Today we have heard a part of the story of Naomi, returning from exile, of Ruth, the foreigner in a foreign land, and of Boaz, who is there to meet them.
It is a story that moves from famine to harvest, from scarcity to abundance, from widowing to wedding, from poverty and widowhood to providence and safety.
Naomi, the tale tells us, was a woman of Israel who had traveled to the land of Moab in a time of famine. She had been married then, and had two sons, who married local women, there in Moab, Orpah and Ruth.
Those men, all three of them, had died. And so Naomi was left alone in a far country.
Could she provide new husbands for her daughters-in-law? No, she said, I cannot. All I can do is return, alone, to the land I came from long ago, and hope to make out some kind of living there among the people who once knew me. Leave me, and return to your own people, she said. Orpah did so, turning back from the long road to Israel, and saying farewell to Naomi, but Ruth stuck with her.
Where you go I will go, where you live I will live; your God will be my God, your people my people; where you are buried there will I be buried also. And so the two of them set out, crossing the miles and miles from one side of the Jordan to the other and moving up into the hill country of Ephraim, to the little town of Bethlehem.
It was in this country, the home country Naomi had come from, that they hoped to live.
Would Naomi be accepted back? Would anyone remember her? What about her husband’s land, the inheritance she would have to reclaim to make a living from? Could she, with the younger widow working beside her, farm it and live on the produce? In the meantime, how were they to eat?
It is a harvest time. Ruth goes out, to gather the grain left behind by the reapers; she is gleaning, a traditional way the poor kept from starving.
She finds favor in the sight of the farmer. His name is Boaz, and he has heard of her selfless care for her mother-in-law; in fact, he is kin. And he knows the law of the land—the law that laid out a role for the next of kin, the closest male relative to Naomi’s late husband and Ruth’s, to serve as the redeemer, the one to take over the care of the inheritance and of the family’s future.
Imagine the sorrow and loneliness Ruth felt; now turning to joy. She had been a widow from a far country, traveling among strangers and serving her mother-in-law. She had been gleaning in the fields, trying to make a livelihood out of poverty and forbearance, and had been rewarded with the regard of the man in whose fields she had gleaned.
Her mother-in-law, a widow too, saw this and, savvy to the ways of men, saw a way out of poverty. Put on your best clothes, my daughter, and go to the threshing floor tonight, where Boaz will be resting. Quietly go to him in the night. He’ll take it from there.
Ruth comes home that night to Naomi, bearing grain in her cloak— and good news. It must have been clear from her face.
Naomi may have thought things would progress farther than they had, in one way. Boaz had a good heart and saw that Ruth had one too. He continued to look after her, and did offer her protection, not the warmth of a night’s blanket but a lifetime of husband-hood.
Already he—a man of means, and of generous manner—saw in her his equal, calling her a worthy woman, that is, a person of honor and wisdom, like the capable wife, the accomplished life-partner, extolled in Proverbs (31:10-31).
He went to the city gate in the morning, where such business was transacted in that land, and there he made the deal— to a closer kinsman of Naomi, the one who had prior rights, he said, you are the redeemer, if you choose to be, of the inheritance of Naomi: a parcel of land, to farm, and a daughter-in-law, with whom to marry and raise a family. This is what you have to redeem, if you will be the redeemer.
I cannot do it, said the other man; I have an inheritance of my own to protect. And so he sealed the deal with Boaz, clearing the way for the marriage— and a new life for Ruth, and Naomi.
Soon there would be children, and this stranger to Israel, this sojourner in their midst, became one of them. Her faithfulness, her steadfast loyalty to her mother-in-law, her sacramental love and care for her, would be recognized and rewarded. She who had been a foreigner, daughter-in-law to Naomi, the returning exile, would marry the man who had stayed in the land—she became included among the people of God.
There is something more than blood kinship at work here; there is more than fulfilling an obligation of law. There is grace, and welcome, and faith made effective in love.
The story goes on to tell us about the children of Ruth, her son Obed (which means “servant”), her grandson Jesse, and of Jesse’s son—David, who would become king.
This widow, in her steadfast love and loyalty, her selfless care, is not the only widow extolled in today’s stories. She is not the only example of God’s care, of what it is to live in faith.
In the gospels we hear parable after parable to tell us what the kingdom of God is like. It is like a treasure buried in a field, it is like a pearl beyond price, it is like a mustard seed; it is like a father welcoming home his prodigal son.
Today also we have what amounts to a living parable, the poor widow that Jesus watched in the Temple, as she gave without stinting her last two coins, all she had to live on—in effect, her whole life—given over as a free gift to God.
Look, Jesus said to his men: there it is.
This is what the kingdom of God is like. It is like a poor widow, who on reaching the Temple gave without reserve her whole life as a sacrificial offering to God. She, unlike the others who came there that day, had no prominence in the eyes of men: she had no large gift to catch the eye, nothing that would show off well, just a simple gift—of everything.
Where is the good news in this story?
The good news is manifest in God’s unfailing love, open-handed beyond caution or common sense, acted out by this woman at the Temple treasury.
The good news is in God’s open-handed love, beyond precedent in the lives of men or women, which would soon be shown by Jesus himself, as he offered himself as a sacrificial offering, once for all.
The priests who entered the Holy of Holies, Hebrews reminds us, did so every year: not so our Lord, who once in his lifetime offered his whole life to God, for the redeeming of us all.
This is what the world looks like when God is truly in charge: a world in which all comes from God, and everything we have we have from God. All we offer to God—our gifts, our work, our offerings of thanks—comes from God and it is to God that we return.
So Ruth is welcomed home to a place she had never been before; she is welcome, known, recognized, as one of the very own of God—generous, loving heart, faithful—she is home, for the very first time.
So we too are welcome, in the kingdom of God, a world characterized by what the Hebrews called chesed, loyalty or faithfulness arising from commitment, the steadfast love of a loving Lord, the God who first loved us.
The widows in the story of Ruth, the widow in the Temple—they are exemplars to us of faith in living. The widow in the Temple does not give her whole life, her two coins, as a bet—she is not placing a desperate wager on the generosity of the Messiah. This isn’t a holy lottery, hoping that last dollar will turn into thousands. She is, by what she does, showing us a picture of absolute faith in the providence of God, the one who has given her all she has, and of whose own provision she has made radical return. We don’t, most of us, give with that little thought for the morrow.
Giving out of the abundance God has granted us, with thanks, with obedience, with grace, and with the knowledge that all we have is his, is what we do: it is the human thing to do.
What we see in the widow’s mite is more than just a human response—it is a sign, of God’s grace, of God’s abundance, of God’s profligate generosity. For soon, as the story carries us forward, this same son of Man who watched the widow put her two coins in the Treasury, will himself be given—will give himself—as the gift of God for our own souls’ redeeming.
He is the one who did not count equality with God as a thing to be held onto, but will be the one of whom it is said, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believed in him, whoever trusted him so completely as to put their whole life into his care, would not perish but live eternally.
Everlasting life—and the love that is its source—is what stands behind the widows’ story.
Love, loyalty, life itself: time, talent, treasure: all we have, all we give, comes from God—who gave himself for us.
Guide me, God of grace, to give, as you would have me give, of what you have given me.
AMEN.
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The Lessons appointed for use on the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost;
Proper 27, Year B, in the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL):
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17 and Psalm 127
(or 1 Kings 17:8-16 and Psalm 146)
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44
The Abingdon Bible Commentary (Abingdon Press, 1929)
The HarperCollins Study Bible, Revised Edition (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006). Galatians 5:6, n.
The New Revised Standard Version Bible (National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America, 1989)
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