The good voice of poverty
Commentary
Object:
In my times of great energy and passionate success, I never think about death. I was born to live! I entered this world to conquer! I am a child of greatness, and the stars need do my bidding!
But now and again I see my mortality clinging to my steps like a lengthening shadow, and I am caught wondering why I am here at all. A question chiseled in stone over the grave of a child recycles in my brain: “If I am so quickly done for, what on earth was I begun for?”
Because we are psychosomatic creatures, spirits expressing ourselves through bodies, we often think that the inner self grows in significance as the material self struts with pride and fine fashion. Since no one can touch the soul inside except by way of the material stuff with which we surround it, we are often beguiled into amassing possessions and accomplishments as means to identify our worth.
Yet all of these things will be stripped away from us before we can blink against the wind of time. Some time ago I cried with a thirtysomething fellow who is a glowing testimony of success in our community. He grew up in a close-knit family, wears an athletic body and a movie-star’s face, married a beautiful and intelligent woman, lives in a luxurious home, and is buying a multimillion-dollar business that could become a multibillion-dollar corporation before he retires. He was the envy of the neighborhood, but today it means nothing. A crippling disease, a foolish action, and a disintegrating marriage have tripped him on the run. “I would trade everything to have my wife and children back,” he said. “Two weeks ago I thought I had it all. Now I don’t know if I have anything.”
God meant for us to live and to enjoy the marvelous beauty and material riches of our world and universe. But we can’t truly delight in them until we know who we are. It isn’t until we begin to die that we begin to live. It isn’t until we cry out to heaven that 90 or 75 or 50 or 13 years aren’t enough that we begin to understand what 13 or 50 or 75 or 90 years of human life really mean.
If today’s lectionary readings can whet our appetite for what really matters, we will find out that the God who taught our cells to divide in our mothers’ wombs won’t let the sun set forever. After all, it was our own brother Jesus who rolled back the stone of death on Easter morning.
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
During the time of the Judges, unsettled by a nasty famine, Elimelech removes his family from the hill country of Judah to find food and work. They settle in Moab, long enough for the two sons, Machlon and Kilion, to marry. Then in short order all the men of the family die, and Naomi is left a widow. Destitute, Naomi can only think of returning to Bethlehem, where she might find old friends who could give her a few handouts until she dies. Her daughters-in-law try to travel along, but Naomi resists their pity. She has nothing to offer them, not even future sons if the unlikely should happen and she would marry again.
Orpah is wise, and goes back to her Moabite community to start over. Ruth, however, is stubborn, and is doggedly determined to accompany Naomi in order to share the burden of her desperate situation.
On arriving in Bethlehem, Naomi is barely recognized but warmly welcomed. She tells her woeful story and claims a new name, Mara (which means “bitter”), as an indication of her sorry state.
Ruth joins the other poor people who glean the barley fields for leftover corner patches and fallen stalks and loose kernels after the reapers have taken in the bulk of the crop (see Leviticus 19:9 and 23:22 about reaping and gleaning practices). She catches the eye of Boaz, a wealthy landowner of some of the fields where she labors. He gets friendly, and Naomi sees a good prospect looming on the horizon. She urges Ruth to return Boaz’s kind initiatives, and before long the gentleman makes public his courtship intentions. Quickly he cuts through community red tape, and the two are wed. Already on their honeymoon a child is conceived, and when little Obed is born Naomi claims him as a sign of Yahweh’s renewed blessing on her life. Of course, everybody lives happily ever after, and the closing credits show that this is the origin of the great family of David, who later restores glory and honor to Israel.
The tale is as clean and crisp and delightful as any ever written. But like an iceberg, there is much more going on beneath the surface than first catches the eye. For one thing, the book of Ruth is a literary gem. Written with tremendous economy, it conveys a major story in only 1,260 Hebrew words. Moreover, within that brief venture it manages to encapsulate an introduction and a conclusion (each of which has exactly 71 words) and four dramatic acts containing two scenes apiece. Furthermore, of the two scenes in each act, one takes place in a private location and the other in a public location, and the order of these is reversed between the first and second halves of the drama. When analyzed from purely a grammatical and literary perspective, this is an incredible work of art, symmetry, and balance.
But there is more. A character study reveals that nearly every dramatic persona in the book is doubled and paralleled. Ruth and Boaz are the twinned lead characters. She is female, young, single (widowed), poor, and an alien in Israel; he, on the other hand, is male, older, single (unmarried), wealthy, and a leading citizen in Israel. Their interaction continually highlights both their similarities and their differences, making them a truly engaging couple.
Next to them stand their dramatic counterparts, lesser figures in the story to be sure, but foils in whose reflection these lead characters are further defined. Ruth’s “other” is Orpah, another young Moabite woman who also married a son of Elimelech and Naomi. While Ruth becomes noble as the whole of the drama progresses, Orpah becomes ordinary, taking the typical human path at the beginning of the tale. Orpah reminds us of ourselves, acting with modest self-interest to make it through life. Meanwhile, Ruth soars in an impressive arc of witness, a triumph of the humble spirit focused relentlessly on things that really matter.
Similarly, there is a counterpart to Boaz. He shows up near the end of the tale as the “kinsman-redeemer,” or nearer relative, who can follow through on the levirate customs that would allow Naomi and Ruth to regain title to the land evacuated by Elimelech. Once again, this man is very much like Boaz. He would also like to help Naomi and Ruth, but practical matters of family get in the way, and none among the elders of the community reproaches him for stepping back. Boaz, however, stretches beyond what circumstances require, and gives himself to pledges that define a new future for others, even when Boaz himself is not under obligation to them.
A third pair of dramatic characters is found in the background collectives that provide color commentary to the story. There is a group of women who congregate around Naomi and Ruth early in the tale (when these two enter Bethlehem after Naomi’s exile) and again late in the story (in order to pronounce blessings on the household after Obed is born), announcing Naomi’s situation and reflecting her changing fortunes. Likewise, a group of men gloms onto Boaz, first in the fields of harvest where they act as his confidants and advisers, and then for a second time in the final gate scene where they adjudicate the decisions that are being made.
What becomes strangely clear when reviewing these pairings is that Naomi stands alone. Elimelech, her husband, vanishes within the first few verses. Ruth may be a companion to Naomi, but she is never an equal. The women who chant are always in the background, even as Naomi lives at center stage. While the title of the book may focus our attention on Ruth, it is actually the figure of Naomi which emerges in the drama as the main character. She has no counterpart. She is the focus of the story. Although we delight in snuggling up to Ruth and Boaz, it is the fortunes of Naomi that become the prime concern of everyone else in the tale.
In this light we begin to understand the theological significance of the drama. While it is a story well told and beautifully staged, it is also a clearly moral and religious homily. Like Samson in the book of Judges, Naomi is the mirror reflection of Israel as a nation. The very fact that she has no parallel character within the tale makes her stand out as a type of something larger, something more significant.
This theological significance is highlighted by the striking use of setting and names throughout. The story begins in the time of the Judges, when the dominant motif, echoed particularly in the sordid appendix to the book of that name, is: “in those days there was no king in the land and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” The book of Ruth commences with a man consciously removing his family from their divinely granted inheritance, to seek fortune and security among Israel’s enemies. This is the displacement warned about in the curses of the Sinai covenant, and modeled in the failures of both the tribes of Dan and Benjamin.
At the same time, the book of Ruth ends with a clear and unambiguous link to the time of the kings, in its epilogue that lists the family succession directly to David. In this way the story of Naomi bridges the awful destitution of life under the judges with the Camelot sparkle of Israel’s grand existence during the reigns of David and Solomon. It is thus, coded in the weavings of Naomi’s life, that the key to Israel’s success is found. How does Naomi go from rags to riches? How will Israel claw its way back from destitution to restitution? The answer lies in the symbolism of this story.
Bethlehem, the home town of Elimelech and Naomi, means “house of bread.” Yet it is precisely here that there is famine “in the days of the judges” because of the failure of the Israelites to live as Yahweh’s covenant community of witness. This becomes even more clear when Elimelech (“My God is King”) leaves his inheritance to become, in effect, a Moabite man. The Moabites were cursed by Yahweh for having led Israel to lose its religious identity in Numbers 22-25. Though unstated, Elimelech’s faithlessness prompts an underlying current of judgment against his family. This is why his sons are so frail (Machlon means “sickly,” Kilion means “weakling”) and die along with their father, leaving the one vision of hope in the family, wife and mother Naomi (“sweet” or “pleasant” -- “sweetie-pie” you might say!), turned sour (Mara means “bitter”).
It is only through a faithful Israelite who did not leave his inheritance (Boaz means “in him is strength”), coupled with a despised Moabite woman who actually caught the vision of Yahweh’s missional covenant community in spite of the failures of so many of Israel’s citizens, that Israel/Naomi is restored. So the drama, which began when the “House of Bread” was empty, ends with a bountiful harvest in the same breadbasket community. Moreover, the family that gave up its inheritance, only to have its future obliterated under the curses of the covenant (all of the males -- who carry the inheritance links -- die, leaving the women worse than dead), finds a new fulfillment that brings harvest, safety, home, wealth, and above all a male child to restore a claim in the inheritance of the covenant people in the promised land. And what is the name of the boy? Obed. “Servant.” Exactly! Only when personal self-interest (so Orpah and the kinsman-redeemer) is given up for faithful covenant service (so Ruth and Boaz) does life begin again to shimmer with significance. The book of Ruth is very fine drama indeed, but it is exceptionally great theology besides!
Hebrews 9:24-28
Although the author of Hebrews shares his perspectives with his audience, there is one significant difference between them: he fully believes Jesus has ushered in a culminating change that transcends and makes obsolete these previous expressions of religious identity, while they, due to cultural pressures around them, are not so sure of that. This document is written to convince a community -- which is on the verge of slipping away from Jesus back into a pre-Jesus Jewish ritualistic context -- that such a move would be both unwise and inappropriate (Hebrews 10:19-39).
All of this begs the question: who were the first recipients of this document? Where were they living? What was their background? When were they caught up in these things?
There are a number of clues that come through the author’s notes about the experiences they have faced:
When all of these things are considered together, subtle demographic lines emerge. Because they are well-educated, communicate in Greek, and appear to have come to Judaism from a Gentile background, it is likely that these people were proselytes to Judaism who had been seeking moral grounding in an increasingly debauched and debasing Roman society. There were many instances in the first centuries BC and AD where non-Jews became enamored of the rigorous lifestyle found in Jewish communities scattered around the Roman world. After going through years of non-participating observation and instruction, these converts were then officially declared to be Jews through ritual entrance ceremonies.
New adherents of any cause or religion are often the most zealous for their newly adopted perspectives and philosophies. It certainly seems to have been the case with these folks. So it must have been quite exciting and shocking when news about Jesus circulated, announcing the arrival of messiah and the coming of God’s final act of revelation and transformation. No doubt many of these Gentile proselytes to Judaism were quick to take the next step in exploring the messianic fulfillments of the religion they had recently adopted.
Of course, it did not take long before tensions within the Jewish community, and later persecutions from without, took the glow off these exuberant times. Now, in the face of renewed threats against Christians by the Roman government, a complicating twist had been added. All Christians, whether Gentile or Jewish in background, were specifically identified as participants in an illegal religious cult, while Jews who did not believe in Jesus retained official protections as part of an already sanctioned religion.
This heightened the confusion of identity issues for proselyte Jews. If they continued to profess Jesus as messiah, they would be separated from the rest of the Jewish community and persecuted by the Roman government, perhaps losing their property, their families, and even their lives in the process. If, however, they gave up the Jesus factor in their messianic Judaism, they would be able to return to the safety and camaraderie of the general Jewish community, with all of its religious rigor and righteousness, and at the same time escape threats from the Roman officials. The latter option was a very tempting choice to make.
So the writer of Hebrews points to others, of both Old Testament times and recent difficult circumstances, who chose to keep in step with the messianic progression of God’s activities, culminating in the coming of Jesus, the messiah. If these followers of the right way could keep their faith, even when it cost them everything, you can do it too! And look! They are the ones who are cheering you on! They believe you can remain faithful. In fact, Jesus himself stands at the end of your journey and beckons you on to the finish line! So don’t give up now, just when you are achieving a newer depth in your relationship with God! You can continue on! You can make it!
Mark 12:38-44
Money is a power in our lives. We have all felt it feed our greed or suck like a leech at our souls. In our consumer-oriented society it has to be disarmed, or it will consume us with credit-card debt and gambling addictions.
Jaques Ellul, the deeply religious French social critic, offered some hopeful suggestions in his book Money and Power (IVP, 1984). Ellul said that there are three ways we can learn to defuse the power of money in our lives.
First, in all the issues of life, said Ellul, we must choose to side with the human dimension rather than the economic. In other words, we have to refocus the glasses of our heart’s eyes to see persons before profits. Economic problems have to become for us human relations successes. People always matter more than the bottom line on bills.
Second, said Ellul, we must each make a willful decision not to love Money. Jesus called Money a god directly in competition with the Creator. If we would find the true value of our lives, according to Ellul, we need to peg our hearts on God’s board, and deliberately refuse to be counted on Money’s team.
More than any other advice or admonition this goes against the current of our society. Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith developed the creed of North American life when he declared as his major economic thesis that “prosperity is generated by desire.” If you want to gun for economic greatness, you have to feed the flames of greed. Wealth is a perspective on life carved out of insatiable consumer madness.
Ellul’s third guideline for defusing the power of money was to give it away. It is not enough, he said, to take God’s path at the fork in the road. We must also divest ourselves of the very power of the other god in our lives. Just as alcoholics must renounce the bottle in order to survive, those who are smitten with the plague of greed have to get rid of the things that produce the cancerous disease. Some in fact, as Jesus noted in the New Testament, may well have to get rid of every bit of money and goods and take vows of poverty.
Even for those of us who may be able to survive with less drastic healing measures, Ellul urges that we all need to give away much more money than is our current habit. Prosperity makes it easy to throw dimes and dollars this way and that without attacking our deep connection to material things. Recession, on the other hand, feeds our worry and robs us of both faith and generosity. To paraphrase the prayer in one of the Proverbs, “Lord, give me neither riches nor poverty; riches will make me self-sufficient and poverty will make me obsessive.”
Application
Precisely when the going gets the toughest, as Naomi and the recipients of Hebrews and even Jesus’ first disciples realized, the only quality of life that we can bank on is the graciousness of God. That is why the truest test of our spiritual character is found in the reflection of God’s generosity that spills out of our souls. Annie Johnson Flint put it well in her hymn:
When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.
His love has no limit; his grace has no measure,
His pow’r has no boundaries known unto men;
For out of his infinite riches in Jesus
He giveth and giveth and giveth again!
Alternative Application
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17. The book of Ruth is all about Naomi, and Naomi is all about Israel. It begins during the time of the judges when Israel was turning away from Yahweh and experiencing the curses of the covenant, including losing its place in the promised land. It points to the need to return “home” to the covenant inheritance if life is going to recover its significance. It shows how the problem of “Mara” (bitter destitution) is resolved through covenant obedience. And it ends with a direct link to King David, who will be given a royal grant (2 Samuel 7) that will keep his family on the throne of Israel forever, ensuring the success of Yahweh’s missional enterprise.
The book of Ruth is much more than a good love story; it is a tale of covenant-breaking, judgment, faithfulness, and restoration. Both Ruth and Boaz lay their own selves on the line to meet the needs of Naomi’s destitution. They embody the Sinai covenant. Those who live in this way enter the true shalom (rest) that Yahweh intended for Israel. More than that, they bring others (Naomi/the nation of Israel) with them. Leave the land, the covenant, the mission of Yahweh (as Elimelech did), and you only find death and destitution. Return home, and even the nations (cf. Ruth) are blessed, just as Yahweh promised Abram back in Genesis 12. It is for this purpose that Israel exists, and why she is to live in Canaan, the platform from which the whole redemptive drama of Yahweh will be visible to the nations, and draw them also into covenant blessing.
But now and again I see my mortality clinging to my steps like a lengthening shadow, and I am caught wondering why I am here at all. A question chiseled in stone over the grave of a child recycles in my brain: “If I am so quickly done for, what on earth was I begun for?”
Because we are psychosomatic creatures, spirits expressing ourselves through bodies, we often think that the inner self grows in significance as the material self struts with pride and fine fashion. Since no one can touch the soul inside except by way of the material stuff with which we surround it, we are often beguiled into amassing possessions and accomplishments as means to identify our worth.
Yet all of these things will be stripped away from us before we can blink against the wind of time. Some time ago I cried with a thirtysomething fellow who is a glowing testimony of success in our community. He grew up in a close-knit family, wears an athletic body and a movie-star’s face, married a beautiful and intelligent woman, lives in a luxurious home, and is buying a multimillion-dollar business that could become a multibillion-dollar corporation before he retires. He was the envy of the neighborhood, but today it means nothing. A crippling disease, a foolish action, and a disintegrating marriage have tripped him on the run. “I would trade everything to have my wife and children back,” he said. “Two weeks ago I thought I had it all. Now I don’t know if I have anything.”
God meant for us to live and to enjoy the marvelous beauty and material riches of our world and universe. But we can’t truly delight in them until we know who we are. It isn’t until we begin to die that we begin to live. It isn’t until we cry out to heaven that 90 or 75 or 50 or 13 years aren’t enough that we begin to understand what 13 or 50 or 75 or 90 years of human life really mean.
If today’s lectionary readings can whet our appetite for what really matters, we will find out that the God who taught our cells to divide in our mothers’ wombs won’t let the sun set forever. After all, it was our own brother Jesus who rolled back the stone of death on Easter morning.
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
During the time of the Judges, unsettled by a nasty famine, Elimelech removes his family from the hill country of Judah to find food and work. They settle in Moab, long enough for the two sons, Machlon and Kilion, to marry. Then in short order all the men of the family die, and Naomi is left a widow. Destitute, Naomi can only think of returning to Bethlehem, where she might find old friends who could give her a few handouts until she dies. Her daughters-in-law try to travel along, but Naomi resists their pity. She has nothing to offer them, not even future sons if the unlikely should happen and she would marry again.
Orpah is wise, and goes back to her Moabite community to start over. Ruth, however, is stubborn, and is doggedly determined to accompany Naomi in order to share the burden of her desperate situation.
On arriving in Bethlehem, Naomi is barely recognized but warmly welcomed. She tells her woeful story and claims a new name, Mara (which means “bitter”), as an indication of her sorry state.
Ruth joins the other poor people who glean the barley fields for leftover corner patches and fallen stalks and loose kernels after the reapers have taken in the bulk of the crop (see Leviticus 19:9 and 23:22 about reaping and gleaning practices). She catches the eye of Boaz, a wealthy landowner of some of the fields where she labors. He gets friendly, and Naomi sees a good prospect looming on the horizon. She urges Ruth to return Boaz’s kind initiatives, and before long the gentleman makes public his courtship intentions. Quickly he cuts through community red tape, and the two are wed. Already on their honeymoon a child is conceived, and when little Obed is born Naomi claims him as a sign of Yahweh’s renewed blessing on her life. Of course, everybody lives happily ever after, and the closing credits show that this is the origin of the great family of David, who later restores glory and honor to Israel.
The tale is as clean and crisp and delightful as any ever written. But like an iceberg, there is much more going on beneath the surface than first catches the eye. For one thing, the book of Ruth is a literary gem. Written with tremendous economy, it conveys a major story in only 1,260 Hebrew words. Moreover, within that brief venture it manages to encapsulate an introduction and a conclusion (each of which has exactly 71 words) and four dramatic acts containing two scenes apiece. Furthermore, of the two scenes in each act, one takes place in a private location and the other in a public location, and the order of these is reversed between the first and second halves of the drama. When analyzed from purely a grammatical and literary perspective, this is an incredible work of art, symmetry, and balance.
But there is more. A character study reveals that nearly every dramatic persona in the book is doubled and paralleled. Ruth and Boaz are the twinned lead characters. She is female, young, single (widowed), poor, and an alien in Israel; he, on the other hand, is male, older, single (unmarried), wealthy, and a leading citizen in Israel. Their interaction continually highlights both their similarities and their differences, making them a truly engaging couple.
Next to them stand their dramatic counterparts, lesser figures in the story to be sure, but foils in whose reflection these lead characters are further defined. Ruth’s “other” is Orpah, another young Moabite woman who also married a son of Elimelech and Naomi. While Ruth becomes noble as the whole of the drama progresses, Orpah becomes ordinary, taking the typical human path at the beginning of the tale. Orpah reminds us of ourselves, acting with modest self-interest to make it through life. Meanwhile, Ruth soars in an impressive arc of witness, a triumph of the humble spirit focused relentlessly on things that really matter.
Similarly, there is a counterpart to Boaz. He shows up near the end of the tale as the “kinsman-redeemer,” or nearer relative, who can follow through on the levirate customs that would allow Naomi and Ruth to regain title to the land evacuated by Elimelech. Once again, this man is very much like Boaz. He would also like to help Naomi and Ruth, but practical matters of family get in the way, and none among the elders of the community reproaches him for stepping back. Boaz, however, stretches beyond what circumstances require, and gives himself to pledges that define a new future for others, even when Boaz himself is not under obligation to them.
A third pair of dramatic characters is found in the background collectives that provide color commentary to the story. There is a group of women who congregate around Naomi and Ruth early in the tale (when these two enter Bethlehem after Naomi’s exile) and again late in the story (in order to pronounce blessings on the household after Obed is born), announcing Naomi’s situation and reflecting her changing fortunes. Likewise, a group of men gloms onto Boaz, first in the fields of harvest where they act as his confidants and advisers, and then for a second time in the final gate scene where they adjudicate the decisions that are being made.
What becomes strangely clear when reviewing these pairings is that Naomi stands alone. Elimelech, her husband, vanishes within the first few verses. Ruth may be a companion to Naomi, but she is never an equal. The women who chant are always in the background, even as Naomi lives at center stage. While the title of the book may focus our attention on Ruth, it is actually the figure of Naomi which emerges in the drama as the main character. She has no counterpart. She is the focus of the story. Although we delight in snuggling up to Ruth and Boaz, it is the fortunes of Naomi that become the prime concern of everyone else in the tale.
In this light we begin to understand the theological significance of the drama. While it is a story well told and beautifully staged, it is also a clearly moral and religious homily. Like Samson in the book of Judges, Naomi is the mirror reflection of Israel as a nation. The very fact that she has no parallel character within the tale makes her stand out as a type of something larger, something more significant.
This theological significance is highlighted by the striking use of setting and names throughout. The story begins in the time of the Judges, when the dominant motif, echoed particularly in the sordid appendix to the book of that name, is: “in those days there was no king in the land and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” The book of Ruth commences with a man consciously removing his family from their divinely granted inheritance, to seek fortune and security among Israel’s enemies. This is the displacement warned about in the curses of the Sinai covenant, and modeled in the failures of both the tribes of Dan and Benjamin.
At the same time, the book of Ruth ends with a clear and unambiguous link to the time of the kings, in its epilogue that lists the family succession directly to David. In this way the story of Naomi bridges the awful destitution of life under the judges with the Camelot sparkle of Israel’s grand existence during the reigns of David and Solomon. It is thus, coded in the weavings of Naomi’s life, that the key to Israel’s success is found. How does Naomi go from rags to riches? How will Israel claw its way back from destitution to restitution? The answer lies in the symbolism of this story.
Bethlehem, the home town of Elimelech and Naomi, means “house of bread.” Yet it is precisely here that there is famine “in the days of the judges” because of the failure of the Israelites to live as Yahweh’s covenant community of witness. This becomes even more clear when Elimelech (“My God is King”) leaves his inheritance to become, in effect, a Moabite man. The Moabites were cursed by Yahweh for having led Israel to lose its religious identity in Numbers 22-25. Though unstated, Elimelech’s faithlessness prompts an underlying current of judgment against his family. This is why his sons are so frail (Machlon means “sickly,” Kilion means “weakling”) and die along with their father, leaving the one vision of hope in the family, wife and mother Naomi (“sweet” or “pleasant” -- “sweetie-pie” you might say!), turned sour (Mara means “bitter”).
It is only through a faithful Israelite who did not leave his inheritance (Boaz means “in him is strength”), coupled with a despised Moabite woman who actually caught the vision of Yahweh’s missional covenant community in spite of the failures of so many of Israel’s citizens, that Israel/Naomi is restored. So the drama, which began when the “House of Bread” was empty, ends with a bountiful harvest in the same breadbasket community. Moreover, the family that gave up its inheritance, only to have its future obliterated under the curses of the covenant (all of the males -- who carry the inheritance links -- die, leaving the women worse than dead), finds a new fulfillment that brings harvest, safety, home, wealth, and above all a male child to restore a claim in the inheritance of the covenant people in the promised land. And what is the name of the boy? Obed. “Servant.” Exactly! Only when personal self-interest (so Orpah and the kinsman-redeemer) is given up for faithful covenant service (so Ruth and Boaz) does life begin again to shimmer with significance. The book of Ruth is very fine drama indeed, but it is exceptionally great theology besides!
Hebrews 9:24-28
Although the author of Hebrews shares his perspectives with his audience, there is one significant difference between them: he fully believes Jesus has ushered in a culminating change that transcends and makes obsolete these previous expressions of religious identity, while they, due to cultural pressures around them, are not so sure of that. This document is written to convince a community -- which is on the verge of slipping away from Jesus back into a pre-Jesus Jewish ritualistic context -- that such a move would be both unwise and inappropriate (Hebrews 10:19-39).
All of this begs the question: who were the first recipients of this document? Where were they living? What was their background? When were they caught up in these things?
There are a number of clues that come through the author’s notes about the experiences they have faced:
- These are second-generation Christians (2:1; 2:3; 13:7)
- Who had come through tough times (10:32)
- Many were publicly ridiculed (10:33)
- A number of their leaders apparently were killed (13:7)
- At least some of them had their property confiscated (10:34)
- Although most had not been martyred, many had spent time in prison (10:34; 13:3)
- They knew the Hebrew scriptures well (obvious from the continual stream of scriptural quotes and allusions)
- They had practiced Hebrew religious ceremonies in the past (13:9-10)
- But they were likely Gentile in ethnic background, having come into Judaism in the first place by way of conversion (10:32)
When all of these things are considered together, subtle demographic lines emerge. Because they are well-educated, communicate in Greek, and appear to have come to Judaism from a Gentile background, it is likely that these people were proselytes to Judaism who had been seeking moral grounding in an increasingly debauched and debasing Roman society. There were many instances in the first centuries BC and AD where non-Jews became enamored of the rigorous lifestyle found in Jewish communities scattered around the Roman world. After going through years of non-participating observation and instruction, these converts were then officially declared to be Jews through ritual entrance ceremonies.
New adherents of any cause or religion are often the most zealous for their newly adopted perspectives and philosophies. It certainly seems to have been the case with these folks. So it must have been quite exciting and shocking when news about Jesus circulated, announcing the arrival of messiah and the coming of God’s final act of revelation and transformation. No doubt many of these Gentile proselytes to Judaism were quick to take the next step in exploring the messianic fulfillments of the religion they had recently adopted.
Of course, it did not take long before tensions within the Jewish community, and later persecutions from without, took the glow off these exuberant times. Now, in the face of renewed threats against Christians by the Roman government, a complicating twist had been added. All Christians, whether Gentile or Jewish in background, were specifically identified as participants in an illegal religious cult, while Jews who did not believe in Jesus retained official protections as part of an already sanctioned religion.
This heightened the confusion of identity issues for proselyte Jews. If they continued to profess Jesus as messiah, they would be separated from the rest of the Jewish community and persecuted by the Roman government, perhaps losing their property, their families, and even their lives in the process. If, however, they gave up the Jesus factor in their messianic Judaism, they would be able to return to the safety and camaraderie of the general Jewish community, with all of its religious rigor and righteousness, and at the same time escape threats from the Roman officials. The latter option was a very tempting choice to make.
So the writer of Hebrews points to others, of both Old Testament times and recent difficult circumstances, who chose to keep in step with the messianic progression of God’s activities, culminating in the coming of Jesus, the messiah. If these followers of the right way could keep their faith, even when it cost them everything, you can do it too! And look! They are the ones who are cheering you on! They believe you can remain faithful. In fact, Jesus himself stands at the end of your journey and beckons you on to the finish line! So don’t give up now, just when you are achieving a newer depth in your relationship with God! You can continue on! You can make it!
Mark 12:38-44
Money is a power in our lives. We have all felt it feed our greed or suck like a leech at our souls. In our consumer-oriented society it has to be disarmed, or it will consume us with credit-card debt and gambling addictions.
Jaques Ellul, the deeply religious French social critic, offered some hopeful suggestions in his book Money and Power (IVP, 1984). Ellul said that there are three ways we can learn to defuse the power of money in our lives.
First, in all the issues of life, said Ellul, we must choose to side with the human dimension rather than the economic. In other words, we have to refocus the glasses of our heart’s eyes to see persons before profits. Economic problems have to become for us human relations successes. People always matter more than the bottom line on bills.
Second, said Ellul, we must each make a willful decision not to love Money. Jesus called Money a god directly in competition with the Creator. If we would find the true value of our lives, according to Ellul, we need to peg our hearts on God’s board, and deliberately refuse to be counted on Money’s team.
More than any other advice or admonition this goes against the current of our society. Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith developed the creed of North American life when he declared as his major economic thesis that “prosperity is generated by desire.” If you want to gun for economic greatness, you have to feed the flames of greed. Wealth is a perspective on life carved out of insatiable consumer madness.
Ellul’s third guideline for defusing the power of money was to give it away. It is not enough, he said, to take God’s path at the fork in the road. We must also divest ourselves of the very power of the other god in our lives. Just as alcoholics must renounce the bottle in order to survive, those who are smitten with the plague of greed have to get rid of the things that produce the cancerous disease. Some in fact, as Jesus noted in the New Testament, may well have to get rid of every bit of money and goods and take vows of poverty.
Even for those of us who may be able to survive with less drastic healing measures, Ellul urges that we all need to give away much more money than is our current habit. Prosperity makes it easy to throw dimes and dollars this way and that without attacking our deep connection to material things. Recession, on the other hand, feeds our worry and robs us of both faith and generosity. To paraphrase the prayer in one of the Proverbs, “Lord, give me neither riches nor poverty; riches will make me self-sufficient and poverty will make me obsessive.”
Application
Precisely when the going gets the toughest, as Naomi and the recipients of Hebrews and even Jesus’ first disciples realized, the only quality of life that we can bank on is the graciousness of God. That is why the truest test of our spiritual character is found in the reflection of God’s generosity that spills out of our souls. Annie Johnson Flint put it well in her hymn:
When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.
His love has no limit; his grace has no measure,
His pow’r has no boundaries known unto men;
For out of his infinite riches in Jesus
He giveth and giveth and giveth again!
Alternative Application
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17. The book of Ruth is all about Naomi, and Naomi is all about Israel. It begins during the time of the judges when Israel was turning away from Yahweh and experiencing the curses of the covenant, including losing its place in the promised land. It points to the need to return “home” to the covenant inheritance if life is going to recover its significance. It shows how the problem of “Mara” (bitter destitution) is resolved through covenant obedience. And it ends with a direct link to King David, who will be given a royal grant (2 Samuel 7) that will keep his family on the throne of Israel forever, ensuring the success of Yahweh’s missional enterprise.
The book of Ruth is much more than a good love story; it is a tale of covenant-breaking, judgment, faithfulness, and restoration. Both Ruth and Boaz lay their own selves on the line to meet the needs of Naomi’s destitution. They embody the Sinai covenant. Those who live in this way enter the true shalom (rest) that Yahweh intended for Israel. More than that, they bring others (Naomi/the nation of Israel) with them. Leave the land, the covenant, the mission of Yahweh (as Elimelech did), and you only find death and destitution. Return home, and even the nations (cf. Ruth) are blessed, just as Yahweh promised Abram back in Genesis 12. It is for this purpose that Israel exists, and why she is to live in Canaan, the platform from which the whole redemptive drama of Yahweh will be visible to the nations, and draw them also into covenant blessing.
