LUTHERAN WOMAN TODAY SESSIONS 1-3 WISDOM STORY # 1: RUTH LEVELS OF STORY  Surface—sweet love story  Deeper issue addressed = boundaries of community identity….what to do about biblical passages that have become controversial RESOLUTION THROUGH REVELATION OF GOD’S HIDDEN HAND CRITERION FOR WHO IS WELCOME IN THE COMMUNITY—TRUMPS BIBLICAL PASSAGES PROHIBITING WELCOME LAW AGAINST WELCOMING MOABITES—Deut 23:3-4  “No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the 10th generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord because they did not meet you with food and water on your journey out of Egypt…..” LEVIRATE LAW  Goal = to insure that Israelite man lives on through his male descendants  Law = if Israelite man dies without male heir, widow with moral responsibility to have sex with his nearest male kin  Boy born as a result inherits name and property of dead father  Nearest male kin with responsibility to provide economically for boy and his mother till adulthood NAMES as CLUES  Elimelech = God is King  Chilion = emptying out  Mahlon = sickness  Ruth = watered to saturation  Naomi = (possibly) pleasant PLACE NAMES AS CLUES Bethlehem Moab “May Yahweh show hesed to you as you have shown the dead and me” 1:8 RUTH 1:11-14  “Turn back my daughters…..do I still have sons in my womb that they may becomes your husbands? Turn back…..Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth cleaved to her” Was full/ now empty Call me Bitter-MARAH THE ALMIGHTY HAS AFFLICTED ME SESSION 2: CHS 2-3 Ruth’s hesed leading to heroic action to secure future for Naomi and self; issue raised of how community deals with now-controversial Biblical passages LAWS AT STAKE IN STORY  Deut 23—no Moabites allowed  Levirate marriage--keep name of dead man alive in perpetuity  Redemption—nearest male kin with responsibility to ransom/redeem widow’s land from creditors to keep property in the family Young woman “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!” 2:12 “Blessed be Yahweh who did not forsake faithfulness/loyalty to living and dead…this man is kin, our redeemer” Ch 2:20 “Spread your skirt over your servant, for you are our redeemer” 3:10 Suspense —nearer kin with redemption rights to Naomi’s land RUTH 4  Surface = happen ending—God’s hidden hand revealed in birth of son to Boaz through Ruth and through genealogical links to King David  Depth = springboard to larger biblical conversation about how to interpret biblical passages that have become controversial RUTH 4:11-12  “Then all the people who were at the gate, along with the elders, said “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you produce children..and bestow a name in Bethlehem; and through the children the Lord will give you by this young woman, may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.” To Naomi Blessed be the Lord who has not left you without right to redeem….for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more than seven sons, has born him” “Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and nursed him. The women of the town gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi” 4:16-17 Genealogy Boaz + Ruth Obed Jesse David ESED CHALLENGE TO US = REFLECT ON WHERE God’s hidden hand may be calling our community to live in hesed and even take heroic risks to welcome the outside whose status seems in some biblical passages to set them outside the community’s boundaries