Boaz, having removed his sandal (revised)

Love is a rare thing in that it is both joyous and excluding. Most joyous things are spilling and overflowing, affections that catch up those around them in their heat, like the rays of the sun which fall alike on all men. Nothing is hidden from the heat of the sun, but love is an interchange, a mutual going forth that is accessible only to its participants. Others stand at a distance and marvel, wonder, for there is nothing on the outside to give away the splendid operations at work. Love is like Benjamin's sack of grain.

I have stood before these men, given my solemn pledge, taken off my sandal according to the customs we have made. Before the gates of the city, this was the circumcision of our love, the seal of my promise to her, this brown woman, this Moabitess, this Ruth. O Lord, I have so often looked out upon the ways of men and maidens mystified and detached, a stranger to them, understanding only in the abstract what I imagined to be some sort of hyper-lust, an infatuation or intoxication like Shechem felt for Dinah. Now I stand in it and it fills me with a joy that feels fresh, as if any words I used to describe it would be new and wonderful, spoken for the first time. Love has a cleanness in it.

I saw her first when she was yet young in the days of her sorrow, having come with her mother-in-law from the land of our foes across the great valley where Abraham once rescued his righteous nephew. Lot's descendants, now among our fiercest enemies, are given over to idols, and though Elimelech went there in search of work and food during that great famine, his two sons took upon them foreign wives, Moabitesses, the offspring of idolaters. I heard the rumors when Naomi returned, but only when I saw Ruth working in the fields did I lay eyes on this foreign woman among us. Foreignness is revealing, because it takes in to itself a certain outward perspective. But we Israelites are the holy ones, the ones set apart, the possessors of the promises and the oracles of God. In Moab they have nothing, spite, dust, the pain of a few short years soon ended. They are not a people, because they possess no reason to exist. All the tribes of men are but a poor imitation of this great family, the family from Abraham, an organic oneness stretching back to him, and through the mystical promises back to Adam. To be among us to be known by God.

She was (is!) beautiful and young, looking no less beautiful in the meanness of the gleaning of the fields. This is a task usually reserved for the older widows and impoverished women, those who could not acquire a husband in the normal way, and thus feared little from working in a field full of men. When I saw her, she was beautiful to me, I looked upon her and loved her even then, though the distance of her youth and ancestry would not permit me to go further. But Naomi was my kin, so her daughter-in-law also, and I protected her that day from my men and provided for her the grain she needed.

A Moabitess. When she came to me later, as I was sleeping, an act both expected and unexpected, I had had time to consider her. Her labor in the fields, the story of her faithfulness to her mother-in-law had touched me. To follow Naomi was to join her, to become her kin in a way that defied the usual understanding we have of family. To envision the family of God as springing naturally from each other was exclusive, dividing. I had heard about her words to Naomi, "Your people will be my people, your God will be my God."

Lord, let your words remain always in my mind as I consider these things. We are the descendants of Abraham, the twelve tribes of Jacob. I myself come from Judah, in the line of Perez and Rahab. My kin are those who come from the same flesh, those of us all once contained in the body of Abraham, those who in him offered to the priest-king a tenth. We are the heirs of the blessing, given to Abraham, repeated to Isaac and Jacob. We are the ones who possess the law. Lot's line, those sons of incest and sin, are cursed. This is family, the bonds of flesh, facts of nature and situation not changeable.

A wild olive branch was this woman, so firm in her faith, for to follow Naomi showed that she trusted in the God of Naomi. She saw our God and wanted him, pursued him, spread herself before him. She had not been told this was possible or permitable but she had done it, not as she came to me of course, but as Jacob came to God, struggling, seizing, not letting go until he blessed him. My father spoke often of this desire for God, the legacy perhaps inherited from his own ancestor Rahab, another woman of desire, who had sought and seized the God who is kind to the seeker.

Thus the path of reflections upon this woman towards whom my heart was already exercised, towards whom already my thoughts were much upon. She was beautiful, certainly, but her character, her strength, her determined womanhood, these also had enlivened her beauty in a way that no outward adornment could. She was gentle, quiet in her heart and posture, submissive in her bearing, but she had thrown of all things to follow the God of Israel. When I compared her to the women of our village, chasing after the young men poor and rich, I saw a heart that beat for the promises of God, a heart that had heard from her godly mother-in-law of the people who worshiped the true God, and she had sought him and found him!

Then last night, she was at my feet. When I saw her, my heart loved her. Before she spoke she was my joy and my delight. When she asked me to take her upon myself, to take her under the shadow of my garment (what does this mean except for me to recreate what Adam had done so long ago when he cradled the woman under his arm, she his, when he named her for she had come from him?), I had already taken her up in my heart. There she was my flesh, my body, one with me in the mysterious pathways of this created love, this act set in place by God so that men would not be alone. Foreign she was no longer, but organic, reborn into our people by the power of God, now joined to me, my noble wife, a woman of nobility. Ruth, woman of God, like Rahab and Tamar she is unexpected in her righteousness, but known by God.

I saw her and I loved her. Then I spread my love over her, to shelter her. Now here in the city gates before the elders of the city I have sealed for all time our love (meaning, of course, as long as time is, until the unmaking of time and the remaking of the world).

O love, love, did I say once that you did not spill over? Perhaps not in the way I once thought, but my love will yet spill out and multiply, the way God's love has. From our love will come the offspring of my line, the line of Judah, the line of the king, the line from which the scepter will not part (how long, O lord, until you act?) Can you celebrate my love, O elders of the city gate? Love is by nature an exalting thing, which raises up and honors its objects.

Moabitess, my love. When God spoke he chose, when he took Abraham he took him freely. We, his people, are his people freely, the people of his love. Every choice of his is free, and if free than it is to us as a foreigner, as one estranged, as one far off. We stand far off but he brings us near. It is he who spreads his cloak over us, who takes us up. When I redeemed Ruth according to the law, I did so in order that she would belong to me. This purchasing was a choice, one I did with joy because of the exercise of my heart towards her.

These elements are all in place, I in love acting towards her, she drawing near in her request, the satisfaction of the law towards her. Now for the celebration of our love, the love that with all my heart I hope will pour forth into fruit, into expansion, into an heir that will stand one day in praise of this woman, this love, this faithfulness of God towards us.

In celebrating our love, we celebrate yours, O God, who made love and made our hearts to love.

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Scripture:

The WHOLE book of Ruth
References to Melchizedek in Genesis 14
Other bits of Genesis
The reference to "brown woman" is from Song of Songs 1:6 "do not stare at me because I am dark, because I am darkened by the sun."
Other bits of Song of Songs also present.