The Bible's Best Love Story

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
May 8, 2005

The Bible’s Best Love Story
Ruth 1:1-18
Luke 8:1-3

Later this month the Confirmation Class will gather at the Manse
for their final retreat
We will do a number of things when we gather,
but we will begin our time together
by asking each student to draw a picture of his or her image of God.
We began our year together with this exercise
and we want to end our year together with the same exercise
to see if the image of God each student has in mind
has changed during the year.
Our hope is that it has, even just a little;
hopefully for the better – that each student
has a more personal image of God
in his or her mind.

If I were to ask each of you now to draw a picture of God
I am guessing that most folks would draw a picture similar to
the well-known image of God that Michelangelo
created on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
at the Vatican 500 years ago.
You recall that picture: God is portrayed as a older male,
with long white hair and a beard;
he wears long flowing robes.
His eyes radiate strength, wisdom, and power.
This is God the father,
the one Jesus refers to as Abba, father.
God the wise older man.
A God of power and strength.
God our King.

We put a human face on God because it helps us to understand God,
to draw closer to God.
We put a human face on God because we read in Genesis that
we were created in the image of God,
and so God must look something like you and me.
The problem is that when we put a human face on God
we limit God, for God is not human.
Think about it: if we all bear the image of God,
God looks like Paul Newman and Rodney Dangerfield,
and like Nicole Kidman and Phyllis Diller,
all at the same time!

God is far more than human, for Jesus tells us God is Spirit.
So if we are going think of God as a male, as our father,
we also need to think of God as a female, as our mother.
God is both.
God says as much in Isaiah,
Speaking through the prophet, God says with great tenderness and warmth
to his children in exile in Babylon,
“as a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.”
More than 500 years before the birth of Jesus
the Children of Israel had been routed from their land
and were living in captivity in Babylon.
They were feeling abandoned by God,
no hope that they would ever be restored to their land:
In chapter 49 of Isaiah, we read,
“Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.’

But God had not abandoned them
and God replied to their prayers
with such tenderness, such love,
“Can a woman forget her nursing child?
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?”
Isaiah 49:14-15

God is as much a mother to us as God is a father.
The fact that we pray to our Father in Heaven
that fact that I may use male pronouns when I refer to God,
calling God “him” or “he” isn’t because God is male.
We use those terms because it simply
makes things easier for us.

We have to remember that the various books of the Bible
were written in very patriarchal times.
Men were very much in charge, and
women were second-class citizens.
As we read through the Bible we find very few women
who stand out, who play a leading role in God’s story
of his relationship with his children.
Read the last chapter of the book of Ruth,
a story set more than a thousand years before the birth of Jesus
and you will understand what life was like for women:
Read carefully how Ruth becomes Boaz’s wife.
No dinners at romantic restaurants,
No flowers,
No moonlit walks hand-in-hand.
No Ruth goes with the property left her when her first husband died.
When Boaz bought the property,
he acquired Ruth as his wife in the bargain.

That’s how things were done 3,000 years ago.

The role of women in the Bible is underreported and underplayed.
You have heard me say many times, that had it not been for the women
who followed Jesus and then subsequently walked with Paul,
the church would not have developed as quickly as it did.
We hear as much in the passage from Luke,
one of those transitional passages that we generally tend to
skim over quickly as we move on to what we consider to be
more important readings.
But there it is, the truth:
the women provided for Jesus and his disciples
from their own resources;
…from their own resources; their own possessions,
….from what they had.
They made sure that Jesus and his disciples had food, clothing,
and other necessities as they journeyed
and took their ministry through the land of Judea.

Reading through the letters of Paul,
we find brief references to various women who were important contributors
to the foundation of the church.
Lydia is perhaps the best known.
The church in Philippi grew as a result of her support,
her faith, and her generosity.
There is a brief reference to a woman named Phoebe
at the very end of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
She apparently played an important role in the development
of the Church of Christ in a town just south of Corinth.
Paul writes, “I commend to you our sister Phoebe,
a deacon of the church in Cenchreae
so that you may welcome her in the Lord
as is fitting for the saints,
and help her in whatever she may require from you,
for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well.”
(Romans 16:1-2)
That’s all we know about Phoebe.
We don’t know what she did to deserve Paul’s praise.
We don’t know what she did to build the church in Cenchreae
We don’t know why she might have been traveling from there to Rome.
A fleeting reference and that is all.
But we sense that had there been no Phoebe
the church in Cenchreae might not have blossomed
as it did.

There are only two books of the Bible that go by women’s names
and ironically, they are among the oldest books in the Bible,
both found early in the Old Testament:
The book we know as Ruth
and the book we call Esther.

Ruth is referred to by one commentator
as “the most beautiful book in the Bible” and it is.
We find in it no stories of war, no violence,
no armies, no struggles of man against man
or nation against nation.
It is a love story pure and simple.

Ruth lives in the land known as Moab,
the land to the east of the great Salt Sea,
the body of water we now call the Dead Sea.
The time is more than a thousand years before the birth of Christ.
and there is famine in the land to the west,
the land of the Israelites.
An Israelite named Elimelech and his wife Naomi,
and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion
travel east to find land where they can grow their crops,
and they settle in Moab, a land where the people
do not believe in the Lord God.
Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, dies not long after they settled there.
Naomi and her sons remain on the land trying their best to survive.
Then in time-honored fashion, boy meets girl
and Ruth marries Naomi’s son Mahlon.
But after only 10 years of marriage, tragedy strikes twice,
and both Naomi’s sons die, leaving her with her two daughters-in-law.
Naomi tells the two young women both to go back
to live with their parents.
They are still relatively young – perhaps they will marry again.
Naomi’s daughter-in-law Orpah agrees to return to her family
and leaves.
But Naomi’s other daughter-in-law Ruth will not go.
she will not leave Naomi.
She knows Naomi has no one,
and an elderly widow with no family in those days
was likely to starve to death.
Ruth knows that if she doesn’t look after Naomi, no one will.

And so we find those beautiful words that are so often
used as readings in weddings,
“Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people;
and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die,
there will I be buried.” (Ruth 1:16-17)

Ruth’s love for her mother-in-law is so powerful,
her devotion to her mother-in-law so touching –
there is no other story like it in the Bible.
It is no wonder it is called the Bible’s best love story.
It is not about the love between a man and woman,
romantic love;
rather, it is simply the caring, nurturing love of one person for another.
the deep, selfless love that God wants for us,
the deep, self-giving love that Jesus tries to teach us.

Ruth stayed with Naomi, and they returned to Judah
to Bethlehem, where Naomi was from
and they did what women had to do 3000 years ago in order to survive:
they went to farmlands that were being harvested,
and they waited until the harvest was over
and then they picked the remnants on the edges of the field.
God commanded his children in Leviticus:
“When you reap the harvest of your land,
you shall not reap to the very edges of your field,
or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
You shall not strip your vineyard bare,
or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard;
you shall leave them their for the poor, the stranger, and the alien.”
(Lev. 19:9-10)
God created the first Food Pantry in that way.
And that’s how Ruth and Naomi survived.

The story does have a happy ending
as Ruth meets Boaz, who was a distant cousin of Naomi;
He also happened to be the wealthy owner of the field.
And Ruth became Boaz’ wife, and gave birth to Obed
the man who would become the grandfather of King David.
And Naomi looked after Ruth’s child.
The two of them, Ruth and Naomi inseparable,
their love for each other so strong.
Love between two women, children of God,
sisters as much as they were mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.

But that is the love we should all have,
for it is the love of Christ.
Mother to daughter,
father to son,
sister to sister,
brother to brother,
child of God to child of God.

The story of Ruth is a love story
a story of grace, a story that I have to believe
puts a smile on God’s face every time God re-reads it
a story that has to be one of God’s favorites,
a story that our loving Father in Heaven,
and yes, our loving Mother in Heaven,
would have for all of us.
Amen