Stories of the Faith: I'll Go Where You Go - Ruth 1: 1-17

When I was little there were two Bibles that my parents read to my brothers and I from at bedtime. One was a picture storybook, full of beautiful paintings. The other was an individual storybooks that told the kid-friendly version of some of the most well known Biblical stories. For some reason, I still remember the cover of the book for Ruth - green robe flowing, pink head-dress, and a look of sadness and strength, poise and fear. The person drawing the cover for that picture-book could not have captured the Book of Ruth any better. For the story itself contains all of those emotions that were captured in Ruth’s face on that cover. 

Let’s set the scene. Ruth takes place in the days when the Judges ruled. The Book of Judges was a crazy time - when the people of Israel would oscillate between requesting that God give them a king so they could be like everyone else and forgetting about God entirely. The people looked around and saw all the other countries surrounding them with King and prophets and rulers with flesh, and they didn’t think their God was quite as good as those other rulers in other Kingdoms. The refrain that echoes throughout the pages is “in those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.” Judges would come and judges would go, but the people escalated in their lawlessness - going from fighting other countries at the beginning of Judges to an all out civil war where the tribes turned on each other in the end. It was not a good time to live.

Yet, it was during the time that the Judges ruled, that Ruth is set. During that time when as if fleeing from God and away from the words of the judges wasn’t enough, a famine hit the land. Its a little hard for us to imagine a famine today, for so many of us have stocked pantries. Even when we have a poor crop one summer or even two in our gardens, we have a grocery store down the street and other options. But there weren’t any other options during this time. There aren’t any other options when famine hits even in many lands today. When famine comes people have to move - to try to find fertile land. To try to find a relative with some food to spare. To simply survive. And move is exactly what Elimelek, Naomi, and their two sons did. They moved from a place of safety where al their family lived, Bethlehem, to a place they didn’t know, Moab.

We don’t know how long, but after they arrived in Moab Elimelek died. Surely his family mourned him, but death was also part of life during ancient times. If men lived to be forty, it was considered to be good. I know we read lineages of people in the Hebrew scriptures with old-ages, well past what we expect to live today, listed. But those were abnormalities - not the norm. Death was so common that there was a common way that inheritances were passed down in families, so that widows knew they could be provided for. Property passed from one male to the next, generation after generation. While females didn’t inherit property, it was expected that they would be taken care of by their family, after the passing of their husband.

The true problem for Naomi erupted when her sons died ten years later. Both had taken wives of local women, Orpah and Ruth. When they died there was no longer anyone to take care of Naomi. No income to be had. No property to pass down. No way of surviving. The only glimmer of hope Naomi had came in the news that things were no longer so hard in Bethlehem, the bread-basket. She would return to the land of grain and hope that some distant kinsman would take pity on her - bring her into their home and take care of her until she, too, could pass away. 

So she packed her few belongings and provisions for the journey and turned to her now widowed daughter-in-laws, telling them to return to their mother’s households. Return to the place where hopefully someone would have pity on them and take care of them as well. Maybe, just maybe, they could find someone else to marry. But the girls wouldn’t have it. They clung to Naomi, weeping, telling her that they would go with her. Namoi replied even more boldly for them to go back. Go back to the places they knew, surrounded by family, and begin to hope and heal. For she had nothing left to offer them. 

Orpah did as she was told, kissing her mother in law one more time and turning back to her mother’s house. But Ruth, always the bold one, replied that she absolutely would not leave Naomi. She would leave her hometown, where people knew her and where she had prospects of a new life, and would go with Naomi into the unknown -  a place she had never been, with a people who spoke a different language and worshiped a different God. She would go as an outsider for the sake of Naomi.

Naomi gave one more plea - telling Ruth to go as her sister in law, Orpah did, listening to the old women’s wishes to go back. Go back to opportunity and people to take care of her. Go back tot he land she knew. But Ruth would have none of that and replied with a statement that is often used at wedding ceremonies today: Where you go, I’ll go. Where you stay, I’ll stay. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. Ruth was truly going to be a stranger in a strange land. Leaving her people for her mother-in-laws. 

One of my favorite aspects to the story of Ruth is the fierce since of identity and inclusivity. Ruth probably had heard her husband and father in law pray to the God of Israel, but they also would have known that it was not her God - the God of Moab. But that did not discount Ruth from being part of God’s plans for God is the God of fierce inclusivity, using the most unexpected people, including people who do not yet recognize his power and might. 

While this story is set during the time of Judges it was probably written down and recorded during the time of Ezra and Nemiah. A few weeks ago during the Tuesday night Bible study at St. Paul’s someone recognized that Stephen was leaving out major pieces of Jewish history when giving his defense against charges of blasphemy, prior to being stoned. We all do that. We color history and stories with what we are currently going through as we try to make a point. So it was with those who wrote down the story of Ruth as well. For during the time of Ezra and Nemeiah, women and children who were not Jewish by birth, were being thrown out of Jerusalem. As a contrast to this exclusiveness, comes Ruth, a late in life Jewish convert, who represented everything that were held up as ideal - loyalty and devotion, especially to those who others had forgotten or abandoned. Ruth goes as far as to make a formal oath with Naomi, saying that she should die if she ever left Naomi’s side.

Something that deeply troubles me in today’s society is our natural instinct to create “in” groups and “out” groups. Think about how we speak - clumping people into groups based on religion, region, race, anything that we can think of to separate us from “them” or “those people”. Ruth reminds us that people cannot be grouped together. Her is a woman who is deep in her own grief over her husband’s death and now is voluntary dislocating herself for the sake of Naomi, yet I fear that all too often today we would just see her as “one of those Moabites” or “those people who don’t worship the God of Israel”. If we met Ruth today, someone who was fiercely loyal to someone we love but of another religion what would our reaction be? Would we feel blessed by her friendship? Or would we discount her because she is different from us, grouping her in with those we fear because we don’t know them.

Here’s the thing - God didn’t discount Ruth because of her religion, race, or region, so we shouldn’t either. God had a plan for Ruth that even Naomi, a devout Jew didn’t realize, as Ruth would go on to be in the lineage of David and Jesus. Let us not be like others in the story of Ruth who tried to pin her into a box by only referring to her as “Ruth the Moabite” - may we instead see her, and others, as the whole people they are - loyal, trustworthy, self-sacrificing, and acting in another’s best interest. May we judge her not by things beyond her control but by the oath she made “to go wherever you will go.” May we see her for who she truly is in the eyes of God. Amen.