There are several good ways to
read the Bible.
Sometimes I like to read it an
old fashioned way.
It works like this: we study the
social situation
–
what was going on at
the time the story was written –
and
look at the history leading up to that situation.
That
way we can figure out the point
the author was trying to make.
There
are other ways to read the Bible,
and we will still get a point out of
it,
just not necessarily what the author
meant.
In
the case of Ruth, the author was making a point
that speaks to the United States today,
and it’s a point churches might learn
from.
King
David was the centerpiece of Jewish history.
David
was the ultimate Jew.
He
was their George Washington, Abe Lincoln,
and FDR all rolled into one.
David
was everything a Jew ought to be.
Our
story happened before David,
but it didn’t get written until after
David.
After
David, the Jewish Empire fell apart.
Finally,
Babylon conquered Judah
and carried the upper class away into
exile,
leaving only the blue-collar workers
behind.
For
40 years, the upper class exiles in Babylon
kept tight with each other and
practiced their religion
scrupulously dotting ever I and
crossing every T.
Back
home in Judah, the blue-collar folks
had not been so precise.
They
were more easy going with their rituals.
To
make matters worse, there was a tide of immigration.
Foreigners
from neighboring Moab moved into Judah
and mixed in with the blue collar Jews.
Jews
and Moabites even married and had children.
Then
the exile ended.
The
upper class Jews came home
and were not pleased to see what had happened.
They
began whipping the place into shape religiously
and cleaning it up ethnically.
They began a massive deportation
effort
to
get rid of all those unclean Moabites.
Most particularly they wanted to
get rid
of
the Moabite wives of Jewish men,
and
their little half-breed children.
When our author saw families
being torn apart
by
this deportation policy,
it reminded him of Ruth.
A few hundred years earlier, two
Jews,
Elimilech and Naomi, lived in Judah,
until
there was a famine.
When they couldn’t make a living
in Judah,
they
packed up and moved where they could.
There was precedent for it.
During an earlier famine, their
ancestors had moved to Egypt.
But Elimilech and Naomi didn’t go
that far.
They moved to the country next
door.
They moved to Moab.
Elimilech got a job and worked in
Moab.
Their sons both married Moabite
women.
Eventually Elimilech and his sons
died.
By now the economy had picked back
up in Judah,
so
Naomi decided to go home.
But her daughter-in-law Ruth
wanted
to
keep what was left of the family together.
So Ruth the Moabite woman moved
to Judah with Naomi.
There Ruth worked in the fields;
but
her story doesn’t end like that.
It’s frankly a pretty racy story.
She sort of slept her way to the
top.
The author doesn’t criticize her
for it.
He’s too focused on admiring her
family loyalty.
The prurient details of the
romance between Ruth
and
the Jewish gentleman farmer Boaz
just
keep us reading the story to its conclusion.
The
conclusion goes like this:
Boaz
the Jew marries Ruth the Moabite.
They
have a son Obed, whose son is Jesse,
whose son is - - - - David!
David,
the ultimate Jew,
had Moabite blood in his veins.
Under
the deportation policy at the time this was written,
David would have been deported.
His
grandma Ruth would never have been let in the country.
If
she had snuck in,
the Judean Immigration Control & Enforcement
would
have pulled up in their black SUV’s
to Boaz’s house one night,
told
Ruth to kiss Boaz good-bye,
and
the Jews would never have won their freedom
from
the Philistines because David
would
never have been born.
The author of Ruth could have
made his point
just
by quoting God’s law. Deuteronomy 24: 17-22.
It commands Jews
to
welcome and care for aliens in their land
because
they were once aliens in Egypt.
But the author preferred to tell
us this story
that
makes a subtle reference to the law.
Boaz met Ruth while she was
gathering
the
gleanings from his field.
Those gleanings were left for her
as an alien
because
God specifically commanded it
at
Deuteronomy 24: 17-22.
So what was the moral of the
story for Judah
in
those days after the exile ended
when
the upper class leaders
were
deporting the Moabites?
What might the moral be for us?
That’s something we all have to
pray our way through.
But I’ll make one small point
about church life.
There’s something that goes on in
virtually all churches.
It is always completely
unconscious,
and
that’s what makes it so powerful.
Some churches are just cold and
aloof.
But most churches are pretty
welcoming
to
newcomers who are like the folks
who
are already there.
We are pleased as punch to see
more
of our own kind in the pews.
But unless they are very
deliberate about it,
most
churches are not so inviting
to people who are different.
The cruelest behavior I have ever
seen
has been church folks excluding people
who “aren’t our sort.”
It isn’t unusual for young adults
to ask me to suggest a church.
But, we have congregations where
I will not refer a young adult
because
I know how they will be treated.
It’s unconscious – but it isn’t
invisible.
Different churches have different
unconscious standards
for
who they will include and who they won’t.
If we want to get serious about
evangelism in Nevada,
a
good starting place would be for each congregation
to
figure out “Who is a Moabite to us? Who is alien to us?”
then prayerfully reflect on God’s
word at Leviticus 19:34:
“The
alien must be treated as one of the native born.
Love
him as yourself;
For
you were aliens in Egypt.
I
am the Lord your God.”
