H. Michael Brewer
Crescent Springs Presbyterian
7 January 2007
THE OUTSIDER
Ruth 4:13-22
Let’s wrap up the story of Ruth and the Christmas season both at the same time. After some romantic
maneuvering, Ruth the Moabite foreigner finally marries Boaz the Jew. They settle down, have a baby boy, and
presumably live happily ever after. Actually, once the baby is born, the story-teller loses interest in Ruth and
reaches his big finale by attaching a family tree to the end of the book. Ruth and Boaz were the parents of
Obed, and Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse was the father of—
Wait for it. Here it comes.
Jesse was the father David, King of Israel. And David in turn was the father of a line of kings that God
promised would last forever.
Now we know why the tiny Book of Ruth got into the Bible. Ruth’s story paved the way for David’s story. In
other words:
In order to establish Israel’s greatest king, God used Ruth.
In order to end the Philistine menace—they were defeated by David—God used Ruth.
In order to establish Jerusalem as the Holy City and home of the Temple—it was David who conquered the
city—God used Ruth.
In order to establish the Davidic covenant—the long line of kings ordained by God’s decree, beginning with
David—God used Ruth.
In order to prepare the way for the Messiah—who was descended from David—God used Ruth.
What makes this so remarkable is not just Ruth was one of the little people—poor, an immigrant, a
widow—but she was also a Moabite. The Jews nurtured a special dislike for the Moabites dating all the way
back to the days when Moses was leading the Israelites through the wilderness. There was a long history
with the Moabites involving idolatry, curses, intermittent warfare, and assassination.
So the fact that Ruth was a Moabite was a big deal. The book is only four chapters long, and in that short
scope the storyteller five times refers to the main character as Ruth the Moabite. Five times!
“This is the story of Ruth the Moabite. She came to Bethlehem from the land of Moab. Did I mention that
she was a foreigner from another country? In fact, she was a Moabite. That’s why they called her Ruth the
Moabite.”
The last thing any good Jew expected was for God to be at work in the life of a Moabite. They were bad
people, not our kind, nothing but trouble. And yet here God decides to use Ruth, not only to establish Israel’s
monarchy, but also to bring the Savior into the world. It seems like funny business until you take a close look
at the family tree of Jesus and you realize God chose a lot of unlikely people to provide a path for Jesus,
unappreciated people and outsiders.
Go ahead sometime and browse through Matthew’s genealogy for Jesus. Take a long look at the people
God used to bring the Messiah. You’ll find some truly great people in that list, but you’ll also find a mass
murderer who filled Jerusalem with blood. You’ll find at least one leper and several idol worshippers. You’ll
find foreigners—Ruth isn’t the only one. You’ll find prostitution, adultery, and incest. You’ll find incompetents
and cowards, and any number of unremarkable people who lived obscure lives and survive today only as
names on the page. Take away any one of them, break the genealogical chain, and the Savior doesn’t arrive.
Could God have found some other way to bring Jesus into the world? Of course, but God would still have
used the people at hand—good people, bad people, and boringly ordinary people, insiders and outsiders—
people like you and me.
Consider the folks who show up to pay their respects when Jesus is born. IN Luke’s gospel, it’s the
shepherds. We have this warm, cuddly view of shepherds, but in that day shepherds were regarded with
suspicion. They were considered religiously unclean and suspected of thievery. In other words, they were
outsiders.
In Matthew’s gospel it’s the wise men who show up to sing happy birthday to Jesus. They were educated
and well-to-do, but they were almost certainly foreigners as well, and that made them outsiders, too.
The Messiah arrives in Israel and the insiders don’t notice. Only the outsiders show up to offer their worship
and their blessings, because it’s the outsiders to whom God has sent the angels and the star.
The events in the story of Ruth take place during the time of the judges, but the book as we have it was
written much later, probably five hundred years later at time when the Jewish people were increasingly
prejudiced against foreigners. Those were the days when Jewish men were being encouraged to send away
their foreign wives and abandon their “half-breed” children. The Book of Ruth was probably written as an
antidote to that attitude, a way of saying, “Look how God used Ruth the Moabite, the great-grandmother of our
greatest king. Look how that turned out! And now we should close the door to outsiders?”
What shall we learn from Ruth? There is no one outside God’s love, God’s will, God’s unsearchable
purposes. If I find myself looking down on someone who is different from me, if I decide, “That person has no
purpose, that life has no value,” if I say to myself, “God couldn’t possibly be at work in that woman, God surely
isn’t reaching out to me through that man,” then I’m wrong. I’m wrong and I’m blind and I’m foolish, and I’ve
slammed the door on my Savior.
That’s right, to turn away from any person is to turn away from Christ. John says that Jesus is the true light
that shines in every human life. Some glimmer of our Lord shines in every person, even those who don’t know
him, even those who have wandered far from his arms. I believe in a sovereign God. That means there are no
random encounters. Every person I meet is placed in my path on purpose—to enlighten me, to correct me, to
wake me up, to invite me to serve. Every person I bump into was sent by God, which unravels the whole notion
of insiders and outsiders, people who matter and people who don’t. It turns out everyone matters.
Now turn that coin over and look at the other side of it. You and I are also sent. You and I are also being
used by God. No matter how ordinary you and I feel, no matter how unworthy we know ourselves to be, each of
us is part of God’s wonderful, intricate, gracious plan for saving the world. There is a light in you that you can
share with others. The presence of the living Christ abides in you, a presence waiting to be born in the world,
longing to be shared with others, a gift you can give to the people you meet. In fact, you are God’s gift to each
person you meet. You are there in that moment for a purpose.
And it’s always the same purpose—to bring Christ into the world. Just as surely as Ruth and Boaz and
everyone else in Jesus’ genealogy, we are here to be a door through which Christ can enter human lives.
I went to the Boar’s Head Festival at Christ Church in Cincinnati last Sunday, a wonderful, worshipful
ceremony. At the end, as the players were filing out, a young man dressed as a kind of jester leaned over me
and handed a small bouquet of holly to the woman sitting next to me.
I said, “Do you know him?”
She shook her head.
I said, “Then what’s that about?”
She looked at the holly and then looked at me.
“It’s a sign,” she said. “It’s a sign of God’s presence.”
Which was just what I needed to hear at that moment. A man with a sprig of holly became a sign of God to
that woman, and her words became a sign of God to me. That’s what we learn from Ruth the Moabite. We are
all signs to one another or at least we can be, because God can and does reach into the world through
anybody and everybody.
Soli Deo Gloria!