I’m sure many of you have heard the old story about the man who trusted God to save him from a flood. For days the meteorologists were predicting record breaking rainfall, dangerous amounts, but he was not worried. He had faith; he trusted that God would save him. When the rain began to fall, the county emergency management coordinator issued an evacuation order for his neighborhood. But the man stayed put. “God will save me.”
The waters began to rise. Soon, it became difficult for anyone to drive. However, the National Guard showed up in a large 5 ton truck. “Sir,” one of the soldiers called out, “Get in the truck. We’ll take you to safety.” “Thank you, but no,” the man said. “God will save me.” “But sir, the water is rising and this is the last truck. There won’t be another. Please, get in.” “No, God won’t let me drown.” So, reluctantly, the truck left.
The water continued to rise and soon the man had to retreat to the second floor of his house. There he continued to pray for God to deliver him. A rescue boat came by and, seeing the man inside, stopped at an open window. “Sir, come on. We’ll take you to safety,” called a woman in the boat. “No need. God will save me.” The rescue workers tried to convince the man to get in the boat, but to no avail, so they left to help others.
Soon the water inundated the second floor and the man was forced onto the roof. Still, his faith did not waver. As the water force him higher up the roof, a helicopter flew overhead and dropped down a line. A voice, amplified by a loud speaker, called out, “Sir, grab hold of the rope and we will pull you up to safety.” The man shouted back at the top of his voice, “No, thank you. God will soon save me.” The helicopter crew tried again: “Take the rope. This is your last chance.” “I have faith. God will save me.” So the helicopter flew off.
The water kept rising and soon the man drowned. He found himself before the Pearly Gates and he was none too happy. As he approached, St. Peter looked up from his laptop and did a double take. “Mike Jones! You’re not supposed to be here yet.”
“I should say not!” the man replied. “I trusted that God would save me from that flood. I prayed. I had faith. But I drowned. Where was God? Why did God let me drown?”
“What do you mean ‘Where was God?’” said St. Peter indignantly. “We didn’t let you drown. We sent you an evacuation notice, a truck, a boat and a helicopter!”
The book of Ruth is a little like this story, not in its outcome, obviously, but in terms of where God is and how God is at work. Ruth is, on the surface at least, a story about human relationships. Almost all of the action is done by humans. God is often invoked both in blessings offered by one person to another or in expressions of thanks. But only twice is God said to act in a direct and clear way. The first is in the opening chapter when we are told that Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem because she has heard that God has “considered God’s people…and given them food again.” [1.6] The second occurs in this morning’s second reading, from chapter 4, when we are told “the Lord made Ruth conceive, and she bore a son.” A harvest after famine and the birth of a child: both are examples of fertility and hope for new life given by God. But in between, we might well ask, “Where is God? How is God at work in this story? How does God act in the world?”
Numerous Biblical scholars see in these questions one of the central theological themes of the Book of Ruth. Katherine Doob Sakenfeld sees three prominent themes. The first two we looked at over the last two weeks: 1) hesed (steadfast love or loving kindness) shown by one person for another and 2) the establishment of a just, peaceable community that welcomes strangers and cares for all ages, genders, and classes. [Ruth, Interpretation, 9-14] The third theme is the answer to the question of the man caught in the flood: Where is God? “God is at work in the everyday actions of faithful people,” people who show loyalty, care and compassion for others and thereby both mirror and enact God’s hesed. [15-16] Reflecting carefully on these three themes, we can see the connections among them, how they are interwoven with one another: God’s very nature is love and people reflect the Divine character when they show hesed, steadfast love and kindness, to one another; this faithfulness and care builds a more just and peaceful community; and through it all God is at work, in subtle ways, respecting human freedom, but also guiding, encouraging and building upon human works of love and deeds of compassion in order to draw people more closely together and move them further along the road toward God’s vision of the Beloved Community in which God’s hesed is realized, made effectual in a transformed human society.
We have already seen Ruth show loving kindness: she goes above and beyond by staying with Naomi and working to ensure both have food. Boaz, too, went above and beyond in providing food for the widows and extending protection to Ruth. And now she asks him to do so again. When Ruth asks Boaz to “spread your cloak over your servant,” (3.9) she is taking the initiative and proposing marriage, something that Boaz was not obligated to do under any Hebrew law known to us (he is not a brother of her dead husband so this is not a reference to levirate marriage). Moreover she is making this bold request using Boaz’s own words of blessing to her. The word here translated “cloak” (kanaf) was the same word Boaz used when he said to Ruth, “may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings (kanaf) you have come for refuge!” (2.12) She is in effect saying, “You have invoked God’s blessing upon me—the blessing of refuge and protection—now act to make it so. Be God’s instrument of blessing. Be the wing of God under which I find refuge and a blessed future!”
Boaz rises to the challenge and again responds with loving kindness. As soon as the sun is up he heads off to take care of all the legal rigmarole necessary both to secure Ruth’s hand in marriage and to redeem Elimelech’s land and keep it in the family.
The book ends with the result of that marriage: God blesses Ruth with a son, Obed. But this is not only a blessing for Ruth and Boaz and Naomi, nor just for Bethlehem. For Obed will have a son named Jesse. And Jesse will have a son named David, the second and greatest king of Israel. The whole nation, the whole people will eventually be blessed because of the birth of Obed,. But this blessing will not be limited to Israel, because out of David’s house and lineage will come, at long last, Joseph, whose wife Mary will give birth to a first born son and call his name Jesus, great David’s greater Son, the very incarnation of God’s steadfast love and kindness, through whom all humanity, all the world will be blessed with hope and salvation.
But none of this happens without the hesed, the loving kindness, lived out and enacted by Ruth and by Naomi and by Boaz. God works in and through such faithful humans and their deeds of loving kindness in order to accomplish God’s purposes. Carolyn Pressler suggests that the story of Ruth conveys an image of God that resembles not so much a monarch issuing commands, as a gardener “providing what is necessary for the plants to grow.” The story, she says, “points to God at work in and through ongoing events and human encounters, providing opportunities and bringing human efforts to fulfillment.” [Joshua, Judges and Ruth, WBC, 277] And that fulfillment turns out to be far beyond what Ruth, Naomi, Boaz or anyone else could have imagined, hoped for or dreamed. Yet it is intertwined with, dependent upon, responsive to, and shaped by human actions and choices.
I am reminded of a saying of St. Augustine that was a favorite of South African archbishop Desmond Tutu: "By himself, God won't; by ourselves, we can't; but together with God, we can!" God chooses to work with and through us, so that in our works of love, in our deeds of compassion, in our words of kindness, in our struggle for justice, God’s will is done and God’s presence is made real.
Matt Fitzgerald is a UCC pastor in Chicago. Some years ago, he found himself sitting in silence in the kitchen of a family from his congregation barely an hour after the husband had died. The wife was in the living room with his body. Fitzgerald sat at the kitchen table with a church friend and the dead man’s teenaged daughter. He recalls, “We tried to speak comfort to one another, but we'd run out of things to say. We sat in silence. To me it felt like we were waiting. But waiting for what?” The grief was heavy and it was sure to get worse, for the funeral home would soon be there to take away his body, to remove the physical presence of the one whose soul had already left. The moment was dark and the future seemed to promise only more of the same.
The doorbell rang. It was a plumber. Apparently, the hospice nurse had flushed the deceased’s medicines down the toilet—protocol. But somehow, this broke the toilet. So, the plumber was called and now he walked unknowingly into a family’s darkness and pain. “He could have run straight to the bathroom,” says Fitzgerald. “But he didn't. He shook my hand, looked the teenaged daughter straight in the eyes and told the grieving widow that he knew what a good man her husband was. As he made his rounds something in the room turned. For a moment the pain broke and became something else. Or at least the pain was met by a power that promised it would not last forever.” [Matt Fitzgerald, “Like a Plumber at a Deathbed,” UCC Still Speaking Daily Devotional; June 6, 2015]
A grieving family and an overwhelmed pastor encountered God’s care and God’s steadfast love (hesed) in the words and actions of a plumber who had never seen, much less spoken to, any of them before. Where was God? Right there in that living room sitting beside the grieving wife, weeping with her; right there at that kitchen table with the heartbroken daughter and the pastor who had no more words. God was present and at work and revealed in the care and kindness of a man none of them knew. God’s blessing of hope, God’s assurance that the pain would not last forever, that grief would not be the last word, that there would be a future both for the deceased man and for his grieving family—all of this was communicated came through a human being who simply acted with loving kindness (hesed).
So let us not be like the man in the flood. Let us remember that God works in everyday ways and through ordinary people—plumbers, and daughters-in-law, and farmers—to accomplish God’s purposes. Let us be attentive, for God is often hidden in human kindness. Let us have faith, for God’s hesed, God’s steadfast love, endures forever and nothing can separate us from it.
And, let us follow the example of Ruth, Naomi and Boaz, the example of that compassionate plumber. Let us do justice now. Let us show loving kindness now. Let us walk humbly now. Let us love our neighbors, all of our neighbors, now. Let us enact steadfast love, trusting that God is present and will use our loving, faithful actions and relationships to bring blessings that we cannot imagine. [Pressler, 308] Amen,