Well,
this is an awkward part of the story of Ruth to preach, if I’m being completely
honest. I guess, at least there isn’t a children’s sermon today?
I don’t mind talking about relationships, and
marriage, and sex, but it’s nice when there’s something else besides it—you
know, something Jesus-y, or gospel-y, or anything else, really. What is a
person to do with this? What are the underlying lessons from Ruth and Boaz on
the threshing floor? Is it even something we should care about, or in the words
of a seminary professor, who I asked one time to write an article for our
student newspaper, and who said, “I’m happy to write, as long as the subject
isn’t sex… again.”
I suppose Ruth and Boaz could appear
to be a story about sexual morality, as fun as that is to preach. From a quick
sampling of sermons taken from, admittedly, largely evangelical sources on this
scripture, I saw a lot of stuff about sexual boundaries. That’s thrilling and
all (not really), but the other thing about that is simply: That has nothing to
do with what is going on here. Ruth and Boaz do not exist in 21st
century America, and if you pretend that they do, then you’re not being
faithful to the scripture.
Ruth is, quite literally, property. Now, that
might rub you the wrong way, and it probably should, but it is simply how the
world worked in those days, and that has to color the way we look at this
relationship. It’s not like Ruth and Boaz can date. Their relationship is
necessarily about contracts and assurances, which is not romantic (at all), but
this was life in those days. Whatever you think about the way our society handles
marriage, and the role of the church in it, it has to be said that we are miles
away from what Ruth was dealing with. We have our issues, but they are
completely different.
It’s really hard to culturally commute between
21st century America and 11th century AD Israel. To that
point, using the Bible as a key to sexual morality is really fraught with
difficulty, because morality in the Bible is a constantly moving target. At
various times, scripture allows polygamy, levirate marriage (in which a brother
of a deceased man is obliged to marry his wife, which is sort of what’s going
on here with Ruth), and many other versions of marriage which we would aspersions
on today. The society of Ruth’s age began with the clan, which was the
immediate family system. You could never marry outside of the clan. This is why
Ruth goes to Boaz, because he’s a close-enough relative that he might take her
in and protect her. Marriage, in that time, was about security for women and
property for men.
Love? The only love here is between Ruth and
Naomi, her mother-in-law. There is no romance; it’s just obligation. So, the
first, and perhaps greatest, lesson here is that if you’re looking for a good
message about morality in marriage today, you’re barking up the wrong tree. But
if you’re curious about what it looks like to value commitment to meaningful
things in a broken world, then yes, delve a little deeper into Boaz and Ruth.
So much of our conversation on matters of marriage, sex, and sexuality, when it
happens in the church, if it happens at all, is really a guise to talk about
boundaries. We don’t actually talk about sex; we talk about boundaries around
sex, and it’s awkward. I know, because I have to bring it up on occasion with a
bunch of middle-schoolers. You think you’re squirming! The thing is: When the
church talks about sex, it is usually to hold boundaries, to say, “This is
appropriate and this is not”—whatever “this” is.
But since that’s the only thing we ever say on
the subject, it tends to become this powerful, mysterious force. By either
never talking about sex, or only talking about boundaries, we implicitly
suggest that this is one of, if not the, most important things. So, it’s little
wonder that in a 2010 Gallup survey of millennials in the church, they found
that my generation’s #1 way description of church, of any kind, is about sex.
In that case, millennials defined the church, above all, as: “anti-homosexual.”
Now, we can say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s not us,” or whatever, but that’s
sort of missing the point. Why do people equate the church and sex at all? Why
have we made it so important that a generation of people—my generation—think about
sex and the church before they think about Jesus.
It’s disheartening, for about every reason I can
imagine, but I can understand how we get there. We imply that the thing that
matters most in the world is sex, because it is the great unspoken thing
happening behind the scenes, and so, what is a young person to think?
Meanwhile, this story about Ruth gets bogged
down in ethical questions that it has no interest in addressing. Marriage
ethics do not exist here, sorry. Instead, it might be helpful to consider: What
are Ruth’s deepest motivations? Why is she doing what she is doing? If you can
put yourself in her shoes, then perhaps you can imagine the attractiveness of
Boaz for protection, for a future, and, more than anything, for the person Ruth
cares about most, Naomi. Ruth’s greatest motivation is love, just perhaps not the love you might have expected.
Love is the thing that matters, the thing that
drives us. Boaz and Ruth make the best of their circumstances, which is
remarkable, really. To me, that’s the lesson here. Life is messy. We need to
stop pretending like there is a perfect situation coming just around the
corner, and instead, we need to set criteria for how to get by in a broken
world. I want to be clear: There are bad situations. Bad situations have bad
power dynamics. Is a person exercising power over you? Then it’s not love. Is a
person withholding affection, forcing you to submit, abusing you? Then it’s not
love.
Don’t use anything from ancient Israel to justify
your relationship. Yet, in a messy world, Ruth and Boaz are a reminder that
goodness can be found amidst brokenness. If the world out there is crazy, how
much more is it incumbent on the rest of us to stay sane? For my children and
grandchildren, I hope for a better society; one where love is exercised and
abuse is not tolerated. I hope for a place where love is that great definer of
our faith, where joy is found in commitment to people in our lives who make us
better versions of ourselves.
I hope for a lot, but, at the end of the day, if
things are not as I hope, we need the reminder of Ruth and Boaz that, even in a
broken world, there are people always striving for a glimpse of something
better, and we don’t need to pretend that the hurt of the world makes it
impossible to do it. Our children and grandchildren will eventually enter a
world that may be good, or bad, or, most likely, somewhere in-between, and they
will do so with God going before them, not to fix
everything, but as a promise that the essentials have been fixed. So, love can
win, even when society gets bogged down by other things. That is a powerful
message, hidden beneath the awkwardness of the threshing floor.
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