REV: Hugh Perry

Readings

Ruth 3: 1-5, 4 13-17 

Both Ruth the Moabite and her Jewish mother-in-law Naomi are widows and have returned to Naomi’s homeland from Moab.  However, without a direct male relative they are destitute and have survived by Ruth gleaning in a field belonging to their nearest living relative Boaz. But now the harvest time is coming to an end, so Naomi thinks of a cunning plan for their ongoing survival.  It might be Naomi’s plan but it is Ruth who has to implement it, but she understands their situation so agrees.  It is after all a cunning plan that has been carried out time and time again in cultures where women are completely dependent on men for their survival. 

Maurice Andrew notes that ‘On the one hand, these are ‘woman’s wiles’; on the other hand, they were what women were able to do in order to survive in a time of deprivation.’ [1]

When Boaz, tired from work, partying and maybe even a little too much to drink Ruth slips into bed with him and when he wakes up Ruth explains that he will now have to marry her.  Boaz seems open to that suggestion but first makes sure that he will get access to her property before he agrees.  When the wheeling and dealing at the town gate is complete Ruth and Boaz are married and in due course Ruth has a son, Obed who became the father of Jesse, who was the father of David.

On the birth of the son Ruth becomes redundant and Obed is known as the son of Naomi.  The foreign woman Ruth appears to only be valued for her ability to bear children, but the reality is that she is still the mother of kings.

Mark 12: 38- 44

We now move to the fate of widows in Jesus’ time, which was not much of an improvement on the times of Ruth and Naomi.  Jesus says ‘Beware of the Scribes’.  The Scribes were the experts in the law and Jesus points out how they like to make a big show of their piety but one of their revenue streams was exploiting widows.  As experts in the law, they would manage widow’s estates, because women without a husband or son could not manage their inheritance but the scribes would use up all the inheritance in fees.  That is a practice not unheard of in twenty-first century Aotearoa New Zealand although we could add fund managers, finance companies and con-artists to lawyers in that same context. 

The first section about lawyers and fund managers puts the second section about the widow in the temple in context.  Jesus is criticising the temple’s flat tax system which for the widow is everything she has, but for the wealthy in the society, for instance the scribes who put on a great show of piety, the temple tax is inconsequential. 

Sermon

The book of Ruth is another of the books of the Hebrew Scripture that give so much more meaning if they are read right through like a novel rather than just the short passages the lectionary gives us. 

However, if you read last week’s reading from the opening verses of Ruth you would have learned about the vulnerability of widows in biblical times.  Then todays reading gives us two extracts from the conclusion of the book. 

We miss out the classic ‘gleaning’ episode which highlights the do-it-yourself social security system of the time.  Law proscribed that landless widows were entitled to take the grain that was missed during the harvest.  That reminds me of Inge Woolf’s description of her family arriving in England as refugees from Nazi Germany.  They were undesirable aliens without work permits, and at one time Inge’s mother collected offcuts from clothing factories and made them into children’s duffle coats.  The factory gleanings were then sold at a street stall to provide income for the family.[2]

Returning to Ruth and Naomi, Maurice Andrew points out that, although they were able to redeem their situation through ‘woman’s wiles’, we need to remember just how desperate the situation was.[3]  

Certainly they were not living in the middle of the London Blitz with the patriarch of the family serving in the Czech Unit of the British Army. 

But, there is a definite hint of the patriarchal system that controls women’s lives in these closing passages we read this morning. 

The son of Boaz and Ruth is regarded as a son for Naomi even though the child has no biological connection to Naomi, she is simply Ruth’s mother-in-law. 

The human constructed custom of levirate marriage, where a brother is obliged to marry the widow of his dead brother, seems to have been extended to the cousin Boaz.  The first son of levirate marriage is considered the son of the deceased brother, not the biological father.  Therefore, Obed is understood as Naomi’s grandchild and both Boaz and Ruth are simply surrogate parents. 

The benefits for the women are that Naomi has security in the community through her grandson and Ruth has security through her husband.

The spiritual context that challenges human law is added to the story by the biblical writer’s irony.  The writer provides a forward running genealogy that notes that Obed became the father of Jesse, who was the father of David. 

So, despite the strange human constructed levirate rules designed to keep control of patriarchal property, the non-Jewish Moabite woman becomes the great grandmother of Israel’s idealized king.  That is a message to all peoples who seek racial purity and is worth remembering as population growth, changing economics and global warming moves people around the globe. 

Despite human laws, customs and practices that are designed to manipulate people’s lives, God’s will prevails.  We are all the family of all humanity.  Today’s reading from Ruth reinforces the Exodus call to freedom that continually perverts even the most structured of rule-based slavery, giving liberation to desperate widows and adding DNA from a despised race to the most powerful of patriarchal families in Israel’s history. 

That divine indifference to human racial sensibility is later reinforced as David’s successor, Solomon, is the son of Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah the Hittite.  Furthermore. Bathsheba used ‘womanly wiles’ to first become queen and then queen mother.

It is this hint of divine oversight and concern for widows as marginalised people that features in our Gospel reading.  Jesus first criticizes the scribes for exploiting widows and then contrasts the donation of those who contribute out of their wealth to the widow who is forced to give all that she has. 

The scribes were experts in the law and, just like the legal profession of our time, were capable of administrating inheritances.  In a society where women were expected to deal through a male, they often administered estates for widows without sons like Ruth and Naomi. 

With widows from poor families the scribe’s fees could easily use up all the inheritance which is not beyond the realms of possibility in our society.  The cost of running a law office is significant and is not related to the size of someone’s estate, which is why we have the Public Trust and Community Law. 

However. as we move further towards user pays the poor of both sexes get marginalised and even a free school lunch is seen as a threat to the market economy.

However, Jesus’ accusation was much sharper than simple criticism of the free market.  ‘They devour widows’ houses.  (Mark 12:40) 

For those of us who live in the digital age that sounds very like computer scams, elder abuse and dubious investment schemes.  Deliberate deception that can even involve care givers and family members.   

When I lived in the Waikato there was a major fraud that targeted vulnerable people.  That group remortgaged old people’s inherited freehold homes, kept the money.  When the victims failed to repay the loan they lost their homes. 

As it turned out it was not just Jesus that disapproved, and a very diligent detective made sure a number of people involved shared Her Majesty’s hospitality for varying lengths of time. 

Jesus’ comments remind us that exploiting vulnerable people has been around for a very long time and the example of the flat temple tax makes it clear that even religious institutions can also indulge in it. 

In our time the prosperity gospel maxim that ‘the more you give to God the more you receive is alive and well in many so-called successful churches.  That creates a risk to all churches of a backlash from a caring secular society that could see all churches lose their tax-free status.

The indulgences that so outraged Martin Luther and triggered the reformation targeted the poor and vulnerable with promises of escape from purgatory, at a price.  The fact that it was more successful amongst the marginalized is illustrated by the story of the great indulgence salesman John Tetzel who was supposedly asked by a knight if he could purchase an indulgence for a sin he might commit in the future. 

Ever enthusiastic to boost Pope Leo’s fund for the restoration of St Peters, Tetzel agreed, collected the money and issued the certificate.

However, on his way to the next town the Knight held up Tetzel and robed him, remarking that this was the very future sin he had in mind. 

That story suggests that the ruling class were far less intimidated by the church’s authority than the peasants and marginalised masses of Europe. 

That also appears to be the case with the Temple authority in Jesus. time.

Certainly, Jesus acknowledges that the wealthy gave to the temple.  But the legislated flat temple tax was far less of a burden to them than the poor, for whom the tax was often all that they had. 

But Jesus also suggests that the wealthy gave to look good and improve their status which is not unheard of in our world. 

It has become fashionable for the world’s wealthy to give away large amounts of money but often they still expect to control how it is spent.  Certainly, gifts to political parties are often viewed with suspicion.  Recently there have been rumours of large donations from the tobacco industry being connected to changes to the Smoke Free legalisation.  

Significantly we can however learn from both these readings that all sorts of cultural rules and practices still have gaps where vulnerable people suffer and are exploited. 

In biblical time widows were vulnerable and survived as best they could.  We can equally make a list of marginalised people in our own society.  Sadly, women in broken or violent relationships would feature on such a list.  Isolated women are just as vulnerable as Ruth would have been gleaning in a field filled with men harvesting the grain.

Churches and other faith communities certainly need money to survive and carry out their mission.   But what our gospel reading teaches us is that contrary to what the church has preached in the past, and will probably preach in the future, todays Gospel reading is not a plea for support for the church. 

Today’s reading is in line with the total Gospel.  It is a plea for us all to care for the vulnerable and a critique of all those people and organisations who exploit the marginalised. 

We who are the church certainly need to be cheerful givers but cheerful is the operative word.  Our giving is part of our discipleship journey, our commitment to transforming our world.  We give what we can to achieve together what we would struggle to achieve individually. 

But we also give of ourselves to be part of a just society.  We love our neighbour as ourselves when our neighbour is the total family of all humanity regardless of race, creed, culture or gender. 

In living as Christ to others we look to a world without exploitation where no one needs to glean from the field or the clothing factories.

[1] Maurice Andrew The Old Testament in Aotearoa New Zealand  (Wellington: DEFT 1999), p.207

[2] Inge Woolf Resilience the story of persecution escape and triumph (Wellington: The Holocaust Centre of New Zealand 2024),p.81

[3] Maurice Andrew The Old Testament in Aotearoa New Zealand  (Wellington: DEFT 1999), p.207