St Paul’s Canterbury , 8^th September 2013, Pentecost 16

Third in a Series of Brief Homilies:

Women Heroes of the Hebrew Scriptures

The Rt. Rev'd John Bayton, AM

Ruth

Ruth is the third in the list of six women of the Hebrew Scriptures I have chosen to speak about during my time with you .Miriam as Vocation, Rahab as Mission, Ruth as Communication, Jael as Word and Image, Judith as Intercession  and Esther as Prophecy. 

It is possible for you to read the Book of Ruth in 20 minutes if you read slowly.  It is in fact a ‘Short Story’ meant to be read in  a modern contemporary narrative.  Its purpose is to engage the reader in that  the heroine Ruth, like her Mother-in-Law Naomi, is a Refugee!  She is not an Israelite, she is from a universally despised tribe; a citizen of Moab, sworn enemies of the Jews.   Like so many foreign refugees today who leave their own homeland to come into our Land of Promise – Australia - Ruth leaves her homeland  Moab to go to Bethlehem in Judah, the Land of Promise.  “Your people shall be my people; your god, my god”   Sadly many contemporary refugees and asylum seekers become people of  the own homeland and culture, merely residing in Australia.  They have no intention of ‘leaving home, country, religion, to become integrated into Australian  culture.  Australia is a secular nation, so we cant blame them for wanting to retain their own heritage. Multi-culturalism is merely a change of geography.   The story of Ruth begins when Elimelek and his wife Naomi with their two sons Mahlon and Kilion leave Bethlehem during a famine and go to Moab.  The boys  marry Moabite women.  After about ten years Elimelek, Mahlon and Kilion die in the land of Moab.  The women, Naomi, Orpah and Ruth have to make a decision –  to stay in Moab or to go to Bethlehem.  Orpah decides to stay.  Ruth decides to go with Naomi to Bethlehem.   She does so  -  “Whither thou goest I will go; whither thou stayest I will stay.  Your people will be my people; your god will be my god; wherever you die I will die…and may the Lord be with me…” In  Bethlehem Ruth gleans the barley fields of Boaz; she “uncovers his feet” – a beautiful euphemism for something larger than life; he recognizes her, wants to marry her but there is another man who has a claim on her - her dead husband Kilion’s  un-named next of kin.  Shrewd Boaz works the story of redemption, according the  Law, and as ‘near of kin, Boaz marries Ruth.  Their son Obed, fathers Jesse, who fathers  David.   Thus a foreigner becomes the ancestor of  the Jewish race and through Joseph husband of the Virgin Mary Jesus is born into the ‘House of David”.  What do we mean by “the House of David”?  First it is a metaphor – the Dynasty of David.   But in Christian theology “house” means more than ‘Dynasty’  for it was in houses that the first Christians met to break bread, to read the letters and the gospels and to recite the liturgical prayers.  Ruth is not the first  foreign woman to appear in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Remember Abraham who fathered Ishmael by Hagar the Egyptian; Moses who married  first Zipporah a Midianite woman  daughter of  Jethro the priest of Midian woman.

Naomi and her husband Elimelek had been people of some importance when they left Bethlehem.  Naomi returns destitute, relying on Ruth to glean stubble from the barley fields.  We often forget that barley, not wheat was the important daily cereal of the people. In the ancient world wheat was a  primitive form of grain.  We remember that a thousand four hundred years after Ruth Jesus blesses five barley loaves and two small fish to feed the 5000 ! And it was in the barley fields that the shepherds watched their flocks by night.  And it was in the symbiosis of farmers and shepherds that at the end of September – early October Christ was born in Bethlehem the city of Naomi and Ruth.