness that hinted at
it will unfold in its right time
when Boaz & Ruth meet there is an exchange of kindness
listen in to what they say
Ruth 2:11-12
11 Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to
live with a people you did not know before. 12 May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”
Ruth 2:10, 13
10 At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She asked him, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?”
13 “May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord,” she said. “You have put me at ease by speaking kindly to your servant—though I do not have the standing of one of your servants.”
Boaz is as generous as he is kind
As we know Ruth gleans in the field
Takes a smoko with the harvesters and is invited to stay behind the harvesters gleaning until the field was finished
In Boaz we seem to strike a man who loves God
and is generous to the vulnerable and poor
These women need protection as we sense there is a dark shadow here where in another field Ruth as a foreigner and a widow by herself may have met with harm
Boaz is protective as well as providing
Boaz observes more than the spirit of the law
He moves beyond any sense of obligations
Like we might feel we have obligations to the poor or to our family, to those who are victims or those in need
true generosity begins when we do the those things but then also choose to go further to be surprisingly gracious and extravagantly loving in the situation
just like in forgiving someone Jesus was asked by Peter in Matthew 18:21-22 “Lord how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
Not just forgive us our sins but forgive those that sin against us
Grace means that God meets us more than half way, and pours out on us more than what we deserve, sometimes we find it hard to stop looking at ourselves to look out to see what God is doing right now
the bitterness and grief and emptiness of Ruth & Naomi now starts to give way to promise and kindness
Seeking is something we find ourselves run to so often
How many of us seek answers starting with the question WHY?
WHY GOD DID YOU…?
The surprise we start running into with what goes on in the life of Naomi, Ruth and Boaz
Is a story that models grace
God is the redeeming God who goes out in pursuit
of those who are far off and brings them
Our God is the God who takes the low and the grieving the sad and the downcast and he lifts up their faces and points them his way
he draws us on a narrow path that leads to life
Naomi stayed home bitter in her soul she is soon caught up with God’s grace shining through a generous man Boaz who let her daughter in law glean a barley field and protected her from harm
We are drawn by an inkling that something else is at play in this generosity that we see as readers but that maybe Boaz or Ruth haven’t
Except that one is generous the other seeking survival is met with abundance that would ensure she or Naomi would not starve
All this happens close on to the dramatic return after 10 years of loss
Returning home is a rich word
How often do we return after struggle
Even when we may not have left where we live but we certainly put distance on the people we love and share our lives with
Returning is also a rich word in the Bible
That same word of returning Naomi used in Ruth Chapter 1
Is the same word the prophets used for repentance
Repentance is like someone who seeks their fame and fortune in a foreign land, who turn their back on following the God they love seeking to strike out without his hep or his assistance an then watching it all fall apart and when finally on our knees then cry out for mercy and to seek out loud for forgiveness
Oh Lord have compassion on me in your unfailing love forgives us our sins, help us to forgive those who sin against us
It is fitting with Naomi’s return that she comes without any element of self-justification
She returns home which she knows in her heart is where she belongs
Like the returning prodigal daughter –she casts her life in God’s care
The saving history of God is continuous and planned is at work in the ordinary moments of our most basic days
As Paul leads us here as followers of Jesus
What do we find ourselves seeking to drive us
Romans 8:28-30 , 37-39
29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified…
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Is that your hope – is that part of your story
What’s your story as a traveller in Christ
For in the Story of Naomi and Ruth seeking gives way to finding and that we will have to wait until next week to find out
So let’s pray for each one of us now
[1] Martin Luther, *Defense of All the Articles*, Lazareth transl., as found in Grace Brame, *Receptive Prayer* (Chalice Press, 1985) p.119