July 3, 2022
Ruth 4: 1-18
Pentecost +4

In my college days, I would visit New York City on a regular basis. This was the time before the city got sanitized … if you watch a police movie from the ‘70s, you can see what the streets looked like.

During one of my first solo adventures in the city, I was standing on the platform as I waited for the subway train to arrive.

There was a pretty good-sized crowd waiting for the train. Against the back wall, a small crowd had gathered around a man and a cardboard box.

On the box were three cards lying face down and a couple of five-dollar bills, the man was picking up and dropping the cards and telling one person to “find the queen.”

The man, didn’t find the queen and the man with the cards, collected the bills that had been placed on the box.

It’s called three-card monte and it’s a scam that has been around for about 500 years.

The scam relies on misdirection or a distraction from someone planted in the crowd to ensure a person … better known as a “mark” … puts down a bet and never finds the queen

Boaz plays a bit of three-card monte in today’s passage from the Book of Ruth.

We heard last week how Ruth and Naomi took matters into their own hands to secure a future for Ruth. Ruth met Boaz … a relative of Naomi’s late husband … on the threshing floor after he was done celebrating an abundant harvest.

During their night together, Ruth calls on Boaz to marry her … to throw his cloak over her.

Boaz tells her that there is someone who is a closer relative to Naomi who might be a better choice for a husband. But if he says “no,” Boaz promises to marry her.

This morning we find Boaz in front of the elders at the city gate … a place where legal and other disputes or agreements are formed and witnessed. The other relative just happens by and Boaz calls him over.

Boaz tells him that their relative by marriage … Naomi … wants to sell her late husband’s land. The sale will help support her as she struggles to survive. As next-of-kin, this unnamed relative has first rights to purchase the land.

He jumps at the chance to expand his holdings and wealth. Then, Boaz adds a wrinkle to the deal … Ruth.

This is a package deal … land and Ruth.

The relative will be expected to marry her and have children with her and allow her late husband’s name to live on through the child.

This presents a problem for the relative … if it’s a boy, Naomi has a male heir and can reclaim the land from the relative.

The relative backs out of the deal and disappears into the crowd. The purchase isn’t as an attractive proposition as it seemed a few moments earlier.

Boaz has manoeuvred the relative into rejecting Ruth, so that he can fulfil the promise he made to her on the threshing floor.

They are married and have a son … Obed … David’s grandfather. In its original Hebrew, this passage says that Naomi … becomes the baby’s wet nurse. So, the woman who said she could not promise life to Orpha or Ruth as they journeyed to Bethlehem provides nourishment and life to Ruth’s son.

All this has been made possible by sharing God’s hesed … God’s love … to others through faith-filled actions.

In her discussion of Ruth’s story, Lutheran scholar Kathryn Schifferdecker wrote:

“Abundant harvest, overflowing blessings, new life where before there was only emptiness … all of it is made possible through the hesed of God, enacted by Ruth and Boaz, everyday, ordinary people who demonstrate extraordinary love and faithfulness.”

Even though Ruth and Naomi move a bit into the background in today’s passage, their bold actions were what set things in motion … Naomi’s instructions and Ruth’s faith result in Boaz being at the city gates bartering to get them a future.

What can easily be missed in Ruth’s and Naomi’s story is that neither of them took time to grieve the losses they suffered.

They both lost husbands and security. Naomi lost her sons and Ruth lost her homeland. Naomi lost a home and a sense that they had a future.

They came to Bethlehem as refugees … seeking the promise of a new, better life for them than what they had in Moab. Naomi kept the past in the past … there was no going back … and she was focused on a future for her daughter-in-law … just as Ruth was focused on her.

As a congregation, we have been like Boaz … working within the systems of the world to bring people out of dire and dangerous situations … to help the Naomis and the Ruths who are leaving their old life behind because it doesn’t offer security or the promise of an abundant future.

And we have been like Naomi … nurturing people as they begin their new life.

We have been a blessing to families escaping violence and war … and they … in turn … have been a blessing to others.

This is something we are seeking to continue as we work with the community group trying to bring single mothers and their children from the war in Ukraine.

Our role in this effort is still evolving … we’ll likely be crossing unfamiliar ground … something that might require a measure of boldness … but there is little doubt with so many community partners that the effort will be a success.

Hesed is indeed at work.

And maybe … unlike Naomi and Ruth … these women and their families will have time and room to grieve the losses they have experienced … the loss of homeland … of family members … maybe even of culture and language.

While we … as a church and as a community … continue to operate at the city gates to ensure that an overflowing of blessings … the abundance of God’s love … is there for them … overwhelming whatever emptiness that has been left by their losses.

… and nurturing them as they begin a new … secure … life.

Because such blessings … such life … becomes possible when ordinary people demonstrate extraordinary love and faithfulness.

And in those actions … in those moments … God is indeed present … and the bountiful harvest is shared.

AMEN