“Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
We seem to be very much in the company of grieving widows and sorrowing mothers! Naomi has lost her husband Elimelech and her two sons who were also the husbands of her two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, after whom The Book of Ruth is named. In a way, such situations, though sad, are hardly unique. You only need to think about your own families and your own communities to recall similar sadnesses, sorrows and loss. And yet, as Paul suggests in our second lesson from his Letter to the Philippians such commonplaces of sadness and sorrow, the thing that have happened, can “really serve to advance the Gospel.” Somehow such circumstances can be the occasion in which Christ can be honoured and glorified. In another words, the Scriptures give us ways to face the hard and sad things of human life.
Probably written sometime after the Babylonian exile, The Book of Ruth with its timeless and reflective mood is notionally set in the time of the Judges. In the Christian Bible it is found immediately after The Book of Judges. In a way it is a kind of critical commentary on The Book of Judges, offering a completely contrasting account of Jewish identity and mission. The Book of Judges like many of the early books of the Hebrew Scriptures are written from a kind of exclusionary viewpoint with the emphasis upon Israel as the Chosen People separate and apart from the nations round about. Over and against that stands another perspective which emphasizes the role and mission of Israel as “a light to lighten the Gentiles,” as Isaiah puts it and as the Nunc Dimittis from Luke’s Gospel repeats in our evening liturgy, the idea that what has been proclaimed to Israel is for all people, something universal in principle. These tensions define Jewish history and thought which oscillate between the one and the other.
Of course, God’s covenant with Abraham embraces both those moments in the idea of the Promised Land and the Promised Son through whom, however, “all nations shall be blessed.” But The Book of Ruth particularly challenges the idea that God is the possession of the people of Israel only. Ruth, herself a widow, insists on going with her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi, back to Naomi’s people in Bethlehem even though she is not an Israelite but a Moabitess. As the story unfolds, Ruth will be befriended and protected by Boaz who will take her as his wife. She will bear a child, Obed, who will be the father of Jesse, the father of David, the great shepherd-king of Israel. For Christians, the story of Ruth is also read during the days of Christmas precisely because of that theme of the universal realized in and through the particularity of Christ’s Incarnation, whose humanity is derived in part through the royal house of David. Ruth goes to Bethlehem even as Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, is born in Bethlehem and goes forth from there for our salvation.
Our lesson turns on this wonderful moment of Ruth’s decision. Against Naomi’s protests, she responds with a wonderful kind of faith statement. “Your people shall be my people and your God my God.” This transcends the tribalisms of ancient and modern religion and culture and challenges the particularist perspective that often appears throughout the early historical writings of the Scriptures. And certainly The Book of Ruth breathes a far different air than the Books of Joshua and Judges. Those books are about conquest and settlement through warfare and battle; bloody tales indeed. The Judges, whether Deborah or Samson, to name but two, are strong and charismatic figures but almost adolescent and naïve in their actions and thoughts. Not so with Ruth.
She is a strong woman, mature and wise, but her strength lies in her insight into the nature of God. She has a hold of the universality of God and of his absolute and almighty nature. These will become part and parcel of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic understanding of the essential attributes of God who is not to be reduced nor confined to the things of the world whether tribal, social, political or economic, but remains sovereign and free. Human dignity finds its freedom precisely in relation to such an understanding of God.
There is a quality of quiet dignity and perseverance about the character of Ruth. In a way, she refuses simply to be defined by her grief and sorrow. Her insight is about a relationship to God which transcends the limits of human experience. Her words open us out to the majesty and the truth of God.
The difficulties of the contemporary Church are simply about a complete lack of conviction and confidence in the idea of God in his majesty and truth. We have “domesticated divinity,” as the writer Flannery O’Connor has so tellingly put it, and in so doing are bereft of any understanding that can bring dignity and compassion to our world and day. We are dead to the reality of God. Ruth’s words recall us to something fundamental and basic, to the universality of God and his people, to the majesty of his eternity and truth. He cannot be confined to the little systems of our world and day and insofar as the institutional church worships itself and its bureaucratic structures, it is utterly dead to God and to the Gospel which is our freedom to proclaim.
The Book of Ruth recalls us to the theological vision which in turn shapes our manifold activities. We forget precisely what she intuits: we live for God and not God for us. In the Christian understanding that idea is intensified in Christ. As Paul puts it, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Far from being simply world denying, it is about the redemption of the world in Christ. We live for the praise of God even in times of sorrow and loss. That is our joy and our freedom.
“Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XVII
Choral Evensong
September 30th, 2012