Word of Salvation – September 2024
Our Story-Making God
Sermon by Harry Burggraaf B.D. on Ruth 1 & 4:13-22
Scripture Readings: Ruth 1 & 4:13-22
Singing: We are here to praise you (BoW.179)
How sweet the name of Jesus sounds (BoW.409)
How vast the benefits divine (BoW.373)
Salvation belongs to our God (Rej.483)
What gives our life meaning?
The other day we went to watch a movie – ‘You can count on me’. In many ways quite an unremarkable movie. About a brother and older sister who had lost their parents in a car accident when quite young. The sister had an unsuccessful marriage which ended in divorce and the brother became an aimless drifter moving from job to job. One day the brother comes back to the family home where the sister is now living with her young son and she tries to ‘clean up’ his life and make him a little more responsible. A great irony as she herself is making a mess of her relationships. What gave the story some depth was the way that spiritual questions kept intruding. Not all that common for Hollywood today.
At one point she persuades the priest of her local church to speak to her brother and the dialogue is quite searching. The priest realises the resistance of the brother to spiritual things and he ask an unsettling question:
Does your life mean anything? What is the meaning of your life?
The brother doesn’t know how to handle the question. ‘What are you getting at… what do you mean, does my life have meaning?’ ‘Well what makes your life significant?’
‘Do you mean, what do I believe in… God and all that? I’ve thrown all that out ages ago.’
‘No, what gives your life connectedness. Where do you fit in the larger scheme of things?’
It’s an important question isn’t it? What is the meaning of our life? What is the significance of our life? How do people answer that question in practice?
How would you answer the question? Think about it!
People find their significance in their job. What I produce, what I can do.
People find meaning in their children. How well I perpetuate myself. I live on in the way my children handle life successfully or not.
People find meaning in their social standing and status, how others view them. How they are considered by others.
People find significance in things. What I own makes me.
Besides other things, the book of Ruth faces us with the question of how we fit into the larger scheme of things. What gives our lives meaning and significance? How do we find our identity in a confusing world?
The book of Ruth.
In the Hebrew Bible the book of Ruth belongs to a group of books called the megilloth, the five rolls. It’s a group of small books that were read at the time of the great Hebrew festivals to remind people of God’s great saving acts. It was linked with:
The Song of Songs – read at the Passover feast, to remind people of God’s great work of liberation and salvation in the Exodus when he brought them out of the slavery of Egypt.
The book of Ecclesiastes – read at the feast of Tabernacles, to remind the Israelites of their desert wanderings and how God provided for them year after year in miraculous ways.
The book of Lamentations – read at the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem, to remind people of their rebellion and exile and the promise of a return to a restored temple and city
The book of Esther – read at the feast of Purim, to remind people of God’s protection from the genocidal Haman. A wonderfully interactive worship event in the synagogue. Whenever the name of Haman was read people would boo. Whenever Mordecai’s name was mentioned they would cheer. That would brighten up our services, wouldn’t it. (In the Gospels: Judas – boo! Jesus – hurrah!)
And then the book of Ruth – read at the feast of Pentecost, to celebrate the end of the grain harvest and the giving of the law at Sinai, and later of course the coming of the Holy Spirit.
And so the very context of the book of Ruth says that there is something more going on here than the simple story of a girl who marries a rich farmer, Boaz, after a time of tragedy and pain.
The book of Ruth is set liturgically, in the worshipping life of Israel in the great drama of God’s wonderful story of salvation.
It is a personal story set in the context of God’s story. It is a ‘seelsgeschichte’ (soul history) as a part of Heilsgeschichte (Salvation history). The broad outline of that story is like a Six Act drama – from Creation through The Fall and Salvation, to the end-time Consummation. God’s cosmic drama in six acts.
Ruth’s life had significance because it was part of that story. Our lives have meaning because we are part of that same great narrative.
The story of Ruth is also about developing an identity as a person of faith in the context of God’s covenant.
It’s all about how we fit into God’s design and pattern of relationships, which of course is the main place where we find the answer about the meaning of our life.
Taking this business of context a little further, in our English bibles of course Ruth isn’t grouped with Esther and Song of Songs etc. Where does it belong? It comes after the book of Judges. Now that is significant.
The book of Judges describes the period after the Israelites have been taken out of Egypt, after the wilderness wanderings; 11th century BC. And they have come into the land of Canaan; starting to settle into an agricultural lifestyle. From wandering nomads to established farmers. And what happens? What is the period of the Judges like?
It’s summed up in the last sentence: ‘In those days Israel had no king; everyone did what he saw fit.’
Well of course they did have a King, but they denied his claim on their lives and did their own thing.
Judges is a worrying description of a new generation who no longer had the experience of the immediate activity of God in their lives. Consider how that is portrayed:
* Judges 2:6 ‘….each to his own inheritance.’
* Judges 2:10 ‘…another generation grew up who didn’t know what God had done for Israel… they served Baals.
* Judges 2:18 ‘…when the judge died people turned to even more corrupt ways’ – it’s a cycle of: salvation… failure; salvation… failure.
So this is a picture of huge social and cultural change. It’s no longer a life of direct dependence on God for the daily meal. Do you recall what signified God’s immediate presence in the wilderness? It was the daily provision of manna wasn’t it? Now grew their own food. Self-sufficient! You can give God the flick. Instead they ran after local fertility gods.
So what is God’s response? He makes a story. We have a story-making God.
Look at the opening sentence in Ruth: ‘In the days when the Judges ruled there was famine in the land.’
Do you get the picture? Confusion! Everyone does their own things… moral chaos, lack of meaning, aimlessness!?
Watch this space. See what God does.
The story of Ruth.
In many ways the story of Ruth is the story of ordinary people doing and experiencing ordinary things. That’s why we can relate to it so well.
Elimelech – a farmer who has fallen on hard times; a series of bad harvests; the family farm just can’t support them and they move to Moab. In Australia right now there are people walking off the farm because they’ve experienced hard time. The farm just doesn’t pay; or the business has gone bankrupt; or the company they’ve worked for, for 20 years has decided to relocate. A tremendous dislocation in their lives. The whole meaning of their life ripped away. I have a friend who worked for Heinz who’s finding it incredibly difficult to readjust after being retrenched.
Naomi – the long-suffering wife; probably the spiritual power in the household. Did she really want to go to Moab? Moab after all. Not exactly a friendly place for faith. You wouldn’t find a local Reformed Church there!
The Moabites were often Israel’s enemies. Moabites weren’t allowed into the congregation or be part of Israel’s worshipping life. One wouldn’t find a very good church life there.
But faithful, loyal, she goes along and suffers one trauma after another: Cross cultural marriages. Remember the Israelites weren’t to marry Canaanites or Moabites. What a struggle of faith that must have been. Then the death of her husband and her two sons. No breadwinners, no place, no network of faith. Here’s a terribly vulnerable woman.
No wonder she says, ‘Don’t call me Naomi (pleasant, lovely, delightful), call me Mara (bitterness has overtaken me).
Ruth – the outsider, the foreigner, the alien; kind, compassionate; hungry for the spiritual life of faith. She comes into the network of relationships, the family clan, by marriage to the rich farmer Boaz. That must have been more formidable than marrying into the De Haan or the Noorbergen, or the Piening clan.
Living with a single mum; trying to make ends meet on social welfare (not from the welfare office, but you had to gather your own grain from the scraps left behind).
Ordinary people, with ordinary lives. Unemployment, moving home, settling into a new culture, stretching the budget to cover the bills. We can identify with all of that.
But a story with a happy ending. Tragedy turned to triumph. Daughter makes the right match and they all live happily ever after.
But what gives their lives meaning and significance is the larger framework, the larger picture.
The larger salvation story.
In many ways the book of Ruth is like a modern movie.
There’s the story itself – tragedy, triumph, romance, emotion, passion, tenderness, tension, life in all its nakedness and reality.
And it would be very tempting to walk out when the screen turns dark at the end of the story.
Many people do that of course. Very few people stay for the credits.
I get really annoyed when after a really intense or moving film people just up and go, talking, laughing, noisily finishing their popcorn… and ignore the credits.
The credits give you the details of the actors; they tell you the locality where the story is filmed, who put the music together. Most of all the credits tell you the producer, the director, the genius behind the story. That is what gives the film its larger meaning.
The producer, the director.
Some scholars claim that Ruth finishes at 4:12, the rest is a tack on by another author.
However, it is anything but that. Verses 13 – 22 are the credits. They give the whole book of Ruth it’s larger meaning.
Perez was the father of Hezron… and Jesse the father of David…!
And if you continue through to Matthew 1 and Luke 3 … the ancestor of Jesus.
The life of Ruth was not just a random series of experiences – arbitrary, casual, unpredictable. It was a narrative – it had a plot, a structure, a purpose a design. Each detail of her and the other characters’ lives were part of a larger story. The larger story of salvation. That is why the book was read in conjunction with the Exodus and the Sinai wanderings. This was God’s story.
In his grace he chooses to take this foreigner, this alien, this outsider and graft her into the clan of Israel, his special people.
That is called election.
Then he makes her life significant, meaningful – gives it purpose. She becomes the great ancestor of Jesus. A Moabitess – the great, great grandmother of Jesus. All she does fits into God’s pattern of relationships.
That is called covenant.
Election, a term that has fallen into disrepute, just means the declaration that God has designs on me, he has a purpose for me.
Covenant is the description of how the things I do fit into those designs.
Our salvation story
What gives our lives meaning? What is the significance of the dailyness of our lives – working, paying the bills, being in love, crying at a funeral, worrying about the sick child, studying for exams?
The significance is that when we are related to Christ, when we are his, our story is part of God’s story. It is all part of God’s structured purpose. Nothing is irrelevant.
In election God says – you’re mine, you have a unique identity, you’re part of my special loved people.
Through covenant God says everything you do has consequences, it makes a difference what you do. Live in such a way that it fits into my story.
Sometimes it’s difficult to live in God’s story because we have no direct script. How do we know how to live if there are no lines for us to follow? Well, know the author. Know the script that has gone before and that comes after. Depend on the coach, the instructor – the Holy Spirit.
And even if you muck it up, don’t worry. I’ll make something of it. All things work together for good to those who are called according to his purpose.
What is the meaning of your life? Why is it significant?
Because it is part of God’s drama, centred in Christ. By election in Christ I am uniquely part of the story. By covenant grace I can play my part in the drama. And at the end when the credits roll, our names will be there Harry Burgraaf, Peter, Wim, Helen – minor or major parts, but they’ll be there in the chronology of God’s narrative… God’s story!