(This was a lesson I taught at Brookwood Baptist Church for our college sunday school class in our series on Ruth)
Let me begin with a question, something to consider to place us in the right frame of mind: Where do you see yourself in ten years? Think about where you want to be, where you hope to be ten years down the road. Think about the plan, as little or as fully developed as it may be.
The Passage:
[19] So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, “Is this Naomi?” [20] She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. [21] I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”
[22] So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest.
(Ruth 1:19-22 ESV)
We need to get involved with this story and feel its characters, its setting, put ourselves into it to really get a sense of what is going on here. If we do this well, we will see that this is a very powerful and moving scene, and we will see as well that what we have here is a hard but honest portrayal of the difficulties of living in a world like ours.
What have we learned so far?
Naomi left Bethlehem, a word that means “house of bread,” with her husband and two sons to go to Moab because there was a famine in the land, and the house of bread had run out.
During that time, her husband died, her two sons were married to Moabite women, and then they too died, leaving Naomi and her two daughters-in-law alone with no male support, a death sentence in the Ancient Near East.
Ten years have passed in Moab, and Naomi heard that Bethlehem, the house of bread, was again filled with bread, because Yahweh had visited his people and stopped the famine. So, Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem, and in the process told her two daughters-in-law to return to their homes and their gods and seek a better life, because with her there was no hope for the future. In Bethlehem two Moabite women would be nothing better than despised outcasts. They had no husbands to give them credibility in this culture or provide for their needs. Naomi’s advice makes sense. Orpah leaves with sadness, but Ruth insisted on staying with Naomi, and claimed Yahweh as her God and Israel as her people. And so, Ruth and Naomi have struck out for Bethlehem.
Where are we now?
The scene fast-forwards to the end of the journey, and we find Naomi and Ruth in Bethlehem, having just arrived. We aren’t told how they got there. The journey doesn’t seem to be important. We skip past all that and are deposited in this scene where Naomi and Ruth have just arrived at Bethlehem, and their arrival has caused a stir in the community. Ruth drops out of this scene. If we had time we might try to think about what must have been going on in her mind at this point, but it would be purely speculation. What we must do, in order to go deeply into this story, is to view it from two perspectives. We need to put ourselves in the place of the people at Bethlehem, see it as they would have, and we need to see it as Naomi would have, put ourselves in her shoes.
Two perspectives:
The People – verse 19 gives us the perspective of the people and their reaction to the return of Naomi to Bethlehem.
[19] So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them. And the women said, “Is this Naomi?” (Ruth 1:19 ESV)
Bethlehem was a small town throughout its history, but especially at this time. The most Bethlehem ever had was around 200 people, and here it was likely much less than that, more like 100 or so. A small town like this would have recognized Naomi at once, and likely everyone would either have known, or been told who this woman was. So when Naomi arrives, the whole town is set to talking. The word used here translated “stirred” is a homonym, a word that sounds like our English hum. They were making a great hum about Naomi. She was the talk of the town.
Now, put yourself in their place. Have you ever run into someone you hadn’t seen in years and done a double take? That’s what’s happening here. It would be like running into an old friend whose lost 20 pounds or whose hair style has completely changed, and it takes a minute to recognize who they are. Only, in this case, what has changed isn’t just cosmetic, what they are seeing is an embittered, destitute woman. This was someone they knew well, who had a family and hope and a future who had left for a better land with more food. Now she has come back to them haggard and weary. They barely even recognize her. The women of the town ask “Can this be Naomi?” They can barely believe their eyes. They are stirred by her.
Tragedy has a way of doing this to us. We have probably all been a part of a community where something tragic has taken place, and the whole community becomes agitated by it. Sometimes it can cause such a stir that it can really weigh heavily on the person to whom the tragedy has occurred. I can only imagine how much this stir in the community would have made the wounds and troubles that Naomi has gone through once again fresh in her mind and heart. It must have been a very painful experience. The people of Bethlehem can’t believe their eyes.
Naomi – The majority of this passage is given to us from the mouth of Naomi. She answers the murmuring of the people, and she reacts against their question, “Can this be Naomi,” in a powerful way.
[20] She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. [21] I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” (Ruth 1:20-21 ESV)
Why did she leave for Moab? Why was she there the last ten years?
Perhaps she feels as though the last ten years were wasted. Ten whole years devoted to preserving her family and now she finds them all dead and she has only one companion left, a young Moabitess who can barely be of any help. Her whole plan, her whole life is down the drain. She doesn’t even feel like she can be called by the same name any more. Her whole identity has been stripped from her. It would be as if you had gotten married and had children, and you had made a stable and healthy home, sacrificing a lot of things for the sake of that family, and then it was all stripped away from you. I can only imagine she was left wondering what in the world it was all for. She has been emptied of all that she is. People are staring at her, talking about her, she feels isolated and alone in the midst of her people. She is in the pit of despair, and she doesn’t have anywhere to look for hope. Her husband is dead. Her sons are dead. Her line has failed. Her purpose has been stripped from her. And it seems that the only one upon whom she could hope for a miracle, Yahweh, her God, has turned against her for some reason she doesn’t know but believes must be just. She feels like she has failed. In some way, she has done something that has put her at odds with her God. And so she is no longer Ruth, a name meaning “pleasant,” but she is Mara, “bitter,” the most bitter of all women. She doesn’t want to be known as the woman who left so full, because that is an identity that she has lost. She is without hope in the world. She is isolated and alone, even in the midst of her people. No one can understand her, and even God seems to have left her side.
It is interesting to think about her statement “I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty.” She says here that she went away full, but in reality she went away hungry, she left in the midst of a famine. She left precisely because she was not full. Clearly what she is talking about here is not physical well-being. She is talking about her life and family, though in the midst of famine, that was her fill. What she had was much more important to her than her physical health. She would rather be in the midst of famine than in the torment of this loss of husband and sons, of all well-being. Next to this suffering a famine is nothing in her mind, lost to her memory.
But there is hope. The final verse of our passage speaks words that for us mean little, but are very important to the development of the story.
[22] So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest. (Ruth 1:22 ESV)
The verse recaps their arrival, but in so doing it tells us that this is the beginning of the barley harvest. There is foreshadowing here. The writer is using his literary skills to point us toward what is about to happen. The fields are ripe. Yahweh has visited His people to bless them with produce. And this is the beginning of the barley harvest, the very first of the major harvest seasons. They have arrived just in time to see the yield of God’s blessing. It is time to gather God’s provision.
For Us:
I want you to think again about where you see yourself in ten years. Think about the plan in your mind, why you are in school and life, what you are working toward, all that you can imagine and are looking to make happen.
Here’s the deal. Some of you, ten years down the road, are going to be facing the same situation as Naomi is facing here in this passage. The details will be different, but the dilemma will be the same. You are smart, thoughtful people. Some of you have a plan, some of you are still trying to figure it out, but I am certain that in some way you are in the process of making the same decision that Naomi made ten years ago. You are looking around, trying to figure out where there is famine, and where there is food, and you are going to make a plan and head that way. But I can guarantee you that at some point, no matter how good and logical the plan you have is, it will fail you. There will come a point of tragedy, a point of loss. You will feel as though the past ten years of your life have been wasted. For some of you, it will be these years of schooling, you will find yourself out there looking for a place to work and there will be none. Your plans will fail, and the identity you have been hoping to make for yourself will seem to have fallen at your feet. For others it will be ten, twenty years down the road, when all was going according to your plan, and all of the sudden out of nowhere tragedy strikes. And there will come a time in each of our lives when we feel that our only hope, our God, has judged against us. We are so easily blind to His plan that we will fail to understand how anything good could possibly come out of this. We will all face the problem of Naomi, to one degree or another, whether you think you are invincible or not. Human plans fail. What we have to remember when our very identity seems lost and our hope in God seems vain is that He has a plan. Even when it feels cliché and we don’t want to think about it, He is working all things for the good of those who love Him. We have to maintain that perspective, even in the midst of such deep suffering. When you get to that place, though you may forget it in the mean time, remember Naomi. The Bible gives us real people to turn to, to see that we are not alone in our suffering. Turn to this destitute woman, and remember that though no good seems possible, and all seems lost, God is sovereign, He is in control, and in the end, all things will work for His glory, and for your good.
We know this most assuredly because we can look back on the cross of Christ, and on his resurrection. Just as Naomi lost everything, Christ gave everything in sacrifice for us. Just as Naomi lost her relationships and her hope and her identity, Christ stepped down out of his identity as God almighty and took on human suffering. When we are in the midst of suffering like Naomi’s, we can look to the cross and remember the suffering of the One who stood in our place. We can remember that God is not against us, but rather even when it seems He has turned His face against us we know that his plan has been worked out through Christ, and we are reconciled to Him. Naomi’s greatest hopelessness here is in her feeling that God was against her. We have the cross to remind us that God is for us, and we have the resurrection to remind us that God has a plan, an end to suffering and tragedy. Even when we feel in the depths of Hell, we look to the cross, and then to the resurrection. When all seems lost, our only hope is to be found in this perspective, in a perspective that recognizes though God seems absent, behind the scenes we know He is working, and we must look forward to and wait for the resurrection of the dead and the wiping away of every tear from our eyes.
Theology in Community 