Are you hungry? I am.

Some days my mouth fills with the antsy anticipation of satisfaction;

Satisfaction that overflows like milk and honey, 

like quail and manna, 

like gleaned wheat after a famine.

“Man does not live on bread alone” (Matthew 4:4), and that’s true, but Elimelech wasn’t so sure as he crossed the border into Moab - wife and kids in tow. Famine was driving people into madness back in Bethlehem. “Bethlehem” the House of Bread…how ironic. The House of Bread was now filled with flour dust bunnies and levin tumbleweeds. Maybe Moab would provide more.

For a moment it did! It kept them alive, it brought wives for the two sons of Elimelech and Naomi, but along with something to fill them up, came tragedy which completely gutted them: the death of Elimelech…and then the deaths of the sons as well.

Are you thirsty? I am.

How enticing the thought of someone who hangs on your every word, 

who adores your every thought,

Who accepts you regardless of…well, just regardless.

I am parched for a knowledge that I will never be abandoned, 

never be forgotten, 

never be alone.

Three women had their husbands ripped from their fingers by the claws of death - the reality of a fallen world. Naomi (no longer able to embody a name which meant “pleasant”) lost a husband whose king had been God, but whose end had been disaster. Despite their faithfulness, the daughters-in-law (Ruth and Orpah) lost their husbands to sickness and destruction and, in the end, the last that Ruth saw of her sister-in-law (a true partner in her plight) was the back of her sunburned neck sweltering under the desert sun as she returned to where she came from. Now Ruth and Naomi – excuse me – Mara crossed over into the House of Bread once again, this time, hungry in a much deeper way.

Are you hungry? I am.

Hungry for safety and stillness and someone to hold up my frailty,

Hungry to be held and helped and healed,

Hungry for company…companionship…

For covenant.

How terrifying that journey from Moab to Bethlehem must have been. It was not a time when police officers patrolled or justice systems protected. It was not a time when calling 911 would provide a quick rescue or modern medicine would provide physical relief. Two women traveling alone on a crude road for fifty miles; did they jump at the sound of a nearby branch breaking? Did they hold their breath when they heard another traveler approaching? Did Ruth ever get antsy when Naomi needed to stop and rest for a while – her older body less able? Perhaps these women thought about Naomi’s Israelite ancestors who had once trudged through the desert sands on their own way towards the Promised Land and what would become Bethlehem. As the eyes of God watched their slow trek, did the Creator envision the Word incarnate within the womb of yet another woman journeying to Bethlehem?

Hunger must have carried them into the town. But instead of a feast of familiar friendships and welcoming embraces, Naomi and Ruth were met by disbelief. Surely that isn’t Naomi! They said, She was so vibrant when she left. This woman here is bitter and brittle and broken. 

“She said to them, ‘Call me no longer Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty; why call me Naomi when the LORD has dealt harshly with me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?’” (Ruth 1:20-21)

In telling her own stories of love and loss, Cole Arthur Riley writes about lament and paints an applicable picture: “I think when God bears witness to our lament, we discover that we are not calling out to a teacher, but inviting God as a nurturer – a mother who hears her child crying in the night. She wakes, rises, and comes to the place where we lie. She rushes her holy warmth against our flesh and says, ‘I’m here.’” (Riley, 99) Is that what Ruth was to Naomi? The mothering flesh of God moving against Naomi’s own in order to remind her that she would never truly be abandoned? Did Naomi remember Ruth’s covenant pledge as words from the mouths of both her daughter-in-law and her God?

Ruth was determined to feed and sustain her mother-in-law at any cost. “Where you go I will go” she had promised. When you don’t have the strength to lift your hands up for help, I will lay down myself to provide for you. Hesed. Ruth pointed her face toward the rising sun and set out to glean in someone else’s field in hopes of providing for herself and her counterpart.

What are the odds that faithfulness and strength would stumble upon each other in a field of wheat? What are the odds that provision would arrive at just the right time, that out of the House of Bread would come strength – designing a blessing within the design of the Blesser? (Ruth 2:4) As Ruth gleaned in the field, Boaz (the next of kin, the kinsman redeemer) “just so happened” to arrive. He arrived just in time to witness the faithfulness of a woman whose identity was becoming less about nationality and more about character. He arrived in time to encourage her in her hard work. Boaz preserved Ruth’s self esteem while providing sustenance and, moreover, hope – inviting her into success, into relief, into rest…even simply into lunch. “And when you are thirsty, help yourself to the water they have drawn from the well.” (Ruth 2:9 NLT, emphasis mine)

Are you thirsty? I am.

Past the point of sweat dripping, and on to tasting the dust from which I came;

On to dipping my bread into sour wine 

that reminds me of quenching but does no such thing.

In Ruth (much like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), God is often behind the scenes and working through a human redeemer. Each instance of redemption points toward the heart of God and the soon-to-be gospel. “[Ruth’s general use of the term for Kinsman Redeemer] picks up on the central motif of the story, as a whole, namely, human protection, and support as a manifestation of God's redemptive care.” (Sakenfeld, 61) Generations later, as a descendent of Boaz and Ruth (strength and faithfulness), Jesus became human in order to be our redeemer. In putting on our flesh, he became part of the human family. He became our next of kin in order to meet us in our hunger and thirst.

Are you hungry? I am.

Is the growing gap of emptiness consuming you? 

Do you long to be filled with promise and with hope?

With life that might extend beyond 

the darkness of your circumstances?

After her day of gleaning, Ruth “takes the barley back to the city and provides for her mother-in-law out of this abundance (or her fullness).” (Fentress-Williams, 82) Between the food she has gathered, the grace she has been given, and the good news she has heard, Ruth carries more than enough, and this is only the beginning of the abundance to come. As God fills Ruth’s tired arms with provisions of barley, he will soon fill her life with rescue and restoration, and will eventually fill her womb with hope in the form of a life.

God smirks a little and winks as the story progresses and those of us who grip the pages of Ruth – devouring the text for answers – come up short. We do not have the tools to decipher the incident between Ruth and Boaz under cover of night at the threshing floor, but we do have the hearts to see God’s honor for women who exhibit the divine nature in their courage, intention, and love. Ruth’s courage roars in the face of despair and marginalization. “Where you die, I will die.” (Ruth 1:17) Nothing will get in her way. And nothing will get in the way of the fingers of God as he weaves rescue for these faithful women, as he weaves the threads of Ruth and Boaz’s lives together in marriage, as he weaves a child together in the secret place of Ruth’s womb. (Psalm 139)

As this story draws to an end, I cannot deny that I am disappointed. After the birth of her hope-bearing child, our heroine seems forgotten in the rush of all that is new. “A story with promising beginnings, as women seek to make their own way, ends very conventionally (albeit through unconventional behavior along the way) with the women’s security achieved by reintergrating themselves completely into the existing traditional economic and family structures. And it is the men who arrange the details of that reintegration.” (Sakenfeld, 86) Ruth has truly sacrificed everything – her freedom, her hopes, her body – all for the sake of Naomi. She has worked hard within a system that kept her at the margins of society, putting her down because of her gender and nationality, yet she has defied all expectations. “Better than seven sons!” (Ruth 4:15) shouted the village women in the face of ancient patriarchy. Yet a part of her sacrifice has been to submit to the brokenness of the world – of the culture – for the sake of her mother-in-law. “Why is Ruth so esteemed? Surely not just because she happens to have borne this male child. Indeed the Hebrew syntax stands against such a narrow reading, as does the reference to Ruth’s love for Naomi. Rather, Ruth is of such great value to Naomi because everything that she has done from the first scene until now has led to the possibility of the birth of this child of hope. It is Ruth’s faithfulness, kindness, loyalty to Naomi, in a word, Ruth’s hesed, that has led to this outcome.” (Sakenfeld, 82) I cannot help but hear the voice of Ruth raised in harmony with that of Mary the mother of Jesus singing, “Oh, how my soul praises the Lord. How my spirit rejoices in God my Savior! For he took notice of his lowly servant girl, and from now on all generations will call me blessed.” (Luke 1:47-48)

Such treasures are found glinting in the light of the book of Ruth, but the deeply embedded gold that reaches throughout is the beauty of hesed. We are all hungry for hesed love, but we usually do not know it. The ravenous hunger for it shows up in addictions and dysfunctions, we call it daddy-issues and codependency and, while it is all of those things, it is also the gaping hole in our lives where hesed is supposed to be.

Paul Miller describes this powerful concept. “Sometimes hesed is translated ‘steadfast love.’ It combines commitment with sacrifice. Hesed is one-way love. Love without an exit strategy…your response to the other person is entirely independent of how that person has treated you. Hesed is a stubborn love.” (Miller, 24) I would add that hesed is a love as stubborn as a cross. It involves death of self, yet it ultimately leads to life. How many stories in the Bible carry this same idea? Certainly the story of Ruth, even more the story of the Savior.

Ruth exhibited “love without an exit strategy” when she committed herself to a new place, culture, and religion. She exhibited loyalty when she did not chase after younger men, but found someone who could take care of Naomi. (Ruth 3:10) She exhibited self sacrifice when she brought a baby into the world. Then, after her body had been ripped apart by the war of childbirth, the book ends and we do not hear from her again.

Are you thirsty? I am.

Do you harbor desires to be recognized and remembered;

To leave your fingerprints on the painted caves of human history?

Have you worried that someday, something might overshadow you, 

might leave you without a voice, without a name?

Whether or not the author of the book or the people of the town forgot about Ruth in the face of societal norms and expectations, the Maker and Shaker behind the scenes did not. In fact, his plan for her stretched out far beyond her time, her world, her understanding. His plan made her the mother of great kings and of the very Messiah the world had been waiting for. “For Christians that glimpse [of God’s hesed seen in Ruth and Boaz] expands to fullness in Jesus of Nazareth, born of Mary, son of David, descendant of Ruth, Messiah, who fed the hungry, succored the grieving, entered into unlikely friendships, and confounded traditional categories of center and margin. The story of Ruth and the story of Jesus Christ invite us to love loyal kindness [hesed] and to follow the God in whom dividing walls of hostility are still being broken down.” (Sakenfeld, 88)

Jesus, the Messiah, remembered Ruth and he remembered us. Generations later, he felt the scratch of hay and rough wood against his own new skin as he also arrived in the House of Bread – destitute and lowly. “Where you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live.” (Ruth 1:16) He breathed our air and felt our ache. He “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself.” (Phil 2:7-8) And all of this as the Bread of Life who came to fill us with good and beautiful things at his own expense. “Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.” (Ruth 1:17) Not even death will separate us. Jesus remembered Ruth by writing her into the great story of God and he honored her by preserving her heroism and using her story to proclaim the hesed of redemption. “The book of Ruth – wherein goodness grows out of goodness, and the extraordinary is found here, and here, and here – is sown in desertion, bereavement, barrenness, death, loss, displacement, destitution. What can sprout from such ash? Then Ruth sees into the nature of Covenant, and the life of the story streams in. Out of this stalk mercy and redemption unfold: flowers flood Ruth’s feet…until the coming of the Messiah from the shoot of David, in the line of Ruth and Naomi.” (Ozick, 264)

As I think of all that Ruth and Naomi longed for, I am inevitably met by my own longings – my own desires in life – and I must ask about the difference between what I want in life and what life is actually about. I think Ruth had to do this too. Because humanity was designed for love and community, blessing and fulfillment, we hunger and thirst after those things here on earth. Just as Naomi hungered for family and Ruth thirsted after security, we desire safety and fulfillment and purpose. Recently, in a class exploring the interior life, Dr. Chuck DeGroat asked his students to ponder: “Of course we have desires and longings, but where are you taking your hunger and your thirst?”

Just like Jesus remembered Ruth, he remembered us and, later, asked us to remember him. Before his greatest act of hesed, he sat at a table with those he loved most, looked into their eyes, and told them of something new; something that Ruth had anticipated, something that would bring healing for every loss and every pain, something that would secure hope for us all. He spoke about a place where we could truly bring our hunger and thirst – where we could truly bring our emptines. He established the physical, spiritual, beautiful practice of Communion as a way to proclaim our need for the blood and the body. Taking Communion is the outcry of our desperation for the work of Christ and it is also the celebration of him. It’s the proclamation that we are parched for peace and starving to be saved. It is the reminder of what he has done and what he will do. 

Ruth did not take her hunger and thirst to the places that I likely would have. “Your God will be my God” Ruth said. As he fills you, may he fill me. As we consider where we take our emptiness, Communion invites us to bring our longing, our hunger, our thirst to this table, to come alongside our brothers and sisters (our mothers-in-law even) and hunger after Christ because, just like Ruth and Naomi, he will not leave us empty.

Are you hungry?

This is My body broken for you

Take this and eat.

Be satisfied because I Am;

because this covenant – this salvation – is all you long for.

This is my hesed which poured like sweat from my brow 

and filled my mouth along with sour wine.

This is hesed which streamed from my side 

and rolled down from my head.

Are you thirsty?

This is My blood given for you, a new covenant.

Take this and drink.

And be filled!

Bibliography

Fentress-Williams, Judy. Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries: Ruth. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2012.

Miller, Paul E. A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships. Illinois: Crossway, 2014.

Ozick, Cynthia. Metaphor and Memory. New York: Vintage, 1991.

Riley, Cole Arthur. This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us. New York: Convergent Books. 2022.

Sakenfeld, Katharine Doob. Ruth: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Westminster: John Knox Press, 2011.