God Has Done Great Things for Me
Ruth 4:1-22; Luke 1:46b-55
The elders of Bethlehem said to Boaz: “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel.”
The women of Bethlehem said to Naomi: “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a Redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! This child shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age.”
Another woman who came to Bethlehem to bear a child said to her cousin Elizabeth: “The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. He has come to the aid of his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
On one level, the Book of Ruth tells a classic love story. Boy meets girl gleaning in boy’s field, girl proposes to boy on the threshing floor, boy outwits another boy to win the girl, they get married, they have a baby, and everyone lives happily ever after. A story that the future King David no doubt heard growing up about how his grandfather Obed was born, a story passed on through the generations in Israel’s royal family, and to us more than three thousand years later. And yet one in which we can see people like ourselves, even so long ago, falling in love, finding their way to a life together, overcoming their losses and their fears, finding blessing and healing.
On another level, as we have seen over these past few weeks, the Book of Ruth in the written form that we have it today makes a very particular point in the culture wars of Jerusalem in the first years of return from the Exile. In a time of trouble and confusion, when some thought the main problem was Moabite women marrying Hebrew men and weakening the purity of Israel, the tale is told of Ruth the Moabite woman of great faith and nobility, of Boaz the Hebrew man devoted to God’s law, to doing right by the widow and the stranger, generous and kind. And the God who obviously blessed and was pleased by their love for one another and through them blessed the whole people of God.
We see this at the beginning of the story today. The night before, Ruth came to Boaz and named Boaz her redeemer, her go’el, the relative who would rescue her and Naomi and restore the family of their late husbands. Boaz was willing to do it, and even though there was one other relative who under the law had the first responsibility of being the redeemer, Boaz promised Ruth he’d make sure the redemption happened. And at dawn, after sending Ruth home to Naomi with food and provisions, Boaz heads for the city gate, where all the town business was transacted.
And of course, it just so happens – amazing in this story, how many things just so happened, as in any love story, how many chance things just happen to work out, as if some unseen hand were bringing two people together – it just so happens that this other relative comes walking by. This other relative, whose is not named in this story. There are a lot of names in this story – poor Richard who had to read all those names today! – everybody else’s name was remembered in this story, but this other relative’s name has been forgotten. Which tells us something about this other relative, doesn’t it?
Boaz quickly gathers ten elders of Bethlehem – ten elders being the quorum for witnessing legal transactions like property sales and marriage contracts. And Boaz tells this relative, in the presence of the witnesses, that Naomi is going to have to sell Elimelech’s estate, since her husband and her sons are all dead and she has no heirs, and the relative is the first one in line to buy the farm. Yes, the relative says, I’ll buy the farm and add it to my own. It’s always good to be the biggest landowner in town, don’t you think? To have the biggest empire, the most property, the richest farm? Sure, I’ll take the land of Elimelech (may he rest in peace) for my own.
Wonderful, says Boaz. Now of course you realize that this means you will have to marry Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Elimelech’s son Mahlon, and that your children with her will inherit the property in that family’s name – not in your name. You realize, of course, that this is the way that it works. Oh, says the relative. You mean this is going to actually cost me money? That I’m not going to get to add this land to my family estate? Well, you know, much as I’d like to help, I don’t have that kind of money, Boaz. And Boaz says, Hey, no problem. I’ll take care of it.
Do you hear the point that the compiler of this story is making to his (or her) contemporaries in the post-Exile community in Jerusalem? You can be like Old What’s-His-Face, he didn’t want anything to do with marrying a Moabite woman. You can think of yourself and your property and maintaining the purity of your line, if that’s what you think is important – and nobody even remembers his name. Or you can be like Boaz, a true son of Abraham, protector of the widow and the stranger, generous and kind, who did not see his beloved Ruth as some foreign contagion, but as the faithful and worthy and honorable woman that she was. Which one was a blessing for Israel? Which one did the will of God? Which one do you think God wants you to be like today?
When you realize the time in which this story was written down, how pointed – almost political – it was in its day, the book of Ruth is more than just a love story. It’s a love story, yes, but a love story about the kind of love that God wants and blesses – a love that, like God’s love, does not respect the lines that human beings draw, that is not bound by the expectations that human beings have. A love that is not constrained by fear of the other and the different, a love that does not put itself first, a love that brings healing and blessing to those who were lost and afraid. And that’s the version of this love story that made it into our Bible, that’s the version of the story that speaks God’s word to us today.
Because – and this is perhaps a third level to this story – even though this is a story about people, a story about Ruth and Boaz and Naomi and their family, a story about regular people – ancestors of a king, of course, but still ordinary people doing ordinary things – it is also a story about God. About how the elders of Bethlehem, witnessing the agreement between Boaz and the other relative and Boaz’s promise to marry Ruth, praying for God’s blessing on Boaz and Ruth. How? By praying that Ruth would be like the ancestral women of Israel, Leah and Rachel, the two wives of Jacob, that the story of Ruth and Boaz would become part of the bigger story of God and God’s people.
About how, when Ruth and Boaz have a child together, the women of Bethlehem give thanks to God, and give thanks especially for how this child is a blessing to Naomi. In chapter one Naomi returned to Bethlehem saying her name should be Bitter, because she has lost everything, because God has treated her bitterly. And now the women of Bethlehem praise God for the blessing and joy that Naomi has been given, that her days of bitterness and grief have given way to hope for the future.
And, although we have no words of Ruth herself in this last chapter of the book that bears her name – the gospel gives us the words of another woman of Ruth’s family line, another woman who would also give birth to a redeemer in Bethlehem, another woman whose being with child appeared scandalous to some, also giving thanks to God. The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And Mary puts what God is doing in her time and in her life within the context of the whole story of what God has done in Israel – He has come to the aid of his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise made to our ancestors, the promise made to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Boaz and Ruth, and David, and their descendants forever.
And because we have been drawn into the same promise of God, this story of David’s ancestors, this story of Mary’s and Jesus’s ancestors, has become our family story as well. May we, all of us here this morning, may we be like our ancestors and discover the hand of God working on our lives. May we be like Ruth, courageous, daring in love, faithful and devoted. May we be like Boaz, a person of integrity, seeking to obey God’s law even in secret. May we be like Naomi, loved despite our failings and our hurts, finding ourselves overwhelmed by God’s unexpected blessings. May the fingerprints of God be all over our lives, and may we respond with gratitude and joy.
(The prayer in the last paragraph is adapted from a prayer of Tanya Marlow, https://tanyamarlow.com/a-life-stitched-with-prayer-ruth-4-and-overview/).