Lessons: Psalms 5-6; Ruth 1:19-2:13; 1 Timothy 1:18-2:8; Luke 13:10-17
Decades ago now I left my native South and took a position in New Jersey. I moved into a largely Italian neighborhood. Having grown up with mostly blond and blue-eyed people or Black people, I was struck by the new beauty of young Italians with dark eyes and hair. As I drove home there were corner groups of teens or twenties who presented this beauty as did many in my apartment house. That apartment house was filled with culture, community and kindness, a spirit of looking out for one another. They even took in this blue-eyed young man.
We will learn that Ruth in the Old Testament was beautiful to Boaz. Perhaps there was something about the Moabite people that differed from the people of Israel that made her stand out in the field where she gleaned. To glean was to walk after the reapers and pick up the fallen grain. This was the legal right of the poor, to glean this way or the ten percent left unharvested for them.
Yet there is a deeper beauty to Ruth that will be told this day to Boaz who owns the field where she gleans. It is perceived in her willingness to leave her native family for the insecurity of foreign land in order to care for her mother-in-law.
"She is the Moabite who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. She said, 'Please, let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the reapers.' So she came, and she has been on her feet from early this morning until now, without resting even for a moment." Ruth 2:6-7
Further Boaz will say to her, "All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. May the LORD reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!" Ruth 2:11-12
The effort she shows to secure a new beginning is rewarded as Boaz tells her to feel safe here. She is to return as she wishes. The young men are not to molest her but provide her the comfort of water.
It can be a vulnerable thing to seek a new beginning. One must travel with hope. The hope is you will be well met, that others will show you what you need to know, that you will be seen for who you are and what you bring. This is the hope of hospitality received.
In the faith of Israel, this is core. The religious law was structured to help men and women of faith remember there was a time when they were no people and had no God and no land. All this came to them at God's mercy and effort to seek and call a people of religious awareness. In response it is required that they show hospitality to strangers.
As early as Genesis 18 we see this custom at work as Abraham and Sarah show kindness to three men who come to them on the plain of Mamre. Food for their journey is provided and in return the Word of God is shared with them. Abraham and Sarah are blessed.
Part of what it is to be a Christian in America is to be challenged by this rule of hospitality. We are a mixed people and nation. We view immigrants variously but increasingly with suspicion and resentment. We too easily forget that all but Native Americans were immigrants and there is evidence even they migrated. Our fears are economically housed. Will there be enough for us? Isn't that how we have always viewed immigrants? What work and gift do they bring and will it limit mine somehow? All this is reasonable...but is it generous and if so how? Does it reflect the generous nature of God and if so how?
As a nation we are always reshaping policy in this domain. But that does not relieve me of wondering, what does God expect of me with the stranger? I can come to only one answer. Show hospitality. How I imagine it is spiritual work and practical work. Work with someone with a language barrier. Listen to stories. Aid societies that work with the immigrant people. Be polite. Support those who seek a just system of response. Move beyond fear. See the person behind the accent, complexion, mode of dress. Seek God in them.
That is all Ruth needed as she sought to scratch out an existence for herself and one she loved, her mother-in-law. She was blessed to be under the eye of a man who honored his religious tradition.
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