TEXT: Ruth
3:1-5, 4:13-17
A Round-about
Beginning
There is a psalm – the 127th – that begins, “Unless the
Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” Granted.
But it might also be said that “When the Lord does build the house, it
can turn out looking pretty goofy.” At
least according to our standards. Just
look, for example, at the House of David.
David, you probably remember, was sort of Israel’s “rock star”
king. He wasn’t the first King – that
distinction goes to Saul who, like a faulty bottle rocket, started off with a
flaming fizz but fairly shortly simply fizzled out. David – of “David and Goliath” fame, David of
musical fame – came in after Saul and won the people’s hearts. He wasn’t a saint – there was, after all,
that whole pregnancy issue involving his neighbor’s wife, and the tragic and “accidental”
death of his neighbor in battle (wink,
wink). But while a long way from
perfect, David’s reign was always looked back upon as something like Israel’s Camelot.
In subsequent years, when times got tough – when corrupt king after
corrupt king eroded the nation’s moral fiber; when defeat after military defeat
demoralized the public spirit, people cast a longing eye back to the good old
days of David, and a hopeful eye toward the prophesied day when one from the House and lineage of David would once again sit on Israel’s
throne and restore the fortunes of the nation.
But have you ever paid close attention to where this über-king came
from? Some of us might remember when
David was first selected to be king – when Samuel, Israel’s prophet/priest, was
sent by God to a man named Jesse, among whose several sons he would find a
future king. It’s kind of a comic story
– as these things often are in scripture – in which Samuel “kicks the tires” of
each of the boys in turn, beginning with the eldest and working his way
younger, until he finally gets to the end of the line without ever feeling that
inner “twitch” that lets you know you need go no further. It was sort of a puzzling moment. Samuel didn’t think he had misheard God’s
directions, but none of these seemed to fit the bill. So he steps back over to Jesse and asks, “are
you sure these are the only sons you have?”
“Well, no,” Jesse replies.
“I’ve got one more – the youngest, David; he’s out in the fields taking
care of the sheep. But you couldn’t
possibly be looking for him. He’s
not...well, how shall I say this...’king material’.”
“Well, that may be true,” Samuel responded, “but you’d better fetch
him back and let me look him over, just in case.”
And so it happened. David was
hurriedly retrieved from the field, Samuel took one look at him, pronounced to
a stupefied Jesse that indeed, this was the one, and the wheels were set in
motion.
But that is only the abbreviated version. A larger picture is painted by Matthew, in
the opening chapter of his version of the story of Jesus, in that seemingly
innocuous recitation of Jesus’ ancestry.
Five women, you may have noticed, are named in that long list of men –
Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Bathsheba, that neighbor woman of David’s who
had been the inspiration for his great sin, and three in David’s ancestry: Tamar, who’s unconventional story of taking
matters into her own hands I’ll save for another day; Rahab, the prostitute who
hid the Israelite spies who were casing the Canaanite city for attack and
thereby elicited from them a promise of safety for herself and her family; and
finally Ruth, in whom we are interested this morning. We find her connection spelled out in the
last few tidbits of the story before us:
So
Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the Lord made
her conceive, and she bore a son. And they named him Obed; and he became the
father of Jesse, the father of David.
Really? Ruth?
·
Ruth,
the foreign woman who had the misfortune of losing her husband at an early age?
·
Ruth,
the Moabite woman who devotedly followed her mother-in-law to Israel where they
would have to fend for themselves together?
·
Ruth,
the voiceless immigrant dependent upon the largesse of the farmers in the area
who must have begrudged, at times, the old commandment requiring them to leave
some of their precious harvest in the fields for precisely this purpose?
·
Ruth,
the valueless widow whose only long-term hope was the condescension of some
distant relative of her dead husband’s family to take her under his wing?
Yes, that Ruth
– along with her mother-in-law Naomi: two
widows – one old and one young – thrown onto the mercy of relatives and neighbors
they hadn’t seen in years, if ever. Ruth
and Naomi, who join with Tamar and Rahab and Bathsheba and Mary to form the
collective womb through which the pedigree of divinity would be traced.
Does anything strike you as odd or interesting about this list of
names with which Matthew begins his gospel?
Does it seem to you, as it does to me, like Matthew goes out of his way
to call attention to these framing women around which this “House of David” is
constructed – unconventional women; we might even be prone to describe them as
“inappropriate women?”
There was a time, for example, years after the time of David, when the
people of Israel felt the need for racial purity – that anyone from “outside
the family,” so to speak, needed to be purged from the community for the sake
of national integrity. They were coming off some hard times, the
people of Israel, and it was important, their leaders believed, for the “real”
Israelites to assert themselves. It’s
one thing, after all, for these foreigners to work in the meat packing plants
and do housekeeping in our hotel rooms as long as they are closely watched, but
they shouldn’t start thinking of themselves as in any way “belonging.” We need to keep these lines clearly separated,
they insisted. And so an official season
of “ethnic cleansing” was begun.
I wonder who it might have been, just then, who impertinently dared to
remember out loud the ancestry of David, their most beloved king? I wonder who it was who had the temerity to
speak the names of Rahab, the Canaanite whore, and Ruth, the foreign-born
Great-great-grandmother of their hero?
And I wonder if that confusing and inconvenient recollection gave the
people pause – they who were so absolutely sure they knew the kind of people
God might use and in whom God might deign to be found?
And I wonder if, having such a heresy spoken out loud, they discovered
some new or neglected spaces of possibility in their souls, in their
neighborhoods, and in their imagination where God might be working among them.
That, I would suggest, is the challenge every generation faces sooner
or later: coming confessionally to terms
with the various ways in which – and the various people in whom – we refuse to
give God permission to move and act. If
that sounds overly dramatic, recall that...
· ...once upon a time there were
good, Bible-believing Christians who viewed the indigenous peoples of this land
that eventually became known as “America” to be fundamentally other than and
less than “human,” and therefore outside the concern of God.
· Recall how, several generations later,
that same point of view dismissed any relevance for black slaves except as
beasts of burden to do the white folks’ heavy lifting.
· You might also call to mind how, during
World War 2 we came to believe some pretty screwed up things about people of
Japanese descent – along with anyone who bore even the slightest resemblance to
them.
I can only
imagine what it has been like, in recent years, to be gay or Arabic or Mexican
and have to sit by and hear all the vitriolic and slandering and demeaning
things that people say about you.
But I’m guessing that those who, years after her time, took solace in
retelling the story of Ruth would genuinely understand. Ruth, the foreigner who wasn’t supposed to
count; Ruth, the outsider who, like a virulent and highly contagious virus,
they thought could contaminate and sicken everyone she touched; Ruth, the devoted
and determined daughter-in-law whose progeny was David, the legendary leader,
Solomon, his wise and expansive son, and ultimately Jesus of Nazareth who
subsequent generations would confess to be the Christ, the son of the living
God.
Nope. She’s the wrong
kind. Nothing good can come from her.
Thinking this week about this unlikely vehicle of promise named Ruth,
I recalled the old sermon I pull out every Christmas season by one of my heroes
named Frederick Buechner, in which he reflects on the story of the incarnation
and comes to this eventual conclusion:
after Bethlehem and the humility and indignity of it all, "those
who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can
never be sure where he will appear or to what ludicrous depths of
self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of humankind. If holiness and the awful power and majesty of
God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a
peasant's child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but
that holiness can be present there too.
...it is just where we least expect him that he comes most fully."
(Buechner, in The Hungering Dark, p.
13)
This “birth of a peasant’s child,” and this holy utility of a foreign
woman named Ruth. Unusual people;
unexpected ways. While it’s probably true
that every generation has to learn that fact for itself, I have to imagine that
God wearies of teaching it.
How wide do you imagine that Holy Smile would stretch should we – in
the people and places least imagined – greet the unexpected God no longer with
dismissal, denial, or denunciation, but with the glee of being surprised...
...by joy?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to find out?