Focus: God redeems his saints.
Part of the Lutheran communion service for All Saints’ Day says, “By the witness of your saints you show us the hope of our calling and strengthen us to run the race set before us, that we may delight in your mercy and rejoice with them in glory.” Why does God give us saints? Because saints show us hope.
There is no better example of hope than the story of Ruth, a saint who started with nothing: in a short time, she had lost her husband, she was living as a foreigner in a foreign land, she had no way to provide, nothing but her widowed mother-in-law Naomi to cling to. And God who keeps his promises. Ruth is a story of love, new life, faith, but above all, it is a story of redemption.
Today, we hear what that redemption looks like. Last week, Ruth agreed to give Naomi’s daring plan a shot: to try to win over Naomi’s kinsman Boaz, a wealthy, righteous landowner, by showing up alone at the threshing floor after he had eaten and drunk and was going to sleep and basically to seduce him. If this sounds risqué, all I can say is it’s the Bible, and the Bible isn’t afraid to be real: even get a bit risqué. But risqué or not, this plan is most definitely risky. Boaz might question what kind of woman she is who comes to him in the night like this.
But today we hear the resolution of the story. And it works, as the knowing mother-in-law Naomi knew it would and as Ruth hoped it would. But there’s still one problem before the Happily Ever After: the question of redemption.
Redemption has deep theological meanings that we will get to in a couple minutes, but the way to understand it in this story has less to do with what we do in church than what we do in Meijer. What do I mean by that? Have you ever “redeemed” pop cans for 10 cents? Have you ever “redeemed” a coupon or voucher? Then you know how this works. Redeem means “to buy back.” It’s an economic system from when marriage was a very economic reality. Remember the whole reason Ruth really needs to find a husband is so that she and Naomi will have enough to eat to stave off starvation.
In Leviticus 25, redemption is described as a way when someone falls on hard times that the next-of-kin can redeem, buy back the person’s land and support their family. It is a law designed to keep the person’s land, family, and good name intact. Here’s where Ruth and Naomi come in. Naomi needs to sell her deceased husband Elimelech’s land to survive, and according to the law, her widowed daughter-in-law Ruth is attached to the land. The land and Ruth are a package deal. This may sound like an odd system to our ears today, but in the time, it actually functioned to help women who had been widowed find a husband to start their married lives over again.
Through this economic system of redemption, Boaz can restore Elimelech’s land to his family, marry Ruth, and provide a living for both Ruth and Naomi. The Happily Ever After is in sight! But there’s one problem. Boaz is not the next-of-kin. There’s one guy closer. We’re never told his name other than “Next-of-Kin.” I guess it’s like when you’re buying a house you never learn who’s selling. But from the story’s perspective, the reason’s clear: His name doesn’t matter other than that he’s a threat to our Happily Ever After. Will Elimelech’s family land be sold off to this nameless Next-of-Kin; will Ruth be married off to him instead of Boaz? And that’s where we leave our story this week. No, just kidding. Wouldn’t do that to you twice in a row. No, this time it is Boaz who has a plan.
He meets the next-of-kin the next day and explains the situation. He tells him about the parcel of land. And he tells him to make up his mind. “If you will redeem it, redeem it.” And Mr. Next- of-Kin says he will. And everyone’s heart sinks. But this is where Boaz drops the other news that he had been holding back for just the right moment. “You will also be marrying Ruth, who is attached to the land.” Well here’s the problem. Mr. Next-of-Kin already has an inheritance promised to a son, and Ruth marrying into the family threatens to break that up. The man backs off. This time, it’s Boaz’s plan that works.
The story ends with everyone redeemed, economically and otherwise. Ruth has found a husband who will support her. Boaz has found a faithful, loyal, hesed wife. Even though Elimelech is dead, his name and land will go on. His widowed wife Naomi has found a new life and a new purpose. At the end of the story, she is so constantly with her new grandson Obed, Ruth’s son, that the villagers joke, “A son has been born to Naomi”—the type of idea Naomi might have laughed at earlier in the story. And not only that. The people of Israel are redeemed. We are told that Obed was the grandfather of the great king David, David of course the ancestor of Jesus. That means that from this foreign woman who seemed so hopeless, so outside the bounds of what was expected, God worked his redemption literally for everyone in the world.
Saints show us the hope of our calling. Ruth is one such saint. Ruth shows us the power of redemption, of being bought back. Maybe it seems weird to think of things like life and death and eternal life and salvation in such economic terms. But try thinking about it this way: At the start of the story, we met characters who others better off, better connected might have described as hopeless, even worthless; maybe our heroes felt the same way about themselves on their worst days. But redemption says otherwise: Redemption teaches us that every single person even in the hardest circumstances has value. Where others saw only an alien Moabite woman, God saw the most valuable person of all, the essential ancestor of David and indeed Jesus.
And it is the same for you. Maybe on this All Saints’ Day, you think, “I could never be a saint. Those are the special people like St. Francis or Mother Teresa with halos on their heads.” But being a saint is not about what we do. From beginning to end, it is about God’s redeeming acts for us in Jesus Christ. Buying us back from sin, death, the devil, and whatever evil we have seen in our life or will see in the future. As St. Paul reminds us, we were bought with a price (1 Cor 6:20). Redemption shows us that none of us is valueless. In God’s eyes, each and every one of us is worth Jesus. From beginning to end, being a saint is about the value God puts on our lives.
How do we use that amazing gift? That’s where faith comes in. The Ruth type of faith of everyday life, stepping forward even when we can’t see the whole staircase. On this day when we remember not only biblical or historical saints, but saints in our lives, you and I can think of plenty of those types of saints in our family, in our church. Some saints who are now at rest, and some saints who still walk among us as yet by faith. In our everyday lives, they and we will all run different races, take different courses, but we begin and end in the same place: in the redemption of God who places an inestimable value on our lives. Amen.