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| A beautiful rendering by He Qi He Qi © 2013 | www.heqigallery.com |
A newly-widowed woman named Naomi demonstrates chesed when she directs her daughters-in-law (who are also widowed) to return to their mother’s houses. In scripture, the less common phrase “mother’s house” is associated with women who determine their own fates and the fates of others. Naomi is a strong woman.
When Naomi tells Ruth and Orpah to return to their mother’s houses she is selflessly saying she wants them to re-marry. Women in Near Eastern cultures at that time had no security except through their husbands and sons. Naomi has lost both her husband and her sons, so will most likely be very poor. By telling Orpah and Ruth to return to the safety and protection of their mother’s houses, Naomi is thinking of their well-being, and taking the ultimate risk of love, the risk of losing the person you love.
Orpah tearfully says goodbye and departs, but Ruth “clings” to Naomi. In the Hebrew scriptures, “clinging” is the closest physical position one woman can take to another, so this word indicates the strength of their bond. Ruth's chesed is saying she will bind her fate to Naomi’s. Ruth gives herself to love, saying the words so often quoted in weddings, "Wherever you go, I will go, wherever you dwell I shall dwell. Your people will be will be my people and your God will be my God."
In those days, people did not convert from one religion to another. Your ethnicity and where you were born determined your religion. If you were Moabite, like Ruth, you worshiped the Moabite gods. In order to claim Yahweh as her God, Ruth must claim a new identity founded in love, an identity which can never wholly or truly be hers. She will never be accepted as a true Jewish woman, and she knows this. She takes that risk because this is the way she loves.
Ruth embodies the virtue of love. Ethicist Robin Lovin writes, “Love is the orientation of individual life to a center outside itself.” Ruth gives herself to love in ways that were breathtakingly courageous in her time and place. This is her choice. She and Naomi are both strong, and willing to take risks for love. In the book of Ruth, the word "love" only describes the relationship between Ruth and Naomi.
Making this commitment can mean trying to love people who may be hard to like. They are not perfect, but then neither are we. The challenge is to try to find, with them, the loving kindness that can survive stormy seas. When we find ourselves on a shore we never thought to encounter, it means turning to one another with the will to see that sacred love once more. The ministry we share is about loving commitment. It is a risk to make this commitment. There are no guarantees. It takes a leap of faith.
The book of Ruth can teach us a great deal about the theological virtue of love. It teaches us that giving yourself to love can be positively dangerous – that is, dangerous in a positive way. Loving can change your identity radically. It did for Ruth. Loving ourselves and others deeply, despite faults and failings, can transform us. Love may ask us to forget everything we ever thought we knew about ourselves. When you give yourself to love, really give of your self to love, you may find your self dissolving like a caterpillar’s body does in its cocoon. You may feel your self re-forming underneath the surface, until you emerge with a new identify, ready to take wing.
Giving yourself to love is frightening, and it’s exciting. It is juicy and full of life and possibility. It is a risky step into the unknown and perhaps the unknowable. The thing is, love is always worth the risk. I think this is the central message of Ruth’s story. No matter what it leads you into, what pathways of the heart, love is worth the risk. So give yourself to love, if love is what you’re after. Open up your heart to the pain and laughter. And give yourself to love, give yourself to love.
By the way, it turns out well for Ruth. Naomi finds her a husband and they live well and long together.
