Writing #4: Ruth October 4, 2005

Day four's reading schedule has taken us a long way. So far, I have kept mostly to the schedule and I have finished nine of the sixty-six books of the Bible. I will probably read a little more this evening before bed, but right now I am satisfied that I have made good progress through four days of reading.

If you are following the reading schedule you also finished Genesis today. I also read the book of Ruth last night before I slept. I love that story of Ruth. It drips with love and affection and kindness and compassion and grace. I can't imagine anyone showing the sort of love to a foreigner that Ruth showed to Naomi. The question that I believe we are meant to ask, when reading Ruth, is this: Will Mara ('Bitterness') ever become Naomi ('Pleasant') again? Strange then, to me, that the one who helped Naomi realize that life is not all that bad is one who had very few reasons to help her see that. Ruth could have left and gone back to Moab with Orpah. But instead she clung to Naomi and would not let go. Such devotion is remarkable and moves me when I read this story.

Something else, however, is involved in this story. It's not just Ruth's devotion that is so striking it is the motivation behind her devotion. She is utterly self-less. She seems to be the type of woman who either a) has all these plans worked out ahead of time or b) is so uninterested in her own self that she scarcely thinks beyond the moment. She is so willing to help Naomi recover what she lost (her pleasantness) that it is scary. She did anything Naomi asked. She went wherever Naomi went. She very literally became the Jewess she said she would become (1:16-18). The self-lessness is utterly confounding. Why do it? Why be so giving? So unselfish? No one has such motivation to do such things when there is not something in it for themselves. Strange that the story is called Ruth. It is so not about her. It should have been called Naomi. "Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. The women living there said, Naomi has a son!" That's what one gets for being selfless. Yet Ruth is one of four or five women given recognition in Matthew's geneaology of Jesus.

The first will be last and the last first. There is something to be said about being no one in particular. Apart from Ruth's selflessness perhaps David never comes into existence. It does make me wonder what results our own self-lessness might produce or what impact they might make on this world. Then again, to think about the results they might have would be utterly selfish. We can hardly go on into the realm of selflessness while thinking selfishly about results. The essence of selflessness is the simple action of emptying the self, abandoning the right hand to obscurity while the left hand is callused, and the right hand to glory while the left is forgotten. Ruth did not do what she did to get mentioned in a book a thousand years later, she did not think about her great-grandson being the greatest human king ever, and she did not think of even marrying someone so God-like as Boaz. Those simply were not her motivations. Her motivation, strange as it may seem to our prickly ears, was Naomi's happiness.

I am inclined to believe that the world in general, and the church in specific, could use more of such an attitude. Just imagine if we developed the sort of Jesus like attitude that says, "I am not here to be served, but to serve and to give..." Can you imagine a church where the most important thing to take place on a Sunday or Monday or Tuesday is the happiness of someone else? Can you imagine how less complicated life would be if each person in the church looked out for the interests of others first and themselves very last indeed?

The idea of emptying the self for the sake of others is not original with me. It is radical, it is stunning, it is counter-cultural, but it is not original. Jesus said it best, and in fact was the originator, 'He who saves his life will lose it, and he who loses his life will save it.' The church needs more members to give themselves away, more people to lose their lives, more selfless and emptying people. What will the church be when the most important person is not me?

What will the Church be
When the most important person
Is not me?
What can the Church be
When all that anyone can think of
Is anyone but the 'me'?
What will the Church do
When all that I can think of
Is only, always you?